"You do not have to be good. You do not have to

walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the

desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal

of your body love what it loves.

            Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

 Meanwhile the world goes on..."

 – Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

In these darkening days of de-regulation, when it seems that the hounds of unfettered and short-sighted commerce – let's call it what it is, greed and a kind of breathless violence – have been unleashed upon the last of the world's wild places, I am always encouraged and emboldened by the work of Round River. There is courage in the work they do, seeking to study and know, as best as can be known through all the senses – love included – these last and farthest wild places, in our own country as well as beyond. There is courage, too, in the community work they pursue for the human elements of these landscapes. We need all stripes and brands of environmentalists these days, now more than ever – in the path of the mindless juggernaut of a war-based economy, a little obstructionism may not always be a bad thing – but I personally am partial to those science and community based forms of activism which contain proposed solutions in addition to the obvious answers of protect the last of the wild, love the last of the wild.

Old forests in the Rocky Mountains are again being cut and our beloved Colorado Plateau is being broken apart for brown low-grade coal by corporate pirates such as the Carlyle Group (the barbarians have entered the gates). Yet the vision of Round River has over the last decade achieved numerous conservation successes, from the coast of British Columbia to the high forests of Arizona. Community forestry is being modeled in Ecuador, Black Rhinos and the effects of tourism are being studied in Namibia, and the territory of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation is being defended fiercely, and still remains whole, in northern British Columbia. 

These accomplishments have been met by passionate and talented staff and instructors working as partners, not superiors, with passionate and talented students, on-the-ground and in-the field, in the heartlands of wild country. I salute the places and projects where Round River has been active in the past, as well as their ongoing work, and I look forward with hope and what I want to believe is a thing like courage – the courage to love the world more deeply – to the areas where they will be working in the future. Thank you to all the hundreds who have participated in Round River in the past, and to those who will, in the coming years.

Rick Bass