A First AscentPinnacles Nat'l Monument, CA, 1934
"There is a lot to be learned from climbing mountains...Tough mountains build bold leaders, many of whom, in the early days, came down from the mountains to save them. The world now needs these leaderspeople willing to take a chanceas it has never needed them before."
David Brower, 1995
After joining the Sierra Club in 1933, Brower and his climbing friends began revolutionizing the sport of rock climbing with new techniques for safety and teamwork. They used little equipment outside pitons, carabiners, and the hemp rope and crepe-soled basketball shoes shown in this picture (Chuck Taylor All-Stars). In his mountaineering career, Brower is credited with 70 first ascents, the majority of them in the Sierra Nevada of California, but including the historic ascent of Shiprock in New Mexico and war-time ascents in the Alps while serving in the U.S. Army's storied Tenth Mountain Division.
08/06/01
BROWER BOOK EXCERPT #1
From "Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth" by David R. Brower with Steve Chapple
(New Society Publishers, 2000):
from CHAPTER 11: A WORLD RESTORED
Broken Eggs must remain broken, but broken hearts may be mended with love. Extinct species are gone, but endangered plants and animals may be brought back from the brink. Exhausted fields can renew themselves. Grass can annihilate pavement. So long as life lasts, dashed hopes stand a chance. We need only get over that current feeling that says, "Where there is life there must be hopelessness." We must ever answer the question, "But what can I do?" with the realization that restoring the Earth, making things better, renews and heals us at the same time.
Restoration is a deceptively complex concept. It means regeneration. Return the natural world to the way it was, as best we can, before clearcutting, acid mining, inelegant development, pollution and the industrial accidents of bygone eras harmed the Earth. Give nature a jump start, and stand back.
Restoration means putting the Earth's life-support systems back in working order: rivers, forests, wetlands, deserts, soil, and endangered species, too. Many dams on many rivers have been made unnecessary by new systems of energy generation and distribution. Let's take out those superfluous dams, beginning with Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy, which should never have been dammed, and let's drain Glen Canyon. We need forests, not just tree plantations. Wetlands, as we are beginning to learn, purify our drinking water, acting like giant filters. Ducks like them, too. Deserts require reclamation, not innundation. And isn't it time we stopped treating soil like dirt?
Human systems also need restoration. Let's rehabilitate the South Bronx, and all the other places like it across the Earth. To accomplish that, we must give the unemployed and the never-employed a stake in the wider restoration process. Let's also put environmental conscience into world trade and into our corporate thinking. It is time corporations moved from green public relations to green operations, so far as their environmental strategy is concerned. Restoration departments should be added to whatever Departments of the Interior are called the world around, and to the World Bank, while eco-spinmeaning that you carry on with your work, but you carry on with the best interests of the Earth as you do soshould be included in every thinking person's job description, from farmer to architect.
08/01/01
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