A Headwaters Hike

This is classic old school archives material, from December 1990, 25 years ago to the month. Here on the Voz Silvestre blog I share the scanned images of an old North Coast back-to-the-lander independent newspaper. It was fun to find and remember how I once scrabbled out a "natural history essay" that came from rooting around as an early-twenties "forest defender" that the hippy activists I admired so much at the time decided to publish on the cover of the very last edition ever printed of the Country Activist. Simple title: A Headwaters Hike. In a media that was truly independent. Technology was kicking in--I think I wrote the piece by hand but then edited and typed it in to a word processor that was in the old Ancient Forest International (AFI) office, that is now Persimmons, in Redway, California. But this was still distributed on paper, a very old school (and effective!) civics affairs organizing tool.

This is another example of how keeping a journal back in the day translated into relatively coherent and complete (in some few instances!) writing pieces. But I never was (nor will be) a true writer or wordsmith, I am simply not prolific enough. Still, this is a funky and authentic archive glance at my writing from back in the day. It is pretty fun to soak up the idealism and the fire of youth as captured in this piece that I put together and submitted literally in the very days before launching out as a mochilero south bound, to eventually arrive to a pre-determined destination with a commitment to work in Nicaragua as a volunteer for more than six months. It was different traveling back then. I was so fortunate to learn of the world on my own terms. From the old growth of the Pacific Northwest to the social movements of Central America, my explorations were always heavily diversified. I understood early on that biological diversity included and was completely interdependent with cultural diversity. Little by little I have been uncovering some curious old samples. Sooner than later though the memory lane silliness won't be sufficient to keep me entertained, the boxes will get put away in storage, and I am going to have to generate some new material. It is however very grounding to look back.