Williams College gets earful on proposal to build $65 million art

January 2016 www.greylockindependent.com $1.00
Williams College gets earful on proposal to build $65 million art
museum on Southworth By Bill Densmore
In two public forums called on December 15, Williams
College asked for comment on its proposal to erect a $65
million, 102,000 square foot art museum at the corner of
Southworth and Main Streets—and got earfuls of criticism
about the proposal as well as appreciation for holding the
meeting. “You tell us what we have to do to convince you
to pick another site,” pleaded Wendy Martin, who lives one
street adjacent to the proposed site.
At least 130 people showed up for the two hour-long
listening sessions called by the college art department and
museum program and space planning committee. By the end
of the second gathering in Griffin Hall, committee members
were acknowledging they had told architectural advisors to
get back to their drawing boards and consider smaller ideas for
the parcel on the order of 60,000 square feet. The Southworth
site is the subject of an iPetitions campaign [https://www.
facebook.com/DivestWilliams/posts/10153797665017718]
signed by more than 300 people, many of them Williams
faculty and staff, expressing concerns about the college’s
building on Southworth and urging choosing another site,
particularly the college-owned Williams Inn and the townowned former town garage site on Water Street.
The comments from declared opponents or commentators
on the Southworth site boiled down to two main points:
(1) For the college to consider its academic programming
needs for faculty and students without regard to its impact on
changing the town’s character, risks making Williamstown
a less attractive place for private individuals and families.
(2) It’s difficult for the larger community to deal with the
impact of the college’s building binge, given that there is no
evidence or discussion, at least in public, of a coherent longterm plan, and one that includes the character of the whole
town.
Williams media relations director, Mary Dettloff, in
explaining the status of these college plans, said: “There is
no site picked out. . . . I can’t comment on all the rumors on
the iPetition site. . . . We don’t have a schedule for a building
being built in 2017. A very early conceptual drawing was
immediately rejected by the building committee as being too
big. We still don’t have a replacement concept for that. And
Photo by Bill Densmore
since we have no design, we have not begun fundraising for
a new museum.” And the project has not yet received trustee
approval. Dettloff said there is no firm plan yet for parking
and other considerations, including traffic and cost.
College officials explained why their focus is the
Southworth site and why they need a new art museum: (1)
It is a reasonable planning strategy to focus on one site at a
time, rather than pursuing multiple routes simultaneously. (2)
Southworth is close to the humanities and social science quad,
while still a short walk across Main Street from the Spencer
Studio Art Building and a short walk from Lawrence Hall,
where the Williams College Museum of Art is now based. The
runner-up location, the college owned Williams Inn at Field
Park, is too far from the rest of the art and art history facilities.
(3) For over 20 years, the number of objects in the Williams
College Museum of Art College has grown to 14,000 from
6,000, including a gift of thousands of objects from one donor.
The vast majority are in storage for lack of exhibition space.
Consultants Steven Holl Architects have been told “to see
if they can come up with a way to still make this a viable
possibility.” Holl’s name as consultant architect was provided
the week before at a public meeting, by Thomas Krens,
MASS MoCA originator and former head of the Guggenheim
continued on page 2
Page 2
The Greylock Independent
January 2016
continued from page 1
museums. Holl’s style of design appears cubist and stark.
Some documents in circulation have shown drawings of a
four-story structure at the Southworth site.
The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) is known
to be working on a name change, which has given rise to
speculation that the college may have secured a major gift for
the museum expansion.
By far the loudest applause at either of the two meetings
took place when Williams Professor Richard Deveaux, whose
home is across Southworth Street from the considered site,
said: “There doesn’t seem to be a way of making this into
something that the whole community could be joyful about—
which would be to develop a site that needs to be [developed].
Like the Williams Inn site, where we have a building we don’t
know what to do with, or the town garage site. You guys are
a smart, clever group. Can’t you think of a creative way to
make that whole part between Water Street and Spring Street
an integrated, semi-urban environment that would connect all
these things in a way that would make the town happy?”
[Specific comments from town residents on the Southworth
Street issue are included in our website version of this article,
at greylockindependent.com.]
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Page 3
The Greylock Independent
January 2016
First Congregational Church and
Williamstown. 250 years together
By Moira Jones
Moderator, First Congregational Church, Williamstown
The Great Awakening, beginning
around 1740, shook congregations to
their roots both in England and in the
Colonies. Among the topics of heated
debate was the question of whether a
person whose parents had not both been
members of a church could become a
member.
It was probably a reaction to
these spiritually unsettling times that
drove the General Assembly of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts to
pass legislation in 1750 requiring each
town to have a “settled and learned
pastor” in order to incorporate in
Massachusetts. The first proprietors
tried many times to obtain a pastor
and spent a great deal of money on it,
building a meeting house in the town
square before the end of the French
and Indian War. In July 1765 they
had some luck. Rev. Whitman Welch
(Yale, 1762) was called to be the first
pastor of the Congregational Church.
He served until May 4, 1775 when
he sold his farm to accompany the
Williamstown volunteers going to fight
in the Revolution. He died of smallpox
in Quebec in 1776.
The next major event in the Church’s
history is the Haystack prayer meeting
at Williams College in August 1806.
The prayer meeting became significant
a few years later after students Samuel
Mills and James Richards enrolled at
Andover Theological Seminary. Joined
by other enthusiastic seminarians, they
convinced the General Association of
Congregational Ministers to form The
American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions in 1810.
Rev. Ralph Gridley, our fourth
pastor, was called in 1816. The revival
meeting, a key component of the Great
Awakening, became the first instance
of Town-Gown discord: Williams
President Edward Dorr
Griffin felt that public
display of emotions
should be discouraged,
and that sermons should
be read. Rev. Gridley,
on the other hand, felt
emotional displays were
a natural part of the
revival, and sermons
delivered extemporaneously were
more effective. This disagreement
resulted in Rev. Gridley’s resignation;
he headed west to establish missions on
the frontier.
At the end of 1849 Samuel
Harrison arrived in Pittsfield from
New Jersey to become the first pastor
of the Second Congregational Church,
a new black church. Immediately
after arriving in the Berkshires,
Harrison decided to attend a Berkshire
Association meeting in Williamstown
in January 1850. Harrison was
ordained in the First Congregational
Church in Williamstown, which
was large enough in space and heart
for such an event. After serving as
chaplain of the Massachusetts 54th,
Rev. Harrison is most famous for
winning equal pay for black soldiers
in the Civil War.
There were five pastors called
between the time Rev. Gridley resigned
and Rev. Mason Noble came as an
interim in 1865. Noble came to serve
his native Church in its centennial year,
only to watch it burn to the ground 3
months after the celebration. The New
Congregational Church was built of
brick to discourage future fires, designed
by Charles Rathbun of Pittsfield. The
College gave a substantial sum to
ensure that it would be large enough
to hold their annual ceremonies. The
Church had spent all the money they
raised to build this church. Professor
Albert Hopkins volunteered to serve as
pastor without pay, which he did until
his death in 1872.
When the College received the gift
of what became Chapin Hall in 1910,
they decided they no longer needed the
Church building. The Church debated
building on a new site, but decided
against it. Three years later, Robert
Cluett presented a plan whereby the
Church could renovate to a Georgian
style. The idea was to reduce the size
of the two brick steeples, and wrap the
entire structure with clapboard. Mr. and
Mrs. Cluett paid the entire cost of the
renovation. The 150th celebration in
the newly redecorated church was an
extravagant affair, taking up an entire
weekend in October 1915.
After the 1934 re-incorporation,
there came a turbulent period when the
Church wrestled with the question of
independence from versus solidarity
with a national Church organization.
The Church chose first to join,
then leave, then rejoin in 1961 the
organization that became the United
Church of Christ.
Now, as our new pastor, Rev.
Mark Longhurst, said recently, First
Congregational Church is “plotting
goodness,
celebrating
beauty,
worshipping God, serving people in
need, learning from the Bible, and
connecting with people”.
Page 4
The Greylock Independent
January 2016
Thomas Krens proposes a “cultural corridor” between North Adams
and Williamstown. Video and audio highlights of the presentation
By Bill Densmore
Former MA governors Weld and Dukakis
Photo by Bill Densmore
Former Massachusetts governors Michael S. Dukakis
and William Weld joined former Guggenheim museum
director and MASS MoCA originator Thomas Krens, on
December 5, 2015, in describing plans for an “Extreme
Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum”
and a new “Global Contemporary Collection and Museum”
near the Harriman & West Airport, both in North Adams,
Mass.
To watch a video or hear the audio of the key 27 minutes
of the presentation, including remarks by Dukakis and Weld,
as well as Krens’ description of both projects, with slides,
go to the following link: http://newshare.typepad.com/
greylocknews/2015/12/videoaudio-all-the-details-aboutkrens-cultural-corridor-ideas-with-weld-dukakis-.html
Here are some excerpts from the presentation:
Dukakis: I am a rail fanatic. This proposal gives us a
great opportunity. I look forward to following the progress.
Weld: It feels like old times. Back in 1991, John Barrett
and others persuaded me that the idea of MASS MoCA was
so counter-intuitive that it probably had a good possibility
to work. It turned out to be a spectacular investment by the
state. This current project that we’re here to talk about today,
the railroad installation here and the Global Contemporary
Art Museum by the airport—really are attention-getters and
a complement to MASS MoCA and the Clark.
These are projects that are going to be financed—there’s
no doubt about that. The railroad museum in Hamburg,
Germany, similar to the plans for the one here, has had a
million visitors a year, which is triple the Clark and five
times MASS MoCA, and we think we can do as well as
Hamburg, even better. I personally think this is broader than
North Adams and North County. It’s another step in our
realizing that the arts and culture in western Massachusetts
are arguably superior to those east of Route 495. We’re on
the march.
Krens: I wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about it at the
beginning. I had been in New York for 25 years but still
came back to Williamstown from time to time since I still
have a home here. Gradually the idea dawned on me, as I
saw that what was happening at MASS MoCA, like the Sol
DeWitt installation, in collaboration with the university and
the state, was one of the heroic moments at MASS MoCA
that indicated it would be here for a while. You could see
that the ship was rising. I was thinking primarily, as the most
important project for me, of the project at the airport.
When I was talking to John DeRosa and Mayor
Alcombright about this project, they heard these noises in my
basement, and I had to explain, “I’m building prototypes for
a museum in China, of an extreme model railroad (‘Extreme’
means rigorous and precise in every detail, including the
setting).” So after that, Heritage Park became the focus.
When spring came, I rode my bicycle around Heritage
Park and the Hoosac Tunnel, and saw that there might be
something here to develop. Heritage Park was originally a
project of Governor Dukakis and these buildings were quite
extraordinary.
So, my thinking developed about North Adams. It’s the
smallest city in Massachusetts but now it’s hard to imagine
North Adams without MASS MoCA. But MASS MoCA has
not been a silver bullet. It has hit its original target but it’s
not enough, and there
is no spill over effect to
other parts of the city.
There are reasons for
this. People come from all
over to MASS MoCA, but
they’re not staying. The
economy and population
of North Adams continues
to contract. So something
has to be done to enhance
the city. That’s the reality.
The potential is that
MASS MoCA has become,
officially, the largest
museum of contemporary
art in the country. It has
Thomas Krens
an annual attendance of
www.artnews.com
180,000 people, including
continued on page 5
Page 5
The Greylock Independent
January 2016
continued from page 4
concerts. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, with
its recent major expansion, has an annual attendance of
325,000. Williams College has announced plans for a new
College Museum of Art, construction to begin in 2017.
To identify the valley as a cultural corridor, North
Adams needs more world class attractions. Here are two of
my proposals:
Global Contemporary Art Museum at the Harriman
& West airport. Most established museums in large cities,
and many private collectors, simply do not have the space
to systematically or sustainably exhibit the explosion of
creativity that has taken place in the visual arts. So we’re
talking about a new exhibition space that would exhibit the
whole echelon of contemporary art that fits perfectly between
what MASS MoCA is doing and what the Clark is doing. The
main idea is that we’d be taking works that you usually see
only once, and aggregate it into works by a single artist. This
could be the perfect location for it because an urban setting
would be too expensive.
Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary
Architecture Museum at Heritage State Park. This
would be an extra long building, longer than two football
fields. It’s not a model-train-in-the-basement concept ...
I’m famous for doing the art and motorcycle show at the
Guggenheim Museum, where the idea was to relate popular
culture to a museum context, presented with sophistication
Extreme Model Railroad
and Contemporary Architecture Museum
Photo from Bill Densmore video. https://youtu.be/Stuvfn2e8sw
and elegance. This concept also deals with cost efficiency.
The idea is to put up this train museum as one of several
galleries that could operate for a limited amount of time,
say, 10 years. Then I began to imagine it would be more
like a theme park, a very sophisticated theme park, for
people ages four to 104, a Disney Imagineering project.
The goal would be to enhance the profile and brand of the
North Adams/Williamstown Cultural Corridor, to establish
a professional standard by becoming the best of its type in
the world, to generate a new audience that complements the
MASS MoCA/Clark/Williamstown Museum of Art axis, and
to generate investment to stimulate the economy here.
President Falk creates new committee at Williams to judge whether
monuments or memorials on campus encourage an inclusive
community By Harry Montgomery
Read your Williams Record of December 9 online to
follow President Falk’s explanation of the College’s new
Monuments Committee. Herbert Allen, class of 1962 and
major donor to the College, wrote a Letter to the Editor,
Dec.9, arguing that the President’s censoring a painting at the
Log and then forming “a tribunal to judge the moral value
of art objects on campus,” will be “the College’s edition of
the old House Un-American Activities Committee.” Art will
always alienate someone, he continues, but everyone is at
liberty to criticize and we shouldn’t be appointing committees
to destroy the past. Better to focus on broader representation
of groups who feel underrepresented.
I share Allen’s view. Preserve and share all that old art,
good and bad by current standards, and bring on the new. I
believe Allen and Falk both hope to come out in the same
place, on the side of freedom, but Allen makes it difficult for
Falk to take his circuitous and obfuscated route.
Funny how sides and roles shift over the years on issues
of free speech. In my time as a student at Williams, it was
the Old Guard elite, led by President James Phinney Baxter,
who protected academic freedom and the professors who
exercised it, from the purges sought by the McCarthyites.
And let’s not forget Williams’ own Professor Lane Faison,
godfather of the “Williams Art Mafia”, who joined The
Monuments Men during WWII, a US and Allied agency
formed to save the European art stolen by the Nazis or
threatened with destruction, and after the war, to return it
to the rightful owners. The Monuments Men did not vet this
recovered art—they saved it all.
Allen, eight years after me at Williams, fully earned his
Bachelor of Arts degree in his Letter. He defends freedom
of expression, understands the importance of the context
in which art is produced and remembers history—to avoid
repeating it.
Page 6
The Greylock Independent
January 2016
Head Start Visits the Clark By Rae Eastman
The Clark starts attracting its
visitors at an early age. On a sunny
morning in December over 20
Headstarters from North Adams
trooped eagerly into the museum with
their teachers for their first visit to
an art gallery. Their introduction to
the idea of art had been the reading
of a book, a charming little book
created by the Clark art department
to explain what art is, what a gallery
is. Dressed in identical green smocks,
they listened quietly as officials at the
Clark welcomed them, introducing
them to admissions people and then
to a member of the security staff who
told them visitors never touched a
painting, always spoke in low voices
and did not disturb other visitors and,
of course, always walked in a gallery,
never ran. One of the officials told
them they would soon have their own
gallery at the Clark, hanging paintings
they had made their very own selves.
They spoke with one of the guards as
we entered the first gallery who, among
other things, relieved me of my pen and
replaced it with a pencil.
By this time, there were two
groups, each with a leader. The group I
followed was led by Peter Mehlin, one
of the Museum’s docents.. In the first
gallery, the group sat on the floor, hardly
Photos from The Clark Art Institute
looking at the walls but
then noticing that a man
wearing gloves was also
seated on the floor beside
a huge bucket of tools. He
explained that these were
used to ensure that each
painting hung exactly 61
inches from the floor and
an equal distance from
its neighbor. The curators
used these as well, he said,
for other technical reasons to do with
hanging a painting, though no one, he
said, ever touched a painting with their
bare hands. He mentioned again that
they would have their very own gallery
by the end of their course but still, they
barely looked at the paintings on the
walls.
Peter then led the group to a
painting chosen at random to point out
that all the paintings hanging in this
gallery had three things in common:
a frame, the picture itself and an
identifying label. The gallery also
contained sculpture, also a kind of art
that, by definition, he said, pointing
to a Remington nearby, you can walk
around—which they all proceeded to
do. Then it was time for the fun part,
to repair to their own gallery, a room
beyond the cafeteria where they found
huge paper cutouts of humans ready
for embellishing with crayons and little
design additions. The look on some
faces showed they couldn’t believe
their luck, and they set to with such a
will that some of the spangles ended up
on the floor.
The second session a week later
began with a look outside the Clark,
up the dirt road to the right where cows
grazed, and a look upward toward the
smaller gallery hidden beyond the trees.
As if to look the youngsters over, an owl
landed on a fence in the near distance
and never moved while they watched.
Peter reviewed the particulars common
to the oil paintings in the gallery, which
they enthusiastically called out as Peter
pointed: “The frame! The picture! The
label!” This time they got interested
in the picture itself. A still life—what
was that? Who are those people in
that picture? Now they were looking
at all the paintings, running from one
to another. “That’s a seascape.” “No it
isn’t, it only has a little water!” “This
face is familiar,” said one student,
whereupon Peter pulled out a dollar
bill, showing whose face that might
be. He called one painting a seascape
and was loudly denounced: “That’s a
landscape—can’t you see the trees and
the grass?” This time their own work, in
their own studio, was with watercolors,
and as each painting took on a meaning,
they were told to give them titles.
At their last meeting the participants
showed their family around the gallery
they knew by now, by reviewing a
spreadsheet, crossing off the squares
as they were accomplished: See a
sculpture—Tell about a painting—Ask
guard a question. And best of all—Show
YOUR art. Then they were ready to cross
off the last directive—Have a snack.
Their parents had to have been
impressed. There on the walls of the
Clark were the students’ own paintings,
titled by the artist: “A Rainbow”.
“Colors”. “Self”. “A Different
Landscape”. “Portrait of a Dog”. This
program had all the elements needed
for them to remember their time at the
Clark and perhaps make future visitors
out of them.
Page 7
The Greylock Independent
January 2016
GAILSEZ: What to Do in January
By Gail Burns
Don’t settle in to hibernate just
yet! The pace is slower in January, but
there’s still plenty to do.
DASHING THROUGH THE SNOW:
Whether or not there’s snow,
Sweet Brook Farm on Oblong Road in
Williamstown offers sleigh or wagon
rides through the maple sugar bush and
around the beautiful alpaca farm with
Dave Larabee and his team of Belgian
horses, Bob and Bud, all winter long.
Rides, last approximately 45 minutes
with a break for hot cocoa in a cozy
cabin in the woods. Cost $18 adults,
$9 children. Reservations are required,
413-441-4302.
MLK DAY OF SERVICE:
Gather at 9 am at the MCLA
Church Street Center on Monday,
January 18 to sign up for service
projects and enjoy light refreshments.
Participants will choose from projects
onsite at MCLA–including making
mittens, crevices, meal kits, and other
projects–or going to local agencies
such as the YMCA, Louison House,
and winterizing at local homes. The
day concludes back at the Church
Street Center with a free community
lunch, a celebration in honor of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., and the
presentation of the Peacemaker Award.
FREE ART:
The crowds are smaller and this
month there are opportunities to visit
our excellent local museums for free.
Admission to The Clark is free from
10 am-5 pm on January 3, and MASS
MoCA’s annual Free Day is January
30 from 11 am-7 pm. Admission to the
Williams College Museum of Art is
always free, and on January 28 from
5-8 pm the winter study class, Mapping
An MCLA senior provided impromptu musical accompaniment while volunteers
cleaned the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of North Adams during last
year’s MLK Day of Service. Photo provided by Gail Burns
the Museum, culminates in an evening
of “petite interventions” curated by
socially engaged artist and class leader
Lexa Walsh.
FREE CONCERTS AT WILLIAMS:
From January 7-9 the Williams
College Department of Music presents
I/O Fest ’16 – three days of adventurous
new music from around the globe–at
the ’62 Center. On January 24, at 3 pm
in the Math-Stats Library professional
harpsichordist Victor Hill performs
the music of Bach, Scarlatti, and
Jacques Duphly on the double-manual
harpsichord of 18th century FrancoFlemish design custom-built for him.
The Williams Opera Workshop’s
culminating concert of operatic scenes
will be at 7 pm on January 28 in
Chapin Hall.
DANCING THE WINTER BLUES
AWAY:
On January 22 at 8 pm on the
MainStage in the ’62 Center, iconic
choreographer Ronald K. Brown and
his dance company Evidence presents
a program that will include “The Subtle
One,” Brown’s extraordinary new
collaboration with the renowned jazz
pianist Jason Moran.
STRONG JANUARY LINE-UP AT
MASS MoCA:
On January 16 at 8 pm composer
Daniel Wohl’s new album Holographic
comes to life in tandem with Daniel
Schwartz’s lush visuals in a work-inprogress multisensory performance. On
January 21 at 7 pm there’s a screening
of “Heart of a Dog”, Laurie Anderson’s
touching tribute to her beloved terrier,
Lolabelle. On January 23 at 8 pm
FreshGrass presents Birds of Chicago,
the mesmerizing husband-wife duo JT
Nero and Allison Russell performing
their soul-inflected, groove-based
Americana. And finishing out the
month on January 30 comedian Chris
Gethard brings his stand-up act to Club
B-10 at 8 pm.
Page 8
Wild Sightings
The Greylock Independent
January 2016
By Adrian Dunn
Two years ago, on a winter
walk near my home, I saw what
I thought was a suspiciously
large, sandy-colored housecat,
sitting with its back to me on
a frozen pond several hundred
yards below my path. I stared,
trying to judge its actual size.
Pulling my binoculars out of
my knapsack, I immediately
recognized the black-tipped
ears of a bobcat. As it turned
its head to look at me, I saw its
long, furry sideburns. After a
good long look, the bobcat got
up and walked away across the
ice on oversized paws, revealing
a stubby, black-tipped tail.
A year later, on a similar cold gray
day, my husband and I were again
walking near the pond. I teasingly said,
“OK, see if you can spot the bobcat!”
“There’s something down there on
the ice,” he replied. “Something is
flailing around.” “Get the binoculars
out,” I replied. I grabbed them out of
his hand and looked down at the pond.
Sure enough, there was my bobcat,
wrestling a small deer onto the ice, its
stiff legs flailing. While we watched,
the bobcat kept his mouth on the deer’s
throat, straddled its body, and dragged
it up the bank into the bushes. “Oh, the
poor deer,” I said, but my next thought
was that the bobcat would have plenty
to feed her young.
The wildest thing where I grew up
in a southern California suburb was a
puddle full of pollywogs in an empty
lot. Living in the Berkshires for the
last thirty years feels incredibly rich in
comparison. Not only are the woods
and fields full of wild animals, we
can usually protect them without their
posing a threat to us. We are touched
by their beauty and nobility, or by their
comic silliness. Qualities we project
on them, perhaps, yet nonetheless
inspired by their curious otherness.
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Sometimes encounters with them
evoke deeper feelings of connection
to the natural world.
Recently, I saw a coyote a few
yards off a country road, and pulled
over. The coyote was loping away from
the road on the edge of a farmer’s corn
field. He continued to walk away from
me until I got out of the car, when he
stopped, turned, and stared me down.
I stared back, noting his gray and
tawny facial markings and alert gaze.
I felt slightly unnerved, but held my
ground. He was maybe fifty or sixty
feet away from me, close enough to
get a good look. Was I too close? I felt
he was assessing me: was I prey? Was
I a threat? Once he had sized me up
as being neither, he turned and walked
deliberately away. No domestic dog
has ever looked at me like that.
Seeing a wild animal up close
always makes me feel blessed, as if
I am granted a momentary glimpse
into another world. We can choose
to live in our imaginal and virtual
worlds, allowing our emotions to be
manipulated by the prevailing media,
by words and manufactured images,
interacting only with other humans,
machines, or with our fawning pets.
But when you stand in the gaze of a
wild animal, it brings you completely
out of that contrived and domesticated
human landscape into the immediacy
of your own animal nature. The color
and feel of the surroundings, the need
for shelter, the impulse to hide or the
urge to give chase: these are all yours in
an instant. The importance of physical
strength, of strong maternal and group
ties, the need for endurance in lean
times, the necessary sacrifice for life
to go on, the inevitability of death:
these are the gifts from wildness.
In wildness there is no free lunch
and no illusion of it. Just humility,
struggle, and time. In thirty years, I
have seen changes in our local animal
populations. Orange salamanders
have dwindled, monarch butterflies
are scarce, and I see many fewer
songbirds. Our area is affected by
habitat loss thousands of miles away,
as wilderness is transformed by human
encroachment. I fear the loss of the
wild. The wild animals staring from
our cell phones could outlast the real
ones as their habitats are destroyed. In
a completely domesticated world, how
will we fully know ourselves?