At the end of 2020, I thank the small coterie of regular readers of this idiosyncratic blog and the wider group of more occasional readers.
To express my appreciation and acknowledge my readers, I
have attached a link to a short article by Barry Lopez “Love in a Time of Terror: On Natural Landscapes, Metaphorical Living,
and Warlpiri Identity” (link here).
Lopez, who died last week, was previously unknown to me. His
best known book was Arctic Dreams, an
account of five years living in the Arctic. A 2005 review (link
here) by Robert Macfarlane, whose work I have read and enjoyed, described Lopez
as ‘the most important living writer about wilderness’.
This sentence from Love
in a Time of Terror struck a chord with me:
It is more important to live
for the possibilities that lie ahead than to die in despair over what has been
lost.
Apart from the challenge of seeing the world in
non-rational and metaphorical ways, embedded in these words is a deep respect
for human agency, and perhaps even an argument for the importance of individual
agency over structure.
It is an essential thought and touchstone, even for
policymakers, upon which to end 2020, and begin 2021.
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