I like sharing fun stuff. Thanks for reading.

I’ve stood that side of those solvent words.

Namaste (in this case meaning the divine in me gets a big kick out of the divine in you).

Your response was more generous than my comment.

Thanks for it.

This is what I’m seeing. Much of the fighting over Crossfire doesn’t appear to be about the canyon, not really. What might it be about, then?

I’ve begun to think that it’s some kind of language expressing dire need.

At any rate, I think it’s time for new kinds of geo-rhetoric that rather than prompting readers to align themselves or choose sides instead enable them to feel wonder, consider their positions, and form actual attachments. Passionate but yielding words that actually do leave the earth and the human language now flowing everywhere over its surface better than when they found them.

I know a very few things. I know that God lives and I know that truth and love are powerful forces in the universe. I know some people who are good and generous. I know the sort of conduct that leaves me feeling refreshed and joyous and I know the sort of conduct that doesn’t.

And then I think a lot of things. I have opinions about environmental issues, for example. But mostly I don’t know. Most of the most zealous fighting is done by people about things that they, also, don’t know. I’ve become pretty anti-ideological, though I try not to be ideological about it.

Nor am I interested in promoting relatively less value-laden language as a form of higher language. My remarks about the deleterious effects of contaminated rhetoric demonstrate that quite clearly.

I have in the past used the words “recovering” and “canyon” (something like, “the canyon is recovering”) in reference to changes in Crossfire. Looking at my own motives in using those words, I can see that I said them to cast a poor reflection on others more than as a well-informed appraisal of the canyon’s condition. So I’m stripping “healing” and “recovery” out and starting over, finding a better way. This is not to say I won’t use them again, only that if I do, I’ll probably mean something altogether different from what I meant before.

I’ve spent only 4 years in and around Crossfire. I’ve spent nearly 30 years considering the nature of rhetoric. I’m only just getting to know the canyon, and it is only getting to know me. In these early stages of presence, taking greater care not to form hasty judgments about what’s going on has become deeply important to me, especially when the rhetorical atmosphere swirling around Crossfire has become quite dense and exerts its own influences upon the canyon.

In the landscape of rhetoric, I’m more informed and have extensive experience. I will make strong statements about language–”lead-based warring language,” “the mercurial taint of ad hominem wielding tribalism,” with greater confidence and the ability to back them up. “The canyon is healing”? Not enough information, no depth of experience or understanding.

Yet.

So … “the canyon is changing.” A good base from which to explore further, on which to rework my thinking, on which to sculpt a better way to speak about this stretch of earth that is becoming part of me, and I of it.

Is there a limit to your principle? If “healing” is too value-laden a word to apply to the revegetation of tire-tracks that separated the main stems of plants from their wide-ranging, water-seeking roots, is there a way to be sure that “canyon” is not also too value laden?

One can’t always envision how a beaver might use the broken side of a styrofoam cooler to reinforce a portion of its dam. Is it best to leave it flotsam, or to gather it up into one’s pack?

In terms of language, mightn’t partisan-sounding words today become the neutral, accurate terminology of tomorrow? Didn’t that happen with “women’s suffrage,” and “equal rights”?

I readily agree that values are implicated in the language we choose, and that a kind of subtle violence can be done to others by rhetorical selections and stances. But I’m dubious that higher values can be promoted only by consistent use of relatively less value-laden language.

If a canyon road cut cannot be “healed,” is the same true of a tortise’s leg that was broken when it was run over by the ATV that made the road cut?

There’s a rule one sees often on signs and pamphlets advising hikers and campers on their behavior: “Leave it better than you found it.”

When I’ve been out poking around in the backrocks, where there’s no litter or anything problematic requiring attention, I’ve wondered how to apply that rule. In the wildlands of language, however, I wonder if the applications might be limitless.

I don’t think, of course, that behaving better in language is a mere matter of cleaning it up or preserving some portions to keep it pristine. Fine language has creative brio, power to open up matters and expand frontiers. For me, many times, it has changed everything.