Language may be dying out.  Words.  So many words, so little time.  Most kids who graduate from high school are only functionally literate.  That means they can't understand the deeper things encoded in literature.  That means they only function at the surface of society.  Those that drop out - a growing mass - struggle to understand even the superficial.  So out to the edge of society - out to the edge of consciousness - they're pulled, and die.

Language may be dying out.  The image, the picture, the video (think YouTube, Google and Yahoo video, etc.), is the new means of communication.  And the vast majority of it floats OVER the superficial, if that is possible.

Poetry evolved as the quickest way to transfer very deep ideas.  Poetry is a kind of shorthand to those things that can deepen us as people.  Make us think.  I would alter the railroad sign: "Stop, Look, and Listen" to "Stop, Look, Listen AND Think!"  Poetry, even if we don't get ALL of it, makes us stretch out our mind.  Poetry forces us to imagine things we would never otherwise imagine.  Poetry forces our imagination to awaken, to get excited (the root word being to awaken).  As a child we ran around like a globe of burning imagination.  But how imaginative are we now, as adults?

The following poem isn't directly about wilderness issues.  It certainly isn't directly about the subject of toilets.  It's about the loss of fatherhood in America.  The loss of leadership.  It's about how really important things have been discarded in favor of the less important.  It's also about the onslaught against nature that has been ongoing for 200 years. 

Fighting the Great Storm

"Where have all my fathers gone?
On that fateful day when DNA combined,
my compass pointed North and all my
fathers stood still in their breathing.
But then the sounds of men disappeared.

I sent out letters around the lands I traveled.
My stick wrote on the ground itself: “Where
have all my father’s gone?  There are no
sounds of men with sons anymore.”
Hindenberg died! said a German nanny.

Now me and my fellows - forests, animals,
rivers and oceans and oceans of people -
must stand and resist the minds that
replaced old Hindenberg.  My tattoo reads
“Brooklyn, New York, 1960.

They say, “This is,” and people kill in support.
I appeal, then, to the butterfly in you, to
the hummingbird, the mysterious wanderer,
even that elusive flying bear with its teeth
holding still the ground, fight the great storm!

And so the myths about fathers gets longer.
A leaving followed by a long pretentious interval.
But never a final reckoning or a final
resting place.  I stare at the cows
and the cows stare at their hay and can’t eat.

So I always scurry to that place the marks
direct.  My pace has slowed by time; no
particular hurry.  Save for the vagary dictated
by my new handlers.  To hear thoughts of
renewal; of a final escape.

Around the fire I hear confessions of former
prisoners: “There are no more satisfying myths,”
said the big man.  The little woman read, “Your salvation
has been cancelled.”  I roared back in laughter and
secret knowing: my salvation died before I was born."

We're growing slowly here at Ultralight Wilderness Toilet.  But we are growing - by the day.  We would like to hear from you.  If the poem above had any meaning for you, we'd like to have you leave a comment.