We believe there's something fundamentally wrong with the phrase "the environment." It seems to say that air and water sources are out there. Yet we breathe the air and drink the water. We are "the environment." It's out there, but it's also in here, in us. Clean air and water are essential to the health of man and beast and microorganism alike. Our very cells reflect the nature of the so-called "environment" we live in.

People all over the world die by the millions because they don't connect those dots: we are "the environment." We have for sometime agreed with the author David Duncan who writes that the phrase [‘the environment'] isn't "big enough or powerful enough. It carries nothing of the language of eternity or inclusion." Think about that for just a moment. We need some sort of phrase that contains a much bigger idea about INCLUSION. It and us.

In short, the phrase "the environment" just doesn't resonate with people as part of them, as fundamentally essential to their very existence. When we poop and leave it on the ground in the wild places, we're in denial of the fact that "we are wilderness." We think Dame Nature will take care of it for us. So to those who poop and leave it on the ground, the environment remains out there, and so its NOT their problem. We're so used to flushing the toilet and letting the sewage system take care of our poop we can't come to grips with the fact that Dame Nature struggles to take care of so much human poop left on her carpet. Microorganisms can do a pretty good job, unless they're overwhelmed, such as with an oil spill. Well, the human poop problem in the wild places is getting nearly that bad.

Duncan claims that the inadequacy of the phrase is reflected in the inadequacy of the entire movement to really clean up air and water sources. It's certainly inadequate in getting people to stop pooping and leaving it on the ground in the very place they're trying to recreate in.

"The environment" simply isn't working as a phrase of importance in most people's lives. And as for businesses, far too many factories and businesses continue to pollute air and water sources with impunity. And far too many people still poop in wilderness and backcountry and simply leave it there on the ground - along with their toilet paper, tampons, and condoms and every sort of tin can and plastic bottle.

Duncan had no suggestions for a new phrase that better helps us grasp the fact that "the environment" and us are ONE. Our idea is to introduce a phrase borrowed from the poet/dramatist Goethe's writings on nature. He described nature as "EVERYTHING AT ONCE." Now that phrase might not be the best phrase to get the job done, but at least it's a phrase to start a new tribal debate. Here's how Goethe arrived at this very different and potentially powerful concept:

"Nature! We are enveloped and embraced by her, incapable of emerging from her and incapable of entering her more deeply. Unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circuits of her dance, drifting onward with us herself, until we grow tired and drop from her arms. From inaccessible mountain range, by way of desert untrod by human foot, to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives.

"There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it. Our desires presage the capacities within us; they are harbingers of what we shall be able to accomplish. Time commands success and achievement. Nothing is worse than active ignorance. Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing. If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick. Everyone hears only what he understands. You don't have to travel around the world to understand that the sky is blue everywhere.

"We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies. Our senses don't deceive us: our judgment does. We are never deceived: we deceive ourselves. Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned. Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road. Nature has neither kernel nor shell; she is everything at once."

When Goethe writes, "Our senses don't deceive us: our judgment does. We are never deceived: we deceive ourselves...Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the right road. Nature has neither kernal nor shell; she is everything at once."

So, our intent is to get people to feel about "the environment" what they might feel about their own flesh, their own bones. We want to get people to think about their actions while in the wild places. For if they do, according to Goethe, "will soon find his way back to the right road." Air and water are needed to keep flesh and bone alive. And Dame Nature is in so many ways our "mother," our benefactor, our provider, our source of life, which reverberates in Thoreau's quote. So man and wilderness and the wild things that live there and air and water are one: everything at once.