These activists personify the emerging environmental creed of “bioregionalism”. Simply put, this means living in place; basing environmental preservation, restoration, and management on a deep commitment and attention to the land. Both scientifically and spiritually, this principle is profoundly right. It is what the land needs, and it is what people need: a connection to the land that is as intimate, challenging, and unshakable as the human bonds between man and woman, parent and child.

Developing this connection is now my goal. Ex-globetrotter, I sit on top of Pilot Rock and survey the boundaries of my world; the great white peaks of McLoughlin and Shasta, the distant forms of the Marble Mountains and the high Cascades, our wild Siskiyou neighborhood, and at my feet the Rogue Valley, seething with dreams and schemes. There is enough wild and human richness in this land for many lifetimes.

And yet . . . a warm breeze stirs my hair. A cloud of swallows swirls by, one small eddy in the great river of life pouring north out of the tropics. I have watched these same birds in South America, streaking low over jungle rivers to snap up iridescent golden mosquitoes. For them, life in place would mean death; the rhythms they dance to carry them across the world, bringing beauty and benefit to each place they pass. For me too, the call of the tropics is something I cannot resist; before this year is through, I will have returned there twice. I know now that I will always be a traveler, even as I strive for deeper connections. The great naturalist Aldo Leopold instructed us to “think like a mountain.” I will never be that wise, never be able to live in place like a tree, a bear, or like a few special people. But I will try, and in the trying I hope to learn how to live fully wherever I am; a bird of passage, in place.