Interviews A Conduit For Definitive Voices In Environmentalism

“Listening to the Land: Conversations About Nature, Culture, and Eros” By Derrick Jensen (Sierra Club Books, 326 pages, $15)

The opinions about environmental issues probably number as many as there are people who care at all about forest and mining practices, oil spills or salmon runs.

And sometimes when wandering among the trees left standing or along a loud stream, some of us hear small voices that speak of lifestyles that mitigate damages done and prevent future devastation.

Spokane writer Derrick Jensen is just one activist amid a vast array of people who listen to the voices and add their own to the din.

But rather than writing a book about the environment that would reflect his own holistic viewpoint, Jensen chose to let others speak.

And, one of the strengths of his effort - “Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros” - is that the voices are unfiltered.

The book, in the tradition of some of the best interviews of this century, is in question-and-answer format.

This method of writing can be fraught with jarring potholes as big as the Berkeley Pit Mine in Butte, Mont. For a book that’s simply a series of interviews to be readable, the questions must be every bit as informative and well-constructed as the answers are riveting.

Jensen did not completely avoid this pitfall. But in the places where unfocused questions result in answers that need a sharper point, the weight of the speaker’s opinion overwhelms the rough edges of the writing format.

In the end, it’s the names on the bookcover which will, like a magnet, draw readers. Some of leading movers and shakers in the environmental arena talked with Jensen: Dave Foreman of Earth First! fame, writers John Keeble and Terry Tempest Williams and activist John Osborn, among them.

While some in the book practice their activism at the extremes of the movement, what they are saying still merits an audience, even among those who hold entrenched views.

Because it is through listening to each other that we will be able to ferret out the paths that will take us - and future generations - to lifestyles rich in diversity and respectful of the fragility of ecosystems.

This book alone won’t guide us there, but it might contain a couple of cairns to indicate the way.

, DataTimes MEMO: Derrick Jensen will sign books at Hastings at the Lincoln Heights Shopping Center Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.