“The Culture of Sustainability”
I’ve taken on a real project: to organize a panel for Focus the Nation II on this topic, getting together some people from the College of Liberal Arts to contribute to the effort that’s moving forward elsewhere in the University. I’m committed to make my own presentation–a definition of what this grandiose term means, a survey of what the Humanities have to offer.
I’ve started gathering ideas and assembling links from the AASHE website, but I’m having trouble continuing, even though I woke up at 4 AM with the need to get going. How to stay on track, keep up the momentum, when first the economic crisis, and as of two days ago, the mayhem in India suddenly intrude? I’d thought the election would get us back on track, but now the right of way seems to have been blown up.
I’ll take a walk in the dark.
Went up Buena Vista and then cut over past the water tank to a game trail on the east end of Poly Mountain. Huffed to the top as as day dawned, less breathless than expected. Light and vegetation both unexciting. But as I looked for a trail to descend through the two year old burn, I saw movement in the brown grass. A coyote loping silently on one path, and then another following and then doubling back, accelerating to a soft silent gallop.
Then between them a good sized doe bouncing up from the chapparal to the grassland directly below me. For a short while I could see all three animals from above: the dance of predation. Then the second coyote was lost in the oak woodland, and soon after the deer headed off in the same direction and disappeared into chapparal to my left, and the first animal that had come into view took off toward the west. 
I took many pictures, but without the telephoto knew that they wouldnt show much. You can see the coyotes only in the larger versions found by clicking on these.
As I came back down the game trail, the clay neither hard dry nor sticky wet, just moist enough to be springy, the sun topped East Cuesta Ridge.
