Talking on the Water: Conversations About Nature and Creativity

Since 1983, the Resource Institute, headed by Jonathan White, has held an ongoing series of "floating seminars" aboard a 65-foot schooner, events led by leading thinkers and artists in a broad array of disciplines. Ten years in the making, here is a sparkling collection of interviews, conducted by White, with the writers, scientists, environmentalists, and poets that gathered on board to explore our relationship to the wild.
Readers can listen to science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin discuss the nature of language; microbiologist Lynn Margulis contemplate Darwin's career and the many meanings of evolution and anthropologist Richard Nelson talk about the spiritual life of Alaska's native people. Rounding out the group are such visionaries as writers Gretel Ehrlich, Paul Shepard, and Peter Matthiessen, conservationists David Brower and Roger Payne, theologian Matthew Fox, activist Janet McCloud, Jungian analyst James Hillman, poet Gary Snyder, and ecologist Dolores LaChapelle. By identifying the common link between these conversations, we embark on the search for a deeper and more meaningful understanding of ourselves and the environment.

In 1983 writer Jonathan White, founder and president of the Resource Institute, a nonprofit educational organization in Seattle, transformed a dilapidated schooner into a floating classroom to which he invited environmentalists, writers and scientists to discuss humanity's place within nature and the vital spiritual and ecological lessons we can learn from animals, the land and indigenous peoples. Here, White draws on these seminars to pose new questions to the likes of Gretel Ehrlich, David Brower, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gary Snyder, Peter Matthiessen and eight others. The resulting dialogues knock down walls to widen the floor of discussion. Rather than outline an answer to the ills of modernity and overdevelopment, they demonstrate the complexities of the problem. Although serious and informative, the interviews are highly accessible and, at times, even amusing. By sharing their knowledge, research and personal anecdotes, the participants accent common themes, like the the reality of an interdependence between nature and humanity rather than a romanticized independent natural world. Infused with passion and spirituality, Talking on the Water reminds us that if we abuse nature, we're ultimately abusing ourselves. Photos not seen by PW.
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