The Trumpeter - Journal of Ecosophy (Athabasca University)

Rosmarin, .

The Cypress and the Rose

Conesa-Sevilla, Jorge

Walking and Dying With Bears: An Ecopsychological Case Study of Timothy (Dexter) Treadwell

Winogrond, J. T.

A Pathway Home

Anker, Peder

Deep Ecology in Bucharest

Drengson, Alan

The Trumpeter  
Volume 24, Number 1 (2008) 
ISSN: 1705-9429 
 
Book Review  
 
Review of Peak Experiences: Walking Meditations on Literature, Nature, and 
Need by Ian Marshall, 2003, 267 pages with Notes and Index. Series Title: 
Under the Sign of Nature: Explorations in Ecocriticism, 11 titles so far. 
University of Virginia Press, www.upress.virginia.edu 
Charlottesville and London 
ISBN 0-8139-2167-8 
6 x 9 Cloth $30 US 
 
Reviewed by Alan Drengson 
 
The title of this book, Peak Experiences, refers to the author’s own journeys in 
nature walking to the tops of various hills and mountains, and to Abraham 
Maslow’s typology of human development as a pyramid whose top represents 
the peak experiences of self-actualizing humans. The mountain and triangle 
represent the hierarchy of human needs, their fulfillment, and the levels of 
conscious development open to human life. The author discusses his personal 
experiences, reflecting on literature and nature writing, while in nature 
walking and camping, alone and with others. This wonderful book is for 
anyone who loves the wild and being outdoors in free nature. As the author’s 
book reveals, returning again and again to the same places, living outside, 
relating to others in these natural settings—where basic needs and physical 
realities are so plain and uncomplicated, is an excellent way to improve 
ecocriticism. I cannot imagine a better way to reflect on our literature of 
nature than by being out there again and again as a life-long activity. Marshall 
brings together current reflections in ecopsychology relevant to Maslow’s 
concept of self-actualization, along with how these show up in literature, 
human development, and in our relationships with nature. 
 
No matter what the current “wisdom” in the academic community, or what is 
chic to discuss, we must admit that too much of our daily focus in 
contemporary society is nature deprived. It is overly rich in cognitive 
abstraction, technological cleverness and quickening obsolescence. When, for 
example, we walk in nature on a regular basis, at least an hour a day, we learn 
what it truly is to inhabit a place. We live outdoors as the other alive beings on 
our planet mostly live, and the way our ancestors lived before they stayed 
indoors and worked in factories. Our clever devices, Muir observed, turn us 
The Trumpeter 154
 
 
into factory workers, even those who teach in our increasingly controlled 
education institutions. Peak Experiences encourages us to get out and walk in 
the outside air, reinhabit the Earth with our bodies, and enjoy our senses in 
every way we can, as much and as soon as possible! Read the great literature 
and poetry of nature, but reflect on all of these as part of a total process in 
living that grounds daily experience where you are, in the Earth, outdoors, in 
your home place. Learn to love and know the unique details of the individuals 
and communities within your home place. 
 
These are some thoughts and feelings that came to me as I read Ian Marshall’s 
insightful book. I am grateful that I was asked to review it. I now better 
appreciate nature writing in our society, along with having the joy of 
discovering poets such as Pattiann Rogers. Marshall’s book is a treasure trove 
for all who love nature and being out year round no matter where we live. We 
can find wild places even in the middle of a city, finding the wild in ourselves 
everyday. Our lives in our home places mean something through our daily 
mixing with all that is concretely there, and by appreciating and sharing our 
deepening whole experiences in song, dance, poetry, and stories. What more 
could we ask for when spontaneous experience is so rich and our possibilities 
practically unlimited? This is what peak experiences in nature every day gives 
us, as we see more clearly by reading Marshall’s book. Our spontaneous 
experiences in daily life in nature give us peaks of perspectives, a wider and 
deeper sense for human possibilities and potentials; a unity of experience that 
is interconnected with the awareness of a larger living community of sentient 
beings. 
 
Peak Experiences is divided into five chapters that correspond to Maslow’s 
levels of development and need: 1 Physiological needs, 2 Safety Needs, 3 
Love and Belonging (Needs), 4 Esteem Needs, and 5 Self Actualization 
(Needs). Each chapter is set in specific areas in various places in the United 
States and Canada, from the Rockies to the Adirondacks. A “Wandering 
Introduction” explains the author’s purposes and methods in the book. This is 
an experimental and imaginative work filled with surprises. Some of it is 
demanding, like a steep trail with heavy pack, but in other places, we soar 
with delight, as we feel Ian’s summits of excitement, read poetic lines of self-
actualization. It becomes clear in the journeys that our total needs cannot be 
met by the artificial alone. We require live experience, engaged in our own 
real struggle and exertion, to become fully actualized persons. Our maturity 
deepens and our reflections enrich as we know peak after peak; life is a series 
of sunrises and sunsets, sorrows and joys, highs and lows that rise higher and 
higher to full self realization. Here we are on the ground of the sacred, aware 
of the wild energies that unite us all. “That is the peak experience, an 
ecological perspective become spiritual insight” (237). “[T]he ultimate goal of 
our recognition of spiritual truths—to reestablish our connection with the 
spirit that runs through all things” (226). Our unities far exceed our superficial 
disagreements using confused ideas and inept language. We become poets and 
storytellers by creating contexts that are rich and full in all these things. From 
a Norwegian and Scandinavian perspective, Marshall is a practitioner of 
Volume 24, Number 1 155
Friluftsliv (free-air-life), living and returning to the mountains and wilderness 
in scholarship, teaching, and research, fully grounded by experience in the 
open air.  
 
In these rich natural contexts we become fully alive once more. We move out 
of our cognitive abstractions, out of theoretical and emotional preoccupations. 
In our spontaneous experience as whole and unified, our spiritual, cognitive, 
emotional and physical needs are met. We have a sense for the unity and 
diversity we share with all aware beings. We are in a living context not of 
human design, one with fantastic possibilities, one with creative evolving 
processes that give rise to novelty and uniqueness. In nature we have diversity 
and individual uniqueness within a context of unified energy flows; we have 
multiple perspectives, individual experiences and creative adaptations; at the 
cultural and personal level, diverse worldviews and personal lifestyles, with 
rich ways of celebrating and expressing our joy of connecting with the 
communities in our home places and in wildland explorations.  
 
Marshall discusses many authors and poets throughout this book. He discusses 
archetypal figures from our shared mythologies, such as Hercules, the hero 
who tries to control nature, Antaeus, nature’s defender, and Psyche, who 
reminds us that touching the Earth is good for our soul. His discussion of these 
figures and writers is insightful, touching, and well expressed. As he sees it, 
our culture is caught by a Herculean fixation, leading us to try to control 
everything around and within us. Yet, there are growing numbers who see the 
flaws in this, and who want to, and do, embrace nature. Marshall is one of 
them.  
 
He uses a variety of ways to tease depth of interpretation out of these literary 
traditions and other works. For example, he reads the Leaves of Grass by Walt 
Whitman as he is climbing and hiking in the wild. It is a very fruitful exercise 
for he and his readers. Some of the many authors he discusses are Pattiann 
Rogers, Walt Whitman, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Henry Thoreau, William 
Wordsworth, Abraham Maslow, Gary Snyder, Laura Sewall, Sigmund Freud, 
William Shakespeare, Paul Shepard, Herman Melville, Homer, Jon Krakauer, 
Robert Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson, T. S. Eliot, John Burroughs, Annie 
Dillard, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Cole, Ralph Metzner, Theodore Roszak, 
and Michael P. Cohen. A few of the many places discussed and/or visited 
include Mount Shasta in California, the Colorado Rockies, the Adirondacks, 
the Catskills, the Laurel Highlands, Bald Eagle, Mount Rainier, Mount 
Everest, Big Bald Mountain, Mount Lassen, and so on. Throughout the book 
Marshall comments on the healing power of nature revealed in ecopsychology 
and literature and in his own regular experiences as a wild journeyer in free 
nature and as an author and teacher. He writes: 
 
“I offer myself as a test subject, recently divorced, a father sharing custody of 
two children, someone with a high regard for the written word,  . . . a little too 
stressed-out these days, no more self-actualized than the next person but just 
The Trumpeter 156
 
 
Volume 24, Number 1 157
as curious about it—and what I have going for me are a lot of well-read books, 
a good pair of broken-in hiking boots, and a thing for the mountains” (10). 
 
The summit of the book is the last chapter. There we get some idea of how 
Marshall’s personal test has worked. On the union of self and mountain he 
writes: 
 
“That conflation of self and mountain has been my main conceit throughout, 
and I’ve been engaged in a sort of self-ascent, progressing up the life zones of 
psychological needs. But how can I be both the climber and the thing 
climbed? Let me consider the mountain as mountain for a moment, and 
Maslow and Whitman two slopes rising to meet at the ridgeline. That’s what 
literary critics do—bring some sort of theory in contact with literature: 
Maslow’s hierarchy, biopoetics, ecopsychology, Freud, flow, touching on 
Walden. The Odyssey, the poems of Pattiann Rogers, John Muir’s 
mountaineering essays, Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” I have walked those 
slopes, followed those paths, my boot soles striving for contact (contact!) with 
“the solid earth, the actual world,” striving for that high point where all meet 
and merge, fall away and disappear into the sky. The slopes of the pyramid are 
not walls penning us inside, but a series of footholds. And at the top, where 
slope meets slope and together they come to a point (and here I come to the 
point), the self ends” (240). 
 
If the other books in this series are as good as this one, then there are yet 10 
volumes more I will enjoy reading. As you must know now, I heartily 
recommend this book. 
 


Book Review

Gambrel, Joshua Colt

 
The Trumpeter  
ISSN: 0832-6193 
Volume 24, Number 2 (2008) 
 
A Narrative of Environmental Values 
 
Joshua Colt Gambrel 
 
 
 
 
 
Joshua Gambrel received his MA in Philosophy from Colorado State 
University and is currently a graduate student in the storytelling department at 
East Tennessee State University. 
Everything has a spirit. All natural phenomena – like rivers, wind, and mountains 
– tell a story. Usually only shamans know these stories, but others can learn to 
listen. Many people don’t understand how to listen to the world. People who 
don’t take the time to listen will suffer, as will their children. In order to live well 
we must respect the world. Rivers, wind, and mountains tell different stories 
everyday. Other people besides shamans may be able to hear these stories if they 
listen with respect. We must help teach others to listen. 
Galba, a Tuvan Shaman from Western Mongolia 
 
 
Mongolia represents many things to many people, but to me, more than 
anything, it represents the transformative power of the spiritual narrative. 
As a writer, I searched constantly for the words needed to accurately 
describe the changes I experienced while I lived among the beautiful 
sweeping landscapes of this incredible country. Mongolia became a critical 
junction on my personal path of self-realization. Like many people around 
the world, I had become dissatisfied with the lifestyle propagated by 
western society and the established institutions that only seemed to wreak 
havoc on the natural world and human health. I had hoped that living 
abroad for a considerable length of time, in an area of the world 
significantly different from America, would help me understand more 
clearly the problems we face and, possibly, what alternatives we have to 
the dominant model that modernity presents. If we are to overcome this 
paradigm it will be necessary to offer a reasonable alternative; but what is 
this alternative, and where will it come from? At the time, I had no idea 
that this would turn out to be not only a philosophical journey, but a 
spiritual one. But, after a year of work and research throughout Mongolia 
I was still struggling with these questions and with trying to formulate 
The Trumpeter 12 
 
 
more succinctly what it was that this country meant to me. Then came the 
arduous task of translating all the research I had accumulated during the 
previous year and an opportunity for a deeper analysis of my own 
relationship with the natural world.  
A significant portion of my time in Mongolia was spent conducting a 
research project focusing on traditional prose narratives—myths, legends, 
and folktales. This primarily consisted of traveling around the aimags of 
Bayan-Olgii and Omnigov, conducting interviews, and asking people if 
they could tell me stories. I had hoped to gain additional insight into the 
culture and history of these peoples—Mongolians, Kazaks, and Tuvans—
by learning more about the traditional stories that have been passed down 
for centuries; stories that express a culture’s worldview by articulating a 
historical relationship to the environment, the moral relevancy of non-
human Others, and the history underpinning their ethical systems. Much 
of a cultural ethos can be traced along such folklines. Prose narratives are 
often beautiful stories of one’s place in the world. Such stories may also 
resonate with our own sensibilities in a more profound, lasting way than 
any amount of ethical discourse. Conducting this project was a wonderful 
experience. Anyone that has been to Mongolia knows how hospitable the 
people are and, in a year and a half, I drank enough salty milk-tea and ate 
enough boiled mutton to last a lifetime. I fell in love with these endearing 
people, and the memories of the many warm smiles mingled with the 
complete elation that a foreigner could speak their language will be with 
me forever. 
While collecting these narratives, I was fortunate to be able to spend some 
time with a traditional Tuvan shaman living in western Mongolia. I was 
able to conduct two separate interviews in two beautiful locations: Taven 
Bogd National Park and Tsengel sum, in Bayan-Olgii aimag. During this 
time I recorded several hours of interviews, stories, songs, and 
invocations. Galba was amazing. After a couple of days her reticent 
demeanor towards me melted away to one of warmth and openness. She 
told me that she had been waiting to hear from one of her spirits 
concerning my moral disposition and, on learning that I was both 
trustworthy and sincere, she was willing to let me conduct a thorough 
interview. I had won her respect. For the days that followed we spent 
almost every hour together as I shadowed her transcribing her words. One 
moment she could wear the smile of a loving, jovial mother and in another 
she was transformed into the resolutely determined shaman who acted as 
an intermediary between the worlds of light and dark carrying the added 
weight of one who exists in not one world, but two.  
Galba listened silently to my questions, then after quiet contemplation she 
would offer the advice of one wise beyond her 32 years. To my delight, 
she loved to rhapsodize about the current state of the world and what was 
Volume 24, Number 2 13
needed to save it. This sage believes that the great modern deficiency of 
spirituality the world over is the root cause of environmental degradation. 
“Now people don’t know what religion is. They think that they need 
computers, cars, clothes, and money. When they have true religion they 
have everything they need . . . If I have deep spiritual religion my children 
and I will live very well.” She believes that spirituality helps to engender a 
more benign relationship to the non-human Others and world around us. 
People don’t care for or respect the spirits of the land because they no 
longer listen to them. For me, this is where the true transformation began. 
Galba is an intermediary between the physical world of reality and the 
non-physical world of the spirits. She is consulted by others due to her 
ability to enter into a dialogue with the animate world surrounding her. 
The song sung by the wind, the story told by the river, or the appearance 
of certain phenomena convey particular meanings and portents to those 
willing to listen. All phenomena carry significant spiritual importance, but 
Galba seems to have a special affinity for birds, particularly magpies and 
swans. Interestingly, these were the two most common birds discussed in 
the prose narratives I translated during this project. Galba’s world is 
different from ours; when she steps into it she finds herself embraced by 
living phenomena calling to her, inviting her to enter into a reciprocal 
relationship. She accepts these invitations and becomes lost in the primacy 
of the Other. She allows herself to dance with the sensuous harmonies 
resonating with her soul off the living landscape. These are the spiritual 
narratives of the natural world, and stored within their guiding discourse 
lies the only means of our ecological survival. “If the spirits are revered 
and their lands kept clean then all people will live calm, happy lives.”  
We can only hear these narratives by making ourselves present to these 
presencing phenomena. Only through such openness can the Other truly 
become manifest and teach us of the spiritual energy binding together all 
living beings. When we listen to the spiritual narratives unfolding around 
us, we strive to intuit the sacred latent in every secular experience. By 
listening to mountains, rivers, and wind “we will learn how to live 
happily.” 
Galba believed that such an awareness carried along with it a moral 
imperative to not only respect the stories of the spirits sharing our world, 
but this imperative also admonished us to share these tales with others. 
Through my continued research, I began to feel that there was no better 
way to share such insight than through the traditional prose narratives 
dear to the people. Many of the tales that I translated included personified 
talking animals, guiding spirit helpers, sacred places, and noble heroes who 
triumph over adversity by cherishing, respecting, or building reciprocal 
relationships with either animals specifically, or nature in general. The 
continued transmission of such narratives may be the best means the 
The Trumpeter 14 
 
 
Volume 24, Number 2 15
Mongolians, or any people, have to help cultivate a more compassionate 
relationship with the living ecosphere. While our modern mechanisms 
tend to engender a psychological estrangement from the natural world, 
traditional myths, legends, and folktales help root us in a timeless past 
connecting our ancestral lines directly to the same ecological systems that 
sustain our lives today. Fostering a deep fascination with these tales is only 
one ontological step away from experiencing the transformative power 
dancing around us in the form of the spiritual narrative of our animate 
world.  
One of the most poignant moments with Galba was early in the initial 
interview when I asked her if animals feel pain. As if unsure that she had 
understood the question correctly, she turned to me disbelievingly and 
replied, “Josh, of course they feel pain.” Laughing, I understood how 
ridiculous that question can sound. This fact seems self-evident to many 
of us, but there have been numerous philosophers who have published 
many papers in an attempt to prove the very opposite. Such individuals 
would probably no doubt receive the same disbelieving glance from this 
woman who dances and sings with the very Others that supposedly have 
no voice or ability to engage us in a meaningful discourse. I believe that 
time spent with Galba, or other visionaries like her, will help us intuit not 
only the greater spiritual significance of the world we find unfolding all 
around us, but also our own rich spiritual connection to the limitless being 
of existence. Perhaps Galba can even remind us that the god of all 
religions isn’t necessarily outside or within us, but between us, becoming 
manifest in the open, loving relationships we develop at every moment we 
give ourselves unconditionally to the presence of the phenomena before 
us. 
 


A Narrative of Environmental Values

Devall, Bill

A review of The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology by Frederic L. Bender

Shepard, Florence R.

Riding the Bear

Caley, Michael T.

 
 
The Trumpeter  
ISSN: 1705-9429 
Volume 24, Number 1 (2008) 
 
Editorial 
 
It has been just a bit more than a year since the deaths of Dolores and Ed 
LaChapelle. Most folks knew that Dolores was ill, but Ed’s sudden heart 
attack just weeks after Dolores’s death caught everyone by surprise. In this 
issue, we remember both Dolores and Ed in a special memorial section.  
 
Michael Zimmerman, Ken Maly, and Flo Shepard each have contributed 
unique memorials to Dolores. Michael gives us a narrative about Dolores at 
the first “Heidegger in the Mountains” conference at the Way of the Mountain 
Centre. Flo Shepard recounts 30 years of correspondence and meetings with 
Dolores. She paints a portrait of “the woman of deep ecology.” Ken Maly 
never met Dolores and yet places her work as pivotal in understanding deep 
ecology.  
 
Peder Anker has found and submitted an original paper by Arne Naess that 
everyone had thought lost. Kit-Fai Naess confirmed the loss of the original 
and now we get a view of early deep ecology history. 
 
I am always amazed and enchanted when seemingly disparate events become 
linked in new ways. We are treated to such a link in Jingbi Shi’s wonderful 
paper on deep ecology in some of the works of Jack London. Who would have 
guessed that the adventures I read as a boy would return as exemplars of deep 
ecology? 
 
Jorge Conesa-Sevilla’s “Thinking in Animal Signs” connects again with Paul 
Shepard and the previous two issues. For those of us who have had the 
privilege of howling with wolves, this paper will evoke delightful memories. 
For others, it is an invitation to merge with the “real world.” 
 
“Walking and Dying with Bears” is a dark tale of what can happen when a 
person takes some deep ecology ideas too literally. Jorge Conesa-Sevilla 
examines the life and tragic death of a man who wanted to live with bears. 
 
“Holism with a Hole” by Kate Booth examines her life as an urban or 
suburban deep ecologist and finds some problems. Travel with Booth as she 
explores her “growing recognition of a gap to be explored, of terrain just 
waiting to be navigated.” 
 
Volume 24 Number 1 1 
The Trumpeter 2
In this issue we begin a new phase of Narrative submissions. Freya 
Matthews has agreed publish “The Sun Dew Chronicles” in the 
Trumpeter. Sun Dew, according to Freya Matthews is "a Daoist teacher 
of uncertain provenance." Sun Dew’s excursions have been collected by 
her chronicler, Rosmarin, and Matthews has agreed to be Rosmarin’s 
archivist. We first met Sun Dew in The Trumpeter Vol 23, No 1 (2007). 
 
The work of two excellent, widely published poets appear this issue: 
Christopher Levenson offers two poems, “Banyan” and “Lizard,” and 
Robert Powell contributes “Notebook Entry: On a Flight over Canada.”  
 
We also have a review, by Allan Drengson, of Peak Experiences: 
Walking Meditations on Literature, Nature, and Need, by Ian Marshall. 
 
Michael T. Caley  
Associate Editor 


Editorial

Bowers, C.A.

A review of  A Contract with the Earth by Newt Gingrich and Terry L. Maples

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