Get Out and Get In Touch

Now is the time for New Year's resolutions so I thought would start the ball rolling here at Switchboard with a few of my own.  For those of us who work full-time within the environmental movement, we actually don't get a lot of opportunities to see the areas we work so hard to protect. 

The truth is that much of the work NRDC policy analysts, economists, lawyers, and scientists do is like the work of all such professionals: office work.  This is particularly true because, with the exception of our office in Bozeman, Montana (boy do those folks have a good gig), NRDC's offices are mostly located in large urban centers.

In a movement where burnout is constant challenge, it's very important to just enjoy some of the beautiful wild places left in the world.  So my first New Year's resolution is to get out more.  If I have my druthers, that means heading north to the Boundary Waters or, perhaps, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Along the same lines, I think its very easy in the day-to-day crush of the battles NRDC is fighting to forget why we became conservationists to begin with.  For me, that means getting back in touch with some of the books that made me an environmentalist.  I've quoted from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac several times in this blog, but the truth is I haven't actually gone back and read Leopold's book from cover to cover since I was in college.  So my second resolution is to reread some of the books that inspired me to do this work.  In case any Switchboard readers are interested, here are a few:

• A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
• Encounters with the Archdruid by John McPhee
• The Economy of the Earth by Mark Sagoff
• The Rights of Nature by Roderick Frazier Nash
• The Wealth of Nature by Donald Worster

What about you?  What are the books that got you interested in environmental issues and conservation?  I would love to add a few new ones to my New Year's list.

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