Without the oxygenating breath of
the forests, without the clutch of gravity and the tumbled magic
of river rapids, we have no distance from our technologies, no way
of assessing their limitations, no way to keep ourselves from turning
into them. We need to know the textures, the rhythms and tastes
of the bodily world, and to distinguish readily between such tastes and
those of our own invention. Direct sensuous reality, in all its morethan-human mystery, remains the sole solid touchstone for an experiential world now inundated with electronically-generated vistas
and engineered pleasures; only in regular contact with the tangible
ground and sky can we learn how to orient and to navigate in the
multiple dimensions that now claim us.