Dave Foreman's Books of the Big Outside, Spring 1991

Foreman, Dave | from Multimedia Library Collection:
Earth First! Movement Writings

Cover, Dave Foreman’s Books of the Big Outside, Spring 1991

Dave Foreman, ed., Dave Foreman’s Books of the Big Outside. Spring 1991. Environment & Society Portal, Multimedia Library. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/8118


Dave Foreman’s Books of the Big Outside is a catalog of books, poetry, music, and material pertaining to what he calls the “Big Outside,” compiled for “wilderness defenders.” Foreman uses the “Big Outside” as a metaphor for nature and the loneliness it brings, where wisdom can be acquired. This catalog lists books, music, poetry and other material produced by individuals “who are able to eloquently articulate the wisdom from the wild, or to draw profound lessons from human history and that are in harmony with that wisdom.”

Wisdom is more likely to be encountered listening to goose music, to the wind in the trees, or to the flow of a river than in books or libraries.

[…]

Here’s where I’m gonna get into trouble with fetus worshippers, cornucopian economists of the right and left, and those who jack Humankind up onto a pedestal. So be it. But there are too damn many naked apes mucking up Earth for every other critter. Say what you will about maldistribution of “resources,” if we could control our unbridled sexual productivity, there would be a lot more of what everyone needs to go around. Despite our glorious civilization and technology, we have not escaped biology. If we don’t halt the population explosion, it will be halted for us—and it will happen very unpleasantly.

—Dave Foreman


© 1991 Dave Foreman. All rights reserved. This issue is available at the library of the Rachel Carson Center at the LMU Munich. To request access for research purposes, contact us at portal@carsoncenter.lmu.de.

The Rachel Carson Center’s Environment & Society Portal makes archival materials openly accessible for purposes of research and education. Views expressed in these materials do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Rachel Carson Center or its partners.

Further readings: 
  • Foreman, Dave, and Howie Wolke. The Big Outside: A Descriptive Inventory of the Big Wilderness Areas of the United States. New York: Harmony Books, 1992.
  • Foreman, Dave. Confessions of an Eco-Warrior. New York: Harmony Books, 1991.
  • Foreman, Dave. Ecodefence: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching. Tucson: A Ned Ludd Book, 1987.