Contemplative Hiking

I will be selling and signing copies of my book on Saturday, November 13, 2010, at Local Author Day at Jax Merchantile in Fort Collins, Colo.

Perpetuating a fear of nature and specifically a fear of bears and cougars is harmful, because when a series of incidents sparks panic in a community as it did several years ago when mountain lions started showing up in the city of Boulder, the knee-jerk reaction many people have is to eradicate the entire population of mountain lions in the foothills, as opposed to dealing with the problem in a reasonable, appropriate way.

If this book is flying off the book shelves and Franzen is being hailed as “The Great American Novelist” on the cover of Time Magazine, it must be making a lot of people feel good, or at least, validated. And that could mean that a lot of people at least agree with what Franzen is trying to say through the characters in this book, particularly through the protagonist Walter Berglund.

When we think we know everything there is to know—about a person, a thing, an idea or a place—then we lose the ability to receive new information and experiences. When we close ourselves off from the world by judging it and then dismissing it, we actually shrink our lives.