Before They're Gone Inspirations

Some good quotes from the Prologue to Michael Lanza's book:

In everyday life, with its distractions and obligations, there exists no corollary for this time with them.  In civilization, we race from one task to the next and fill our "leisure" time with programmed entertainment or the electronics and toys we've amassed.  But in the backcountry, there's no daily planner.  Beyond the needs of setting up camp and preparing food, there's nothing to demand our time except one another and the calmingly unscheduled live theater of nature.  Only out here do I spend hours a day just talking to my wife and kids.

In civilization, it's easy to ignore the changes because we've created insular living environments.  We simply run the air conditioning or lawn sprinklers a little more. But nature is responding in myriad, complex ways that scientists say include bigger storms and wildfires, growing infestations of exotic plants and insects, rising sea levels--and the sixth and fastest mass extinction of life on Earth. We're in the midst of a holocaust that is expected to claim up to 40 percent of plant and animal species worldwide by 2100, including 21 percent of mammals, 37 percent of freshwater fish, and 70 percent of plants.

But life doesn't extend opportunities indefinitely, waiting for us to grab them. In a few years, Alex and Nate will be teenagers, consumed with their own interests. They may be harder to persuade to take long, arduous wilderness journeys with their annoying parents. Many people make a vow to accomplish a goal eventually, only to realize years later that their promise has eluded fulfillment, sacrificed to career, family, inertia. I didn't want to someday have to gnaw on that indigestible kernel of regret.

I've now reached an age, statistically beyond life's midway point, when time seems to be something I'm no longer adding up so much as counting down. Although, with luck, there's plenty of it left, I no longer have the luxury of running down the clock. That realization can inspire a compelling urge to do something right. For most of us, the best possible contribution we can make to the world is raising people who, at the least, don't mess things up more.