About Dave Foreman's "Around the Campfire"
(Latest Issues of Campfire Are Posted Here)
Dear Friends,
Nearly twenty-five years ago, I started writing a regular column called “Around the Campfire” for The Earth First! Journal, which I then edited. I first wrote it on a mechanical typewriter. With the breakup of Earth First! in 1990, John Davis and I launched Wild Earth, and I continued “Around the Campfire.” The Wildlands Project discontinued Wild Earth two years ago for lack of funding, and Around the Campfire lost a home.
During the quarter century of Around the Campfire, I’ve tried to educate, provoke, and activate conservationists on a sweeping range of ideas, issues, and subjects. Material from Around the Campfire has gone into my books, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, The Big Outside, Rewilding North America, and the forthcoming The Myth(s) of the Environmental Movement. I’ve meant Campfire as a broadside of yore, such as Tom Paine and other patriots wrote during the War for Independence.
In that spirit, I emailed my Nature’s Crisis essay in March of 2005. Many of you further distributed it and it was printed in several publications, including a longer version, “Take Back Conservation,” in The International Journal of Wilderness.
I like real magazines and real books; electronic words seem, well, effervescent. Not in how they tingle but in their apparent briefness of life. Some of us would love to bring Wild Earth back as a real magazine, but there is no funding to do so. Grudgingly, then, parsimony drives us to electronic publishing.
Mind you, “Dave Foreman’s Around the Campfire” over email is no substitute for Wild Earth, but it is something to keep the conservation pot stirred. The Rewilding Institute will zap it out at least four times a year, though we don’t intend to clutter your electronic mailbox. It is free and we encourage you to further distribute it. The first issue was emailed to subscribers in early September. It and all future Campfires will be archived here.
If you would like to be on the distribution list to receive Dave Foreman’s Around the Campfire simply subscribe to our newsletter.
It’s appropriate that Susan Morgan is publisher of Around the Campfire.
Susan and I have worked together on conservation for a third of a century in The Wilderness Society, Earth First!, The Wildlands Project, and The Rewilding Institute. Though she is a wee bit older than I am, she is years younger in her understanding of electronic communications.
I really mean it when I say that this incarnation of Around the Campfire would not be possible without her. Thanks, Susan! Likewise, John Davis, former editor for The Earth First! Journal and Wild Earth, is editor for Around the Campfire.
I am most pleased with this, because I always feel naked without John carefully dressing my words before they step out the door. John may pen columns now and then, himself. Jack Humphrey, Webmaster for The Rewilding Institute, is also key to this operation, particularly for the seeming magic by which it drifts through the ether.
Happy Trails
-Dave Foreman
“Dave Foreman’s Around the Campfire” is published electronically irregularly as a free service by The Rewilding Institute and its Partners. Susan Morgan is the Publisher and den mother. John Davis is Editor and Jack Humphrey is Webmaster.
To receive “Around the Campfire” simply subscribe to our weekly newsletter where new Campfires will be announced along with other articles posted the previous week.
Please forward Dave Foreman’s Around the Campfire to conservationists on your address book and to conservation discussion groups to which you have access. We apologize if you receive multiple postings. Permission is given to reprint Dave Foreman’s Around the Campfire so long as it is published in its entirety and with this subscription information.
It will make a good regular feature for your group’s newsletter, either printed or electronic. Please contact Susan before reprinting it. Dave Foreman’s Around the Campfire also appears on The Rewilding Website; past issues are archived there and available.
Dave Foreman’s Around the Campfire has no subscription charge. It is funded by the Rewilding Partners, who are donors to The Rewilding Institute. If you like Dave Foreman’s Around the Campfire, please go to the Donation page for information on how to support all the work of The Rewilding Institute.