Date: 2005-02-23
To: RAW in the Wild: an introduction
Miles today: 0.0

Longhaul has been pestering me for weeks now about my floating promises to get theoretical again. He¢s dying for it. Don¢t let him tell you otherwise.I aim to please, so here we go. But this time, I need to get concrete in order to get abstract, and I¢m really excited to announce that my Appalachian Trail hike will be a fundraiser for RAW Art Works, a truly amazing youth arts nonprofit in Lynn, Massachusetts. More to come on RAW, and on the programming I¢m hoping to support, soon. For now, you can find out all about the fundraiser ¢ ¢RAW in the Wild¢ by clicking here , and then clicking on the ¢Fundraisers¢ link up at the top of the page. On the fundraiser website is my (comparatively) brief statement of philosophy, mercifully edited down for purposes of clarity. You lucky masochistic readers get access to the original version: bigger, longer, and uncut. (Now with references to Adrienne Rich!) A paragraph or two will strike you as familiar, from an earlier entry ¢ and so it goes; TrailJournals to RAW and back again. How meta of me.In any case. If you like what you see, I¢d be touched and delighted if you¢d consider donating to ¢RAW in the Wild.¢ Even a dollar or two makes a difference. And I believe very strongly that what the trail community means to many of you reading this, RAW means to the kids of Lynn: home, belonging, stability, freedom, and inspiration.****Youth art therapy programs like RAW and youth outdoor therapy programs differ in their approaches to helping at-risk kids, but share the same goals. It isn¢t a coincidence that both types of program have been successful.Although we as a culture tend to think and talk about the arts and the outdoors as being two entirely distinct things, the language we use to talk about these ostensibly disparate categories is strikingly similar. Sometimes that language is in the vocabulary of neurology and flow states in the brain; sometimes it¢s in the vocabulary of community and subculture and belonging; sometimes it¢s in the vocabulary of social and environmental change; and sometimes it¢s in the vocabulary of religion and divinity and mindfulness. The same words keep coming up every time when people try to explain why they involve themselves with the arts or with the outdoors, and why that involvement is important, and what it gives them socially and personally. In everyday terms: They are different things, but often done for the same reasons.It shows up everywhere, this connection, and yet is almost never explicitly acknowledged. The language criss-crosses; the words wrap back on each other. One person will tell you that finishing a painting is like completing a journey, or reaching the top of mountain; another will tell you that the view from the top of a mountain is like seeing a painting spread over the Earth. Both will speak of focus, and passion, and growth.And perhaps the reason that we are, collectively, slow to explicitly acknowledge a connection that is everywhere, once you begin to look for it, is because admitting a connection between arts and environment is tantamount to admitting that the art we create and the circumstances under which we create that art are inextricably bound up with each other. Which, in turn, means that art shapes and is shaped by its social context.That¢s not a new idea, but it¢s a potent one. While grassroots and social arts movements are present now in the public eye in a way that they were not thirty years ago, there is still a persistent notion that social art is by definition lowbrow, and that Real Art exists elsewhere, on a purely aesthetic plane. Adrienne Rich, in a marvelous 1983 essay entitled ¢Blood, Bread and Poetry,¢ writes:¢So political poetry is suspected of immense subversive power, yet accused of being, by definition, bad writing, impotent, lacking in breadth¢¦¢¦The United States feminist movement is rooted in the United States, a nation with a particular history of hostility both to art and to socialism, where art has been encapsulated as a commodity, a salable artifact, something to be taught in MFA programs, that requires a special staff of ¢arts administrators¢; something you ¢gotta have¢ without exactly knowing why¢¦¢¦I need to understand how this location affects me, along with the realities of blood and bread within this nation¢¦¢¦What happens to the heart of the artist, here in North America? What toll is taken of art when it is separated from the social fabric? How is art curbed, how are we made to feel useless and helpless, in a system that so depends on our alienation?¢*Some twenty years later, Rich wrote of the same essay that it may now ¢seem to belong to a bygone era.¢ I wish it did; I am convinced that the questions she asks are critical ones. And that is why walking into RAW is a transformative experience. In this building is immediately, tangibly evident that the art its kids create is valued, alive, transformative, and utterly engaged in what is going on around them. Art at RAW is not a commodity. It is not salable, it is not separate, it is not useless or helpless or alienated. It is the heart of its community. To connect the arts and the outdoors is only to take this heart, this connection, both individual and political, to the next level.And it is a political connection. Make no mistake: socioeconomically speaking, it's often the same demographics of people who are restricted in their access to and experience of the arts, and their access to and experience of the wild. The inner-city kids who are the target demographic of the Fresh Air Fund are more often than not the same kids whose schools are targeted for cuts in arts funding. RAW provides an incalculably precious resource to the kids of Lynn. And I¢m hoping, by way of this fundraiser, to help bring a second precious resource to these kids: to bring the Trail to the kids, and the kids to the Trail.In this vein, I¢m moved and excited that part of the funds raised will go toward bringing the kids themselves to the Trail. Plans are currently in the works to arrange a field trip in August, where a number of RAW kids will join me for a day or two. And maybe we'll even make some art while we're at it. The rest of the funds raised will go to support the RAW Chiefs Mentoring Program; in so doing, I hope to bring the support of the outdoor community to bear on the vital services RAW provides its kids.So I am hiking this hike because I love the outdoors, and I am fundraising for RAW because I am passionate about the arts, and about bringing the arts to kids who might not otherwise be exposed to them. But I am hiking this hike AS a fundraiser for RAW because of a deeply held conviction that the arts and the outdoors are intimately connected, and that exploring that connection has everything to do with who we are as people and as communities, and with how we relate to ourselves, our cultures, and each other.****Rich, Adrienne. ¢Blood, Bread and Poetry,¢ p. 53-60, from Arts of the Possible, New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.