You know the tree by the fruit it bears.

What can I say about my homestate of Utah? I love the land beyond measure. It's like medicine to me.

It honestly fills me with rage then when I see what the current American culture that occupies my homestate is doing to the land - burying it under their "development." It's like arriving home and going into your kitchen to find your out-of-town cousins piling raw human excrement on the homemade ceramic plate that your great great great grandmother had made herself and given to you all as a priceless gift to pass down.

I'm embarrased, I'm angry, I'm saddened that my own human family could be so lame and ignorant, tacky, and ugly.

I'm not a Christian, but I'm down with Jesus when he said: "You know the tree by the fruit it bears."

Really, I don't care if people call themselves Mormon, Catholic, atheist, Evangelical, Mexican, Pioneer, Anarchist, Green, Native American, White, Black, Progressive, whatever, and really I don't care what they say they have to teach me. I taste the fruit their tree bears.

No matter what a people call themselves, or say they believe in, or cite as their cultural references, if the fruit that that people bears is toxic air, stripmalls, poisoned water, Chevron refineries, SUV's, sameness, standardization, "development," obesity, cancer, sprawling, nuclear waste depositories, landfills, majestic wild animals in fenced off pens for human entertainment (like Lagoon Amusement Park's "Wild Kingdom Train" that I rode by today ~ see picture) etc. etc. etc. then what is the tree?

Although it's obviously an oversimplification to lump folks into two categories, my gut feeling is that like Ishmael said in Daniel Quinn's book: "Ishmael" - culturally speaking, it seems that there's just these two cultural tendencies in people: the Taker tendency, and the Leaver tendency. Whatever a Taker culture wants to call itself or whatever - the fruit always looks the same, you know what I mean. I don't care if you're Muslim, or an environmentalist or whatever, cause to me all I see is an SUV crowding me and my bike off the road, know what I'm saying? Whatever you call your tree, the fruit is an SUV. So then, knowing the tree by the fruit it bears, I see Taker. I don't see Muslim, environmentalist, Mormon, whatever you want to call yourself.

Similarly, whatever the Leavers call themselves, the fruit their trees bear is equally distinctive: social harmony, clean air, strong healthy people, trustworthy people, rivers and creeks so clean you could drink out of em, homemade homes and products, local organic food, creativity, hiking, biking, walking, respect for the entire Community of Life, all that good stuff.

With SHAKE YOUR PEACE! and in my own life, I'm trying to cultivate more culturally Leaver tendencies in myself, and dismantle the Taker ones that I was raised with and still practice in spite of myself a lot of the time.

In the meantime, I've been tasting the fruit from the culture that's imposed itself on Utah and it tastes nasty to me. It tastes Taker. I feel like the land of Utah's trying to teach the tree, but the tree is deaf. It continues growing out of control, working as hard as it can to create nowhere, everywhere. Replicating its tasteless, placeless, self like cancer - putting wilderness and health "under control" and under concrete.

What do you think?

I don't want to divide the world into two cultural categories, but when I leaned my bike against this fence I thought to myself, "I wonder which side of the fence people see themselves being on? Why?"

Post your comments. Let's hear it.