Desert Oracle Radio Ken Layne

Mariposa Grove was a sacred grove for millennia before it became part of the Yosemite Grant, lovingly tended by Yosemite Guardian Galen Clark for more than a quarter century.

Sacred groves and forests are protected for their spiritual and ecological importance. Such groves are found today throughout India (home of more than a million holy forests), Japan (many thousands of chinju no mori surrounding Shinto temples), and Ethiopia (35,000 primal forests circling Ethiopian Orthodox churches). 

Sacred groves protect many rare, threatened, and endemic species of plants and animals, and are often the last stand of ancient forest in a community. Biodiversity thrives within these sanctified nature preserves, while festivals dating back to antiquity provide people with a deep and lasting connection to their culture, religious practices, folklore and history. Learn more about Galen Clark from the National Park Service.
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On this Easter weekend, let’s do our best to bring back the ghosts, the supernatural. Let us recognize and respect the mysterious entities that come not from some imagined, distant star system in the cold lifeless vacuum of space, but from right here where we experience them! Backroads, mountains, spooky desert trails at dusk. Jesus loved wilderness and often talked to ghosts, after all. And that's something people of any philosophy can enjoy.
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The pyramids of Guinness 12-packs at our High Desert grocery stores reminded us of St. Patrick's Day coming up, but the grey cloudy skies and green hillsides of the Mojave Desert this month are reminders that the old pagan tales are with us still, wherever the landscape is haunted and strange. And that supernatural entities always gather in their ancient homes: wild forests, dramatic outcroppings of rock, and any lonesome place whipped by the winter winds.
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The storms continue, the wildflowers begin to appear, and Chantel our PCT through-hiker probably made it to the Canadian border without any kind of Mountain Monster getting her, which is good. Also: What is the Voice of the Desert? New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written and hosted by Ken Layne.
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Nothing is sacred unless we set it aside as sacred. As Americans rapidly abandon organized religion — and the formerly sanctified church and temple sites go up for sale as designer homes — where are the places that are truly sacred? The places set aside for contemplation, meditation, festivals, the rituals of life? 

There ain’t much. Not nearly enough. But that can be fixed. New soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Written & hosted by Ken Layne. Thanks for supporting this advertising-free podcast at Patreon.com/desertoracle.
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Where's the beautiful part, anyway? Well, start by walking about a mile past the last parking lot or dirt road or residential car-parts dump or informal halfway house or accidental pit-bull breeding farm, and keep going in the direction of the difficult terrain: the hills and the mountains and the boulders. Not the hills covered in radio relay towers, but the ones with nothing up there at all, nothing except more boulders, more spiky yucca trees that slash your arms, gnarled junipers and needle-armed Joshua trees, up to the craggy peak where the stately pinyons stand proud. Keep going that way.

On the second half of the program, Patrick Donnelly — here's his Sand & Sage newsletter — from the Center for Biological Diversity returns to Desert Oracle Radio to talk about an international land grab dreamt up by a local commissioner in Lincoln County, Nevada, along with the nation of Denmark, which plans to destroy centuries-old forests of pinyon and juniper on your public lands to mush into "bio-fuel" for container ships. What?! New soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver. Written & produced by Ken Layne.

Thanks for supporting this advertising-free show via our Desert Oracle Patreon. Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver; written & produced by Ken Layne.
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