Over the coming months, I will be decommissioning this site and establishing my web presence elsewhere, independent from my employer and free from the baggage of my short-but-intense involvement with the rewilding movement, which this website had also come to symbolize to me (despite the fact that I was right all along in my first post, “Reflections on Downshifting Day,” wherein I described ‘rewilding’ as a “semantic clusterf–k” or “a technical term for a cluster concept confounded to the point of uselessness”).
To that end, I have launched one new blog on Substack, Nonmotorized Trails (carfreebirdnoticer.substack.com) with a second one coming soon, Ethics from the Outside (outsideethics.substack.com). Unusually for me, the former is centered around photos rather than text, and it is intended to serve as my outlet to share my love of sauntering, car-free living, the company of feathered friends, and the experience of wild nature. It is, in a sense, the continuation of my essay “Around the World for a Ten Miles’ Radius” (June 2022), in which I wrote, “It is not out of the question […] that I will eventually launch a new blog devoted to a selection of case studies in living life – and connecting with nature – within the limits of an afternoon walk, drawing from my own experiences as a ‘digital nomad’ […],” although the first two installments are in fact about some of my experiences (positive ones!) living and looking for nature in my long-time home base of Columbus, Ohio.
Nonmotorized Trails is introspective and reflective, but it will never be particularly philosophical. That is why I also plan to launch Ethics from the Outside, in which I will give free rein to my love for analytic philosophy and critical thinking. The initial focus will be issues related to ecological ethics, and since I am now a solo actor – with no feeding hands to bite – I will start with critiques of my own former work (beginning with a reevaluation of some of the ideas in my April 2023 essay “Evolution is Good; Autonomous Evolution is Better“). Meanwhile, I have been asked to contribute a chapter on intrinsic value to a “Nature Values” book, so expect some blog posts on this topic, as I continue to explore new thoughts related to this perennial interest of mine (including a sort of plea for Ordinary Language philosophy, in light of what I’m coming to learn about what philosophers read into that term, presumably without much attention to what practitioners are actually doing in the language games in which they ascribe ‘intrinsic value’ to things… but I digress).
I do not intend to impose any sort of publication schedule on Ethics from the Outside, but I am trying to adhere to one for Nonmotorized Trails: new posts every other Sunday.
I hope that folks who were interested in my work with The Rewilding Institute or The Ecological Citizen will remain interested in my output, since love of wild nature will be a theme central to both blogs. The two blogs are importantly distinct, but together they will form a composite picture of my approach to thinking about nature and ecological ethics. At the same time, however, I hope it is clear that neither blog is about environmental action or activism. Nonmotorized Trails is fundamentally about slowing down and noticing things, as I emphasized in my most recent post, “Conference of the Wading Birds” (June 2024). Yes, the blog is intended to showcase the virtues of car-free living, but I hope it’s clear that this doesn’t make it about sustainability and definitely doesn’t make it about sacrifice or self-deprivation. On the contrary, to me, car-free living has always epitomized the decision to embrace leisure and peace of mind (who has heard of “footpath rage,” “bike trail rage,” “greenway rage,” etc?) and jettison the social norms that tell us we can’t be responsible adults unless we commit to stress for the sake of stress, speed for the sake of speed. Readers who followed Useless Living in its earliest days might figure out that, in fact, Nonmotorized Trails is something of a return to form: my rejection of car culture is very much cut from the same cloth as my rejection of career culture. Ethics from the Outside, meanwhile, will not be intended to preach, but it is also meant to embody the virtue of slowing down and, in this case, stopping to think.
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