The Tao of Justice - Justice Le Tran Alexander


 "Leave No Trace" is the ethical expression of mitigating the alteration of a landscape by hikers in both the metaphorical and physical sense. Humans are drawn to symbols in nature and in general. Written language itself is the use of symbols to convey some grammatical meaning to worldly phenomena. The way we speak about the environment has made me reflect on the various ways the environment is interpreted in language. Most strikingly are the connections I've made with concepts of nature in Taoism. I feel as though the religious and spiritual exploration of the natural environments we inhabit can offer a more comprehensive view of how we talk about the world we live in.

Coming from the Tao Te Ching, "The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao" (American Camino p.180) this understanding of The Tao or "The Way" strikes at an important aspect of how we speak about our interaction with language and the environment. We cannot ascribe concrete meaning to words or phrases in the same way we cannot predict the correct way to live in accordance with our environment. Once we place labels on actions or ways of living we take away from the natural ways in which environments interact with their constituents. There is no "path" to follow according to Taoism for that which is prescribed as the ideal way of living limits all other possibilities.

Taking a step back, when observing the inclinations of human nature to "mark a territory", there is room to see that in changing the ways we interact with concepts of our environment can free us to see them for what they are. As Redick states, "Wilderness in this way may be discovered on a wilderness trail". Wilderness in this sense is not just defined by being an untouched, natural landscapes---it is the culmination of all the eco-places joined by human awareness without having the need to 

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