Agrestal Purpose
Henry
David Thoreau once wrote, "In wildness is the preservation
of the world." Yet humans find it difficult to trust wildness,
to appreciate it as a self-reliant, spontaneous, liberated state.
Our
species has long engaged in a struggle to subdue or domesticate
the world around us, and much as been gained in that process;
but some things have also been lost. We want to sort through those
gains and losses and work toward an appropriate balance between
the agrestal* and the domestic.
The
Agrestal mission, conceived and endowed by an awe for the untame,
is three-fold:
1.
To identify large rural areas with the specific objective of advancing
a wild state in nature.
2.
To identify ways of experiencing wildness in nature within human
population centers.
3.
To champion wildness as something worthy of our respect, something
with value in its own right.
The
purpose is to experience an increasing level of trust for wildness
in each of the many forms it may reveal itself, and hopefully
to discover a feeling of personal liberation as we allow more
freedom for the life surrounding us.
So here
we are in Iowa, the most altered of landscapes, talking about
letting a few rivers run free; suggesting, if we dare, that a
hint of artistic abandon may be just what is needed. This process
may take body as essay, verse, music, dance, or otherwise. Iowans
- learning and teaching, sharing hopes and fears, contemplating
what has been lost, confronting the awe-invoking state known as
wildness, and by doing so, rediscovering a significant part of
ourselves.
INHF's Agrestal Fund aspires to foster a state-wide rumination about holding on and letting go; a very personal journey, with each participant seeking his or her own balance; a self-willed, self-guided, self-authenticating search for the free human spirit living within us all.
*not
domesticated or cultivated; growing wild in the field
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