What we need are guardians — guardians committed to the middle path of mindfulness and dedicated to the enormous task of restoring and healing our ravaged planet. Guardians who have penetrated the anthropocentric notions of our civilization and who, as Aldo Leopold said, can begin to "think like a mountain" and acknowledge that we are only "plain embers of the biotic community."
Be like that bird
Who, pausing in flight,
Feels the bough give way
Beneath her feet
And yet sings
Knowing she hath wings.