Will Falk’s Life-Centered Writing

Pinyon-Juniper Forests: An Ancient Vision Disturbed

Nov 30, 2015 | Essays, Pinyon-Juniper Forests

Standing in a pinyon-juniper forest on a high slope above Cave Valley not far from Ely, Nevada, I am lost in an ancient vision. It is a vision born under sublime skies stretching above wide, flat valleys bounded by the dramatic mountains of the Great Basin. The vision...

Between Here and Home

Nov 8, 2015 | Essays, Mauna Kea, Poetry

Recently, I’ve read about the devastating fires in Indonesia. Now, the destruction itself is horrific, but I am also deeply troubled by the relative silence from the media and just about everyone else. I’ve been asking myself why people are not more alarmed by what is...

Bear Hunt

Oct 29, 2015 | Poetry

after midnight, Big Cypress seeking refuge again at the edge of the continent following the paths bears still walk past Apalachicola and Chassahowitzka through hardwoods and palmettos until I break down, stuck in the swamp listening to night from the roadside I find...

Loving a Child, Protecting the Future

Oct 24, 2015 | Essays

Not long ago, a few hours after his birth, I held a new-born baby to my chest in the hospital. The baby is my girlfriend’s nephew. We arrived at the hospital and crowded into a maternity room with my girlfriend’s sister, brother-in-law, little niece, and mother....

Returning From Darkness: National Suicide Prevention Month

Sep 28, 2015 | Essays

I am an attempted suicide survivor. I tried to kill myself twice – once in April, 2013 and again in August, 2013. It has been over two years and I am still struggling to make sense of what I did. I just learned that September is National Suicide Prevention Month...

Liberalism’s Game: The Failure of Settler Solidarity in Hawai’i

Aug 19, 2015 | Analysis, Essays, Mauna Kea

When I am in Hawai’i, I ask everyone I meet if the United States will ever voluntarily de-occupy the Islands. No one ever says yes. Usually, before I can say anything else, people hurriedly start talking about the lack of a valid treaty or that the American occupation...

Call It Murder: The Ecological Basis for Hawai’i’s De-Occupation

Aug 12, 2015 | Analysis, Essays, Mauna Kea

Resistance to the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project on Mauna Kea has re-ignited the Hawaiian de-occupation movement. Since 1893 when John L. Stevens, other non-Hawaiian plantation owners, sons of Christian missionaries, and the US Navy forcefully overthrew the...

From Unist’ot’en Camp to Mauna Kea: This is What Civilization Does

Jul 24, 2015 | Analysis, Essays, Mauna Kea, Unist'ot'en Camp

All nations are not created equal. Understanding this is a prerequisite to effectively stopping the colonial forces destroying the world. I’ve been thinking this for the last few days watching members of two First Nations I love – the Unist’ot’en Clan of the...

Science vs. the Real World on Mauna Kea

Jul 21, 2015 | Analysis, Essays, Mauna Kea

Many view the debate surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope’s proposed construction on Mauna Kea and Kanaka Maolis’ opposition to it as fundamentally a question of science versus culture. On the benign end, the word “science” has come to connote something close to...

The View (from Guardsman Pass)

Jul 9, 2015 | Poetry

summer proves to be long after another short winter the drought blows through and July mocks us fills the sky with dry cottonwood pollen cruelly mimicking snow below Guardsman Pass I wonder what prayers are possible I cannot look the mountains in the eye they’ve seen...