As an Army private in 1958, Jack Loeffler witnessed the first atomic tests in the Nevada desert. He spent years afterward as a radical environmental activist. But those years also included gigging as a jazz trumpeter, watching for fires in an Arizona forest, tripping on peyote with Carlos Castaneda and, ultimately, having a successful career as a self-taught aural historian. Jack tells his story in Headed Into The Wind, just published by UNM Press.
"I regard writing as one of the great ways one can explore one's perspectives," says Jack. "And one of the things that was of interest to me was how much I had been influenced by people I had met." He mentions that chief among them were Alvin Josephy, Stewart and Lee Udall, Edward Abbey and Gary Snyder. "To get all of those perspectives together in my head really has expanded my consciousness enormously. And I believe consciousness is the reason we're here."
In this longer version of the interview, Jack explains why he says in his book that the greatest threat to our environment is not global warming but rather the way we think about our place in the environment. "What we have done in Western Culture is secularized habitat in order to turn it into money. Until we understand that on a gut level, we're not going to react properly."
