A Pagan Polemic curates the evolving perspective of Jack Loeffler--itinerant wanderer, environmental warrior, storyteller, and story collector--whose true education began when he was marched into the Nevada desert one day at dawn to play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" during an atomic bomb test a scant few miles away. Since that day in 1957, Jack's mission in life has been to record peoples of the borderlands and to bring "indigenous mindedness" to the forefront of the conversation about our precarious environments and our decaying planet. A Pagan Polemic is a sweeping manifesto of Jack's core beliefs and long experience as a fierce (and funny) advocate for Nature and Nature-mindedness and against poisonous politics and policies.

With the temperament of Santa Claus and the tenacity of a badger, Jack Loeffler reveals his compassion and concern for Southwestern traditional cultures and their respective habitats in the wake of Manifest Destiny. Working both as an individual and with comrades--including Edward Abbey and Gary Snyder--he was part of an early coterie of counterculturalists and environmentalists who fought to thwart the plunder of natural resources in the Southwest. Loeffler, a former jazz musician, fire lookout, museum curator, bioregionalist, and self-taught aural historian, shares his humor and imagination, his adventures, observations, reflections, and meditations along the trail in his retelling of a life well lived. In this honest memoir, he advises each and every one of us to go skinny-dipping joyfully in the flow of Nature to better understand where we're headed.

In 1984, Jack Loeffler produced a radio series entitled "Southwest Sound Collage." His primary listener was his great friend author Edward Abbey who said, "Loeffler, this radio series should be a book." Thus, "Headed Upstream" first appeared in 1989 shortly after Abbey's death. The challenging interviews that appear herein (Edward Abbey, Andrew Weil, John Nichols, Stewart Udall, and Gary Snyder, to name a few) reflect many points of view from anarchist to Marxist, from environmental to philosophical, from Beat to historical. Each is highly individual and all reflect deep consideration for the myriad factors that have shaped our milieu. In 2009, Loeffler's close friend Gary Snyder said, "This book should be re-published. It's important." Indeed, it is an important presentation of human consciousness at its best. Jack Loeffler and his wife Katherine live near Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a writer, aural historian, radio producer, sound collage artist, and lecturer. He has worked extensively with indigenous and traditional cultures throughout the American West, Mexico and beyond. His books include "La Musica de los Viejitos: The Hispano Folk Music of the Rio Grande del Norte"; "Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey"; "Survival Along the Continental Divide: An Anthology of Interviews"; and "Healing the West: Voices of Culture and Habitat." He has produced over three hundred documentary programs for public radio, co-produced or otherwise collaborated on documentary films, written scores of articles, and produced sound collages for many institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Camino Real International Heritage Center, and the New Mexico History Museum at the Palace of the Governors. He is a project director for The Lore of the Land, Inc., a 501c3 organization founded by his late friend Lee (Mrs. Stewart) Udall. He was awarded a 2008 New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Edgar Lee Hewett Award for Outstanding Service to the Public by the New Mexico Historical Society, and in 2009 was honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure.

No writer has had a greater influence on the American West than Edward Abbey (1927-89), author of twenty-one books of fiction and nonfiction. This long-awaited biographical memoir by one of Abbeys closest friends is a tribute to the gadfly anarchist who popularized environmental activism in his novel "The Monkey Wrench Gang" and articulated the spirit of the arid West in Desert Solitaire and scores of other essays and articles. In the course of a twenty-year friendship Ed Abbey and Jack Loeffler shared hundreds of campfires, hiked thousands of miles, and talked endlessly about the meaning of life. To read Loefflers account of his best pals life and work is to join in their friendship.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Abbey came west to attend the University of New Mexico on the G.I. Bill. His natural inclination toward anarchism led him to study philosophy, but after earning an M.A. he rejected academic life and worked off and on for years as a backcountry ranger and fire lookout around the Southwest. His 1956 novel "The Brave Cowboy" launched his literary career, and by the 1970s he was recognized as an important, uniquely American voice. Abbey used his talents to protest against the mining and development of the American West. By the time of his death he had become an idol to environmentalists, writers, and free spirits all over the West.

"Ed Abbey and Jack Loeffler were like Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. Loeffler delivers his friend, warts and all on a platter full of reverence and irreverence and carefully researched factual information, interspersed with hearty laughter and much serious consideration of all lifes Great Questions. Jacks story elucidates and demythifies the Abbeylegend, giving us powerful flesh and blood instead."John Nichols

Healing the West explores environmentalism and landscape in the American West through myriad voices, including Native American, drawn from a rich archive of interviews, recordings and writings conducted by Jack Loeffler over the course of several decades. The book is accompanied by a high-quality audio CD produced by the author featuring rare interviews of key environmental, historical, and Native speakers--including William deBuys, Rina Swentzell, Stewart Udall, and Gary Paul Nabhan--juxtaposed with sound collages of Native music and habitats. The book is organized around two sections or themes: The Spirit of Place focuses on the relationship of western indigenous cultures to the land. The second section, Moving Waters: The Colorado River and the West, addresses the role of the Colorado River in the development of the region over the last century. The book sheds new light on the conflicting absolutes of the land is sacred and the Earth is a living organism versus the concept of land as habitat for profit and exploitation. The conversation that develops in the book highlights the overall need to employ cognitive diversity in resolving these environmental tensions. The voices include writers, politicians, ranchers, attorneys, environmentalists, and others actively involved in the ongoing conversation over land, water rights, preservation and conservation. Among those interviewed, ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabham; Nez Perce elder Mylie Lawyer; Nava-jo artist Shonto Begay; Tohomo O'odham wise woman Rosilde Manuel; Acoma potter Dolores Lewis; and Santa Clara historian Rina Swentzell; former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; writer and environmentalist William deBuys;western historian Patricia Limerick; and former Arizona Governor and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. Healing the West is an insightful and timely compilation that will appeal to readers interested in environmental issues in the American West.

Thinking Like a Watershed points our understanding of our relationship to the land in new directions. It is shaped by the bioregional visions of the great explorer John Wesley Powell, who articulated the notion that the arid American West should be seen as a mosaic of watersheds, and the pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold, who put forward the concept of bringing conscience to bear within the realm of "the land ethic."

Produced in conjunction with the documentary radio series entitled Watersheds as Commons, this book comprises essays and interviews from a diverse group of southwesterners including members of Tewa, Tohono O'odham, Hopi, Navajo, Hispano, and Anglo cultures. Their varied cultural perspectives are shaped by consciousness and resilience through having successfully endured the aridity and harshness of southwestern environments over time.

This book pays homage to the counterculture movement through the words and photographs of a select gathering of people who lived it. At its height in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the counterculture movement permeated every region of America as thousands of activists took on the establishment. Although counterculture has often been trivialised as dirty hippies and sex, drugs, and rock n roll, committed activists formed powerful strands of resistance to the political/military/industrial complex. American Indians, Hispanos, Blacks, and Anglos joined in marches and protests -- often at their peril. Veterans of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, communards in northern New Mexico, practitioners of drug-induced mysticism, disciplined seekers of spiritual awakening, back-to-the-landers, defenders of wilderness -- counterculturalists all -- questioned, reframed, and redefined American and global perspectives that remain to this day. The American Southwest became a haven for individuals from both coasts seeking refuge in this vast landscape. Many found an affinity with the native cultures and local inhabitants who were already here. Others joined forces to combat the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, and pillaging of the environment. Still others founded communes based on diverse cultures of practice. Movement leaders organised community events, protests, and spoke for their generation; many used their talents as writers, musicians, artists, and photographers to express their angst and promote change. Jack Loeffler draws from his extensive archive of recorded interviews and transcribed conversations with contemporaries -- among them writers, artists, elders, activists, and scholars -- including Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Edward Abbey, Shonto Begay, Camillus Lopez, Tara Evonne Trudell, Roberta Blackgoat, Richard Grow, Alvin Josephy, David Brower, Dave Foreman, Elinor Ostrom, Fritjof Capra, and Melissa Savage. The book includes personal essays by Yvonne Bond, Peter Coyote, Lisa Law, Peter Rowan, Siddiq Hans von Briesen, Art Kopecky, Bill Steen, Sylvia Rodriguez, Enrique R. Lamadrid, Levi Romero, the late Rina Swentzell, Gary Paul Nabhan, Meredith Davidson, and Jack Loeffler. It includes photographs by Lisa Law, Seth Roffman, Terrence Moore, and others.