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From Unist’ot’en Camp: No Word for Good-Bye

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By Will Falk

Leaving Unist’ot’en Camp was hard. As I stepped away from a group of new friends passing pens and notebooks around to share contact information, I found myself on the banks of the Morice River under the pines. Looking up to see their silver and green tops swaying with the sky, I wondered if the pines were discussing the worth of my actions at the Camp. For the first time in my life, I was being watched by trees that I was directly involved in protecting. I studied the splinters still stuck in my hand from the construction site. I rubbed the black bruise under my left thumbnail where I missed a nail with my hammer. My shoulders were sore from holding heavy roof rafters precisely in place so they could be installed properly.

I hoped the trees approved of my efforts. Then, realizing this desire could only mean I was in love, I began to cry.

I was only at Unist’ot’en Camp for a couple weeks, but the first days after leaving felt like something had been pulled out of my stomach. At the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria, there is a shopping center with a Starbuck’s, McDonald’s, a corporate bookstore selling $25 copies of hardcover bestsellers, and a chocolate shop selling individually wrapped candies. Still unshowered, smelling of camp fire and sweat, with Unist’ot’en Camp soil under my fingernails, I almost asked my friend, Rusty, if we could turn around and drive the 12 hours back to the Camp. Immediately.   [Read more…]

From Unist’ot’en Camp: Think About Your Future

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By Will Falk 5/22/2014

For most of my life, I have been concerned about my future.

As a child, I studied hard to get good grades so I could grow up to be smart. In high school I studied hard to get good grades, played three sports and wrote for my high school newspaper so I could put together the most attractive college application possible. In college I played varsity football, earned a 3.95 GPA, graduated summa cum laude, and took out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans so I could put together the most attractive law school application possible. In law school I studied hard to get good grades, worked as many internships as I could, and took out tens of thousands of dollars in more student loans so I could get the job I wanted. Once I was hired as a public defender, I worked hard to save up money for vacations, made my student loan payments to build good credit, set aside money for a retirement, and set aside more money “just in case something happened.”

I was always working for the future. Only this was the wrong future to work for.   [Read more…]

From Unist’ot’en Camp: Responsibility, Not Rights

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Not all worldviews are created equal

By Will Falk May 19, 2014

I thought this as I sat listening to Mel, a Wet’suwet’en man, explain the ideas behind the establishment of the Unist’ot’en Camp. It was lunch on my first day of the camp. The sun was strong and the few dozen visitors to the camp gathered in a clearing surrounded by tall pines. The quick-flowing clear-voiced Morice River flowed next to our gathering place, ice cold from its glacial source not far away.

My first encounter with Mel was on the bridge into Unist’ot’en Camp. Before visitors are admitted, they must satisfactorily complete the Free, Prior and Informed Consent Protocol – a series of questions that camp elders ask. Mel was quick with a smile, quicker with a hug or handshake, and quickest with a joke. He was the first to clap me on my nervous back after I satisfactorily answered my hosts’ questions in the Protocol. So it was natural I made my way to the small gathering of people listening to Mel at lunch.

“This is about responsibility, not rights” Mel said looking around the sky and gesturing towards the river. He explained the way the land taught his people that they had a responsibility to protect the health of the land. Displaying a mastery of political theory coupled with the traditional wisdom of his people, he weaved a powerful analysis to show how important it is that the pipelines be stopped at the Unist’ot’en Camp.   [Read more…]

Desert Prognosis

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By Will Falk

wrapped in the dark blanket of night
huddled
and feverish with cosmic infections

either I’m shaking
or the sky is   [Read more…]

The Unist’ot’en Camp – Preparation: Home, Language, Self

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By Will Falk

It is almost time to go.

I am going to the Unist’ot’en Camp in northern British Columbia. The Unist’ot’en Camp is a resistance camp built by the Wet’suwet’en people on the path of seven proposed pipelines from the Tar Sands Gigaproject and where corporations are extracting liquid natural gas from the Horn River Basin Fracturing Projects.

I am nervous. I am excited. I am scared. Mostly, I just want to get started. Writing helps me organize my thoughts, sift through my emotions, and steel my heart, so I offer this up as my trip approaches.   [Read more…]

Giving Up on Home and Heading to Unist’ot’en Camp

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By Will Falk

I have given up on the notion that I will ever get home.

In many ways, I have always been rootless. I was born in Evansville, IN, moved to Bedford, IN when I was 5, moved to Salt Lake City, UT when I was 11, and then enrolled at the University of Dayton in Ohio when I was 19. After college, I went to law school in Madison, WI and then took a job in Milwaukee. Now, I find myself in San Diego.

And, I just turned 27 in March.

For the longest time due to my moving around so much, I thought that achieving a sense of belonging was something akin to a spiritual cure-all. I thought if I could only find the right community, the right place to live, and then to live there long enough, I could ease the nagging feelings of being constantly out of place.   [Read more…]

To Be a Warrior Poet

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By Will Falk

I tried to kill myself a year ago.

In the year since, I quit my job as a public defender, spent weeks in group therapy, went on Phish tour, tried to kill myself again, searched every corner of my soul and began writing earnestly.

Sometimes, I think writing has kept me alive. Writing my poetry and essays allows me to fill my world with a meaning that is under attack.

The world is burning at an ever-faster pace. We are at war. Many of us may be imprisoned, tortured, raped and ultimately killed. Before I tried to kill myself, I let myself wander too far with clogged ears deaf to the friends – both human and non-human – that fill this world with meaning.

Armed with my experiences, I know that art can – and must be – a weapon used in defense of the world.   [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “notes from Hillcrest/one year after suicide attempt” by Will Falk

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4/16/14

By Will Falk

I am looking for a pick-axe
a long one with a thick handle
one to chip my way
through the asphalt covering
everything

I want to hear crickets
tall grasses at my heels
the shift of sand
the suck of mud

starlight

this is what I think about
wandering San Diego at night   [Read more…]

Poem of the Day: “This Is Not a Poem” by Will Falk

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First, there’s the world. Then, there’s poetry.

By Will Falk

Editor’s Note: Will Falk contacted San Diego Free Press back in December of 2013. He wrote that he had recently moved to San Diego and was interested in submitting essays and poetry. Since that first contact it is unusual for a week to go by without receiving a submission from Will in one genre or the other. His essays have attracted a wide readership; they are often picked up on reddit and reposted on other sites. It is often harder however for poets to discern the extent and nature of the audience for their poems. So we asked Will why his first passion is to write poetry. His response is in his poet’s manifesto below. This is Not a Poem follows.

First, there’s sunshine, clouds, empty skies, and lightning storms. First, there’s wind kissing your breast, chills chapping your lips, and dew on your sleeping bag before the dawn. First, there’s salmon swimming upstream, heron stalking bluegill, and grizzly bear brothers wrestling. First, there’s quick clean water chasing over pebbles, ice cracking under a spring sun, and sand dragging over desert floors.   [Read more…]

Prayer to Brian Boru on the dawn of battle, 2014

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By Will Falk

one millennium later
and there are still warships in the bay

our time, our place
the longest night before
our own Clontarf

the sea
turns green from gray

  [Read more…]

We’re Finished. Now What?

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By Will Falk

I don’t know how to write this, but it looks like humanity is finished.

Many of us know it in our hearts. We watch as civilization marches us to the edge of the cliff. We look around to find most governments refusing to implement the radical shifts needed to save us and killing those who fight back against these governments. We are searching for the serious resistance movement we have needed for the last sixty years while nothing materializes. Even though we have invented a million reasons why we’ll be saved like the belief in technology or a faith in economics, we know what is happening.

Of course, this culture is suspicious of the implications of any easily observable phenomenon that is not stamped with the approval of the currently dominating priesthood – I mean – scientific community. And, even the scientists have known our doom for decades.   [Read more…]

Where to Go

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By Will Falk

the canyon where I wander
seems empty to me

I am
wondering where to go
wondering what the canyon
will do with me
wondering at the emptiness of it all

burnt orange reaches to blue
where the stones hold the sky
the stones’ strong hands
are the only hands sure enough
to carry the sky   [Read more…]

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