“All right, Pooh, what can you tell us about the Uncarved Block?”

“The what?” asked Pooh, sitting up suddenly and opening his eyes.

“The Uncarved Block. You know . . .”

“Oh, the . . . Oh.”

“What do you have to say about it?”

“I didn’t do it,” said Pooh.

“You—”

“It must have been Piglet,” he said.

“I did not!” squeaked Piglet.

“Oh, Piglet. Where did you—”

“I didn’t,” Piglet said.

“Well, then, it was probably Rabbit,” said Pooh.

“It wasn’t me!” Piglet insisted.

“Did someone call?” said Rabbit, popping up from behind a chair.

“Oh — Rabbit,” I said. “We’re talking about the Uncarved Block.”

“Haven’t seen it,” said Rabbit, “but I’ll go ask Owl.”

“That won’t be nec—” I began.

“Too late now,” said Pooh. “He’s gone.”

“I never even heard of the Uncarved Block,” said Piglet.

“Neither did I,” said Pooh, rubbing his ear.

“It’s just a figure of speech,” I said.

“A what of a who?” asked Pooh.

“A figure of speech. It means that, well, the Uncarved Block is a way of saying, ‘like Pooh.’ “

“Oh, is that all?” said Piglet.

“I wondered,” said Pooh.

Pooh can’t describe the Uncarved Block to us in words; he just is it. That’s the nature of the Uncarved Block.

“A perfect description. Thank you, Pooh.”

“Not at all,” said Pooh.

When you discard arrogance, complexity, and a few other things that get in the way, sooner or later you will discover that simple, childlike, and mysterious secret known to those of the Uncarved Block: Life is Fun.

“Let’s go and see everybody,” said Pooh.

“Because when you’ve been walking in the wind for miles, and you suddenly go into somebody’s house, and he says, ‘Hola Pooh, you’re just in time for a little smackerel of something,’ and you are, then it’s what I call a Friendly Day.”

Profesiones Preparadas Para Prof Pooh

Still trying to get the crowd’s attention and complete his introduction of the next act, he threw back his head, raised both hairy paws to his muzzle and began to howl like a wolf.

He started low and deep in his chest, rising in slow crescendo toward an apogee of animal liberation, the blood-cry of the eternal untamed, the true and original call of the wild.

That did it. That caught their interest.

The mob echoed his howl in antiphonic recapitulation, male and female, adult and child, human and canine, myriad voices soaring through the cathedral of the trees, into the listening sky, over the yawning abyss of the world’s one and one only Grand Canyon.

Even the cops and rangers were impressed by this mass outburst of angelic demonology. Not frightened, not disturbed — hard for them to imagine so anarchic and jolly a multitude becoming dangerous — but impressed.

They listened, they stared, their hearts beat faster with the power of the primitive — be primordial or die! — and they remembered something older, deeper, richer, warmer, lovelier, and finer than anything osmotically absorbed from TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, politicians, evangelists, priests, experts, M.D.s or Ph.D.s.

What? What was it?

It was that sense of life that cannot be expressed — or depressed — through mere words.

It was the message of the wolf’s cry, the bear’s roar, the whispering of the forest, the thunder of a storm, the silence of the canyon, the wail of wind, the meaning of the moon.

The fire of the blood.
The drumming of the heart.
The beating of the drums.

All present heard the coming music, the procession of dancers.

Ed Abbey, Hayduke Lives!