A Failure of Moral Imagination: Losing the Forests and the Trees

A Failure of Moral Imagination: Losing the Forests and the Trees

A few months ago, I woke before dawn and drove into the mountains, chasing a small, fleeting miracle. The trailhead for the Daffodil Flats hike sits along the rim of the Linville Gorge, sometimes called the Grand Canyon of the East. It is a place that feels untamed in the best sense: steep, stubborn and unapologetically wild. The trail wastes no time. It drops you three miles straight down into the gorge, as if to remind you from the beginning t…