Posted with the kind permission of the YMCA's "Writer's Voice.

Geoffrey Platts is certainly a man familiar with letters. Over the last two decades he's written thousands of missives to public officials, developers, environmental leaders and friends from his one room cabin. A large part of that correspondence has been in praise and defense of the Sonoran Desert. While Platts has spoken publicly and picketed golf course developments that infringed on the desert's simple beauty since the 1980's, he's always returned to letters as the primary instrument in his activism. In 1990 alone, Platts produced over 3,000 letters - many to politicians and developers who supported and created construction site in the desert. They many not know the solitary figure picketing their sites but the volume and unmistakable tone of Platts' letters make him a recognizable, if unwelcome, voice in the debate over Sonoran development.

Platts' letter-writing is more than just an act of protest or a political statement, however. The true extent of his passion is made clear in a book he published in 1991 entitled Trek! Man Alone in the Arizona Wild. Although the cover describes the book as desert journals, Platts has referred to the work as a compilation of "love-letters to the desert." Indeed the panoramic descriptions of the vast landscape coupled with the author's attention to the intricate details of plant and animal life suggest a man enamored with his surroundings.

Since the publication of Trek! Platts has continued to produce
volumes of correspondence regarding the Sonoran but he's begun to focus more intently on the creative process involved in composing a letter. This shift in focus is due in no small part of Platts' estimation that letter-writing is becoming a lost art. His weekly 13-mile walks to the post office give him tie to reflect on the stacks of computer - generated ills, flyers and form letters addressed to "resident" received by so many. He can only feel sympathy for such people who "hardly receive a proper letter."

Perhaps it is this cheapening of the written word by computer
correspondence or the suspicion that, in a world in internet chat rooms and video games, the simple meditative act of drafting a letter may be going the way of the printing press. Whatever the reason, Platts has decided to speak publicly for the first time "in praise of the power and pleasure of letter-writing." in his view, the simple act of drafting a letter enhances the exchange of insights, ruminations and experiences making relationships between correspondents more intimate an provides an opportunity to concentrate on events and experiences lost in the daily grind.

From YMCA Writer's Voice, a community calendar of writing workshops, conferences, and reading, events and submission opportunities. Update Editor Stephen Fillmore March 1998