In recent years I've had a flat-line reaction

when I hear news that a handful of veteran activists have managed, yet again, to gain access to a nuclear submarine or to a nuclear missile silo on which they have hammered out their outrage or spilled sorrowful blood. Such dogged, often sacrificial, devotion to keeping the threat of nuclear war - and the expense of nuclear deterrence - before the public's eyes has value, I know. But although I spent a lot of time in the 1980s vigiling and protesting outside nuclear weapons manufacturers, at the Pentagon and on the steps of a variety of federal government buildings, I have lately had no wish to praise or follow. The shrill drama has seemed disconnected from real life, somehow, although I'll admit that I've had difficulty explaining why.

So, when I journeyed to Las Vegas

to participate in the Healing Global Wounds' "Honor Your Mother Gathering" at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) last spring, I wasn't much tempted by the organizers' promise that there would be a chance to participate in one or more acts of civil disobedience. But I was to experience a change of heart.

The shift began with a forum on nuclear issues hosted by the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, where I was startled to discover that although the audience seemed uniformly in favor of nuclear abolition, at least half the group thought non-military applications of nuclear technology were probably acceptable. As one presenter expressed it, "If the world is going to have an industrial-based society, nuclear energy is the best way to go."

That session offered a useful reminder of a prevailing mind-set: Continuing to develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction seems obviously undesirable and probably immoral. But maybe, just maybe, now that we have the means to profitably utilize the power of the atom, it would be imprudent to repudiate peacetime applications altogether.

How is it, I found myself wondering

that mass destruction delivered by nuclear missiles seems to so many a clearer evil than mass destruction delivered by a corporation or a utility company or a government corps of engineers?

For the next two days I had plenty of chance to chew on that conundrum at the Healing Global Wounds campsite near the Mercury, Nev., gate into the NTS. Here the desert vistas are vast, the ground rocky and the vegetation sparse. For centuries this has been Western Shoshone land, as recognized by the U.S. government in the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863. It was in 1948 that the U.S. forcibly removed over 100 Shoshone familes from the Rhode Island-size area it wanted for the NTS, marked now by the barbed wire fence we could see across the highway.

"Be aware that the desert around you

is extremely fragile," gathering organizers cautioned. "While we may be camped in an area that looks free of wildlife, it's not. Many animals and plants make this their home. Don't move rocks or rip out bushes. Whole ecosystems live under them."

Avoiding washes or "very dusty looking low areas" was also recommended, since "the dangerous fallout from above-ground testing tends to accumulate in these areas."

Just visible on the horizon was Yucca Mountain, a site within the NTS of sacred importance to a variety of tribal groups in the region. Its future as a storage facility for spent reactor fuel is being hotly contested and the forces in favor are formidable. A Healing Global Wounds information sheet noted that the NTS is already the dumping ground for nuclear waste from clean-up efforts at other nuclear weapons facilities, though the clean-up budget here is small. A nuclear dump down the road near Beatty, Nev., reportedly is leaking into the groundwater after only 20 years.

The land, it takes little imagination to see, doesn't distinguish between the peaceful or aggressive intentions that lead to its poisoning. Its distress only spreads and deepens as we stockpile against possible attack, as generators hum.

Both the U.S. federal government and the Western Shoshone people claim sovereignty over this territory. One considers it expendable, useful largely as a huge toxic dumping ground. The other cherishes its wildness and seeks its healing.

The thought, very simply, pushed me over the edge.

I knew I wouldn't be able to leave this place without making some clear witness on behalf of the forces of life, some embodied response to the land's fierce but fragile beauty and the indifference with which it has been violated.