Book Review: LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice

First off, an unrelated complaint: Isn't there a law against having two colds in the summertime? Isn't there? If there isn't, shouldn't there be? How have our lawmakers lapsed so egregiously in their responsibilities? Surely we can put a measly little virus in its place: "Cold virus, you already own November to May; we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere, and we're drawing it here. Keep your paws off July and August, or we're sending you to itsy bitsy microbe jail. We mean it."

A few months ago I read LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice. Ah, I see you nodding your heads: 'yes, I see. Bioregionalism. Of course. Exactly.' Bioregionalism is a philosophy that argues that the natural scale of human organization is one based on the environment's patterns of self-organization--that is, that a human culture should logically be about the same size as the ecology its dependent on (but you already knew that). So that a culture based in the Great Lakes Bioregion should, ideally, not be larger than the Great Lakes Bioregion; and if the sizes managed to match up, you'd end up with a society that is small enough that some sort of actual democracy is possible and is knowledgeable enough about the environment its dependent on not to foul its own nest all the time. Personally, I think this is true; I also think that today's mega-countries aren't going anywhere in the near future, so the challenge of bioregionalism is how to encourage bioregional subcultures within today's nation states, and this is not at all related to the topic of today's post, but I wanted you to know what bioregionalism means before I go natter about this book I read that has the word "bioregional" in the title.

An easy introduction to the concept of bioregionalism this book is not; an interesting meditation on the practice of bioregionalism in one particular place and time it is. The book is broken down into several sections of different facets of bioregionalism practice, such as Grounding (figuring out where you are), Living (figuring out what that means for you), Reinhabiting (changing your lifestyle to be more in tune with the place you live in), Imagining (place-based art and culture), Trading (the economy), and Acting (personal actions).

It is not an exploration of traditional bioregionalism as I understand it, either; Robert Thayer's take is more pragmatic than the utopian and idealistic bioregionalism literature I found when I was doing my undergrad ten years ago. Whether this is good or bad is impossible to say. On the one hand, it's nice to see the concept moving beyond the fringe; on the other, it's sad to see that its focus has shifted away from the cultural-social-economic means to full sustainability it was intended to be towards a concept of ecological rehabilitation with only minor changes in human society. Undoubtedly this makes it more palatable, but it's less inspiring as well.

And you, my Dear Readers, are tapping your feet impatiently: "Home, Andrea. This is supposed to be about Home. Get to it. I have a million other things to do today." Right, yes, I'm getting to it.

Thayer grew up in Colorado, and moved to the Sacramento Valley for a job in his, I believe, late twenties; in the twenty-odd years he'd lived in Colorado, he'd never formed a bioregional practice. He'd never attached to it. It wasn't his home.

He lived there, I know. And I know that today "home" means for most people "the address I give people when they ask where they can mail something;" so why is it that that's not home for me?

I have a home in the traditional sense; or rather, I have a house. Actually, the bank has the house. I think we own about a hundred square feet of it. Anyway, the important thing is, I live there. All my stuff is in it. I sleep there at night, I eat most of my meals there; my computer's there, and you know that counts for something. But after living there for over a year, I still drive past it half the time when I'm coming home from work. Woops! Wrong driveway/street. Good job, Andrea.

I like the house. If you have to live in a house, and these days it's considered uncivilized to pitch a tent on the patch of land you call your own, it's a good house to live in. It's in decent shape, it's big, it's well taken care of, it has electricity and running water, and, you know, my computer's in it. But I don't think of it as my home. My home, as much as it exists where I'm living right now, is the patch out the back door. Erik wanted the house because it was new enough and clean enough and big enough; I wanted the trees.

In winter, when I couldn't go outside as much, I felt disconnected. I fantasized about living in a smaller, less expensive house. Is it so bad to buy a new house in a new subdivision where the trees can be mistaken for survey sticks? Can't I live happily without grass for a few more years if it means our household expenses go down?

Then spring comes. The trilliums and trout lilies bloom.

The trees bud. The squirrels scamper on to the deck and beg for peanuts at the back door. Spring turns into summer: I walk into the woods each week to see which new wildflowers are ready to bloom, if the coneflowers are out yet. I love the coneflowers, not just because of their colour and size but because of the gigantic bumblebees that swarm them.

Yes, I know that's not a bumblebee; I'll post that picture later.

We find rabbits on the lawn. We catch frogs in the back garden, and Frances makes a new friend. I sit out on the back deck with a cold drink in the afternoon or evening; the wind dances with the trees, monarchs fly over our heads, chickadees and goldfinches and purple finches and sparrows and doves and blue jays and cardinals and grackles and woodpeckers battle for the best bits of sunflower seeds. The house sitting on the land is almost incidental; it's the land itself that's home.

I can picture myself visiting new places, even for extended periods perhaps, a year or two; but I cannot imagine living anywhere else. I can't say how or why it happened, but the plants and animals of my childhood and young adulthood are as much friends and family as any person I know. When I walk into an ash-maple or pine forest, when I see the chickadees taking seeds from the birdfeeder for a friend on the branches, I am home. I belong. They're not human, but they are my kin. When I need to relax, I close my eyes and picture myself at my grandparents' cottage, lying on the sandy earth, the shallow tree roots rippling the ground, ants crawling over a leg or arm, pine needles thick beneath me, the pine trees they came from so shading the forest floor that nothing else takes root. The broad flat stones that lead to the creek banks are in the sun; I sit on the large one right by the edge, take off my shoes, and a hundred tiny minnows rush out to swarm around my feet. There are crayfish and frogs for catching and a thousand pinecones to toss in and send over the falls.

From waterfallsofontario.ca

There's no electricity, no running water, no neighbours. That's home. That's my home. Those trees, those minnows, that rushing water--those are my people.

How did this happen? I didn't go there more than a handful of times each year growing up; how is it that I can still close my eyes and picture it so clearly it becomes more real than the chair I'm sitting in? My childhood was not remarkable; my guess is that Thayer reaching adulthood in Colorado without ever feeling himself at home is much more common and we probably share most of our early experiences. I wish I knew what had happened, what the switch was. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone felt that the world around them was kin. That home wasn't the box you lived in, but the land the box stood on.

If I could live for a few years in New Zealand or the south of Italy, I would. I'm not xenophobic or provincial. I love travelling, I love new. But in no other place I've been could I stand outside in a wild spot and feel as if I were as rooted to the ground as the trees, as if I belonged there. In no other place can I hear, when I am alone, the steady pulse of the earth beneath me.

The building I live in is inconsequential. This place is my home--not the buildings, the people, the language, the customs, the insitutions or all that other frippery we pile on top of it, but the actual place.

Posted by Andrea at August 22, 2006 10:06 AM under Books , The Green Family

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