Beyond a Sense of Place23rdApril
As an outdoor educator I've had the slogan "sense of place" drilled into me years ago. But I've learned that sense of place is not enough. I know plenty of people that can identify tracks, spot a bird, measure water quality and even make a bow drill fire. What this leads to is a willingness to help enact policy or an appreciation that your greenspaces exist, it rarely results in the fervent passion that comes with knowing life and death.
We need a better definition: sewn into place, tied to place or inextricably integrated into place. We need a mantra that means "our food, shelter and drink come from the dirt we walk barefoot in". Living in place is what shifts our relationships, making them more sincere.
Let's take it even further then backyard farms and valley CSAs (which is great). If all we do is grow vegetables, that's all we'll show regard for. If we harvest nettle, hunt deer and fish for salmon, we'll care intensely about these fellow inhabitants of our land. And it must happen with our own hands. Not with boats made of fiberglass or steel, rigged with motors that have more to do with proving our manhood then our relationship to the water. Am I suggesting everyone in Portland become a hunter-gather? I can hear the sustainability, carbon traders and leave no trace guardians crying fowl. Absolutely not... Well, not yet. The irony is when we gate off wild nature with asphalt and fences we see it as a theme park, a luxury to be cut as times get tougher.
Let's start simple. Be like your great-grandpa and grandma collecting dandelions for wine. Take after your friends with backyard chickens (and an occasional raccoon stew when they're killing your chickens). And for goodness sake, go fishing with the neighborhood kids! When you harvest these things this year you'll expect them to return the next. That expectation leads to the true nature of sustainability. Its not simply a "sense of place", instead you live and breathe by your home and where you live.
Buffalo Butchering and Preserving, May 30-31
Go out to the farm, as a team: kill, butcher and harvest the meat
of a 1000 plus pound buffalo. The next day turn it into sausage, corned
buffalo and other traditional meat preservation techniques. Is it
difficult? Absolutely yes.
Read about the buffalo butchering preserving class
Nature of Village, September 6-12, 2009
How do 50 people come together on the land and become a village for
the fall harvest for one week? Find out this September as we recreate a
living village. An entire week of lost arts and craft with family celebration.
Learn more about or join the village.
