The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place

Seasons and Nomads: Reflections on Bioregionalism in Australia

278 As the world moves beyond nationalism into larger global corporate communities, one response has been to retreat to proximity and, in Kirkpatrick Sale’s terms, to “dwell in place.” The “imagined community” (Anderson) of the bioregion is human sized: it is a homeland not a nation. The notion of the “bioregional imagination” as explored throughout this book is created by place-conscious literature, art, natural-history writing, and thoughtful daily living. It is an effort to cultivate the sort of community Sale and others imagine, one that, many believe, might enable us to dwell more sustainably in place. What I investigate here, however, is how in the Australian context a bioregionally inspired attunement to place may lead away from rooted forms of dwelling and toward the very sort of nomadic or migratory lifestyles that so much bioregional discourse critiques. A T I M E F O R A L L T H I N G S : S E A S O N A L T H I N K I N G Bioregional living is not just about place; it is often also about time. For example , Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle celebrates her family ’s year of minimizing their ecological footprint by eating seasonally and locally. Dwelling in place demands attention to seasonal time. Not all places are equally seasonal, however. Kingsolver’s opening chapter sees her leaving her home in Tucson, Arizona, to move to a more temperate climate in Virginia for her experiment in place-based living. Some things never had a season in Arizona: living there demanded outside inL i b b y R o b i n Seasons and Nomads Reflections on Bioregionalism in Australia Seasons & Nomads 279 puts, including energy for the air-conditioning, water from imported and fossil sources, and food from temperate climates. Kingsolver’s experience suggests that implicit in the “ethic of proximity ” in the twenty-first century is a “normal seasonal life” in a place that is small enough to be imagined as a community and large enough to sustain a Western lifestyle. If (and only if ) such an assumption is supportable can individuals be empowered by “dwelling in place.” In places that cannot support people in this way—like Kingsolver’s Tucson, a place she loved and where she raised two children—a different sort of living is the only possibility. Kingsolver felt “giddy and tragic” (Animal 2), she writes, about leaving her “far-flung little community of erstwhile Tucson homesteaders , raising chickens in our yards and patches of vegetables for our use, frequenting farmers’ markets to buy from Arizona farmers, trying to reduce the miles-per-gallon quotient of our diets in a gasoholic world. Australian arid zone and deserts Libby Robin 280 But these gardens of ours had a drinking problem. So did Arizona farms. That’s a devil of a choice: Rob Mexico’s water or guzzle Saudi Arabia’s gas?” (6). Kingsolver’s move east was driven by a long drought and a sense that she was staring global warming in the face. But her family’s retreat to the southern Appalachians “like rats leaping off a burning ship” (2) was also a return home for Steven Hopp, her husband and one co-author of the book, as well as a return to the bioregion of Kingsolver’s own childhood. Her daughter Camille, the other co-author, was a Tucson native, but she had also developed a seasonal relation with the farmhouse they were approaching , having spent three months in a log cabin in the woods behind the farm over many summers. Over the years, they had “migrated like birds” between Steven’s home place and theirs. The migratory cycle itself had kept pace with the movement of the sun, allowing the Kingsolvers to avoid the harsh and relentlessly hot Tucson summer, benefiting from the convenience of the long break in the school year. Seasons are very important in Kingsolver’s story. Eating seasonally creates and sharpens the sense of place. The sun’s annual cycle sets the rhythm for the writing. Kingsolver’s descriptions of the first green asparagus spikes forcing their way through the soil after the winter frosts are both mouthwatering cooking prose and great nature writing. The spirit of the fresh asparagus spike offers something uplifting to the soul as well as tempting to a palate sharpened by long winter deprivation. The cyclical, seasonal world of food...