Thinking Like a Watershed: Voices from the West

Conclusion

259 < Conclusion An unfortunate fundament of American law is to legislate in order to serve the wants and perceived needs of those who would privatize common natural resources for personal gain. This sets a cultural standard that apparently works until the population outgrows the carrying capacity of the common landscape. At this point, national legislation and natural law fail to coincide, and the gap between them gradually widens exponentially until the system crashes, and the population diminishes by virtue of overexploitation of common resources. This should be self-evident, especially as we look at our world’s repertoire of disaster potential that increases daily. Let us recall the five exponentially growing issues forwarded by the Limits to Growth project mentioned in the introduction: population food production industrialization pollution consumption of nonrenewable resources And we add a few more issues of growing probability: world war pandemic economic collapse cybercollapse climate instability and global warming Obviously we are in the midst of a complex system of factors of our Conclusion 260 < own creation that poses increasing peril to the entire biotic community including our own species. In this world, the territorial imperative is enacted within a mosaic of nationalistic phenomena such as we see today, each nation complete with its own legislated laws and system of standards, all vying for position within the prevailing collective economic house of cards. It certainly doesn’t take a particularly gifted mind to extrapolate the inevitability of disaster. Rather, it requires some strength of character to look directly into the eye of darkening collective human consciousness for any spark of insight, any glimmer of understanding as to how we attempt to wend our way back from the edge of the abyss. I do not find hope and light in the seats of centralized political power held in sway by corporate economics anywhere in this world. Rather, the great hope that I find lies in rural communities attuned to respective homeland where self-sustainability has been traditionally maintained for long enough to become a resilient culture of practice. I also find hope in those cultures of practice where a spiritual relationship exists with homeland such as we see in the indigenous and traditional communities reflected in the earlier essays in this book. I find hope in the restoration of sustainability and the reawakening of intuitive understanding of our place as a species within the flow of Nature. I find hope in decentralized governance from within naturally defined geographical areas—namely watersheds. And I find tentative hope within an enlightened scientific community intent on evolving technology that is applicable to solving many within the array of areas of jeopardy that we face as a planetwide biotic community. The great anarchist philosopher and geographer Pyotr Kropotkin defined his sense of an ideal society in his essay “Modern Science and Anarchism ,” published in French in 1913. The anarchists conceive a society in which all the mutual relations of its members are regulated, not by laws, not by authorities, whether self-imposed or elected, but by mutual agreements between the members of that society and by a sum of social customs and habits —not petrified by law, routine or superstition, but continually developing and continually readjusted in accordance with the evergrowing requirements of a free life stimulated by the progress of science, invention and higher ideals. No ruling authorities, then. No government of man by man; no crystallization and immobility, but a continual evolution—such as we see in nature.1 Conclusion 261 < In 1985, my friend Gary Snyder spoke his carefully thought-out definition of bioregionalism into my microphone: Bioregion, the term itself, would refer to a region that is defined in some way by its plant and animal characteristics, its life zone characteristics that flow from soil and climate—the territory of the Douglas fir or the region of coastal redwoods; short-grass prairie, mediumgrass prairie, and tall-grass prairie; high desert and low desert. Those could be, or verge on, bioregional definitions. When you get it more specific, you might say Northern Plains short-grass prairie, Upper Missouri Watershed, or some specific watershed of the Upper Missouri. The criteria are flexible, but even though the boundaries and the delineations can vary according to your criteria, there is roughly something we all agree on. Just like we agree on what a given language is, even though languages are fluid in their dialects. So bioregionalism is a kind of creative branch of the environmental movement that strives to reachieve indigeneity, reachieve aboriginality , by learning about the place and what really goes on there. Bioregionalism goes beyond simple geography or biology by its cultural concern, its human concern. It is to know not only the plants and animals of a place, but also the cultural information of how people live there—the ones who know how to do it. Knowing the deeper mythic, spiritual, archetypal implications of a fir, or a coyote, or a blue jay might be to know from both inside and outside what the total implications of a place are. So it becomes not only a study of place, but a study of psyche in place. That’s what makes it so interesting. In a way, it seems to me that it’s the first truly concrete step that has been taken since Kropotkin in stating how we decentralize ourselves after the twentieth century.2 Many of us perceive John Wesley Powell as a man who attempted to put bioregionalism into practice even though the term was coined over six decades after Powell’s death. His rendering of the map of Watersheds of the Arid West that appears in the Eleventh Annual Report to the United States Geographic Survey 1889–90 can well be regarded as a map of the bioregions of the United States west of the 100th meridian. Powell recognized watersheds as commons and clearly defined this in the Eleventh Annual Report to the USGS. Many modern conservationists and environmentalists are hearkening to Powell’s early wisdom. Conclusion 262 < The essays that appear in this book were consciously written or spoken from within the home watersheds of each of the authors. Each essay is a presentation of the workings of a different cultural mind within the context of respective homeland. Each of the authors has both practical and spiritual ties to the North American Southwest that comes from dipping deeply into the flow of Nature, of attuning the senses to the smell of juniper , the sound of the coyote, the sight of endless space, the taste of dust, the feel of the wind—the deep intuition of the sense of being kindred with the life forms, the landscape, the sky, the living waters. It is not superstition to intuit and celebrate the urge to life and consciousness that occurs because of the relationship of the Earth to the Sun. Rather, it is part of humankind’s endowment to be granted the capacity to perceive the sacred quality of homeland, to feel awe at the great mystery that pervades the universe—and to be humbled by the recognition that our species is but the tiniest part of that great mystery, that we are privileged to possess a level of consciousness that far exceeds our untimely paltry pursuits that have brought us to the edge of oblivion. At the beginning of the twentieth century, roughly 40 percent of Americans lived in cities. A century later, nearly 80 percent live in cities, leaving 20 percent of us in rural America. The toll of cities on surrounding habitat is horrific, but consciousness of this toll is meager at best. We as a culture are into several generations’ worth of major overindulgence. Over the last generation, much of our attention has been dominated by digital technology to the extent that many of us spend precious waking hours immersed in a two-dimensional virtual reality that lures our collective and individual attention away from the real McCoy, albeit we have created a mighty force for instant communication throughout our digitally attuned culture of practice. There is a large cadre of scientists of various persuasions monitoring the health of the environment, for which I am profoundly grateful. They also vigorously warn us that we are face to face with enormous climate change due to global warming that is greatly affecting our planet’s atmosphere. But too few of us now live out in it enough to hear the song of homeland, to see its glow, to register its ambience, to take the measure of its pulse—to dance with the spirit of place. There is a beam of hope. A small but growing coterie are turning back to homeland, to home watershed, to home foodshed, and are consciously working hard in behalf of sustainability and rebalance within the flow of Nature. Many now listen to our indigenous neighbors for insight into technique and, even more important, state of mind. Conclusion 263 < In today’s world of economic/political culture, there exists an immense polarity between the right and the left. Unfortunately, they are mostly to the right and left of the wrong issues. A hundred years ago Pyotr Kropotkin campaigned vigorously in behalf of peasants whose lives were usurped to fulfill the presumed needs of the governing gentry. Kropotkin wanted to educate these peasants so that they could take their rightful place within the cultural continuum. At that time our human population of the planet was less than 25 percent of today’s population. There yet remain disgraceful disparities between the “classes” worldwide, and the polarizations grow ever more vicious. But these polarizations blindside us to the single most important issue at hand—the health of our planetary habitat. Our consciousness is so dimmed by our obsession with economics and the deteriorating human condition that we cannot accept the fact that growth for its own sake is inevitably a suicidal course. The longer this course prevails, the less likelihood we’ll survive as a species. We have allowed distant governance to grow too great. The collective consciousness of our governing bodies is far too narrow and modest for the task at hand. Thus, those of us with the means luxuriate in the final days of our perceived overabundance. Techno-industrial-military culture and its attendant political complex has grown too enormous and inflexible to find the resilience necessary to survive itself, let alone the coming decades of global warming and climate instability. The economic imperative has become such a dominant force in American culture and beyond that our federal government’s attention to the health of our overall biotic community has been basically put on hold. Thus, gradual decentralization of political power is vital over the near future so that governance from within specific habitats and watersheds takes priority over centralized governance that is too casually influenced by the moneyed oligarchy that has come to prevail in America and beyond. Money has paid for legislation that is counter to natural law; thus our wildlands dwindle and biodiversity withers in the wake of our species’ march of progress in an erroneous quest of never-ending growth. It requires vigorous and relentless will and deep courage from the grassroots to stay this juggernaut to both achieve a steady-state, no-growth economy and concurrently protect habitat from extractors and developers who see habitat solely as a source of income. Decentralization of political power is indeed a revolutionary act, yet if it is founded in a land ethic born of conscience and conscious concern for the health of habitat, it is right and true even if it breaks laws designed to define and defend procedure legislated in behalf of extraction and development of homeland for Conclusion 264 < financial profit. It is obvious that centralized governance funded by corporate economics is blindsided to the level of jeopardy to the biotic community that we as a species have collectively wrought during our tenure as the keystone species. Thus, we must restore at least some measure of decentralized selfgovernance from within an appropriate perceptible span of landscape. And what could possibly be more obvious than home watershed? To take it a step further, the home watershed/foodshed should preside at “the head of the table” of the governing body that determines carrying capacities, interspecies cooperation, its own health, and myriad other factors necessary for maintaining a state of honest balance. How to do this? Starting at the local level is the only way to invigorate change. Culture evolves from the grassroots. A good way to begin is to organize a celebration of home watershed with poetry, music, and artful reflections on the beauty of homeland—especially at times of planting and harvest. The vernal and autumnal equinoxes are among the most special times of year, times when the incense of local plants should fill the air, times when processions of people should pass across the face of the land in joy, introspection, and reverence as we pay homage to the spirit of place. These are times to desecularize homeland, sacrifice economics, and reinvoke the sense of the sacred quality of the watershed; elevate consciousness and dance with the local deities; marvel at the miracle of existence; and reflect on how fragile and tenuous life is in this enormous span of universe. And then maintain this heightened state of mind and consciousness from equinox to equinox, solstice to solstice. It is good to recognize that farmers markets and community co-ops are already existing centers of cultures of practice of sustainability. It is from here that the handcrafted lifestyle gains impetus and finds outlet. Here people who are already working within watershed/foodshed consciousness prevail, and it is here that organizing governance from within home watershed may begin to formulate, but without heavy bureaucracy. Giving creativity its due is essential to creating and maintaining practices appropriate to home watershed. I can imagine watershed yoga; seminars in ecology; conscious evolution and practice of foodshed culture; ballads of homeland; river trips; annual homeland clean-up brigades; seminars in appropriate economics; honoring of elders; restructuring within the purview of ever-evolving basic minimum technology and its appropriate distribution; watershed watch; schoolboard participation in “ecosystemology ” for K–12; cadres of scientists presenting characteristics of regional Conclusion 265 < watersheds that need monitoring including groundwater depletion and recharge, areas of pollution, anticipated annual snowmelt, assessments of carrying capacities, general health and balance of watershed, appropriate energy production sources, and as many other appropriate factors as can be imagined within the scientific purview; seminars in mutual cooperation and reinventing appropriate cultural relationship to homeland; defusing commoditization of common resources; recording and documenting stories of homeland; evolving appropriate participatory traditions— festival of the waters, festival of the birds, festival of the harvest, festival of the elders, festival of the newly born. In other words, invigorate cultural realignment with homeland. Participate democratically with more emphasis on home watershed/foodshed than national politics; gradually soften federal governance and defuse corporate control; gradually reduce human population; create local energy generation sources using nondestructive basic minimum technology; set goals of restoring our planet to a state of balance—truly become the mind of the planet. This is a utopian ideal that hearkens back to a meld of Kropotkin’s concept of society, Snyder’s definition of bioregionalism, indigenous peoples’ sense of kinship with all species, and appropriate application of ever-refining science, all within a fomenting, evolving social consciousness within home bioregion and beyond. Indeed, the planet Earth is our home bioregion. No other heavenly body will ever be so hospitable. It is important to recognize the degree to which biodiversity and cultural diversity are interconnected. Cognitive diversity is essential for responding to crisis. We face major crises that could well take us and many other species down. We have wrought enormous damage to our planetary environment; we have but a limited and very dangerous and selfish monocultural point of view. We have to look through many windows of consciousness , many points of view to find our way home again. Our true goal must be to reestablish our collective sense of indigeneity to this exquisitely beautiful and bountiful homeland of our planet and to proceed mindfully within the realization that Nature’s bounty is a common resource for all living creatures past, present, and future. And that no species has any right whatsoever to privatize these common resources, these common waters. Traditional indigenous cultures, and other cultures that have evolved long-term sustainability within specific habitats, retain the adaptability to shifting conditions including resilience within the inevitability of change. The Native cultures of the North American Southwest still retain strong traditional practices that align themselves with the flow of Nature. Their Conclusion 266 < sense of place is enduring, and they have much to teach the rest of us about recognition of our kinship with fellow species, rootedness within the biotic community, and the sacred nature of life, consciousness, and homeland. In the most real sense, the indigenous nations and communities of the North American Southwest are “seedpods” of human survival potential over the coming century. We should heed their wisdom and learn to respect their intuitive understanding of relationship of culture to homeland. Indeed, people of the land point the way to the practice of restoration ecology in home habitat and, concurrently, our cultural restoration as we reengage with the land. To desecularize the landscape is a profound concept that we would do well to enshrine as the epitome of a land ethic. Tithing habitats for protection within each ecosystem might ensure survival of biodiversity as we understand it. To resurrect handcrafted lifestyles as revealed in many of the chapters of this anthology may lead the way out of the spiritual lethargy of consumerism into lives filled with meaning. Consciousness is Nature’s enormous gift to our species as we have evolved over scores of millennia. How we use this gift of consciousness will determine how our role either develops or decays over the coming decades. Reveling in the flow of Nature leads to a level of spiritual awareness available nowhere else. Fully engaging the five bodily senses in wildlands is to reawaken lost sensibilities and redefine perspective. Looking deep into the heart of our galaxy of a summer nighttime while listening to coyotes sing allows a glimpse into just how profound the gift of consciousness is. There is tremendous consciousness to be gleaned from deep perception of home watershed. To think like a watershed requires the evolved capacity to perceive interconnectedness in motion. To understand the watershed/foodshed as commons requires the consciousness of the absolute egalitarian. In consciousness we trust. —Jack Loeffler Notes 1. Rodger N. Baldwin, ed., Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York: Dover, 1970), 157. 2. Jack Loeffler, Headed Upstream: Interviews with Iconoclasts (1989; repr. Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press, 2010), 180–81. ...