Cairns of H.O.P.E. #32
End of the Long Nights, 2003
Leaves catching on stems
The annual plants growing in the rocky streambed
die before the summerís heat. Their brown, withered stems remain
standing until the floods of the following winter knock them down. At least
that is the way I thought of them until I watched more closely this winter.
The first floods of winter carry the autumn leaves that fell into the streambed.
If these leaves drift against a withered stem, the leaf wraps around it.
After the floods subside, these stems stand like flag poles with their
flags of wrapped leaves extending downstream. As more leaves wrap around
with each flood, there comes a point where the wrapped leaves create so
much resistance within the torrent that the current pushes the stem over.
But the stem is not washed out. Instead, it lies flat, still holding onto
its catch of leaves. There the leaves are held through each ensuing high
waters. Throughout the ensuing spring, these caught leaves will decay,
contributing to the sparse soil forming among the rocks.
Sean discovers drifting silt
Two weeks ago I had the delight of bringing my 8th
grade class out to our homestead on a rainy day to help diverge runoff
and shift the downward spiral of erosion into the upward spiral of life.
The work appealed to most of the students. They accomplished lots of shifts.
Sean came up to me to share a discovery he had just made. Often when making
subtle shifts it is hard to tell which direction the water is flowing.
If you stir up a bit of silt with your tool, the suspended cloud of silt
will drift with the current. He shared this discovery with me. Unfortunately,
I muffed the interaction. I came from a ìYeah, I know that. It is
such a fundamental aspect of this work that Iíve been using that
technique for years.î instead of a ìI think you just discovered
a really powerful tool. Congratulations on thinking about what you are
seeing so that you discover new ways of using your life energy.î
The way I interacted came from a point of view of
knowledge as property. I have more knowledge and I can demonstrate this
by not needing to accept anotherís gift of discovery. Though this
first point of view sees the acquisition of more knowledge as good, it
is seen mostly as an individual matter with a tinge of comparison and competition
within it.
The way I should have interacted sees knowledge
like water in a desert ecosystemís ìbodyî. As knowledge
grows, possibilities increase. It behooves all to nourish the growth of
knowledge throughout the ìbodyî. From this point of view,
there is both knowledge and, more importantly, knowledge about how to discover
more knowledge. It was this second kind of knowledge that should have been
at the center of my interaction with Sean. Iíve had little chance
to teach water diversion to anyone; my teaching talents in this area are
immature. If I want to teach this to help shift balances within this marvelous
world, I need to learn to teach more mindfully of my real intentions.
Pointing Arrows
While walking the fields where I do my erosion work,
I noticed that the world points out the upward and downward spirals. As
a gully bottom lowers inch by inch, this steepens the slopes of all the
converging side drainages. This sets off headward cutting erosion in the
converging side drainages. These small side gullies converging toward the
head of the gully etch an arrow into the ground pointing down the drainage.
The Earth, itself, declares, this area is moving thataway - down.
On the other hand, when the erosive forces subside
and the relative balance shifts to favor deposition and increased plant
growth, alluvial fans start forming throughout the gully system, breaking
the stream flow into Vís of divergence. These arrows of solid green
vegetation point uphill. This area, proclaims the Earth, is moving upward.
Land of fountains and chimes
Alysia taught me something delightful with a set
of wind chimes I made for our homestead. They hang silently. Then she grasps
the top of the wind chimes with her fingers. Though she tries to hold her
hand still, in 5-10 seconds, the chimes gently begin contacting the quartz
rock clapper. The chimes begin to whisper. Their song grows louder. If
Alysia releases her fingers from the chimes, the ringing quiets towards
silence. Simply by touching and releasing the top of the wind chimes, she
can make the random song wax and wane.
As she showed me this, I began thinking of the chimes
as a sweet-sounding symbol of the relationship between the Earth and life.
Without life, the chimes hang straight down, in a position of thermodynamic
equilibrium. All is still within this closed system. When we touch the
wind chimes, they become part of a larger, open system. Energy flows into
the system and they begin to oscillate away from thermodynamic equilibrium.
No matter how hard we try to hold our hand still, the chimes will begin
to oscillate. Life is like that; energy flows out from it. (Thatís
it! - the distinction Iíve been trying to express in an article
Iím writing. Life is not just an energy-consuming subsystem of the
world; it is also a subsystem from which energy flows out to modify the
world.) Eventually enough energy has entered this part of the system to
get the chimes swinging into the clapper. The music of life begins. When
we release our hold, the chimes become a closed system again. The energy
drains out of the system into the surrounding universe and the chimes silently
hang straight once again.
This last Christmas vacation was a time for me to
play with making wind chimes. This last year has been a time for Alysia
to play with making fountains in her home-embracing gardens. As we sat
on a bench in her garden listening to her fountain and my chimes, a phrase
came: a land of fountains and chimes. I imagined walking through a woodland
where one occasionally passes a set of chimes tuned to the spirit of that
place. Or a solar- powered fountain in a sunlit meadow surrounded by the
calls and songs of flitting birds.
Often I get stuck thinking about how we must change
our current behavior to get to a more desirable, sustainable relationship
with nature. Just as a maze is often easier to solve working backwards,
so it is refreshing to shift the focus away from us and onto the world;
away from the current situation and onto future possibilities. Probably
most of us believe in the concept of a sustainable relationship with the
earth. In political debates, however, sustainable often comes across as
a life constrained. But a land of fountains and chimes. Its loveliness
invites me forward.
AEOE speech
Iíve been invited to give a keynote address
on the evening of April 5th at the Association for Environmental &
Outdoor Education state conference in the Bay area. At the moment, I plan
on opening by inviting somebody from the audience up to hold and ìplayî
the wind chimes. If you would like to come to the talk, let me know and
I can probably arrange to get you admission and directions to the place.
I love presenting to environmental educators; their energy and idealism
is so intense that I feel like a young plant in the presence of sunlight
supplying the energy needed for my inner spiritual potential to grow into
physical expression.
And let me add that I love to give presentations
on the topics I write about in Cairns. I also love creating ways to make
the ideas come alive. Like heavy rains in the fields, presentations set
my soul shining with enthusiasm. It feels so good. So if you would like
me to come give some sort of presentation to some group of yours, let me
know and if you can cover my expenses and I can also sell my books, Iíll
try to make it.
Himalaya and Conflict
I love a good movie so I occasionally recommend
one. Himalaya is a foreign movie; not all video stores have it but it is
probably findable in your town with a few calls. Itís about salt
caravans crossing the Himalayas with yaks.
A few years ago I read an authoritative blanket
statement that all good stories contain conflict. I have been mulling over
this statement like a koan because (1) Iím not sure if I accept
the ìallî part of it and (2) if it is true, what would be
the conflict that would lie at the heart of any story I told about Gaia.
When examining stories for conflict, it becomes obvious that the plotline
of many American movies is: there are good guys and there are bad guys
and during the course of the movie, it becomes graphically obvious that
the bad guys are really bad. The conflict resolves with the good guys dramatically
killing the bad guys near the end of the movie. All these movies teach
a zero sum game, win-lose point of view of the world. One of the reasons
I love Himalaya is the way the conflict resolves. The gods are triumphant.
Hope you like it. The music is also great; Iím listening to it as
I write this.
Shooting Stars and Economic Ecology
Shooting stars, one of my favorite wildflowers,
are one of the first to flower here in mid-February. I have begun walking
to the slopes where they live, hoping this walk will be the one where I
am once again visually shocked by the intensity of the first flowerís
flaming magenta. So shooting stars are on my mind this time of year. (It
is now two weeks later and the shooting stars are in bloom.)
Last night, Alysia and I went to a movie at the
local cineplex. I looked out over vast parking lots surrounding Costco,
Winco, Home Base, Barnes and Nobles, Home Depot, Circuit City, In and Out
Burger, Cinemark, Blockbuster Video, Walmart, Office Depot. I suddenly
remembered that 10 or 11 years, this was where Gary had sent me to rescue
shooting stars. He had told me there was a place in the blue oak woodland
thick with shooting stars that was slated for development. He, a lover/bard
of native plants, was rescuing as many as possible. So I had come out and
dug up 20 or 30 bulbs and over the next week, I tried to replant them where
I thought shooting stars would want to be. One or two bloomed the next
year but all the transplants have since faded away.
Back then this area had been small country lanes
and unofficial dirt tracks. Now it is 4 lane roads with left turn lanes
at each signal. Probably most people in Redding do most of their spending
in this area. Ten years ago it was oaks and shooting stars out past the
mall on the edge of town. Back then I could not comprehend the scale and
speed of the ìdevelopmentî that would happen to this area.
This led to a reverie on what I will call economic
landscape ecology. Naturalists are familiar with how certain patterns shape
natural landscapes. Drainage patterns shape the relief of the land. Aspect
(what direction a slope faces) and gradients of elevation-caused temperatures
strongly shape the vegetation that covers that topography. If you do not
recognize these patterns, then they are like disruptive coloration, breaking
the landscape into visually awkward pieces that donít fit together.
But if you do recognize and understand these patterns, then they connect
the land into a vast, multi-hued story.
Around our towns, the graders, underground culverts
and pavement have just about flattened all these patterns from the land
and replaced them with patterns that are most understandable through economics
rather than ecology. The landscape is still a network of interconnecting
patterns but the patterns are almost all of human creation. A familiar
example is how gas stations and fast food places cluster at interstate
exits. Rather than a nested hierarchy of drainages with patterns and gradients
of stream order, we surround ourselves with a nested hierarchy of streets
(street order). Rather than riparian vegetation bordering a drainage, changing
as one moves downslope along increasing volumes of water, we have a gradient
of economic activity. The headwaters of the smallest streets are lined
by houses. These streets converge upon larger streets where the cars, just
like water, flow faster. Like an occasional willow, one encounters occasional
small, local businesses. Homes start giving way (in some economic ecosystems)
to apartments. As cars converge into higher street orders, one passes gas
stations and grocery stores (or combinations - the convenience store).
Further down the economic drainage, one encounters strip malls and the
beginning of national franchise business. Just before the streets flow
into the freeways, one might come to a large, fully grown mall.
A gradient of signage governing the convergences
has evolved with the street drainages. Unposted rules of right of way in
the headwaters gradually give way to stop signs which give way to stop
lights which eventually develop into stop lights with left turn lanes until
the largest streets converge with the freeways as underpasses, overpasses
and on and off ramps.
The evolution of street drainages and economic activities
are ancient. Through much of history, they have fit into the landscape
because the drainage pattern of water has shaped the human flow of commerce.
So the patterns fit together, adding a human dimension to the natural landscape.
Only recently with earthmovers have humans leveled and paved the land and
imposed purely economic landscapes upon the Earth.
Another ancient example of ìeconomic landscapesî
is how homes grow larger as one moves up a hill. We humans love views enough
to pay extra for them so that people with more money tend to be found higher
on the hill (you are wealthy, Freeman) and so tend to build larger houses
(partly because a large house high on the hill proclaims wealth doubly).
Anyway, what caught my mind as I walked across the
cineplex parking lot was the parking lots. Probably at least 80% of this
former oak woodland is now parking lots surrounding stores, many of whose
names I had never heard of 10 years ago. How did this happen? Parking lots
are probably the key. Fifty years ago, towns had a downtown, where most
of the townís businesses lined the streets. People either walked
or had a single car. People did not go shopping every day. The volume of
the goods was carriable. When one shopped, one would drive downtown, find
a parking place, and then walk from store to store.
As cars become more common and people developed
a rhythm of daily shopping, street parking couldnít handle the demand.
The downtowns grew congested. Parking meters evolved. From this developed
the malls where more space for free parking was built into the new landscape.
This invited greater dependence on the car (buy more cars) and more daily
shopping. But something new happened 10 - 20 years ago. Most of the big
parking lots that replaced the shooting stars are attached to stores where
the typical shopper comes out with a load that canít be carried
around in a shopping bag. (Hard to carry around a TV or 20 bricks or a
shopping cart of groceries.) So rather than a mall where parking surrounds
a cluster of many small stores, most of which sell ìshopping bagî
stuff (You donít see people pushing shopping carts down the promenades
of a shopping mall; its uncouth.), we move to a single store connected
by shopping carts to a large surrounding parking lot. The parking
lot is a big, up-front expense. If you are going to buy ten acres for a
parking lot and if people are going to wheel their loot to the car in a
shopping cart, then it doesnít cost much more to add a quarter acre
of space within the store and expand your offerings into related stuff.
A superstore develops. Rather than shopping at ten smaller stores, a person
parks in three different storesí parking lots.
But looking around, much of each parking lot is
empty. The cineplex parking lot is designed to accommodate the Christmas
or the Friday, Saturday date night traffic on opening day of a blockbuster
movie. The rest of the week the parking lot is far less than half full.
The parking lots of most of the stores are designed for the Christmas shopping
crowd. The rest of the year they are less than half full.
The speed with which the shooting stars gave way
to empty parking lots makes me suspect that all these big stores probably
participate in development consortiums. Freeways interchanges, stop lights,
new road systems - they must all go in together. It canít really
be done a block at a time. Iím not sure what all this means; I am
just growing more aware of these landscape-shaping patterns.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
© 2003, Paul Krafel, P.O. Box 609, Cottonwood,
CA 96022-0609
Permission is granted to copy and distribute
(for free) this material as long as you attach this copyright notice and
my addresses so that a future reader can track down the source.