Dear Baby Tree

Dear Baby Tree,
                 Welcome to the world. You have a big name to grow into; you are Quercus agrifolia, you are oak. Welcome to this very hillside, where your ancestors have resided for thousands of years, overlooking a changing bay. You are the oak of the oak woodland, and unlike many of your neighbors, you get the esteemed title, “native.” You don’t need to know what an ecosystem is, you don’t need to know anything at all. By growing a nice, deep taproot like I know you will, you create and become part of a home, an ecos. Here on this hillside you grow among annual grasses, Monterey pines, coyote bush, a stray cat, hawks, deer, robins, humans. But you will grow to be an engineer, a creator, locking soil and terrain into place; your domain spreading beyond your sprawling canopy.

                  Baby oak tree, you have big shoes to fill. The cities and commerce that lie below you are bursting with life, but the people there are frantic, confused, lost. How to live on the planet has become a question we deal with every day. I see a multi-colored sunset, beautiful in its colors and chemicals. I hear highways and jets. I see city lights begin to turn on. I walk through a swirl of creation and destruction every day; I form part of this swirl; I see and feel change so fast and so big, everywhere. I walk through my own world of love and learning, as I work everyday to grasp this home in which I live, and who I am within it – as a human, animal, dreamer, lover.

                  Baby oak tree, I will always return here to see how far you’ve grown. You feel the soil and the air and the neighbors better than I ever will, without knowing a thing, just by standing still. You belong here, and yet you will experience the same swirl of change in your lifetime that I will. I will try to grow a taproot like yours so that I might begin to feel and act wisely in this web of a place, the San Francisco Bay Area. Your resilience inspires me; the oaks have a lot to teach the world about belonging in and tending to a place.

                  Baby oak tree, grow slow and steady and strong, proving that the pace of the humans below is not the only life rhythm. Grow because you are part of a historical legacy of symbiosis, biodiversity, and tenure. I will return to check on you and your hill, because as time goes on, I know I’ll be needing a reminder of what it is that I dream of, of how I should inhabit this planet, a reminder of the inspiration that nourishes my roots and shoots. Sitting on the dirt, watching pastel sky colors darken into night, I feel myself growing, and baby oak tree, you teach me how to grow everyday. Let’s come to know this soil together. 

Reading, writing, and realizing nature: explore your local place this holiday season

I co-facilitate a student-run class (through the DeCal program) at UC Berkeley called “Reading, writing, and realizing nature.” This semester, thirteen of us embarked on a journey to discover what it means to live in our local place of Berkeley. We read to grasp at a deeper understanding of our local region and how its current living shape evolved. We write to explore our own new ways of reading the land, translating what our senses experience into symbols we can share with those in our communities, thereby strengthening our collective relationship with place. We begin to realize, or be vividly aware of,our own nature and the nature around us, a realization that we can all actively participate in together in order to re-imagine and re-create the way we co-inhabit our home.

Classmates writing in the Berkeley hills

This course developed over the span of twelve weeks with twelve distinct, progressive themes to help us along our journey. But you don’t need a formal class to have some similar experiences. Make the most out of your winter break, whether you’ve traveled home or you’ve stayed put, by embarking on your own journey. Personally, I’m home in Maryland for my break, and I don’t know my surroundings nearly as well as I’ve come to know Berkeley – so I’ll be doing some exploring and reflection myself. Here are eleven activities you can use to strengthen your personal relationship with place – and maybe even share your experience with family, friends, or community members.

1. Start a nature journal: This is the first step in any reading, writing, and realizing nature journey. You can use a journal that you already write in, or create a new one to specifically be your “nature journal.” This is where you’ll write observations and ideas, sketch your surroundings, and more – basically a vessel for your translations of your surroundings into symbols that fit on paper. Encourage friends and family to start nature journals with you – a journal makes a great gift!

2. Sensing haikus: Bring your nature journal and a pen on a walk with you. Pick an interval – say, every 20 steps, every fifth tree, every seventh house, every block. At each interval, stop, immerse yourself in the moment, and write a haiku about what your senses experience. See, smell, touch, taste, hear. A haiku traditionally has three lines: the first, 5 syllables, the second, 7 syllables, the third, 5 syllables. So the point is to capture a moment in time with few words, which can be a challenge. This is a chance to ground yourself in a very specific moment in time and space, something we often forget to do in our busy lives. 

3. Google sensing maps: Take your sensing haikus a step further. Use your G-mail account (or start one) to make a “sensing map” of your neighborhood. Using Google maps, you can place pinpoint markers on specific spots. Pinpoint each place where you wrote a haiku, type your corresponding poem in to each spot, and soon you’ll have a map of sensual poetry experience! In addition to your haikus, add information, experiences, instructions, photographs, and whatever else you desire to the map. Don’t forget to share your map with friends to make it a collective experience, so that everyone can contribute to new experiences and explorations.

4. Read: search your local library or the Internet for literature on the history and present state of your place. We can only really get to know the place where we currently live if we know how it came to be that way. Do you know who lived on your land before you? What sort of landscape it might have been? How it has changed? A good way to start your search is to do some research on the people who have buildings, streets, parks, or neighborhoods named after them in your town. After reading, it’s always a good idea to write down some of your own thoughts and feelings as a response. Now that you live here, you are part of the historical, and potentially literary, tradition of this place!

5. Make your own rituals: A ritual is an activity that you repeat in your everyday life with a certain special meaning to accompany it. Performing different types of rituals can be a great way to more fully experience place. Many of us have rituals in our lives without realizing it. Think about your holiday rituals – be it a Christmas Eve tradition, a certain place you always return to, a food that you eat, etc. Recognize the importance of these rituals in your life. Then, think of a new ritual you can start for yourself that brings more meaning to your local place. For example, make a ritual of bringing something you find in your yard or outside if your house that you use to decorate your house. Share your new ritual with others in your life, and see if you can make it last. 

6. Make your own unique maps: Making your own maps of places that are meaningful to you is a great way to realize the different ways you can experience and interact with a place. Determine your mapping criteria – this can be anything from streets, to graffiti, to your favorite hangout spots, to your favorite places to eat, to environmental justice issues – get creative! Take a walk and draw a map of the elements that you choose as you go. Maps can be made up of lines and words, drawings, photographs, and more. The possibilities are endless. 

7. Landscape art: Landscape art is a form of expression in which you use what you find in nature to make art. This can be anything from arranging stones in a creek, to painting leaves on a tree with berry juice, to arranging sticks into some sort of symbol. Creating landscape art usually means leaving what you make behind to weather away or decay – the natural processes that accompany your creation are as much a part of the art as your human effort. Taking a photogrpah of your creation is a way to preserve your landscape art for eternity, even if it physically disappears with time. Check out Andy Goldworthy for inspiration – he’s a world-renowned landscape artist (and has an installation in the San Francisco Presidio!)

Landscape art in an urban Berkeley creek

8. Urban ecology walk: spend an hour, half a day, or even a whole day just walking around your town/city. Discover how the streets, trails, streams, buildings, and neighborhoods fit together in a sort of urban ecosystem. Talk to people you meet on the street. Everyone has his or her own niche in the urban ecosystem, including yourself. Every walk is a chance to discover how your place is pieced together, and where you fall within that puzzle. This fall, our class started a ritual urban walk from the hills to the marina, creating a transect of the city, writing and observing as we walked. If you find a particularly meaningful route that you take, make a tradition out of this physical journey and bring friends along. 

9. Explore an environmental justice issue in your hometown: find out who’s involved, how this issue evolved, and what you can do to help – then volunteer! Even if there’s not a way for you to volunteer or intervene, simply learning about the issue and then spreading awareness via conversations with your friends or by writing up a blog post about it can make a big difference. If you do write about a local issue, please send it to me (mjacobson20@gmail.com) to be featured on the CSSC website! 

10. Host a “Celebration of Place” with your friends and family – let this be a time and a place where people come together to share creative writing and artwork that dwells on themes related to your local place. Incorporate rituals of place into this celebration, and encourage everyone to participate. 

11. Collective poems: as an activity for your next gathering, give each person a sheet of paper. Decide on a central theme, like the local food system, a local park, a local mountain, the local watershed, etc. Each person writes one line of a poem and then passes the paper around the circle for the next person to write a line. By the time you’ve gone around the circle, you’ll have as many poems as you have people, and each will be a mosaic of voices and a collective effort!

Collective poem

I’d love to hear your experience with any of these activities, and I would especially love to hear about your own ideas for place-based activities that help you interact with your local environment.

How does this all relate to the sustainability movement? Many of us in the CSSC are involved in campaigns that span various scales: from local, to regional, to state-wide, to nation-wide, to global. As individuals, our voices and actions resonate outward, and especially when we join together, we can build solutions that are bigger than ourselves. Reading, writing, and realizing nature is about returning to our individual foundation of what we experience in our own sensing bodies. We can only act and interact with the greater world around us if we understand how we personally fit into the places where we live, work, and play. I’ve found it to be comforting and empowering to realize that in a chaotic, overwhelming world, many questions can be resolved simply by returning to myself and doing some firsthand exploration of my world. Creative expression like poetry, journaling, and landscape art can help us open our eyes to the way the planet expresses itself. The holiday season is a perfect time to return to your core – often we have a little more free time, and we get to spend it with those we care about in our communities. Don’t let winter weather keep you from getting outside. You won’t regret making the choice to get out, explore, and set your senses free – you never know what you’ll discover.

—–

If you are curious about the course that I facilitate, would like a copy of our syllabus, or have any other questions, don’t hesitate to send me an email at mjacobson20@gmail.com

Home, and Reconciling Suburbia

          I am a product of Suburban America. I was raised by a town called Woodacres in Bethesda, Maryland, just at the periphery of Washington DC. I grew up in a red brick house with a backyard in a neighborhood where the cherry blossoms bloom bright pink in spring and deciduous leaves fall brown, orange, yellow, red in autumn. Only a wooden fence separates my yard from Woodacres Elementary School and a park with baseball diamonds, a playground, and a running track. Bethesda is well known for having some of the highest living conditions and most educated residents in the country. Bethesda is also overwhelmingly white, despite sharing a border with what is often called the “Chocolate City.”

            I can travel back to a time when I know I loved suburbia. As a child, I spent hours in my backyard sifting through dirt, running through sprinklers, finding hidden nooks in the bushes, digging for earthworms, casually conversing with robins. I climbed the pine trees in Woodacres Park and sat up there day-dreaming and make-believing, I went on geologic missions to find cool rocks in the areas around my school. The elementary school had astronomy nights when kids and their parents gathered in the park to “ooh” and “ahh” at distant planets in the suburban night sky. During wet summer nights I ran outside to experience thunderstorms, during dry summer nights I caught fireflies in jars and used them as flashlights in bed. All I knew was that I hated cities, because cities have people, and people are bad. I was an animal child. Or rather, I was a suburban child, I just didn’t really know it yet.  

            In high school, I became an environmentalist and learned to hate the place that raised me. I went to a private school in DC and became exposed to an urban environment. I was taught the environmental impacts of suburban life and urban sprawl– from commuter car pollution, to pesticides that make lawns green, to issues of hidden segregation and inequity. Guilt set in and I rushed to get to know DC, so that I might identify with the city rather than terrible suburbia. I rapidly began to pursue an identity as an environmentalist, jumping in on youth climate activism in DC. I attended PowerShift, a giant conference of young people devoted to moving past fossil fuels and working toward a sustainable world. That was the start of a spiral of movements, values, and activism that still makes up a significant part of my life today.

            Halloween is a big deal in Woodacres, and I went trick-or-treating right up until I graduated from high school. I grew skilled at carving pumpkins, and my creations became more and more advanced each year. Although the carving itself wasn’t even the best part – pulling out the goopy orange pulp definitely takes the cake. Over many years of trick-or-treating, I came to know which houses gave out the giant chocolate bars, where the haunted houses were every year, which routes would be the most efficient in terms of candy accumulation per hour. It was rare to find a house without its lights on, without parents and their family dogs dressed up in costumes, holding bowls of every kind of sugar imaginable. My parents had no problem letting me and my friends head out to the streets on our own, because Woodacres is about as safe as can be. The suburbs gave me a sort of cushioned independence from a young age.

            Halloween comes at the same time as the falling of leaves, when suburban streets become living art, overwhelming in swirling, fiery color. That image you have of children in a suburban backyard, raking leaves just to jump in them? That’s me– me and my brothers. Autumn in Maryland is a time of leaf raking, trick-or-treating, apple picking at Homestead Farm, hikes on the Billygoat Trail, fleece jackets, brisk air. Every Thanksgiving, before eating loads of turkey, rolls, and chocolate chip cookies, I tossed a football around in the backyard of wherever we happened to be. Autumn is a season rich in vivid sensual memory.

            In college I learned from Professor Einhorn and others that cities are sustainable and suburbs are not. I learned the historical context of the mass migration to the suburbs, I learned about red-lining and urban planning and zoning laws. New awareness that made me feel worse and worse about growing up in the suburbs. The UC Berkeley department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management as a whole does not seem to support suburbia.  What has it done to me, learning to see oppression and inequality as part of the foundation of the life that raised and sustained me? How do I come to terms with an identity rooted deeply in a place that I’m supposed to reject?

            Here on the opposite side of the country from my homeland, I never know what to say when people ask me where I’m from originally. I give one of two answers: Maryland, or Washington DC. Neither gives the inquirer the real picture. Californians don’t’ know that Bethesda is five minutes from the DC border, and that in high school, I spent more time in the city than in the suburb. But I can’t claim the identity of Washingtonian. I have many friends from the city proper who are outraged if a suburbanite tries to pose as a true inner city native. And they have a right to be opposed – because I was raised by a suburb and not a city, I am not like them. Suburbia is a fundamental part of who I am, and any effort to push that away is dishonest.

            Even here in Berkeley, where they say the seasons don’t change, autumn is my favorite. I sense even the slightest hint of autumn flavor – the changing leaves on planted maples, new smells on the fire trails, the much-awaited abundance of apples at farmer’s markets. Autumn in the Bay means Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park – my all-time favorite weekend. Sometime in November, the first rain falls, a joyous occasion of soaking wet frolicking. Also in November, I can pinpoint the very day when the sun sets exactly behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Bay Area autumn is a distinctively different season that autumn in Maryland, and yet I have learned to love it in same and different ways. 

            Whether it’s true or not, I like to think that I am from the suburbs and the city, and maybe that’s why I’ve found Berkeley to be so satisfyingly home. Berkeley does a terrific job of combining the merits of center and periphery. But as I grow to love the place where I am now, I am also reconciling my relationship with the place that raised me. Sometimes pangs of nostalgia catch me by surprise as I miss summer nights and fall colors and a neighborhood that wraps me tight in its enclosure. I wonder how long it will take to fully come to terms with a suburban identity. It’s easy to see that my love of fall, and my love of bluegrass music, have come from my childhood. They connect easily to my concept of home. But more puzzling is the connection between my current identity as environmentalist, naturalist, ecologist (what do I want to call myself?), and the suburbs that raised me. 

            I am proud of the person that I have become, and I know that she came from Woodacres Park. Suburban soil fertilized my growth, and that is meaningful in ways that I am just starting to know and accept. I often tell people that I am a “California convert” and that I’m never going back. I tell them that in coming to Berkeley, I have found home. And that is true. But in finding home in Berkeley, I have also begun to find home again in Bethesda.

            In Reading and Writing Nature, we are making a class home in the hills, called the Speak Theater. I am puzzled at the prospect of making a home in nature – I was raised in a culture that doesn’t do that anymore. We make homes outside of nature, and are taught to love the wilderness on the weekends. I am puzzled, because I don’t know where to draw the line between wild and domestic, I don’t know how to experience home and nature in the same place, at the same time. But I’m excited to learn. I think the process of home-building here, in the oak-studded hills where wild turkeys roam and the campus buzzes with activity just below, will teach me.  I hope to learn what kind of person the suburbs have raised me into, and how I can use that nurturing soil to grow a new understanding of home, a new way of being in the world, a way of being that fits with the values I strive toward in my life.  Every piece of land on earth is made of fertile soil. To recognize that fertility is to come to terms with roots and identity – which is liberating! By finding home and creating home, I am coming home. 

sensing humboldt

I.

ocean salt tickles

my toes into the dark sand 

it is just us here

II.

fern canyon beckons

miniature rainfall on skin

I stand pressed to moss

III.

light through foliage 

forms a green kaleidoscope

through my naked eye

IV.

redwood creek speaks stone

to me and others

until we stop and listen

V.

driving south away

from old giant red forest

into chaparral

The 3 E's of Sustainability

Cross-posted on the California Student Sustainability Coalition's blog

“The California Student Sustainability Coalition is a non-profit organization that supports and connects students from across California to help them transform their educational institutions into models of sustainability” – the CSSC website.

But what does “sustainability” mean? Lately, it’s become a media buzzword, yet another drop in the greenwash bucket. As students, we have the power to redefine how our society thinks about sustainability. The CSSC is committed to recognizing and working toward the “Three E’s” of sustainability:economy, ecology, and equity. Unlike conventional notions of sustainability that are linked to environmentalism and dwell only in the ecology sector, this three-pronged approach takes into account the fact that all three “e’s” are interconnected.

There is no ecological sustainability without equity. There is no economic sustainability without sound ecology. In fact, the words “economy” and “ecology” come from the same root – “oikos” or “ecos,” the Greek word for “household.” We all inhabit the same household that we call earth.

What does that mean on the ground? CSSC chapters across the state work on issues that relate to all three sustainability sectors. CSSC students are working toward a more just society for all – equitably, ecologically, and economically. I asked our Council Reps to write back with examples of how their chapters are addressing the 3 E’s. Here are some responses:

Equity and Ecology: “Last year, my campus (Claremont McKenna College) tried to include equity into its environmental goals. At our parties, there was not only the issue that students weren’t recycling their disposable red cups, but they were also not even picking up after themselves. They would leave all the work to the grounds/maintenance staff, which definitely wasn’t fair to them. It also cost the school extra money to clean up. So, as a work in progress, we have painted trash cans red to look like an actual red party cup, in an attempt to encourage students to pick up after themselves and recycle. We also hooked this into a general recycling initiative on campus. This effort is ongoing, but an important issue on campus that we continue to address.” – Hannah Haskell, Claremont McKenna College Council Rep

Ecology: “The [Glendale Community College] Environmental Club went to Bakersfield, California to help “Wind Wolves Preserve” restore the native salt bush habitat by planting seeds and building a fence to protect them from cattle.” – Monica Tecson, GCC Council Rep

Equity, Ecology, and Economy: A campaign by Cal Poly Fair Trade Club is aimed at contracting CAN Coffee on campus, and CAN Coffee is a fair-trade coffee (economy and equity). The coffee is grown using the concept of agroecology, which is the understanding that the production of coffee has to be developed within an agricultural system, without disturbing the system (ecology). – Eb McKibben, Cal Poly SLO Council Rep

Economy and ecology: “At [UC Santa Barbara], the Environmental Affairs Board tackles a bunch of different projects. One that has proved to be successful is the “Carrot Mob.” It follows the proverb that says it is easier getting a horse to water by leading it with a carrot rather than thumping it with a stick. We went to various businesses to “green” them by getting them to have more efficient lighting or other appliances, etc. We told them that we would hold a “carrot mob” there, which would attract a lot of customers. By going to the business that day, customers knew they were supporting a good cause. So the store was willing to do it because it increased their customer base for the day. This was all with the agreement that they would match dollar for dollar what they earned that day and invest it in more efficient energies. This would definitely be the economy side!” – Emily Wililams, UCSB Council Rep

Fighting for sustainability means addressing income inequality and poverty. It means preserving forests but also preserving the communities that live off the forest. It means ending all types of discrimination. It means ending corporate personhood. It means addressing climate change but not at the expense of people who are already exploited and impoverished. It means clean energy but also equitable energy, real food but also equitable access to food. It means getting young people out to vote. It means empowering students to be agents of justice of all kinds on their campuses and beyond.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Forestry Camp, in a poem

July 17, 2012

Is there anything more precious than a baby incense cedar?
No hurt feelings after last year's logging,
this child springs up baby green.
As I walk among the mixer conifers of Baker,
I recognize the Pyrola picta, the Chimophila umbellata,
the crunch of the Cohasset.
It is a good, good feeling to know them by name,
friends wherever I go.
The more I learn,
the more I can release my imagination to wild places.
We shake and tremble now that we've seen
quaking aspen show us how it's done,
we squeal like Douglas squirrels,
and we turn rosy cornutt red.
We spend the summer slowly sinking into the earth,
absorbing,
growing down and up and outward,
reaching for each other,
basking in the weekend sunshine.
Are we hear to learn from the landscape,
or learn to become it?
To carve a niche into these acres of ours,
and call it our home?
Merging the wild and the domestic into
one botanical existence,
 easing human tensions until it all comes together
like thepuzzle piece bark of a Pinus ponderosa.
Is there anything more precious than a baby incense cedar?
Would a Jeffrey by any other name smell as sweet?
Which mixed conifer species reigns supreme,
which Sierra swimming hole is best?
Perhaps by the end of our summer of
campfires and cruising timber,
mugwort dreams and mattress moon-gazing,
the answers will come,
whispered maybe from above,
in the voice of Joe McBride.

Tree Lesson #1: Time Management

“Growing at a rate somewhere between stalagmites and human beings, forests can serve as a kind of long-term memory bank, revealing things about our environment, and even ourselves, that only our great great grandparents could have told us.” – John Vaillant, The Golden Spruce.

 I am halfway through my first summer in the Sierra, which I am spending studying forestry. I am learning to see forest as resource, as crop. I am beginning to grasp more tangible connections between the wood that I live in and the forests that I hike through and draw inspiration from. I have been given lenses with which to see trees: as creatures of beauty, as timber, as wildlife habitat, as vehicles of disease, as carbon sequesters. Every day, as my knowledge expands, the trees around me gain depth and complexity, pulsing with life and equations, value and history. 

 I feel that forest management might provide valuable lessons for handling our other “resources,” like energy and agriculture. Trees have the potential to be the world’s greatest renewable resource. They grow with remarkable resilience. They keep growing. The problem is, they operate more complexly than we can understand, and they live more slowly than we can wait. Forests have the potential for magnificent renewal, allowing us to use them without using them up (unlike fossil fuels, and even the materials mined for solar panels). Without ecological eyes, however, trees turn into just another finite resource to use up. If we want to call forests “renewable,” we have to operate within limits – picking and choosing which trees to cut, when to plant, how to use fire, what to preserve. When done right, timber harvest can be sustainable. Timber is natural and ancient. Yet we have a pathological tendency to butt heads with nature. We don’t like to see ourselves as subject to the way of the trees. Instead, we believe in the limits of the chainsaw.

With forests, the limits to our consumption are blatantly visible and quantifiable. The benefits of ecological management are obvious. In other extractive resource industries, lines are fuzzier and the rulebook isn’t as accessible. We don’t know how much aluminum there is to find. We can’t use oil sustainably. I wonder what it would look like to manage energy as we manage forests. If we thought of fuel as trees and electricity as board feet, we might better conceptualize what we’re doing on the planet and how we might sustain and renew.

 A walk in the woods is a unique opportunity for time travel. A forester navigates through different eras, known as age classes. We can read a tree’s age by sampling its insides, allowing us to “manage’ on time scales that surpass the lifetime of an individual or sometimes even a generation. After a clear-cut, a company must wait fifty to eighty years before cutting again. By then, a new logger will be doing the work, with new equipment and new values for the new era. Foresters operating in the present learn to substitute space for time. They move across chains, acres, miles, traversing different vegetative generations (known as succession stages) in order to work with a tree’s slow and steady life pace. The implications of substituting space for time should not be taken lightly, for how we go about it will shape the story of our species. Even if we are gone before those implications are realized, our trees will remain and renew. They will continue to silently preach a history and legacy in their rings, scars, and decay. There’s a physical and philosophical world out there to be read, for those who are curious and tree-literate. 

Spirituality and Sustainability

A question that has been lingering on my mind this semester: is spirituality a necessary component of sustainability?

At the California Student Sustainability Coalition Convergence in Cal Poly SLO, Larry Lansburg spoke to us about the Achuar people of the Amazon - "Dream people." He spoke of their dedication to the health of their land. He described their remarkable ability to combat oil companies in order to maintain cultural and natural integrity. The Achuar people are deeply spiritual. Shamanism plays a strong role in their lifestyle, as does the belief known as "Amazonian perspectivism," in which plants and animals are thought to have human souls. The Achuar embark on "soul journeys" to find self awareness, and interpret dreams as integral and foretelling. Through their relationships with each other and the earth, the Achuar have formed a sustainable society that has lasted for centuries. 

Here in the United States, however, many environmentalists and scientists steer clear from any association with the spiritual. The Oxford Dictionary defines "spiritual" as "of, relating to, or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things". A vague and circular definition, indeed. Perhaps we shy from the term because we don't know what it means, and assume that it does not apply to us. 

At the convergence, I attended the "Awakening the Dreamer" workshop put on by Generation Waking Up. We explored the need to shift the collective dream in the United States away from materialistic consumption and toward a way of life that values relationships, empathy, collective power, diversity, common ground. We have more than just a collection of environmental problems on our hands. The world and humankind are in trouble beyond just poor air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and oil spills. Those are symptoms, rather than the illness itself. Clearly our economic system needs repair. Social injustice, wealth inequality, and various forms of prejudice plague even the most progressive streets. These problems are all related. Technological and legislative solutions alone cannot dismantle this interconnected network of crises. 

It may be beyond the scope of individuals, corporations, even governments to fathom the entirety of the problem. It is system-wide on the universal scale. Our social, economic, and ecological crises are interrelated in such a complex way that it's impossible to see it all at once. We are too small. And yet if we break the system down into pieces in order to solve bite-sized problems, and ignore the ecosystem of connections between them, we set ourselves up for failure. I see a lot of environmental management around the world working in this piece-meal fashion, and sometimes it seems like the efforts are not even making a dent. 

I worry about the sustainability of sustainability. As in, can the ethic of living sustainably last? Those of us who are part of organizations are familiar with the term "activist burn-out." Problems pile up and we feel as though we have to solve them all in order to get anywhere.

The problem is massive. We as a culture evolved to think and behave the way we do now - overly-consumptive and competitive (at least, here in the western, developed world). So environmental values are working against decades, even centuries, of development.   I worry about how the current, surface-level understanding of "sustainability" is often associated with other now-empty terms like "green" and "eco." These terms, along with the ethics that go with them, might just blow away in the wind without any roots to hold them down. 

Maybe sustainability is not sustainable until a new "spirituality" is found and embraced. Call it an ethic, a dream, a cosmology... it's a new collective consciousness for our generation. Like the mentioned definition, I would define spirituality as a way of thinking that transcends the physical. That means a focus on the dream that connects our individual souls together into a larger body. I may be wrong. Maybe such a connection does not exist. But at the CSSC convergence, I could see before my eyes a future of joy. Love for one another, passion in our work (play), music in our voices when they came and sung together. As Zen Trenholm of the CSSC often says about the organization, "We're building a culture." It's bigger and deeper than a structure of campaigns, projects, and events. And that depth is what I'm talking about. 

Mainstream rhetoric regarding environmentalism steers away from all this. There is the notion that if we make the arguments as secular, purely science-based, and emotionless as possible, we will bring a broader range of supporters to our side. The spiritual side seems to be too polarizing and too emotional. But has the secular rhetoric been able to create unity and clear-headedness? Certainly not. The debate over climate change is deeply ideological regardless of intentions, and full of heated passion. Environmentalists constantly argue that science backs them up 100% - so why are republicans still pitted against democrats? Why are there such deep divisions? The ideological undercurrent flows on, and there's no use ignoring it - it's not going away.

So why suppress the spiritual? Besides - the world's young people  are and will be solving the world's problems - and we are a generation waking up. I believe in our ability to study past cultures who have lived far more sustainably than we have, and see that they lived intensely spiritual lives. Somehow, we must find a way to integrate a modern manifestation of that spirituality into the generation of the new millenium. Maybe it comes from spending time in nature with friends. Maybe it means starting a communal farm or living cooperatively. Maybe it comes from religion. Maybe it means making music or painting murals or building cob benches. However it happens, it happens through joy. Through tuning in to a common drumbeat, forever in the background of our individual songs.  Until the dream shifts, political, technological, and economic solutions will just float around in space, not connected, not rooted in any way to our consciousness. 

To make sustainability sustainable, we've got to transform the dream.

Biological Meditation

I. Walking down into the stream valley.

I let myself slow to the pace of the forest and I silence my boots. Redwood mixed with bay laurel, and ferns and mosses to fill in the gaps. Stream rushing creates active quiet. All who walk through abide. Mind alive with biological inquiry, newly learned facts about this scientifically enchanted world around me. Upward colonization by fungus. Round boring beetle holes. Spider webs, water striders. Electric, pulsing mycorrhizae underneath my clunky feet. Air swollen with water. Evidence of past fire, low to the ground, on redwood. Mixed succession up the mountain, all around me. This biological meditation fills me with curiosity, wonder, and a placing of myself, wandering animal, in the magnificent ecos. I am honored to be here.

I test my balance and instincts and close my eyes. Stream becomes louder and ground pushes harder against my feet. I veer to the right, my shoe hits a root and the uncertainty opens my eyes on reflex. I try again. Eyes closed, the sun surprises my forehead with warmth. This time, the uncertainty does not force my eyes open.

I am struck by the aliveness, the constant change and motion, among what seems upon first glance a still and peaceful “landscape.” The insects, the bacteria, the climate, the redwood’s xylem and phloem, the rush of the stream – they are all constantly pushing, moving, changing what is there.

II. Crossing ecotones.

As I walk, Doug Fir forest morphs into chaparral morphs into forest and back again, following geologic and climatic cycles. Subduction, rapid tectonic collisions, slow weathering by waves and rain and wind and fog. I feel the cycles beneath my feet.

California Poppies bloom bright orange and dance in the breeze, as do two Cooper’s hawks. Straight wings and graceful swooping. The hawks fly out of my vision, leaving only the turkey vultures, who dance with bent wings and wobble as they hover. They are here because there is space to wander, as am I.

In the dense forest I am slow, but in the vast open hills, my steps instinctively get larger. My body opens up like the terrain; I feel powerful. Past forces merge with present ones and I walk along the intersection. Nothing is still but the plastic we carry with us.

 I meditate on motion. 

Saturated

We are creatures forever subject to the whims of weather.
A weekend of bluegrass music,
interrupted by eruptions of
sweet rain and thunder and lightning and wind,
naturally.
The organic music played by tree instruments goes well
with a good thunderstorm.
We flock to cover as the air turns bluish purple and
we wait, and while we wait we stomp our
feet together and raise our voices together,
because a storm can't stop the music, no,
rather it feeds the music because the music
is in our heartbeats and the storm makes our hearts beat
faster.
Faster, stronger, and we dance and hum and
squeal when the lightning dances with us because
it is bigger than us.
We drink in the plump air and the music only keeps growing until
it flows out of every pore.
Inside the warehouse there is a circle of singers
harmonizing on spirituals,
they feel the storm they feel the music they feel each other
erupting, spurting, gushing, flowing outward,
the mud is growing thicker,
there are people sliding and running and wrestling,
the storm keeps dancing and we keep dancing and there is fullness
and the air is saturated with water and music and we are too and it all
keeps flowing on and on and on.

Sauntering

"Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

CSSC Spring 2012 Convergence

Group photo! Photo by Tia Tyler

From April 27th – April 29th, over 400 students from across the state of California gathered at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for a weekend of workshops, speakers, live music, and camping. The theme of this convergence was building a resoNATION – inspiring students to join together to make a positive, resounding impact in the world. We all have unique perspectives, skills, and experiences, and the California Student Sustainability Coalition (CSSC) is about bringing those individual resonations into one HUGE resoNATION.

And that is what we did. Most of the 30 workshops offered were student-led, and topics varied from “Transforming White Privilege” to “Agro Eco Coffee” to “Ending Corporate Personhood.” Larry Lansburgh, producer of the film “Dream People of the Amazon,” delivered a thought-provoking and inspirational keynote address about the power of community and perseverance against all odds. After a long day of workshops (and delicious, vegan, sustainable food) we all danced our hearts out to the tunes of The Willows, who played an energizing set for us at SLO Creek Farms.

The CSSC is built on the principle that sustainability has three intertwined threads: ecological, economic, and social. The convergence was a time to explore all of those threads both intellectually and experientially, by opening our minds and our hearts to one another.

Spiral hug! Photo by Tia Tyler. 

Between workshops, over meals or while tossing frisbees, friends were made and conversations had regarding how we can make change in our own communities and on our own campuses. How we can build a resoNATION. Jordan Lambert, Tessa Salzman, and Yamina Pressler did a fabulous job for coordinating this year’s spring convergence. Across the board, students agreed that it was one of the best ones yet. Those three amazing organizers, along with the Empower Poly Coalition and the California Student Sustainability Coalition, worked long and hard to create this space for sustainable collaboration. But rather than write more about the experience, here is a video that encompasses the diversity of voices as well as the common experience that permeated throughout the weekend.

Watch the video here!

If you attended the convergence, I hope this brings back positive memories, and if you did not, I hope this inspires you to come to the next one! The CSSC puts together these magical weekends once a semester – so don’t miss out!

Convergence coordinators Tessa, Yamina, and Jordan. Photo by Tia Tyler

And a poem of my own: 


The word ecology comes from the word ecos
which means "home"
and here and now,
I am home.
Ecos.
Here we have come together to experiment
as a living breathing ecosystem
and that is what we are,
and I am home.
Nutrients have been cycling all day
and I feel the warmth of our symbiosis,
ubuntu.
Here we are home.
I am home.
Individuals connected by unbroken eye contact,
handshakes, hugs,
common passions,
separate resonations that
collide.
We don't need to innovate and calculate
the ultimate solution,
we simply have to go home
create home
together.
Ecos.
I am home.

And a thought: 

My education up to this point has placed the weight of the world on my shoulders. As it should, because feeling that weight is important. Memorize that feeling. Recall it when you start to feel a bit too much like a balloon.  But what the California Student Sustainability Coalition does, is  it takes that weight and distributes it onto all of our shoulders. I can be me, contribute myself, my shoulders - and hold the world up with the rest of my sustainabilibuddies. Sweet, sweet, sweet relief. Memorize that relief. Recall it when you start to feel like your feet are too heavy to lift up.