Eco-literacy
Just as you can't truly love another human without knowing them intimately, you can't love your landbase without knowing it intimately. In other words, you can't be a real environmentalist, or not much of one anyway, if you don't know how the land you live on functions and how to interact with it properly. You need to know how to live in place to be able to make any real decisions about that place.
Or maybe the term "environmentalist" is more fitting; it's purely caring about your environs, your surroundings. Not the complex interlocking systems and networks of other living beings. Not the play of life and death that maintains the balance, diversity, and abundance of a healthy ecosystem.
Labels: activism, ecology, environment, food, predator-prey relationship, sustainability
posted by 29,000 Acorns @ 12:21 AM
2 Comments:
At July 8, 2011 at 4:37 PM ,
Melissa Guillet, Founder of Sacred Fools Press said...
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At
July 9, 2011 at 7:18 PM ,
Anonymous said...
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I might have an article in the RI Audubon Report on that. I'll let you know if/when they publish it.
Eco means home, I always liked that. I am right now making a huge map of the land community I am within. It includes rubbings of tree bark, found bones and feathers, dirt, seeds, nests, beery juices from foraging, bear scat, the painting is done with water from the river I live on, pressed flowers, fallen leaves, etc. There are scrolls and and mini-boxes with stories in them of my persoal experiences with different other-than-human persons: when cardinal man taught me about why girls swoom at rock concerts; when skunk would join me at 3 am for prayers to the land and not spray; the long stares i have had in the eyes of racoons, fox, and deer; the heirloom native sunflowers i helped grow as a gift to the community; plants i have foraged like nettle, garlic mustard, sorrell, dandelion, plaintain, motherwort, cedar, pine sap, wild grape, mulberries, dock, and elderberry; photos, paintings, other's art work, story telling.... it's not just a map, it is my relationship to this place, a few blocks in a small upstate new york tourist/working class town, as a bioregional animist. PS i cannot sign in as me, but this is Heather Awen of Adventures in Animism.
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