Photo by Terril Shorb
Getting Down to Sustainability
by Terril Shorb
What does it mean to live sustainably? Surely, this is one of the questions of our times and there are as many answers as people thinking about this. However, I am a sustainability educator so I have to have some kind of idea of what this might mean to engage in learning dialogues with my students.
One of the first notions I had of what it means to live in a sustainable way occurred when I was about nine year old. I was living on my maternal Grandfather’s ranch in Montana and we used to ride over his ranch every week or so to check on the cattle, the springs, the fences. One afternoon we rode our horses to a high ridge overlooking the meandering valley where Rock Creek carried its clear, cold waters down to the Eagle River. [By the way, I have changed the names of the various geographical features where the ranch was located to protect it from those who might exploit it for commercial gain.]
My Grandfather stood in the stirrups and waved a hand across the scene below. I could barely make out the small cluster of buildings that was the ranchstead. A few miles away was another sprinkle of buildings that was the tiny town of Lupine where I went to school. “You know, the Good Lord put this country together and he did a pretty good job of it. Seems only right that we do what we can to take care of it. If you take care of the land, the land will take care of you.”
During those years on the ranch my Grandfather was to repeat that message on all kinds of occasions. The message is not unique, of course, though I fear it is becoming distressingly rare in our strange times. I have carried my Grandfather’s words with me all my life and I draw comfort and guidance from them. So when my students ask me what I think it means to live sustainably, I imagine I am looking down on those grassy hillsides and that little creek thickly furred by cottonwoods and willows, and I offer that if we take care of the land, the land will take care of us.
The challenge for most of us urban dwellers today is that much of the land has been buried beneath the hardscapes of our civilization. Somehow, taking care of asphalt plains and steel high-rises does not translate. Therefore, one of the first things I believe it is good to learn about sustainable living is that we need the presence of nature to guide our efforts. We need to invite the natural world back into our daily lives. Easier said than done, of course. But I find some comfort in the fact that it took us a century or two or three to bury the land under our outsized building blocks. Likely, if we will it to be so, we can re-green out urban-scapes in a matter of years. If we have the will. Something I learned from Jared Diamond in his book Collapse: Why Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, is that those few societies who did manage to survive over the centuries had two things in common. First, they engaged in long-range planning. Second, they were willing to consider, and change, core values.
I humbly suggest that we pry up some of the paving blocks of our modern society and let the sun’s rays shine on the good soil hidden beneath. Let’s get down to the land, get down with the land. And figure out what it would mean to truly become caretakers of the land. This website is dedicated to helping us learn the many ways we can accomplish that good task.
Life Lesson: The natural world and its stones, soils, waters, plants, and animals is the model for living sustainably. If we are to give ourselves over to more sustainable ways of being, we need the active presence of nature in our daily habitats and habits.
Life Practice: I scout out places on my own property where I can take up a few square feet of former driveway or other such hard-scape (asphalt, concrete). I also suggest this to other property owners who have such places. The local city transfer station takes in pieces of asphalt and concrete for recycling. I then work to restore the little patch of newly liberated Earth to full health, and transplant native wildflowers from a local nursery into this spot. There is something very satisfying about seeing life going on about itself where formerly there was a dead zone.