Locating Nature

A friend of mine & I have been swapping book reccomendations & thoughts about living, eating, & growing food.  He's been curious as to whether or not Kevin & I will stay in South Jersey.  I answered that we plan to.  If we have children we'd love for them to become fluent in Spanish, & may try to live in Central America with them if we can rent our home & manage the logistics, but a part from that we have no plans to move.

He suggested that we might want to be nearer "nature."  This reminded me of Kevin's professor Eva & her thoughts on locating nature.  She lives in South Philly but is constantly doing wild plant identification.  She finds wilderness, wildness, everywhere.  As an environmentalist, she believes in people living more conscientiously in cities to consolidate resources while leaving more land uninhabited & free.

As a pretty confirmed suburbanite, I take comfort in that vision.  I certainly resent sprawl, but feel more able to confront that trend within it.  We have a good bit of land even within the confines of the 'burbs.  I like to think that our presence shines a little light on the vastness of how we can lead our lives.  I've certainly noticed our neighbors taking interest.  My well-hidden hope had been to orchard our neighborhood.  A neighbor invited me to plant fruit trees on her property, as long as she could have some fruit, when I ran out of land (which will happen)!  She was excited by the fresh food on our block, that her granddaughter was more interested in healthy foods when she watched them grow, & now she's involved in a community garden at our library.  Another neighbor installed a raised bed next-door.  I value this proximity & community.

We technically have the space for bees but there are some restrictive policies in our town.  I know we can't legally have chickens.  When we're ready for bees, we'd like to invite over our neighbors, be sure no one has a lethal allergy, & present our case on why bees should live amongst us.  With their blessing we then hope to change policies at our Borough Hall.

Kevin's Aunt lives in a progressive community where we wouldn't have to fight these fights.  But, if no one fights them at the source these policies tend to spread.  It feels valuable to be here & remind people that just about all of us are only a generation or two removed (if at all) from people with dirt under their nails & try to gradually work back.

The day we found the tomato horn bug was awesome.  Kevin was sure he was a baby dragon.

I remember reading a passage in one of Derrick Jensen's books years ago where he described his practice of lying on the grass and watching.  He watched for hours.  It became a meditation but also a way to much more deeply see & experience the soil breathing, ants working, grass waving, & be reminded that we're of this whole.  I went in my yard and watched.  Given that I live in suburbia, this was a more public display than I imagine Jensen's.  No matter.  It's still nature.  It's still living, breathing, growing interconnected systems.  I see it in weeds breaking up sidewalks.  I remember hearing an inmate say he saw it, and took hope, in a spider crawling through his cell.  There is always life.