Color it Green II

(Continued from the preceding post.)

While many of my neighbors apply pounds of chemistry to kill the moss in their lawns, I spend time on my knees (something my very religious Mother would have encouraged) pulling the grass from the moss one small clump at a time.  Moss grows quite well under the gnarly branches of the red maple that shelters the front of our home at Hidden Springs from the often hot Southern sun.

There is something about the repetitive task sometimes associated with caring for the moss that is very meditative.  Our moss garden responds best to sweeping rather than raking. I use a broom with soft bristle to brush away the acorns and leaves that, at various times of the year, coat the surface of the moss.  Each sweep of the broom not only moves the leaves and nuts along but also restores the unity of the green velvety surface.   The rhythmic whisper as the bristles move back and forth across the surface of the moss is the background to a profound meditation…one whispered sweep of the broom at a time.

Perhaps someday Aesthetics will turn its attention to other natural beauties.  For example, the beauty of evolutionary biology as a species comes into being or the beauty of a natural system feeding the cycle of life and death…that would indeed be a substantial transdisciplinary leap into the connections that bind and liberate us all.

Connections.

Shallow depressions in the sandy mud alongside woodland pond. 

Depressions made by a wandering raccoon, an animal so well adapted to feed on the clams buried beneath the surface of the sand that they fish by touch alone.

Connections.

The clams strain minute plankton, clarifying the water, cleaning it until it sparkles--growing inside their shells until a passing raccoon senses their presence beneath the sand, and....

Connections.

Plankton--tiny children of the sun using the basic elements of nature to create the stuff of life, to build their own living plant-selves from the sun and minerals that surround them in the water.

Connections.

Standing -- on the verge of the glassy waters watching the connections unfold, watching the interconnectedness take place. 

Stepping -- carefully least I erase the trace of what has passed here...of the connections that have taken place here.

Wondering -- where I and mine belong in this web of life. 

Sensing -- in those shallow wanderings the elements of nature flowing through me.   

Knowing -- that someway, somehow I and mine have become separate from the primal patterns shifting and blending in the waters of the woodland pond. 

Understanding-- that the separation is only temporary, can only be temporary, is only illusion. 

Standing -- again-- in the shadows at the edge of the pond.

Watching--in my delight and in my fear.

Color it Green I

The Aesthetics of Environment

Things change and old words take on new meanings.  Green for example has come to mean many things other than a color…nature, environment, products, politics, and many more.  Here in the mountains of western North Carolina we have a lot of green.  The mountains are clothed in a cloak of green, the meadows, fields, and lawns are green and gold, and it is beautiful. We are told by philosophers that Aesthetics is the study of beauty.  Apparently, the root of the word is derived from the Greek terms for sensing or feeling or perceiving.  I sense and perceive that a healthy world is a green, fecund, and growing world...a beautiful world.  These mountains are beautiful but my professional work has taken me from the deserts of the American West and Southwest to the Gulf Coast and Caribbean and, now, to the Southern Appalachian Mountains and I have seen a great deal of beauty in all of these places.

In recent decades Aesthetics has expanded its scope to investigate the questions of beauty in nature.  We now talk about environmental aesthetics. What is it that we sense when we look at a beautiful river valley or the winding rows of corn stubble cut for silage in the fall, or a small park in a concrete and steel city?  Something happens. We can feel it, we can sense it.  Sometimes that feeling is very powerful and often it is shared. A lot of work is being done on what it is that we feel by neurophysiologists, psychologists, biochemists, and other specialized fields such as cognitive studies.  Perhaps, one day they will tell us all about it in the often sterile, reductionist words of science.  But there is nothing sterile about our individual or, very often, our collective response to these things. 

We are moved by nature to paint it, write poetry about it, to emulate it in our gardens. In terms of the issues addressed by conservation biology, why is it important what we find beautiful?  A number of observers have made the point that the kinds of natural settings we find beautiful often make a substantial difference when it comes to reaching that collective decision of what places we wish to set aside, to save, to restore or enhance and which to surrender to other, perhaps more consumptive uses.

We most often perceive of transformation to a green world in a mega-sense…for example the greening of government programs…corporate greening…and organizational transformation. But, in fact, critical transformation can only take place one person or even one action…one blade of grass, if you will, at a time.

(Continued in the next post.) 

(The literature on the aesthetics of environment and nature pertaining to the world  environmental crisis has grown considerably over the past several decades with numerous journal articles and books.  Over the years, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism and Contemporary Aesthetics have published a number of articles on the subject. Arnold Berleant, Allen Carlson, John Fisher and others have contributed significantly.  Books addressing this subject include those by  J.B. Callicott, T. Morton, and others. I also suggest Lance Hosey's The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design)

Nature and Human Settlements - Part II

(Continued from the preceding post.)

Much has been accomplished since The Granite Garden was written. For example, in 1990 Black Rose published David Gordon’s book Green Cities dealing with ecologically sound approaches to the use and management of urban space.  In 1994 Platt, Rowntree, and others published a book titled The Ecological City focusing on preserving and restoring urban biodiversity.  In 2001 Richard Register, with the urban ecology group in the Berkeley/Oakland area of California and leader in the Ecocities movement, published Ecocities: Building Cities in Balance with Nature, and then, in 2006, revised it and reissued it as Ecocities: REbuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.

From all of this theory and professional practice has developed an evolving movement that is making inroads, some small, and some very large, into the ‘greening’ of human settlements.  Early on, the American Forestry Society turned its attention to urban forest cover and developed guidelines for the reforestation of urban areas. Green roofs are another technique used to reduce the urban heat island effect and increase urban wildlife habitat. Roofing materials have been developed that reflect light and thus heat from rooftops, rather than absorb heat and require air conditioning. Construction techniques are now being used in buildings and other places in our settlements to reduce environmental impacts.  For example, porous concrete is used to replace asphalt in order to make more efficient and environmentally sound use of the rainwater that falls on the thousands of acres of urban hard surface.

In order to move all of this forward and put all of it into practice, Urban Ecology study centers have been established at a number of places and the United Nations has a sustainable cities initiative.

Government is also involved in the greening of our settlements, sometimes through planning, ordinances, laws, and even funding. In number of areas we see nonprofit consultative groups, that concentrate a substantial amount of professional skills, focused on greening the built environment. A lot of this energy and movement is reflected in literally thousands of organizations in communities, cities, and towns across the world.  These organizations often take on the role of advocates, and sometimes as consultants.

Much of the greening movement within communities has centered on the stabilization and restoration of streams and, where they exist, rivers.  These projects have ranged from removing trash from streams, to planting vegetation or placing structures to slow or stop erosion, to the restoration of special wetland communities, to 'day-lighting' streams that were covered over in the past.

Other work has been undertaken to establish corridors of habitat along which wildlife can move with some freedom and safety.  Still other efforts include general protection, conservation, and restoration of existing patches of forest or desert or shrub-land habitat, depending on where the city or urban center is located.

The urban restoration movement seems to have merged, to a great degree with the broader sustainability movement, and to some extent with the community gardening and permaculture movement, and now we talk about ‘sustainable ecocities.’  In fact, the first International EcoCities Conference was held in 2000 and there have been others since. An increasing number of very fine colleges and universities now offer training in the field of Urban Ecology. 

Living in community requires that we reach agreement about how to proceed on the greening of our settlements.  There are other factors stirring out there, however, that will affect any decisions we make concerning the nature of our settlements, our place in them, and the place of other species.  Not the least of these are the costs and availability of energy, the costs and decreasing availability of water, and the inconvenient but undeniable truth of global climate change and its impacts.

On the morning of December 13, 2000 I was cochairing a regional committee of a US federal initiative. One of the young staffers, who had flown down from Washington to be with us, excused himself to take an urgent call.  When he reentered the room he asked for a moment to make an announcement.  We all knew what was coming. US Vice President Al Gore, following a decision of the US Supreme Court, had conceded the election to George W. Bush and our urban greening initiative had been dissolved by the incoming administration. Several months later buildings in American cities would be under attacks from the air and bombs would fall on Baghdad. The world had changed.

Nature and Human Settlements Part I

During the latter part of the 1990's I had the opportunity to work on a number of projects intended to restore some environmental health to the built environment...to towns, cities, and other concentrations of humanity. This was especially rewarding work. I also had the opportunity to reflect on the 'greening effort' of human settlements in presentations and publications.  Nature and Human Settlements is the title of one of those reflections.

Nature and Human Settlements - Part I

The year 2007 was a special year, a landmark year in human history. This was not the year during which war was abolished. This was also not the year when hunger and crushing poverty were vanquished, more’s the pity. No, 2007 was the year of Urban Humanity.  This was the year when over half of humanity came to live in what we call urban settlements. Well over three and a quarter billion people came reside in the cities, towns of Earth.

One would think that after all of these centuries…millennia, in fact…in response to this great migration of the human tribes…our settlements would be places of choice by virtue of the quality of life and environments they provide.  But this is not the case. The air in most of our larger and many of our smaller settlements is foul and transportation is abysmal.

It was while living in Atlanta a few years back that I learned some of the more unique aspects of human settlements.  I learned, for example of what is called the ‘heat island effect.’  Because of the exhaust of heat as a waste product of the human enterprise, many of our larger settlements are warmer than the surrounding countryside.  They are covered in a bubble of essentially waste energy and gases. In some cases, these bubbles are so dense that they create their own weather…within and outside of the bubbles. The heat island can have an impact even on the weather of the surrounding countryside.

The very structure of so many of our communities mitigates against good health practices. We drive everywhere, we walk nowhere, obesity has become the rule, and a major health crisis. I learned about something else in Atlanta.  I learned about what happens when the integrity of rivers and streams are not honored.  If you put a map of Atlanta (and many other cities) on a flat surface and look at the streams that flow into it…those streams vanish as they enter the city.  They don’t actually vanish they go under the ground, under the cities.

I learned some other things during my urban years, however.  I learned how wonderful it is when citizens band together with a dream. While serving on an interagency initiative, I remember visiting with a group of people who wanted to create a little niche park in their community. And when I say little, that is just what I mean.  A very old house in one of the then more challenged sections of Atlanta, with a stone basement cut into the side of a hill, had decayed and collapsed into its basement.  Over the decades an oak had grown from the stone wall.  When I visited the site, I saw a mess but the citizens saw a small, pocket park.  We gave them the funds and a little technical expertise, they cleaned the site, put in a small path, some flowerbeds, and a couple of benches and had a park.

As an ecologist I have stood looking out over literally thousands of acres of wildflowers after the rains of spring and a bit of snow had moistened the earth just enough for one of those infrequent and incredible desert wildflower blooms.  I have floated over a hundred feet below the surface alongside a massive wall of corals, a thousand feet above the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.  These are wonderful experiences for someone with my background and interests.  But I have also experienced the great pleasure of seeing the first river otter return to a clean and stable urban stream whose rehabilitation I had a small something to do with. I have been part of the day-lighting and rehabilitating of streams that had been buried under a city for decades, and I’ve had the joy of helping link previously detached patches of seriously degraded urban ‘wildlands’ into corridors that allowed the movement of native animal and plant populations.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned is the power of people when they decide they are just ‘not going to take it anymore’ and begin to green and replant their communities.  In each generation there have been those who look upon the city…the town, the built environment…as the center for the intellectual and spiritual enrichment of the human experience. The urban ecology movement has been part of that.  In a way, it has been around as long as there have been those sensitive to what it means to gather together in human settlements.

In the mid-1980’s, while still wandering the deserts of the Southwestern US, I came upon Anne Winston Spirn’s book ‘The Granite Garden’ in which she discusses the cities from the perspectives of nature and human design. I bought that book and have had it all of these years, never thinking, when I made the purchase, that I would have a small part in the contemporary movement to reinvent that which we call ‘urban.’  In the opening words from the Granite Garden…Anne says, “Nature pervades the city, forging bonds between the city and the air, earth, water, and living organisms within and around it.”  That was her vision and it’s a good vision.

For additional material on this subject search the WEB using the terms baugh with urban residential wildlife or urban ecology or urban resources.

(Continued in the next post.)