This is the twenty-fourth issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
In mid-February, Earthaven was honored to host a national meeting of Earth First! I’ll share with you some highlights from the public forum they held.
Forests
The U.S. Forest Service takes our tax dollars to pay timber companies to harvest on public lands; they allow roads in for logging, as well as oil and gas drilling; herbicide spraying is the norm.
2% of the U.S. timber supply now comes from public lands. Clearcuts of 1-2 acres are not uncommon. They pretend that they are doing this to “increase biodiversity” and “control wildfires;” the road-building is presented as a “service” to the public. There are now fewer ways for the public to appeal; preliminary injunctions are only good for 45 days, so the public is effectively shut out of courts and Congress.
The National Forest Protection Alliance (130 small grassroots organizations) are working to preserve what old growth we have left. It’s important for people to know and care about the wild places. To raise public awareness, one group sliced a slab from the stump of a 600-year-old tree which had been cut by the logging companies. They took this 8-foot-diameter slab to show people the natural treasures that are being lost. In the Southeast, the Dogwood Alliance is focusing on markets such as Staples and Office Depot, demanding they use recycled paper. The Southeast is the biodiversity center of the continent! Yet the timber industry brags that this area supplies 25% of all wood fiber used on the planet, 75% of wood fiber used in the United States. Global climate change will cause forest loss, so now the timber companies are saying, “Let’s take the forests, they’ll go anyway.” According to E.O. Wilson, 2/3 of the world’s biodiversity will be gone in 50 years. 60% of our “waste stream” (much of it paper) is forest products.
Logging is devastating to the species that inhabit forests. For habitat protection, at least 10-12% of total land base ought to be left wild. Logging causes sedimentation and water pollution; acid rain from coal burning fragments aquatic habitat. It’s crucial for people to connect with the land, develop a love of place, along with a belief that resistance is possible. Our DNA has not changed much; we evolved to live among trees and meadows, not asphalt and concrete. Let the forest talk to you. (Editorial note: As John Seed would say, “I am the part of the rainforest that is defending itself.”)
Southern Appalachian Mountain-Top Removal
Native forests can re-grow, but not if a mountain top is removed. “Appalachian Voices” is a group who came with a slideshow and a powerful message from their own devastated lives.The mountains of West Virginia have been designated a “national sacrifice area.” 400,000 acres of mountain-tops have been leveled to access the coal deposits. As a result, 1200 miles of stream beds were filled in, and terrible floods ensued in which thousands died and property loss for mountain people was severe. The coal companies called the flooding “an act of God” and refused to make any form of compensation. The Clean Water Act was gutted under Bush to allow these things to happen. Billions of gallons of water are used to carry the coal slurry through pipelines to power plants. The Appalachian mountain people are demanding a stop to it. “Not a NIMBY but a NOPE (Not On Planet Earth),” they say. Old women are lying down in front of bulldozers. One Native American woman whose family had lived for generations on a mountainside showed photographs of the devastation caused to her property by a flood after the mountain-top was removed. Currently, coal burning produces 54% of US electricity. Just replacing your lightbulbs with compact fluorescents can save up to ¾ of the electricity you use for lighting. And we could save all the oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if every car owner simply checked tire pressure weekly!
Knowing Our Place
After hearing so much sad news, it was refreshing to take a nature walk with local naturalist and story-teller Doug Elliott. Even in mid-February, he enchanted everyone with the lore and usefulness of what was growing right around us: spicewood, sassafras, locust, black birch, yellowroot, blackberry, tulip poplar. We ended up at a pond, admiring the woodfrogs and the salamanders.
Despair and Empowerment
In the Deep Ecology work that a group of us have been doing, taught us by John Seed and Joanna Macy, we honor and speak from our places of fear, anger, despair, and confusion about… the Earth, our personal lives, the state of perpetual war this country is in, the deep slumber of the SUV drivers… We are a species living out of touch with its very life source. The public expression of these stuffed-down feelings is liberating.
Being in the Fire
I am feeling vulnerable in several areas.
1) Relationship: In mid-January, I broke up with my partner of 20 months, in a state of anger and blame, and hurt.
2) Housing: I moved into another place, which is often chaotic, dirty, and lacks privacy, and where I can stay only temporarily.
3) Livelihood: In mid-February, my job prospects were placed on indefinite hold at the nearby school (I can walk to) where I was looking forward to doing biofeedback and teaching. There is a lack of space; or, perhaps the timing is not right for that job.
4) Income: I’m low on income, since I’d been expecting that work to kick in since November and had not pursued other work. Some of my funds are invested in a refrigerator, solar panels and batteries.
In order to stay here long-term (build a shared house), I’d need a good deal more money than I currently have in savings and IRAs.
Most importantly, in moving closer to the heart of the community I seem to have stepped into the heart of my own problems. I have been in a place of deep strain in this community, with many people telling me honestly and caringly about the ways I’m difficult to get along with. And it hasn’t been easy to hear it all. My need for approval and acceptance, my style of not reading a social group’s energy correctly, or speaking too much in meetings or bringing in tangential ideas, being too much in my head and not my heart, my difficulty in accepting negative feedback and tendency to beat up on myself or be too sensitive.. all of it is clearly visible here. And I have “met my shadow” in aspects of various community members: the parts of me I have pushed away and disowned—from the “successful author” to the big talker to the aloof judge.
When I heard the negative feedback from so many people in a short time, I was knocked off my feet at first. My tendency is not to defend myself, but to believe that it’s all true and I’m therefore a worthless human being. Then I may get angry and judgmental and defensive. I may go looking for allies, becoming even more needy of appreciation. I search for solutions to “the community’s” problems. The truth is, to paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt: No one can do to me what I’m not already doing to myself. I need to stop putting myself down and being hard on myself. “People shouldn’t say negative things about me behind my back” becomes “I shouldn’t (or I choose not to) talk about other people behind their backs,” as well as “I shouldn’t say bad things about myself.” Thanks to the work of Byron Katie, I’m asking myself some questions and turning things around into their truer version.
There was a beautiful healing circle one night in which we each took turns sitting on the massage chair, in front of the blazing fire at the White Owl, while six or seven friends massaged and stroked us while murmuring their appreciations for us. That was one “hot seat” that felt very nurturing!
I am learning the dance of how to survive in a community. I’ve observed that many people create fairly strong barriers, often those of physical distance—taking time off, working elsewhere for awhile to earn money, having a job that keeps them away from community life many hours of the week, or just not going to meetings. In confusion and sadness, I went to my “sit spot,” the place where I most often go to be in the presence of sacred water and the beauty of nature. A tiny fly got my attention, as it flew quickly up and down in the same spot repeatedly, a few feet away. I took it as a message to go away and come back, go away and come back; go up the mountain, down into the valley. Perhaps it was also reminding me that life is full of high points and low moments. And I have decided that I will resign from most or all of my committees, and move to Asheville for a “leave of absence” from Earthaven, while still remaining a member and coming back for visits and work of various sorts, as many others do. I’d like to continue doing physical work here, like helping to finish the footbridge. It will be much easier to get a job in Asheville, and it will give me a chance to do some more work on my issues, heal some of my old wounds that I’ve been neglecting. I may come back here permanently at some point in the future, but that is unknown as yet.
Meanwhile, the warm spring-like weather is just starting, a softer breeze is blowing, and it feels sad to be leaving all the beauty of nature here: the glorious Rosy Branch Creek, the little seedlings I helped Kimchi start in Tom’s greenhouse, and the singing of the frogs from our ponds.
From the heart,
Cathy
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