Wildflower Stew

When I was a kid, there were certain things growing wild that we knew it was okay to eat. Wild mint and watercress down by the creek, baby dandelion leaves, and a flowering shrub with bright red flowers you could pick and suck the sweet nectar from the end of the trumpet-shaped blooms. We knew never to eat china berries or hack berries. I don’t remember how we knew. Someone must have told us. There were huge oleander bushes lining my grandmother’s driveway. They are extremely toxic. We never went near them. We just knew.

At the right time of the year, there would be wild onion, wild carrot and something that looks (and tastes) like asparagus. All these things were available to an observant child growing up in the country, close to the natural world. There are worlds more of edible foods, herbs and wild crafting supplies for the taking out there - for an amazingly complete rundown on surviving on wild plants see: http://www.wilderness-survival.net/plants-1.php

These days it is becoming popular in some neighborhoods to turn up the front yard and plant a garden. Excellent idea! The kids get to see where some of their food comes from, for one thing. But what about the back yard - or whatever area you have around you where you live? Can you find a spot to turn from landscaped (water-intensive, chemical dependent) back to the wild?

As more and more land gets put into play for humans - agriculture, subdivisions, golf courses, etc. - less and less is available for the critters. People start seeing wildlife in their backyards, coyotes in Central Park. Where else can they go? And then there’s the crazy weather and floods and fires. I read about the wildlife in the fires near Big Sur running toward the ocean to escape the flames. What will they do when they get there?

I know that in the places I’ve been the last few years, even urban areas, the birds and animals are coming closer. I don’t know if they are losing their fear or just doing what they have to do to survive. But I know that it feels right to try to make some room for them too, in whatever way we can, as we all try to cope with our suffering planet. The payback may be waking up to watch deer graze out your bedroom window just before dawn or attracting the most beautiful butterflies, the migrating birds, the best chorus of frogs after a rain.

I was lucky enough to spot a hummingbird nest (no easy task - they are very small) and show it to my grandson when he was two and we watched as the parents fed the extremely small babies and saw them take off in their tiny perfection when they were fledged. How can you compare that with a manicured lawn that has to be mowed with a gasoline powered lawn mower which sounds like some kind of demon from hell?

Cities have all kinds of ordinances about these things as do neighborhood associations. In Austin your grass can’t be more than 12 inches high. Period. That requires lots of mowing. Maybe we should pass an ordinance outlawing lawns!

Then the hummingbirds and butterflies and possums and deer and red tailed hawks could share our space with us and we’d all be a lot better off.

The National Wildlife Federation will certify your very own backyard wildlife refuge if you register with them. They have been offering the certifications since 1973. By the spring of 2008, there were almost 100,000 National Wildlife Federation certified habitats in backyards, schoolyards, just down the road, coming to your neighborhood soon.

There is so much news these days of things that are going wrong. It filled my heart with joy to hear about something that’s going right.

The Wild Sky Wilderness bill protecting a 106,000-acre Wilderness in the heart of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state passed the U.S. Senate with both Democratic and Republican Senators giving unanimous approval and was signed into law by President Bush. The area includes low-elevation old growth forests home to black bears, bald eagles, mountain goats, wolverines, cougars and spotted owls. The wilderness designation eliminates logging, mining, off-road vehicles, even cars. Virtually all motors are prohibited. You can’t even fire up a chain saw. Wheelchairs would be allowed, and the proposal calls for a 2-mile former logging road to be converted to a wheelchair-accessible trail.

The area is already visited by thousands of people every year. Many people come just to watch the salmon runs. They also enjoy hiking, climbing, rafting, fishing, and in the winter cross country skiing. Several picturesque small towns in the area directly benefit from this steady flow of visitors.

The bill was sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Rick Larsen, both D-Wash.. It is the first new federally designated wilderness in Washington since 1984. The Wilderness Society worked closely with the Wild Washington Campaign to preserve this unique area for future generations.
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I Know You Wild Skykomish

Rebecca Swan
May 2008

I woke up this Earth Day in Austin, Texas, to a light rain washing the air clean of city pollution, at least temporarily, and giving the newly leafed-out trees and the wildflowers the morning blessing of water. Recently I saw one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen on screen about water - the movie The Unforeseen. It’s about Barton Springs, a spring-fed swimming hole that wells up from the fragile limestone Edwards aquifer along Barton Creek right in the middle of downtown Austin and the battle between the environmental activists of Governor Ann Richards’ days in the early 90s and the destructive overdevelopment that followed under Governor George W Bush. It tells the story in poignant first person interviews of the developer who had it all and lost it in disgrace and bankruptcy, of the rancher still working his land in the midst of a jungle of new subdivisions knowing when he dies his land will be sold and subdivided and chopped up for even more houses.

The film opens and closes with lines from a poem by Wendell Berry, “The Unforeseen.” Using heartfelt, up close and personal interviews with Robert Redford, Willie Nelson, William Grieder of the Rolling Stone, the late Ann Richards among others - and the developer who talks about what motivated him to leave the precarious farming existence of his family in West Texas and come to the city to make his mark and the precipitous rise and fall that followed.

By the end of the film it is possible to feel the humanity in all the players. Well, with a couple of exceptions; a news clip of George W’s inaugeration as governor and a really creepy interview of a former lobbyist whose fingers are shown putting together model war planes as he describes his years beating out the environmentalists at the state capital. But this is the genius of the film. It shows the tragedy of human folly with compassion - which opens the door for healing. And it shows with exceptional photography the fragile beauty of the springs, how much we have lost, how quickly we could lose it all.

This is the Austin version of what is going on everywhere. It’s a beautiful film and deserves the many awards, including Sundance and The Independent Spirit Award, it has received. If you get a chance, I hope you will see it.

And happy Earth Day . . . thanks, mom . . . . .

View from my bedroom window this morning . . . . swan . . . .

Maybe one reason it doesn’t bother me so much to live in the city now is that I carry all the years I lived on the land around inside of me, running through my consciousness like a river, always close to my heart . . . the pristine beauty, the crisp first snowfall steps, the smooth river rock glistening, the gulf coast breeze in my hair. All the years of living close to mother in her many guises has given me something I guess I can never be separated from.

I haven’t forgotten the difference or gotten used to being in the city but I think for now I have accepted that my personal desire to live in pristine places is secondary to my concern about what is happening to all of us and I try to think what I can do, because I really am privileged compared to a lot of people, having a safe place to live, enough food and a computer even though I live way below the “poverty level” - for this country. So I advocate and I write because I am a writer. Maybe sharing my experiences and what I’ve learned will be of some help.

I think it is very very important for as many people as possible to live on the land in communities and become self-sufficient, growing food, securing their own water and producing their own power sources. The day is coming very soon when we will no longer have the option of driving around in personal gasoline-powered vehicles. Long distance hauling of goods, including food, will become prohibitively expensive. Power grids may fail or become outrageously polluting.

After almost 40 years of traveling, visiting communities and living in community, I am convinced that the most important factor in the success of a community is the combination of human energy - the personalities that make up the community, their common ground and the quality of their relationship to each other. The right combination can create a dynamic that can accomplish miraculous things. So I would say - if you are creating a community, put together the members as carefully as you would put together a band, or the colors in a painting, or the characters in a novel. When you have the right mix, you will know and your community will sing!

The next thing is - be prepared to work hard. Community building is not for the faint hearted. It requires fanaticism and deep love. It demands passion. Anything less and you will fall by the wayside. It also requires the discrimination to be able to say no when it is necessary, to know that some days are going to be hard and some days are going to be sad and be able to handle that, to be pragmatic and non-judgemental, to always come back to what is in the best interest of the community as a whole and to always look forward to what actions will secure the future of the community.

It takes years to get the soil right for an organic garden, years for those spindly fruit trees to bear fruit, years to get the hang of the seasons in your particular spot, when to plant, what pests to watch out for (see beyondpesticides.org ) and when to harvest before the first frost. Take time to lay the ground work well, make a place for the old folks and the children, get to know your neighbors. This is sacred work.

The thing I liked best about living in the country was the continual accompaniment of the rhythms of the natural world. In early morning, before dawn, I would wake to the soft sounds of doves calling me out of sleep into a pearly light as ethereal as a feather. I would quietly make a cup of coffee and slip out the door to walk to the river.

Deer would come down to the river, delicate and alert, reverently bowing their heads to the water and drinking, stepping back quickly to look around at the slightest sound, then bowing to drink again, and then they would all together, as if on cue, rush suddenly away.

The great blue heron would appear, stately, staking out an auspicious place in the shallows to stand and peer for hours and then like a flash to dip and catch a wayward fish that had flickered into its pool, swallow it down, and solemnly return to motionless standing until it tired of that spot and, with a hideous squawk that sounded like it could have come from a prehistoric dinosaur, rise up on its magnificent 6-foot wide wingspan and swoop away down the river.

As the sun broke the horizon, the song birds would chime in. First the tentative calls and twits, then the full-throated operettas of those who were so disposed. For about an hour the resident bird population and those passing through put on the morning concerto as I put on the morning breakfast and began my work for the day. This was also the hour for the insects to appear, a fact I would be particularly aware of if my work for the day was in the garden, and the bird/insect feeding cycle would begin.

The red tailed hawks and vultures would appear later after the sun had been up for awhile, hitting the thermals for warm up rounds, getting ready for a day’s cruising for fresh meat or last night’s road kill. By noon only the buzzards would remain, the carnal garbage collectors, an ever present reminder of the nearness of death in paradise.

Late afternoon would bring cicadas, a signal to me to start winding down my day and think about dinner. On a good year, cicadas rock the woods. I love them. To my ears they are the string section just tuning up. After a rain they are joined by the syncopated percussion of the frogs and the persistent whine of mosquitos. Which drives us inside where we hear the persistent hum of fans.

Finally the twilight comes. Deer graze across the way on the far side of the pasture, watchful but at peace. The cicadas fade out, the air cools and a soft breeze comes up. Fireflies peek out here and there sending indecipherable messages as if a few stars had fallen and tried to speak. I look up in the clear summer sky, a carpet of diamonds unfolds. As above, so below.

Rebecca Swan
Summer 07

. . . . what it’s like to be a nature mystic stuck in an urban apartment? I take pictures of the beautiful Texas sunrises over the skyline of downtown Austin out my bedroom window. I grow some plants on my balcony and watch the clouds and the birds in my little patch of sky over the courtyard of the apartment house I live in. It’s a nice place as urban apartments go and I know I’m lucky. But I really miss the night sky far away from cities where the stars come down to the horizon and touch the earth and you can hear the soft wind and the early morning bird song.

I’ve been grounded by environmental illness. My respiratory system has been so damaged by environmental toxins that I am unable to live without supplemental oxygen and filtered, climate-controlled air. I also have chemical sensitivities to the point where I can’t be around any fragrances, VOCs, pesticides, cleaning agents, smoke, fumes - you name it, I react to it. There’s more and more of us these days as toxins in the environment accumulate and people’s immune systems go haywire under the stress.

Right now, my apartment is my “bubble.” I can’t even go out on my balcony most of the time because of the urban air quality. A lot of people with chemical sensitivities have portable bubbles. They have customized RVs or live as far away from civilization as they can get, sometimes in Airstream trailers which, because they are made with quality, non-toxic materials, are very popular. Having an Airstream and living where I can be closer to the natural world again is my dream.

I have been blessed in my life to live in some really beautiful, remote places. As anyone who has done this knows, it was accompanied by plenty of exercise, otherwise known as chopping wood, carrying water. And, for me, growing food, learning a craft and living a subsistence/barter lifestyle. I’ve also been able to write things and publish things and travel a lot. I’ve baked bread and sold it, was a partner in a cafe/gallery for awhile, worked in one of the most wonderful little bookstores you could ever find - and met all kinds of amazing people.

From 1995 until 2001 I traveled with my partner, Woodstock, on our bus, Even Further, back and forth and all around the country and now I’m writing a book, “The Bus People,” and putting in my two cents worth with this blog. I read a lot and I try to pass on things that I think might be helpful.

I get my news from a broad range of sources. On the internet I read the New York Times and occasionally other newspapers like the St. Petersburg Tribune, the Boston Globe, the LA Times and the Washington Post. I also read the Norway Post, Upside Down (Central and South America), a newsletter from Canada called rabble and the China Dialogue. I watch the News Hour on PBS and other PBS news programs like Washington Week, Frontline, Now and Bill Moyers. Through my email I get Grist magazine, Common Dreams, TomPaine and AlterNet. I also read online Orion the beautiful magazine of nature writing and activism, the European magazine Ode which features real life stories about positive change and the Ecologist to see what the folks in the UK are doing. I read The Bear Deluxe, the dynamic little magazine out of Portland, Oregon, that “explores environmental issues through the creative arts” and occassionally publishes something from me.

I get newsletters and participate in forums on environmental issues, disability rights, environmental illness support groups, progressive politics, civil and first amendment rights organizations, nature writing and radical poetry. I try to distill and pass on from these sources and my own experience what I think might be helpful. I know most people don’t have time to do all this reading so I hope to make my blog a place where people can come for some useful ideas, some inspiration, some connections.

When my friends and I started our first alternative newspaper 35 years ago we decided that there would be no anonymous, pseudo-objective reporting. The corporate media will tell you what a few faceless shareholders want you to know. It was understood that we had to be for real; we had to say who we were and where we were coming from and that’s what I love about the grassroots media; it’s just us.

I believe we can get rid of corrupt politicians, end the war and stop global warming. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to take awhile but it’s possible. Will we do it? Will we do it in time? If it’s just us, who else will do it?

I would love to find a big old live oak tree and an Airstream trailer and hang out with my grandchildren, tell them all my stories and teach them everything I can to help them build a better world. . . . . and keep writing about it. And I’d love to hear from you wherever you are.

We’ve all heard the doomsday scenarios for what happens when you reach “Peak Oil” which is a term for the time when world oil production reaches it’s all time peak and begins to decline forever. In one country this has happened already. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and it’s subsidies to the Cuban economy, oil imports were cut by more than half and food by 80 percent.

A brief rundown on Cuba and how it got to be this way: Cuba in the 1950s had been run by the military dictator, Batista, who wanted to make the most out of Havana’s reputation for race tracks, night clubs and casinos. The Cuban rich were getting richer off the deal but the poor, as usual, were just getting poorer so there was a revolution led by the Castro brothers and Che Guevara.

The new regime tended more toward the communist style of governing and in 1960 established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. After the disasterous Bay of Pigs invasion and the almost catastrophic Cuban Missile Crisis, the US began an embargo against Cuba that left that nation in serious need of food and basic necessities.

The Cuban people were mobilized and worked hard and their survival was mostly due to their own efforts during this time. They invested heavily in growing sugar cane for export using fossil fuels obtained from the Soviets. Then in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and their economic subsidies to Cuba of $6 billion/year vanished overnight. Not long after that the US added to the embargo by prohibiting trading, travel and family remittances to Cuba. This eliminated 70% of Cuba’s food and medicine imports. The Cubans now refer to this time as “The Special Period.” The average Cuban lost 20 lbs. during this special period.

In a new documentary, Power of Community, Cubans share how they survived the transition from a highly fossil fuel dependent, mechanized, agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. Today, half of all the food consumed in the city of Havana is grown in within the city limits of Havana. Cuba is the only country that has faced what all of us are going to have to deal with eventually - a massive reduction in our use of fossil fuels. This is a surprising and inspiring story. See the 2 minute trailer below and then go to their website http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php for screening and ordering information.