SENTIENT TIMES August/September '05

Permaculture and Place

Linking humans and landscapes for sustainability

By Steve Gabriel

Many of us are aware of the complex and dynamic systems in existence that are currently driving our culture toward an unsustainable end. Climate change, increases in the level and scale of violence, and the questionable reliability of our most used resource, oil, are just some of the issues of our time. We, as an American culture, are particularly good at consuming too many things in too little time, with too much waste left behind.

While these facts are well known by many of the population, dealing with the problems and obstacles can often become overwhelming. General solutions often include the financial support of environmental organizations and the idolizing of a political candidate who claims environmental virtue.
Permaculture is one version of a systematic response to the largest difficulties of our time. The two major factors that make permaculture unique within the environmental movement are its focus on solution-oriented action and its emphasis on personal and local transformation. There is no need to wait for a greener president or for the next generation; we can begin changing today! Permaculture is often mistaken as a set of recipes for gardening and green living, but in actuality it is a set of ethics and principles that points us to the way of designing human settlements in accordance with the patterns of nature.

The phrase “Sense of Place” speaks to an awareness level that is becoming less and less prevalent these days. Few individuals have lived in the same place for years much less generations and such a transient relationship to landscapes has been largely destructive. When places are viewed as expendable they are generally trashed, since the attitude is that there is always more down the road to exploit. As our American landscape continues to be consumed by box stores and chain restaurants, the unique features and characteristics of the land are lost. A desert, a forest, and a prairie all become a parking lot. Reclaiming a sense of place is about reflecting and reexamining our personal values and relationship to the places we call “home.” The intent is to blur the boundary between the environment and the self, to not only know a place but to feel it deeply and personally.

Permaculture design cooperates well with this concept, since sustainable living isn’t possible if we choose to remain outside the natural systems that are the source of all our needs. Food forest gardening is a good example of a practice where both permaculture and sense of place principles meet in a mutually beneficial relationship. The idea of a food forest is to grow the vegetables one desires while also restoring native habitat, by interplanting food crops with native vegetation and encouraging the natural succession of the forest. The goal is not a sizable yield of foodstuffs, but to restore healthy forest ecosystems. This sort of perspective ignites a connection to place that is beyond our lifespan while still providing for current needs.

Building relationships where we rely more on local communities and landscapes for our basic life functions is the simplest and most effective solution to the current environmental crisis. Actually enacting measures for re-localizing what has become global takes time and patience, but benefits to such actions can be immediately felt and seen. Eating food that you’ve grown or purchased from a local organic farmer cultivates interpersonal relationships, helps build soil humus, and creates a more stable economy for you and for your neighbors. The food has higher levels of nutritional content and tastes better, too.

The merging of permaculture and place unifies the people with the land. Neither can exist without the other, and it has come time for us to make this relationship more transparent in our daily lives. The first step of this process is to re-familiarize ourselves with our home landscapes, to reclaim them, and to network with other people committed to loving and protecting them. Only by daily positive interaction with our land base and by taking action as a community to protect the forests, rivers, and soils can we begin to sow seeds of a new, more sustainable way of life.

Steve Gabriel is currently an intern at historic Trillium Farm in the Little Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon. He had been studying and practicing Permaculture and the related arts intensively for the past four years. He deems his “place” the Finger Lakes Region of New York but is enjoying his time in Oregon tremendously. Contact him at rhythmstevo@yahoo.com or (541) 899-1696.

SENTIENT TIMES
PO Box 1330 Ashland, OR 97520
PHONE (541) 512-1084 • FAX (541) 512-1085
dmokma@jeffnet.org