Ecology of People

Had a great discussion with a biologists friend recently. We were on a 45 minute car ride into the country to a gathering at a friends farm.

Just outside of town we were driving through an upland rolling landscape with big sky and long distance vista's. We passed a row-crop cornfield of about 80 acres. The field was massive. The soils have been giving.

The row-crop techniques used in this field are common in this area. I'm seeing it in videos from the Amazon too. I've driven through Illinois countrysides. It's the kind with attractive rows that stretch into unity. The rows bend in curves with the topography creating spectacular art when the light is just right. They also make great places to pull over and in a short walk be in complete privacy, so the kids can relieve themselves.

There is a shallow valley in the middle draining to the south. There are gentle slopes pillowing above the narrow string of a water channel. There are other smaller water strings pursing through the field connecting the central string to the outer edges. The strings are narrowly eroded ditches from the heavy rains we just had. The corn rows bend along seeking consistent elevations and go right over the strings of water. I try to imagine the amount of top-soil that is gone. A thin sheet if any hangs on.

This field is unique in ways. It covers nearly an entire micro-watershed like a bowl. The road we are driving on is on the summit of the side of the bowl we are traversing. We can see across the valley to the summit on the other side.

The row-cropped valley has about a dozen or two extremely large oak trees widely scattered around, mostly along the strings of water. From a distance the trees don't seem too significant. Especially passing along at 50 miles an hour. I slow down and squint my eyes to get a closer look. They are humongous. They are glorious. In the light of the overcast day they cast an image in my mind I cherish still.

They were open grown, meaning they didn't have alot of side competition from other trees crowding in close. Open grown trees generally focus on developing a dense layer of leaves over every square foot, one little leaf at a time, given the limitations of branches and stems, climate and soils. Open grown trees are generally a mushroom of leaves from ground to the tippy-toppy.

These trees had large dense canopies of massive proportions. Through my squinty eyes the trunks looked as massive as the car. The canopies as massive as a three-story block house.

I mentioned to friend that the row-crop field with large scattered trees was a savanna. We sat in silence for a moment and gazed.

He didn't seem to appreciate me labeling it a savanna. "It's a row-cropped, mono-cultured, biodesert." he says. "A savanna has biodiversity! A savanna has grasses and wildflowers and the epic proportions of insects that are pollinating, grazing, making epic abundance of proteins and eating each other and feeding other life, and all these other things. All these things that a row-cropped, mono-cultured, biodesert doesn't have. LIFE!"

"This is true," I agree. However, "the basic structure of a savanna is an open prairie with scattered trees in it. In this case, the diversity of the prairie has been reduced to one plant, along with the insects, soil life, and winged friends that seem to benefit, which is few. So yeah, it's a severely degraded savanna," I claim. "Can you see it? Squint your eyes and look for one of those popular photos of the open African savanna."

Of course we had already passed. Over the fence line to the north were the 5-10 acre lots with cheaply built humongous homes surrounded by small young trees that are common in these row-crop landscapes outside the city. I can't imagine living on 5 acres surrounded on all sides by chemically sprayed landscapes.

The friend doesn't see it. He shares that "because the native ecosystem has been completely destroyed, we cannot call it ecology. It looks nothing like an ecosystem. Now I've heard of this thing called deep ecology and I wonder if that's what you're talking about."

"Of course it is what I'm talking about." I say. "To remove the human from the ecosystem and then treat it as a side study referred to as deep ecology is the symptom. It is the symptom that is validating the problem. The problem of being blind to human as an active component of the ecosystem."

We were seeing an occasional country subdivision to the left or right. In places the house lots got smaller and housing density goes up. Each farm being sold off as land prices grow. Some years the value of the corn is worth keeping the land. Some years the part of the farm along the road gets platted out for home lots. From there it's only a matter of time it seems before the remainder of the farm is broken apart into smaller lots.

Many of the farmers are actually investors paying workers to do the labor. It's a numbers game. How much can be extracted and converted to cash?

"When we remove ourselves we kill nature with objectivifications" I say. "We put the expansively textured mystery of nature in boxes. All of it. What doesn't fit in our boxes we don't even see. We don't even see ourselves as part of the ecosystem. We took that part out. The part of us living in nature, amongst the mystery. Doesn't this seem odd?" We are finally getting onto a gravel road and the housing density drops considerably. The soils have changed and the row-crops have turned into pastures and hay fields.

"Even in the neighborhoods of towns there are ecosystems. They too have been severely reduced to a simplified, boxified, approach to tending ecosystems, but it is tending none the less. I get lost in the neighborhoods sometimes and love finding those lots full of native plants spilling over themselves and everything else. I watch the various lawn styles for bird and animal activity. Each lawn supports and favors a cast of characters. The neglected renter lawn. The highly manicured lawn with minimal chemicals to exaggerated chemical applications."

I start wrapping it up by saying that "to remove the human has led us to this place in time, this culture we are currently experiencing, of outsourcing our food production to an industry rather than our homelands and communities, is a blind spot. The industry is a response to a perception, a blind spot, a cultural revolution, that we are disconnected from our ecosystems. The ecosystems around our homes. Around our communities." We cross a bridge in a wooded stream corridor and the trees give way to an overgrazed fescue cattle pasture with multiflora rose and autumn olive sprinkled around. The wooded creek draw is on the pasture side of the fence giving creek access to the cattle.

I say, "Instead of empowering ourselves with our own medicine supply, plants tended in shared gardens and forests, we become dependent on agriculture/chemical/pharmaceutical industry and their paid for corrupt governments to heal us. If you look at how these industries are organized and how they relate with governments, maybe squint your eyes if it's not coming in, the model of the colonies for the empires emerges."

"These industries are based on the extraction for profit model that is responsible for brutal destruction across the planet," I continued as we are now passing various old cattle farms that are maintained with mowers now. There's various tree saplings and shrubs scattered around the pastures. I said, "I just seen they set the Gulf of Mexico on fire. They set the ocean on fire..."

I've read about this in studying European nation state colonies of Africa, Asia, India and the America's. The common threads are becoming more apparent. I say, "nation states validate the colonies when they pay. Abandon when they don't. Nation states provide loans, military's, administrative support, trade negotiations and embargo's, gifts, labor, infrastructure development like safe harbors and paved roads, and all these things to support a small class of people who are organizing severe human rights abuses. Notice I'm using present tense here. The colonies are now called a 'territory' or a 'sovereign nation' in classrooms. The recent Iraq and Afghanistan conquests are fresh examples of what I call the modern colony. Vietnam changed dramatically post conquest didn't it."

We can add Libya and other nation states I'm unaware of in this moment. Syria is deep in it along with Qatar. The Palestine, Canada, the Amazon and Papa New Guinea are in other places of the cycle of colonialism. Colonialism has been around half a millennia. There's many stages that a colony passes through and can last several centuries or more. Many times rebelling to gain freedom only to be invaded by a european nation state again.

The boundary between nation state and international corporations like banks, media, military, etc. is getting pretty blurry. This colonial extraction for profit model has paid well to the organizers.

"The colonies are managed with internal rules set by the governing nation-state, the investors, the managers, the bosses, the individual, and finally the whole shifting collective consciousness. Why is this happening? Aaaggghhh. I want to vomit."

Nature is receiving all this. The brutality of people in their homelands is horrendous. The brutality to biodiversity is tremendous.

I conclude with, "it seems we are getting sicker instead. This separation from nature is making us sick."

I hadn't really heard my self speak so clearly and focused about it. I was kinda digesting what was being said. It was all ecstatic releasing to the truth of the matter. Letting go of any blockages for seeing clearly. I felt blessed. My friend is the most disciplined fresh-local-foods forager I know, and he trusts his diet to support his good health. I was hoping how I finished it would help to make it more personal. To be received. This is a personal matter.

My friend hadn't received it quite the same way. Haha. It's all good. The rest of the car ride I listened to him throw up blocks to fully receiving the information shared. I listened with appreciation of being allowed to witness the blocks I just released come out once again. Occasionally I would spoil his block with details. Details matter.

Words matter. It's important that we get to an understanding of what words mean when they are being spoken. We may not understand each others words. I say may not. It's inevitable. We all put up our uniquely crafted projections onto words. My words have been working on this craft of using right words. My listening has been working on actively seeing my projections and letting them go so I can receive better.

A major spell of the english language is the ambiguity. Throw in the information age and ambiguity seems to be at never-before-seen proportions on multiple dimensions.

The overgrazed cattle pastures are common sights at this point. Some pastures have been retired and are now growing up with juniper, multiflora rose, autumn olive, gooseberry, aromatic sumac, honeylocust and a few others. My friend seemed to have some un-describable block. He was moving all around it but couldn't find the reason. The reason as to why it was decided to remove human from ecosystem. Why make that decision? For what benefit is derived?

I listened while he sorted through all the blocks. All the reasons. All the ways to not see that all these farms, country homes on 5 acre lots and row-crops are ecosystems with the primary agent of control is indeed human. When a strong wind blows some trees over or a hurricane clears the coastline of trees, ecologist call this a 'disturbance'. It's a force, from inside or outside of the ecosystem, that brings energy and transforms the flow somehow.

The most influential determining agent in the ecosystem has been erased and the results are in. I was so grateful to witness his navigating all the reasons he could find. I was so grateful to hold patience and understanding while only getting more clear on the truth of this.

It's a personal decision we all have made in this culture it seems. To some degree on the spectrum. When did we make that decision in ourselves?

At some point we should have another part of the discussion about how people have cultivated the plants we consider wild. These plants were cultivated for millennia. These plants are now disappearing under our culture.

We arrived at the farm. Parked and walked through the pasture to a small stream with fresh depositions of sand outside of its banks. We discussed planting melons in the fresh sand to take advantage of this beautiful opportunity nature has provided to nurture each other.

The conversation was growthful for both. Together we reflected on it in later days. The conversation has since been empowering for me in relating to nature. These plants are my brothers and sisters. We are growing up together, changing over the years, relating in strange and beautiful ways over the years. I see them. They are so enchantingly inviting. They have so much to give. I appreciate.