Sustainability Is the Answer When the Future Is in Question
By Calleigh Ferrara
Early on, I met some of the leaders in the deep ecology movement. I was quite disappointed to learn they weren't living in a way that reflected their writing or speeches. They weren't the rugged forest people of my dreams. At twenty-one, fresh out of college, I was ready to act. My life had been full of words and thoughts, but little action. I had heard over and over again that actions spoke louder than words. So with my backpack of food and gear, I voluntarily dropped out of mass society.
Sustainability means something quite different to me now than it did when I removed myself from town life and relocated to a remote community nestled in the mountains of Northern California. What it had meant then was living in a primitive way, using the simplest methods for attaining food, shelter, warmth, and clothing. I was ready to wash my clothes on rocks in a river, use rendered varmint fat lamps at night, and sleep in the dirt. Following this notion, I grew most of my food (at least 75%) by hand, using a digging fork, a rake, and a wheelbarrow with little outside sources of fertilizer. For several years, this took most of my time. It fed me and others. I found that life could be sustained with relatively few materials aside from the vast resources of the soil and sun. This lesson, along with the people I've shared it with here, has brought me much happiness and growth.
Changing my life in this way has changed my whole being. Physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of myself have developed that I believe would never have been cultivated had I not moved into the woods.
I have stayed very physically active, which has kept my body strong and healthy. A chronic ailment has almost completely ceased. The act of growing my food and consuming it has been my medicine. This personal benefit alone has helped my family accept my chosen lifestyle. We live in a way that requires little money, but demands large amounts of physical effort. We are continually stretching our bodies. We truly work for our living.
Recently we've been building a home. When I dreamed of building, I fully realized it was just that, a dream. Most people use large sums of money to buy materials. Even if we had money, hauling in materials created with large inputs of energy to this remote spot seemed too energy-intensive. As with any project here, we made a mental list of what resources we could gather: small trees thinned from the forest, small and large rocks from the garden and river beds, along with dirt from excavation of the site. When I learned about cob, an ancient building style influenced today by sixteenth century Europe, I learned that the Earth would again provide. Now I sit, after a long summer of cobbing, in a home with a rock foundation, earthen walls and poles supporting a wood roof we helped mill. The way we chose to build was less energy-consuming on a planetary level, but energy-intensive on our bodies. Building our home was (and is, for it's not finished yet!) a beautiful approach which has brought many people together in a sharing of life and creation.
I have learned so much about cultural sustainability living in community. Other people have taught me a lot about parenting, crafting, music, and especially about humans. We have created a family here of non-blood-related people with backgrounds that are similar but also diverse. We have come together from many parts of this continent intent on living simply. Though similar, we have our differences. The members of each family relate to one another in unique ways. It has sometimes been our biggest challenge to understand one another across these family lines, in ways that I think blood or the sharing of parents can create. As we grow older, I have realized that one of our main tasks in this life is simply to get along with one another.
Much of the work we do involves a lot of quiet time. I have learned much about myself by spending a majority of my time in silence. After the first few years, growing food became somewhat of a "no brainer." Now I often quickly figure out how I want to do a project, but the project itself may take many hours. Growing up in modern culture, the TV world, and mixed with close to two decades of mental stimulation from schooling, my brain can go rampant if not held in check. My mind wanders into dramas in which I or other community members are the stars. In order to maintain sanity, I've had to learn simple meditation, prayer, and affirmations to avoid slipping into the human abyss of negativity. This is one of the biggest challenges to people living remotely. It often leads to the demise of their lifestyle and sends them back to urbanity. I see the wild creatures and model them. We're all just doing what we can to to survive. Our sustainability relies on our emotional stability.
One summer day a man came here. I offered him a drink of water from the little spring pool outside the house. He stood in the sun, looked out to the garden in all its summer vibrancy, stared me in the eye and said gently, "You know you live in paradise, don't you? You know that." I do know that, but I also know that at times I can't see this heaven because I am wallowing in a cerebral hell. Everyday, like most folks around the world, I am doing my best to stay positive and inspired. I still have much to learn.
My dream of enlightenment includes perpetual reverence of this place and all that reside here. Being amongst such awesome natural beauty I am often jolted out of my mundane thoughts by noticing a simple natural event such as an eagle soaring above me. Experiences like this one connect me back into beauty and life. Sometimes I've thought that the destructive, unsustainable practices in our mass society are due to the lack of beauty experienced in urban settings. If nature isn't in full view, how can humans make ecologically appropriate decisions?
In nature I find the sacred. Living here has brought a heightened sense of the spiritual because the spirit speaks to me through it. I can sing or pray or just be in awe. Most people feel security through their finances or through the locks on their doors. I find security in the earth and I live on faith. Through the Spirit, I find endurance. This is sustainability.
In the first years that I lived here, we were creating what we called a "closed system." A closed system acts as its own mini-universe. Following the laws of physics, energy can not be created nor destroyed in this system. All resources come from the land or area and provide the primary needs of food, shelter, and clothing. Wastes go back into the closed system to be transformed. This was my ideal. Each input of manure, clothing, food, and such seemed to me a little failure. But we gloried in the bounty provided by the earth.
Old inputs into the system often create non-transformable waste. We haven't gloried in the output of trash. Getting rid of garbage is difficult the farther you are from a dump, unless you create your own disposal site, which inevitably leads to land becoming trashed. Much of our garbage, mostly plastic, comes in with our input of humans in the forms of guests or short-term residents. We have a policy of guests packing out whatever they've brought in. This helps us and helps them realize what garbage they create.
In a sustainable lifestyle, waste management is a complex issue. Inflow of people means more "unsustainable" technologies and more garbage, but with the advantage of more human diversity. Outflow of us means more "unsustainable" technology use, but enables us to earn money, learn skills, and experience more human diversity. We do create more garbage when out. Walking a mile to our house from our car (and having to cross a river in between) really helps eliminate unnecessary stuff at our cars before it winds up at home. Still, if I were to want to move, the backpack I carried in here in 1989 would now be filled along with a couple of truck loads.
Sometimes it feels like we are constantly being barraged with stuff and we have to put up a guard or be engulfed. I'm not always appreciative of people's generosity. This is so different from older cultures. Sometimes I think about how difficult it was for primitive cultures to meet their primary needs. I realize that we are ungrateful at times. The things that come here are often other peoples' discards: tools, clothes, books, buckets, blankets, etc. They come with their blessings and their burdens. Clothing, once a time-consuming handcraft essential for keeping one's body warm, is now hauled from this country to other continents on barges, sold by the pound. Most people these days have too much stuff, and it comes from all over the world. In part this is due to the cheapness of foreign labor (often virtually indistinguishable from slave labor), the mechanization of industry, and advertising. This global economic structure is extremely energy-intensive and completely unsustainable.
We try to make best use of everything we have. For the most part, our clothes are so thrashed by the time we are done with them that they are of little use to anyone even in the third world. We have taken to cutting articles of our natural fiber clothing up into conveniently sized squares and using them as "butt wipe." Just a little helpful hint for sustainable living. In a remote setting, far from the neighborhood store, people rely on their ingenuity and resourcefulness. When they want something, they often try to figure out how to make it from what they already have or can harvest, rather than jump in a vehicle and zip down to the store (which takes three hours!) to purchase it. They might just decide that they don't really need what they were wanting. These solutions to desires are creative. Making things or doing without often gives people a sense of satisfaction not attained by a credit card, and eliminates the stress of debt. Happiness and stability create sustainability.
I continue to live in this beautiful and remote community way back in the woods. I still grow most of my food. But I have gone from living in a way that was closer to the Earth, less dependent on money and contact with "the outside world," to scaling up (or down, depending on how you look at it) a bit because I couldn't "sustain" it. Sustainability has become a member of a list of catchwords for ecological technologies and lifestyles that may lose meaning through its scattered usage. Through time, I have personalized the concept of sustainability.
I have learned to be realistic in my pursuit of "sustainability." If I can't continue my way of living because my body is breaking down, my relations to other humans are lacking, or my needs aren't being met, it isn't "sustainable," folks! Sustainable means perpetual. It has to do with finding balance within ourselves and with the planet. I am happily continuing to practice sustainability. I try something and through time I distinguish its practicality in my life. I revamp or sustain it and continue on.
I have increased my income, though it's still well under the poverty level. For many seasons, I lived on less than two thousand dollars a year. After the basic expenses of buying the food I can't grow, materials for clothing, and our community dues (which include maintenance and land tax), there weren't funds for what could be considered secondary needs of shelter improvements, vehicles, and travel.
These needs became more substantial for me through time. I began longing to visit family. I experienced a minor emergency that taught me a lesson about the benefits of a financial buffer. I wanted to buy and maintain a vehicle.
So my life has changed a bit. I used to get in a car 5-7 times a year. Now it's up to a couple dozen times. Living so isolated, it is important for me to experience other people. I have found relating to other humans essential. To survive, I need friends and family. Also, going "out" makes me appreciate home.
Living remotely sets one to learning about oneself and establishing a relationship with nature. Life can be challenging in a closed system of human culture, without a tribe or trying to create a tribe from a community. Even tribes mingled. Humans are social creatures. I have found solace from the inflow and outflow of people and circumstances by retreating to the ever-present and sustaining natural world. The modern urban world revolves around constant change, high-speed motion. People immersed in it often seem restless and addicted to newness. The natural world is ever-changing too. But change comes from transformation of old into new into old again. Death becomes life. Life becomes death. Right there, in a deer curling up under a large oak for its last sleep and the oak looking greener the following year. No inputs or outputs, just the same elements continually mixing in the awe-inspiring cycle of life. Nature shows us sustainability in every moment.
Recently I have had an image in my head of something I believe is beautiful. It could seem like a radical thought, and for the average American, it's probably quite morbid. It is the image of young people eating food that has been grown in soil containing the ashes of their ancestors. Connecting with Mother and Father by eating the deliciousness of ripened fruit grown from their life force could awaken people from ignorance into an understanding of the source of our sustenance. This image really gives me peace. I think if we began scattering our ashes in the gardens, we might just respect our elders. We might just create sustainable culture. We might just save our world.
We, as an unsustainable culture, have lost an appreciation for the beauty and lessons the natural world holds. We have lost the awareness of our reliance on the earth. We've exhausted our wonder for this planet and have moved on to others. But none of them as yet have shown any qualities that can sustain us.
From this loss of connection to that which gives us life, comes an even bigger one. In neurological studies, it has been found that modern people use only 10% of their brain! But when aborigines were studied, scientists found that these primitive people used much more. Perhaps in earlier times we had more senses than just five. If so, I believe one that has been lost is our common sense. Another is intuition. Whatever the other 90% of the brain could be doing for us humans, getting back to more primitive living could do this planet a big favor. Through time, I have changed some of the ways I live. I no longer grow my food entirely by hand. A low impact on the earth may mean a high impact on the self. High impact can mean stress on the body, the psyche, or it can mean a "high" impact, a spiritual practice, a meditation. There has to be balance for any implementation to be continued.
I once knew a man who wanted no connections to the modern world. He talked much of closed systems, very rarely got into cars, grew more of his own food (including grains) than anyone I have ever known, and hibernated in the winter like a wild animal. I also spent time with him in a hospital's ICU ward where he was plugged into at least a half-dozen machines that were beeping and blipping, keeping him alive. One tube went straight into his jugular. He was being mainlined with a dose of the system. He survived despite and because of it. The experience has had a profound effect on me. I have learned that sustainability includes flexibility.
After I experienced a few trips to the chiropractor myself, I contemplated gardening with machines while recovering. These days, I'm using larger implements than a garden fork and scythe. I use a rototiller and a mower, too. (It helped to fall in love with a farmer.) These tools, as dependent on nonrenewable resources as they are, enable me to save my back, keep the garden worked and fertilized, and mini-farm, which allows us to make money while staying mostly at home. I am often amazed at how little gas the tiller actually takes. We are able to grow much of our food for home use, and the garlic and flowers to sell, on about five gallons of gas. The savings of time and of wear-and-tear on our bodies are great.
Our small business helps us engage with others, too. We relate to lots of different people in different settings. I appreciate seeing the diversity and interacting with people. It is a way for us to plant little seeds of simple living in many people each year. This is important. It satisfies my need to encourage sustainability, and people support it.
For those of us in pursuit of a sustainable lifestyle, we must reckon with the difficulties of not being part of the norm. Strong societal pressure can pull at us when we are down. In our heads, the cultural messages creep in, telling us how life would be better with a tractor, a "normal" job, cheap food, new store-bought clothes, our bodies shaved, and a TV to entertain us. The status quo says, "buy me. It'll make your life better and easier. Fit in. It'll make you a better person." This status quo has been created to be enticing and seductive, so we will accept it and buy more junk. The closer one is to the mainstream, the more difficult it can be to go against the flow. But we continue to resist. We know we will find our sustenance from the Earth. We have stamina. We have sustainability.
Calleigh Ferrara lives without phone, email, or fax in Mad River, California.
�2001* Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2001
Volume 11, Number 1
Tools for Sustainability/Eco-Humor
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