Discuss: The Most Radical Thing You Can Do

Hi

I have just come across your blog and I was very interested to read your great posting.  I absolutely love staying at home and I agree with a lot of what you have written. It’s a coincidence maybe, but I have just written about “roots” and all the work there is to do on the land.         

The most radical thing I have ever done in my whole life is to leave my comfortable, suburban, cosmopolitan lifestyle behind, in pursuit of the good life here in the Abruzzo countryside.

Response to David Hicks
“‘Staying home’ is the norm for every species but us.  Organisms evolve to fit a particular habitat, and prosper there.”

Perhaps, but the particular habitats of many species, from whales to caribou to swallows, involves migration of incredible distances.

On the article and subject overall - Staying home can be a viable and healthy alternative to a hectic, overscheduled, overconsumptive way of life. It can also be a retreat into isolation and insularity.

I love the city and the place I live in, the mountains, the ocean, the wild places a few miles away. I love my neighborhood, but I would not want to spend my whole life restricted to it, to never travel to the mountains that I can see on a clear day. I would never want to spend my whole life even in this region – to never see anything beyond that. (There is an interesting contrast between this discussion and the “Leave no Child Inside” piece – “In suburban Fort Collins, Colorado, teachers shake their heads in dismay when they describe the many students who have never been to the mountains visible year-round on the western horizon.”)

I want to bless the lives of my children with an extensive sense of place and knowledge of the community and environment we live in. I also want to give them the opportunity to see other places – to see the wonder of a Southwest desert, to feel the wind blowing across the prairie (what is left of it) in the Dakotas, to stand amidst redwoods, or to know the gentle beauty of a Pennsylvania mountain. When I was a child, my parents set the goal of showing my brother and I the United States, all 50 states of it, by the time I graduated high-school. We spent summer vacations driving around the country in the back of a battered pickup or van, and I have so many cherished memories of the people, places and things I saw there.

Maybe the damage caused by this kind of travel is not sustainable, and travel is something we have to give up. Maybe, but I would like to think there are ways to have that sort of horizon-broadening experience in a sustainable future - to have a sense of place and rootedness, but also to be able to go on walkabout and see other places.

John

>J-chapman re: David Hicks
Very thoughtful, reasoned and purposeful statement personal testament of perception, balance and place.
My personal attempt to speak to the importance of seeking to balance the allure of being on the move is not analagous to the migratory patterns of other species.

The reason is the destruction of habitat that accompanies a culture of growth above sustainability.
This condition is not unique to the US, but my personal experience leads me to believe living within a self-defined set of limits is easier and more rewarding when one recognizes that demand control starts at home.

Watching the human caused habitat destruction and depredation from satellite imaging is even more pronounced recently when one views the Gulf of Mexico, the Amazon Basin, and the Sahara Desert growth.

Although I am not personally able to participate in direct environmental restoration, I personally can avoid living at the dead end of suburban sprawl, staying off the road whenever possible, and by bearing witness to minimally destructive lifestyle management possibilities.

This is not to be judgmental of our brethren who are not able to make conscious choices. That is the tragedy that the American lifestyle often demands.  Many of our lives are negatively impacted by the greed and destruction of ‘growth at any cost’ zombies in charge (Z.I.C.S.)

My conviction is that there are alternatives, but we have to be vigilant, mindful and supportive to counter the Z.I.C.S.
thundering noise.