Beautiful column and photos as always. I 'batch up' (haha) your writings so when I have some nice interrupted time, I can read and absorb them without the rest of 'life' getting in the way. THANK YOU!
That's actually quite a compliment! Something every writer hopes for, I think, that what we put out in the world will be worthy of someone's true attention. Thank you! Also, YES. Great quote.
Antonia, thank you so much for this post. I spend a lot of time thinking about property law - especially its capacity to recognize and embrace Indigenous laws through alternative forms of ownership and land tenure. I wrote this paper last year on personhood and urban parks in the Canadian context, in case it's of interest - https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ulj/vol50/iss1/1/. Any interest in a reading group??
Thank YOU for sharing this with me -- right up my alley, as you can probably tell, and exactly the kinds of difficult questions I hope more people are asking (including me). Would you mind if I shared it with a couple of science writer friends? These are issues we talk about a lot. (One of them lives in Vancouver and another is in Toronto and works with First Nations on museum exhibitions and similar -- so many things to go wrong with those ...)
Hi!! Thank you for the podcast (listened and loved). An enthusiastic yes to sharing the article. And hopefully you'll come to Vancouver some time to visit your friend and we can chat about all of this in person! :)
Shared, thank you! I know they'll all read it with interest. And I have so many colleagues and acquaintances and friends in Vancouver by now, I really should.
This paper is so good, BTW. This is something I've wondered about idly but didn't know enough about to even form a question, but you've really pulled out the main problem-thread: "personhood is a legal compromise that is not necessarily rooted in Indigenous law." And the section about how "Legal personhood can be introduced without changing power relations" is so, so, so important.
I interviewed someone at the university in Vancouver a couple of years ago for this book I'm working on about Teck Resources and water pollution out of British Columbia. I asked her about that court ruling that acknowledged most of western Canada is unceded land. Her opinion was that no matter what the ruling said, the Canadian governments would never support full First Nations control over land. Do you know if that's been tested at all? (I'm not asking your opinion on the ruling or what she said, as you might not be able to say publicly in any case, but it's an interesting one.)
Sometimes when people feel strongly about something, hopelessness can creep in. A while back I participated in a class of great value. Rather than focusing on the world that is, one aspect of the program was TO REALIZE THAT EVERYTHING THAT IS started out as simply one thought by one person. It remains the currency of change in our world even if it does not always feel that way. Keep writing Antonia. Always great to check in.
It's all we have. The other option derives from "the divine right of Kings" these are just mechanisms to stop thought and discussion. Stopping thoughtful evaluation ends progress in all things
JoDe Goudy is really someone who's worth listening to! He has ways of phrasing it all that thread it right back into the present ... Thanks for the reminder, Jake! :)
I've been reading Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin, kind of a related quote:
“It is my conviction that we are at the end of a historical period in which processes & approaches that initially have been exceedingly constructive & helpful* have run their course and are now in many ways counterproductive” pp56
I have so many quotes written down now after you recommended listening to those lectures (the hard copy just arrived). Related: “It is not so much what planning needs as *whose* planning needs.”
I am so, so glad that last came through. Truth be told, I was pretty emotionally raw and unspeakably grateful to have that creek to go to and the time to sit by it.
Sorry that the legalities aren't in nature's favour. Here in the UK the license for an open cast mine expired last year and the miners... kept mining. Enter confusion about the void of enforcement. More positively, elsewhere in the world rivers have been given legal rights.
That sounds similar to an issue that's been going on with Nestle pumping water from public streams in California for private water bottling decades after their permit expired. These things have to be enforced or they don't matter ...
Rights of Nature is something huge. I hope it spreads far and wide. A group got Lake Eerie rights of nature, followed by the governor of that state promptly making it illegal for a person to represent "nature," but I don't think they're going to give up. The absurdity of corporations having rights but nature not is, I hope, coming home to more people.
“Law, as I’ve written before, is a reflection of the dominant society’s values at any given time.” And a reflection of the masses of the dominant society’s willingness to fucking pay attention … which is a value of sorts too, I suppose. Understandable, given the mighty weight of capital directed toward distraction and obfuscation, but still, it pisses me off. It’s all going on right in front of our noses!
I was at a discussion in Missoula re: the leases years ago in the fading days when the Obama administration was still running the show and there was talk then of assigning the Badger Two national monument status. Tribal representatives were vehemently opposed then and I hope they continue to hold the line. The only answer is #landback. As for people wringing their hands over access when the tribe is returned what is and has always been rightfully theirs (even if via a concept utterly foreign to most of our ideas of what “theirs” even means), I pay $100/year to buy a conservation license from the CSKT to access their lands for recreational purposes, including the tribal wilderness. Hard to imagine the Blackfeet doing anything differently. Some sites might be off limits (Chief Mountain, in GNP, comes to mind, which they should also absolutely have back and limit access to) but that isn’t up to us, as you say.
Anyway, thank you for sharing your love for this place, Antonia. It is inspiring. ❤️
Lack of attention is the truth. If you knew the number of self-proclaimed liberals I've talked with in Whitefish who have never heard of the CSKT Water Compact ... even though it's reported on regularly in the Daily Inter-Lake (which they don't read). The mighty weight of capital isn't something I dismiss, but there is a certain level where people with time and resources are making a choice about where their attention goes. It frustrates me to no end.
From what I heard from Blackfeet people at the gathering, I think they'll continue to hold the line. The Elders were clear on it, and the younger people downright passionate. Hearing John Murray say it during his talk was something else. I'm not kidding about what went through that room.
The access worry is something I've heard over and over and I honestly don't get it. All I can think is that it's a version of "we're scared people will do to us what we did to them." Nick Estes wrote about it in "Our History Is the Future." So many people have written and talked about this fear! Wasting time, energy, and attention on soothing settler-colonial worries that are rooted in the fact of the thefts themselves. When you can literally buy a Blackfeet conservation license online with little effort.
I have a whole metaphor I've got ready for people when they say this to me now, about my garden, that I'm developing into a tale to share if I'm ever invited back on a certain podcast we've talked about.
Love for a place isn't worth much if we hoard it all for ourselves, is it? 😉💚
So grateful for you being here -- and being *here.* The top 3 photos were taken hiking Nasucoin a couple weeks ago with the same person I picked your apples with. Can't imagine a better person to share that place and day with. 😊
Nasucoin is one of my favorite places. Thought the views were familiar! The apples are almost ready! The brandts are doing a pressing on a weekend I will be gone. If you want to take some to press, be my guest! They still need a frost but they are more beautiful than I ever remember.
Hard to miss the abandoned bedstead at the top of the peak! 😂 I love it so much.
I will check in with Barb. I’m going to be gone the next 2 weekends. Not sure when Tyler is doing hers. Cider for the people! Wish I could bring some to a picket line … 🍏🍏🍏
The tagline for this post was right on point for me this morning. I'm older now (58) at the end of this month, not in the best of physical health. And I'm someone with a lot of academic letters behind their name to which I never truly "lived up" according to the standard Western secular script. I should have a book to my credit! Now's the time!
I had another Big Project Idea the other day, and it would involve me living up to that life script... which may mean that it's ill-advised for me to push the idea forward any more strenuously than I've already done. I've pushed seemingly good project ideas before, mostly to the benefit of a wealthy employer and that collection of digital inkblots I call a resume. But the result for me on a spiritual level was an immense amount of strife.
Maybe what my God wants me to do is: show up to the mosque for prayer and community meals occasionally; sit on the couch and listen to a podcast about the life of the Prophet SAWS; make occasional outreach calls to other fellows in recovery; cook my meals. And take walks by a nearby river, frequently. In short: live a very, very simple life.
I don't know: maybe I'll get that text message, Insha Allah. And maybe I won't, Insha Allah.
"digital inkblots I call a resume" did make me laugh! I know what you mean. So many things just aren't worth the trade-off (this is why I've been a freelancer for over 20 years, for the flexibility but also really hated working in an office at assigned hours every day).
Sometimes it's hard to know what it is you're being asked to do. Listening to what speaks most truthfully to us helps a great deal. Definitely more than what a lifetime of pressures and expectations tell us we "should" be doing or "should" have done already. The creeks have no "shoulds" -- they just run over the rocks, absorb the snowmelt in spring and slow to the pace of ice in winter. They're a good teacher for me. 🩵
This is beautiful. And the scene of the shock flash gave me goosebumps! What an awesome gathering to be a part of. And thank you for sharing your creek song. ✨
In the same way that staring into a campfire seems to call forth something primal...as if being called back to a oneness that, like the sacred, can never be captured, described, reduced, or tamed by human language...as a young boy I used to spend hours adrift in the music and the magic of mountain streams. Whether fishing, or just staring deep into time, I was lost to the world, but at the same time never felt so at home. Never felt so connected.
Thank you for sharing, Nia. The photos are lovely.
"I was lost to the world, but at the same time never felt so at home. Never felt so connected." That is the absolute truth. I hadn't thought of it as being like a campfire in the way it brings us back to a oneness, but you're right, it is.
Glad to share! Glad we're both in this corner of the wide, miraculous world.
I've been asked to part of a focus group looking at hiking access on a new acquisition by our local land trust, a 216-acre farm that would have been sold for development had the land trust not bought it and would doubtless have been covered with 5-acre ranchettes each with their own well, septic, outbuildings, lawn, and driveway.
The local organic farm school will regeneratively farm the land. The public will have access to trails and to hundreds of feet of shoreline and beach. The property will be protected against development "in perpetuity", whatever that means.
All good, right? So, what's bugging me?
It's that the only way to protect land from development is to own it. It's still property.
Is that the right answer? I don't know. It seems it's the only one we have right now.
You are not alone, as I'm sure you know. I just had a great conversation with the Schumacher Institute last week (in Massachusetts), and this is the bugbear of all of these projects. It STILL has to be property, and in fact it's essential that it's property if you truly want it ensure protection. One encouraging thing is how many people know that this is a problem.
David Bollier had a great episode of his Frontiers of Communing podcast with an environmental lawyer who's been bothered by exactly this issue and is taking a different approach, one focused on "self-owning land." Maybe the beginnings of a shift? We'll see what happens. You might be interested in some of what he had to say: https://david-bollier.simplecast.com/episodes/thomas-linzey-on-natures-rights-and-self-owning-land
Still, though, 216 acres not turned into ranchettes and driveways with groomed lawns sounds like a pretty heartening thing to see happen. And public access to shoreline and beach! That's a perpetual loss to private property that it's good to see protected.
David and I are trying to arrange a time for a long talk. He's been doing a lot of work, and I think evolving thinking along the same lines we're talking about. He said in a talk he gave somewhere that our property paradigm in the U.S. simply makes it almost impossible to truly bring commons-based land relationship fully back to life.
YES! It really is. In fact, I have another subscriber to thank for setting me up with the Schumacher Institute, who also looped in David. We had a conversation a few years ago, but a lot more came out as we reconnected.
Also thanks for the Land Back resource page. I particularly liked Toastie's talking points in the HCN article. I remember seeing it go by, but I didn't have you to connect the dots for me!
I like Toastie's article because it really does provide a connective tissue for a lot of other stories around landback. I'll keep adding to it when I find things!
What a land Montana seems to be! I hope to pack the Subaru and come visit some day. As much as it seems weird to say, I feel that same way about much of Arkansas. Maybe it's not quite so vast, but I get to live amongst the oaks and pines and the cricks. It's not too shabby.
There are so many places that aren’t too shabby! One of the speakers at this conference is a well-known outdoors writer from Alabama. The way he writes about all kinds of places brings home the miraculous beauty of this planet … especially cricks. Cricks are where it’s at.
We love the river. We love the stream. But the crick is so intimate, so delicate, and so beautiful. Maybe it's the finite nature of a crick that allows you to appreciate it, as it will likely leave nothing but a smooth-rocked bed behind during the summer months. Maybe it's the game trails that lead up to the crick without crossing. Maybe it's the nostalgia of days spent with nothing better to do that poke around for snakes and crawdads. But we love a crick for it's unique life.
I love that so much. Cricks are something absolutely unique—that description of them, intimate, delicate, finite, often hidden.
I am not going to debate anyone on the pronunciation here. “Crick” has always been part of my lingo. I think it is in Montana in general, and “creek” is something a little different. My younger kid and I have a hidden huckleberry spot with the most beautiful crick. It’s our special place.
There is just something about a crick that feels like it's yours. Not in the larger sense of land possession that your writing often tangles with (and we are kindred spirits in our views, I believe, or at least complementary in our views), but in a personal sense that derives from a sense of respect for the nature of the thing, and almost a shared finite existence. Much of the earth was here before we were, and much of earth will outlive me. But we and the creeks share a timebound existence, and there is something special in that.
As far as pronunciation, some of that feels tied to regional dialect. My family often referred to the crick in the back of our land growing up as the Little Creek, but the two terms shared a definition.
What an incredible result. Whew. And that shock-flash moment...
You said that it's not often that an effort gets a win like this - do you think this is in itself a potential turning-point and important precedent for bigger things, or just adding a bit more to the existing weight of cases that had a good outcome? What can you see (or hope to see) happening next in related cases as a result?
Well, from what I've heard, the leaseholder hung on for so long because of the precedent being set -- that if you could drill next to a national park and a wilderness area, on Indigenous sacred land, then you can drill anywhere. I'm sure the money was a factor in folding (partly put up by a not-for-profit foundation), but I'm concerned they got the legal outcome they wanted anyway. Which means we have to watch where it crops up next.
The U.S.'s direction on drilling right now is not great, though as many would argue, if not here then from somewhere else (UK, too, I guess). Which is true because the shift away from fossil fuels has been blocked for decades. What I'd like to see is a huge movement away from dependence on fossil fuels, which I'm not really seeing anywhere. There's also a lot about the U.S.'s laws regarding mineral and fossil fuel extraction on public lands that's insanely out of date. This lease, like most, was sold for $1 an acre.
So there are a bunch of different factors. One of the ones I'd like to see highlighted most, and defended more broadly, is Indigenous people's rights to traditional land, sacred land, etc. Borders of these are always defined by colonial ideas of "where is your church?" for example, when they could be defined by traditional stories.
This is not the first, nor will it be the last, time that "environmentalists (in the broadest sense of the word, having nothing to do with specific organizations) will celebrate an act that reaffirms private property rights. It happened with the New World Mine years ago and will probably happen with Crevice Mountain. It happens to some degree with every conservation easement that entails a tax benefit. And until we can change the prevailing story about property, we are compelled to hope it will keep happening.
The sound of that creek is so lovely I've played it three times already. :) I'm so grateful that you were there to witness the Gathering and to share with us that news and what it was like to be there. That line about NEPA and NHPA....just no. I worked (that is, tried to work) in those frameworks and it's a maddening venture, the idea of that nothing is elevated over other 'priorities.' Just makes my blood start racing. I love the shock-flash, the feeling of that type of energy being recognized by a crowd, noting the resistance and why. Land back is beyond necessary--this back and forth and the values of commerce over land is so gutting on so many levels. I'm so glad you're writing about it and centering relationships we hold with the lands we live on. This line: "It’s asking questions of belonging and responsibility, and struggling with your own place in the world." Yes. That's exactly it. 💜
I wish I'd taken a longer recording, don't know what I was thinking. It's SO lovely, the perfect balance between sound and softness.
And, yeah, ... just no. One of my closest friends works in environmental law, and it's enough just talking with her to know how much industry regulatory capture there is. The most recent SCOTUS decision about Waters of the United States and wetlands and how they can't be prioritized over private property rights is yet another case in point. Maddening is the word. Makes me feel like a woman in a Greek myth sometimes, or Sappho, ready to tear my hair and rend my garments. Thank you, as always, for sharing your attention! 💚
That's some wonderful news! And those are some gorgeous photos. I'm especially fascinated by the gouges in the mountain side of the photo on the left in the second composite from the bottom. It looks like a huge bear took a swipe!
Doesn't it? My friend and I spent a while looking at it and trying to figure out why that mountainside is like that but none of the others. I figure it must be water erosion, and there instead of elsewhere because of a steeper slope. It's gotta be something to see that when the snow's in full melt, but I'm not sure you could get up there.
Beautiful column and photos as always. I 'batch up' (haha) your writings so when I have some nice interrupted time, I can read and absorb them without the rest of 'life' getting in the way. THANK YOU!
"Don't just do something. Sit there."
-Sylvia Boorstein
That's actually quite a compliment! Something every writer hopes for, I think, that what we put out in the world will be worthy of someone's true attention. Thank you! Also, YES. Great quote.
Antonia, thank you so much for this post. I spend a lot of time thinking about property law - especially its capacity to recognize and embrace Indigenous laws through alternative forms of ownership and land tenure. I wrote this paper last year on personhood and urban parks in the Canadian context, in case it's of interest - https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/ulj/vol50/iss1/1/. Any interest in a reading group??
Thank YOU for sharing this with me -- right up my alley, as you can probably tell, and exactly the kinds of difficult questions I hope more people are asking (including me). Would you mind if I shared it with a couple of science writer friends? These are issues we talk about a lot. (One of them lives in Vancouver and another is in Toronto and works with First Nations on museum exhibitions and similar -- so many things to go wrong with those ...)
You might be interested in this interview with Thomas Linsey on self-owning nature. He worked with Yakama Nation on rights of nature for the Columbia River. I think he mentioned some of the issues you're talking about, in passing, but I'd have to listen to it again: https://david-bollier.simplecast.com/episodes/thomas-linzey-on-natures-rights-and-self-owning-land
Thank you for being here! I'm excited to meet more people who are really working on these issues.
Hi!! Thank you for the podcast (listened and loved). An enthusiastic yes to sharing the article. And hopefully you'll come to Vancouver some time to visit your friend and we can chat about all of this in person! :)
Shared, thank you! I know they'll all read it with interest. And I have so many colleagues and acquaintances and friends in Vancouver by now, I really should.
This paper is so good, BTW. This is something I've wondered about idly but didn't know enough about to even form a question, but you've really pulled out the main problem-thread: "personhood is a legal compromise that is not necessarily rooted in Indigenous law." And the section about how "Legal personhood can be introduced without changing power relations" is so, so, so important.
I interviewed someone at the university in Vancouver a couple of years ago for this book I'm working on about Teck Resources and water pollution out of British Columbia. I asked her about that court ruling that acknowledged most of western Canada is unceded land. Her opinion was that no matter what the ruling said, the Canadian governments would never support full First Nations control over land. Do you know if that's been tested at all? (I'm not asking your opinion on the ruling or what she said, as you might not be able to say publicly in any case, but it's an interesting one.)
> Or we could just abolish capitalism. Can’t take that long if we all team up, can it?
I’m up for this. I have a couple of days free next week.
Let me pencil that in ...
Hm, maybe the week after? 🫠
That's good for me, have to be finished by 3pm as picking up the kids from school.
Awesome. We'll have this wrapped up before snow flies here!
Sometimes when people feel strongly about something, hopelessness can creep in. A while back I participated in a class of great value. Rather than focusing on the world that is, one aspect of the program was TO REALIZE THAT EVERYTHING THAT IS started out as simply one thought by one person. It remains the currency of change in our world even if it does not always feel that way. Keep writing Antonia. Always great to check in.
Fascinating thought that the whole white, patriarchal, monotheistic, colonial, extractive, capitalist carapace started *somewhere*.
Lovely quote in a previous newsletter “People say history is history but do not understand that it’s the reality of the present moment” by JoDe Goudy
It's all we have. The other option derives from "the divine right of Kings" these are just mechanisms to stop thought and discussion. Stopping thoughtful evaluation ends progress in all things
JoDe Goudy is really someone who's worth listening to! He has ways of phrasing it all that thread it right back into the present ... Thanks for the reminder, Jake! :)
I've been reading Real World of Technology by Ursula Franklin, kind of a related quote:
“It is my conviction that we are at the end of a historical period in which processes & approaches that initially have been exceedingly constructive & helpful* have run their course and are now in many ways counterproductive” pp56
* this does beg the question, helpful for *who*
I have so many quotes written down now after you recommended listening to those lectures (the hard copy just arrived). Related: “It is not so much what planning needs as *whose* planning needs.”
While reading, I felt the gamut of emotion -- interest, curiosity, joy, tension, uneasiness and peace.
I am so, so glad that last came through. Truth be told, I was pretty emotionally raw and unspeakably grateful to have that creek to go to and the time to sit by it.
Sorry that the legalities aren't in nature's favour. Here in the UK the license for an open cast mine expired last year and the miners... kept mining. Enter confusion about the void of enforcement. More positively, elsewhere in the world rivers have been given legal rights.
That sounds similar to an issue that's been going on with Nestle pumping water from public streams in California for private water bottling decades after their permit expired. These things have to be enforced or they don't matter ...
Rights of Nature is something huge. I hope it spreads far and wide. A group got Lake Eerie rights of nature, followed by the governor of that state promptly making it illegal for a person to represent "nature," but I don't think they're going to give up. The absurdity of corporations having rights but nature not is, I hope, coming home to more people.
“Law, as I’ve written before, is a reflection of the dominant society’s values at any given time.” And a reflection of the masses of the dominant society’s willingness to fucking pay attention … which is a value of sorts too, I suppose. Understandable, given the mighty weight of capital directed toward distraction and obfuscation, but still, it pisses me off. It’s all going on right in front of our noses!
I was at a discussion in Missoula re: the leases years ago in the fading days when the Obama administration was still running the show and there was talk then of assigning the Badger Two national monument status. Tribal representatives were vehemently opposed then and I hope they continue to hold the line. The only answer is #landback. As for people wringing their hands over access when the tribe is returned what is and has always been rightfully theirs (even if via a concept utterly foreign to most of our ideas of what “theirs” even means), I pay $100/year to buy a conservation license from the CSKT to access their lands for recreational purposes, including the tribal wilderness. Hard to imagine the Blackfeet doing anything differently. Some sites might be off limits (Chief Mountain, in GNP, comes to mind, which they should also absolutely have back and limit access to) but that isn’t up to us, as you say.
Anyway, thank you for sharing your love for this place, Antonia. It is inspiring. ❤️
Lack of attention is the truth. If you knew the number of self-proclaimed liberals I've talked with in Whitefish who have never heard of the CSKT Water Compact ... even though it's reported on regularly in the Daily Inter-Lake (which they don't read). The mighty weight of capital isn't something I dismiss, but there is a certain level where people with time and resources are making a choice about where their attention goes. It frustrates me to no end.
From what I heard from Blackfeet people at the gathering, I think they'll continue to hold the line. The Elders were clear on it, and the younger people downright passionate. Hearing John Murray say it during his talk was something else. I'm not kidding about what went through that room.
The access worry is something I've heard over and over and I honestly don't get it. All I can think is that it's a version of "we're scared people will do to us what we did to them." Nick Estes wrote about it in "Our History Is the Future." So many people have written and talked about this fear! Wasting time, energy, and attention on soothing settler-colonial worries that are rooted in the fact of the thefts themselves. When you can literally buy a Blackfeet conservation license online with little effort.
I have a whole metaphor I've got ready for people when they say this to me now, about my garden, that I'm developing into a tale to share if I'm ever invited back on a certain podcast we've talked about.
Love for a place isn't worth much if we hoard it all for ourselves, is it? 😉💚
Your made my heart leak out my eyes. Thanks once again for your writing and putting into words the love I feel for this land!
So grateful for you being here -- and being *here.* The top 3 photos were taken hiking Nasucoin a couple weeks ago with the same person I picked your apples with. Can't imagine a better person to share that place and day with. 😊
Nasucoin is one of my favorite places. Thought the views were familiar! The apples are almost ready! The brandts are doing a pressing on a weekend I will be gone. If you want to take some to press, be my guest! They still need a frost but they are more beautiful than I ever remember.
Hard to miss the abandoned bedstead at the top of the peak! 😂 I love it so much.
I will check in with Barb. I’m going to be gone the next 2 weekends. Not sure when Tyler is doing hers. Cider for the people! Wish I could bring some to a picket line … 🍏🍏🍏
That is definitely a "landmark"
I love that. "Cider for the people".
There are worse revolutionary slogans 😀
The tagline for this post was right on point for me this morning. I'm older now (58) at the end of this month, not in the best of physical health. And I'm someone with a lot of academic letters behind their name to which I never truly "lived up" according to the standard Western secular script. I should have a book to my credit! Now's the time!
I had another Big Project Idea the other day, and it would involve me living up to that life script... which may mean that it's ill-advised for me to push the idea forward any more strenuously than I've already done. I've pushed seemingly good project ideas before, mostly to the benefit of a wealthy employer and that collection of digital inkblots I call a resume. But the result for me on a spiritual level was an immense amount of strife.
Maybe what my God wants me to do is: show up to the mosque for prayer and community meals occasionally; sit on the couch and listen to a podcast about the life of the Prophet SAWS; make occasional outreach calls to other fellows in recovery; cook my meals. And take walks by a nearby river, frequently. In short: live a very, very simple life.
I don't know: maybe I'll get that text message, Insha Allah. And maybe I won't, Insha Allah.
"digital inkblots I call a resume" did make me laugh! I know what you mean. So many things just aren't worth the trade-off (this is why I've been a freelancer for over 20 years, for the flexibility but also really hated working in an office at assigned hours every day).
Sometimes it's hard to know what it is you're being asked to do. Listening to what speaks most truthfully to us helps a great deal. Definitely more than what a lifetime of pressures and expectations tell us we "should" be doing or "should" have done already. The creeks have no "shoulds" -- they just run over the rocks, absorb the snowmelt in spring and slow to the pace of ice in winter. They're a good teacher for me. 🩵
This is beautiful. And the scene of the shock flash gave me goosebumps! What an awesome gathering to be a part of. And thank you for sharing your creek song. ✨
All of these are things I feel very lucky to be able to share at all! Thank you for being here< Lindsey.
💦🩵
In the same way that staring into a campfire seems to call forth something primal...as if being called back to a oneness that, like the sacred, can never be captured, described, reduced, or tamed by human language...as a young boy I used to spend hours adrift in the music and the magic of mountain streams. Whether fishing, or just staring deep into time, I was lost to the world, but at the same time never felt so at home. Never felt so connected.
Thank you for sharing, Nia. The photos are lovely.
"I was lost to the world, but at the same time never felt so at home. Never felt so connected." That is the absolute truth. I hadn't thought of it as being like a campfire in the way it brings us back to a oneness, but you're right, it is.
Glad to share! Glad we're both in this corner of the wide, miraculous world.
Ah, Nia, your timing!
I've been asked to part of a focus group looking at hiking access on a new acquisition by our local land trust, a 216-acre farm that would have been sold for development had the land trust not bought it and would doubtless have been covered with 5-acre ranchettes each with their own well, septic, outbuildings, lawn, and driveway.
The local organic farm school will regeneratively farm the land. The public will have access to trails and to hundreds of feet of shoreline and beach. The property will be protected against development "in perpetuity", whatever that means.
All good, right? So, what's bugging me?
It's that the only way to protect land from development is to own it. It's still property.
Is that the right answer? I don't know. It seems it's the only one we have right now.
You are not alone, as I'm sure you know. I just had a great conversation with the Schumacher Institute last week (in Massachusetts), and this is the bugbear of all of these projects. It STILL has to be property, and in fact it's essential that it's property if you truly want it ensure protection. One encouraging thing is how many people know that this is a problem.
David Bollier had a great episode of his Frontiers of Communing podcast with an environmental lawyer who's been bothered by exactly this issue and is taking a different approach, one focused on "self-owning land." Maybe the beginnings of a shift? We'll see what happens. You might be interested in some of what he had to say: https://david-bollier.simplecast.com/episodes/thomas-linzey-on-natures-rights-and-self-owning-land
Still, though, 216 acres not turned into ranchettes and driveways with groomed lawns sounds like a pretty heartening thing to see happen. And public access to shoreline and beach! That's a perpetual loss to private property that it's good to see protected.
It's plus for sure! Thanks for that link. I'd lost track of David Bollier. Good to find him again.
Did you see this from Safar Fiertze about a land ownership model for small farms?
https://thefiertzeside.substack.com/p/farms-for-the-future
I had not heard of Safar Fiertze, but will follow now, thank you! And coincidentally, I read this from Land Clinic the other week, about the Farmers Land Trust: https://landclinic.substack.com/p/evolving-land-trust-practice-through
David and I are trying to arrange a time for a long talk. He's been doing a lot of work, and I think evolving thinking along the same lines we're talking about. He said in a talk he gave somewhere that our property paradigm in the U.S. simply makes it almost impossible to truly bring commons-based land relationship fully back to life.
I love connecting people!
I'd love to hear about your chat with David.
It seems many people are asking the same kinds of questions. It's starting to feel like a community @
YES! It really is. In fact, I have another subscriber to thank for setting me up with the Schumacher Institute, who also looped in David. We had a conversation a few years ago, but a lot more came out as we reconnected.
Also thanks for the Land Back resource page. I particularly liked Toastie's talking points in the HCN article. I remember seeing it go by, but I didn't have you to connect the dots for me!
I like Toastie's article because it really does provide a connective tissue for a lot of other stories around landback. I'll keep adding to it when I find things!
What a land Montana seems to be! I hope to pack the Subaru and come visit some day. As much as it seems weird to say, I feel that same way about much of Arkansas. Maybe it's not quite so vast, but I get to live amongst the oaks and pines and the cricks. It's not too shabby.
Must say Subarus do pretty well here. ;)
There are so many places that aren’t too shabby! One of the speakers at this conference is a well-known outdoors writer from Alabama. The way he writes about all kinds of places brings home the miraculous beauty of this planet … especially cricks. Cricks are where it’s at.
We love the river. We love the stream. But the crick is so intimate, so delicate, and so beautiful. Maybe it's the finite nature of a crick that allows you to appreciate it, as it will likely leave nothing but a smooth-rocked bed behind during the summer months. Maybe it's the game trails that lead up to the crick without crossing. Maybe it's the nostalgia of days spent with nothing better to do that poke around for snakes and crawdads. But we love a crick for it's unique life.
I love that so much. Cricks are something absolutely unique—that description of them, intimate, delicate, finite, often hidden.
I am not going to debate anyone on the pronunciation here. “Crick” has always been part of my lingo. I think it is in Montana in general, and “creek” is something a little different. My younger kid and I have a hidden huckleberry spot with the most beautiful crick. It’s our special place.
There is just something about a crick that feels like it's yours. Not in the larger sense of land possession that your writing often tangles with (and we are kindred spirits in our views, I believe, or at least complementary in our views), but in a personal sense that derives from a sense of respect for the nature of the thing, and almost a shared finite existence. Much of the earth was here before we were, and much of earth will outlive me. But we and the creeks share a timebound existence, and there is something special in that.
As far as pronunciation, some of that feels tied to regional dialect. My family often referred to the crick in the back of our land growing up as the Little Creek, but the two terms shared a definition.
That is so well said. I'd literally never thought of it that way. Like it's one of the natural things of the world that share our ephemerality.
And I know what you mean -- not a sense of something belonging to us, but of us belonging to it.
What an incredible result. Whew. And that shock-flash moment...
You said that it's not often that an effort gets a win like this - do you think this is in itself a potential turning-point and important precedent for bigger things, or just adding a bit more to the existing weight of cases that had a good outcome? What can you see (or hope to see) happening next in related cases as a result?
Well, from what I've heard, the leaseholder hung on for so long because of the precedent being set -- that if you could drill next to a national park and a wilderness area, on Indigenous sacred land, then you can drill anywhere. I'm sure the money was a factor in folding (partly put up by a not-for-profit foundation), but I'm concerned they got the legal outcome they wanted anyway. Which means we have to watch where it crops up next.
The U.S.'s direction on drilling right now is not great, though as many would argue, if not here then from somewhere else (UK, too, I guess). Which is true because the shift away from fossil fuels has been blocked for decades. What I'd like to see is a huge movement away from dependence on fossil fuels, which I'm not really seeing anywhere. There's also a lot about the U.S.'s laws regarding mineral and fossil fuel extraction on public lands that's insanely out of date. This lease, like most, was sold for $1 an acre.
So there are a bunch of different factors. One of the ones I'd like to see highlighted most, and defended more broadly, is Indigenous people's rights to traditional land, sacred land, etc. Borders of these are always defined by colonial ideas of "where is your church?" for example, when they could be defined by traditional stories.
This is not the first, nor will it be the last, time that "environmentalists (in the broadest sense of the word, having nothing to do with specific organizations) will celebrate an act that reaffirms private property rights. It happened with the New World Mine years ago and will probably happen with Crevice Mountain. It happens to some degree with every conservation easement that entails a tax benefit. And until we can change the prevailing story about property, we are compelled to hope it will keep happening.
Very, very, very true.
The sound of that creek is so lovely I've played it three times already. :) I'm so grateful that you were there to witness the Gathering and to share with us that news and what it was like to be there. That line about NEPA and NHPA....just no. I worked (that is, tried to work) in those frameworks and it's a maddening venture, the idea of that nothing is elevated over other 'priorities.' Just makes my blood start racing. I love the shock-flash, the feeling of that type of energy being recognized by a crowd, noting the resistance and why. Land back is beyond necessary--this back and forth and the values of commerce over land is so gutting on so many levels. I'm so glad you're writing about it and centering relationships we hold with the lands we live on. This line: "It’s asking questions of belonging and responsibility, and struggling with your own place in the world." Yes. That's exactly it. 💜
I wish I'd taken a longer recording, don't know what I was thinking. It's SO lovely, the perfect balance between sound and softness.
And, yeah, ... just no. One of my closest friends works in environmental law, and it's enough just talking with her to know how much industry regulatory capture there is. The most recent SCOTUS decision about Waters of the United States and wetlands and how they can't be prioritized over private property rights is yet another case in point. Maddening is the word. Makes me feel like a woman in a Greek myth sometimes, or Sappho, ready to tear my hair and rend my garments. Thank you, as always, for sharing your attention! 💚
Certainly, never time for complacency in conservation.
That's some wonderful news! And those are some gorgeous photos. I'm especially fascinated by the gouges in the mountain side of the photo on the left in the second composite from the bottom. It looks like a huge bear took a swipe!
Doesn't it? My friend and I spent a while looking at it and trying to figure out why that mountainside is like that but none of the others. I figure it must be water erosion, and there instead of elsewhere because of a steeper slope. It's gotta be something to see that when the snow's in full melt, but I'm not sure you could get up there.
Well, I think a huge magical bear is just as likely as silly erosion!
We always seem to land on bears, don't we?! I'll take the magical bear any day. You can believe in all kinds of things up there. 🐻
LIKE WENDGOS!!!!
😱 😱 😱