Page 33 - ECOlogic Book

that is origins can be traced and its quality known. A first step in knowing
home, in the bioregional sense, is to be intimately familiar with this most
basic element of life. And it’s a great organizing tool, for it begins to define
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the natural boundaries of place.

Many others see the key to biological planning to be the watershed, as well.
th
The word itself is a 19 Century English word that means “parting” (of the
flow) or “separation (of the waters). It meant the boundary line that
separated the flow of rainfall . . . stretched to include an area of land which
drains water, sediment and dissolved materials to a common outlet at some
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point along a stream or river. Water, because it does not tend to obey
human desires, forces us to read the scriptures of the natural world. This is
the flow of the bioregion; within these fuzzy boundaries unique life systems
and cultures can have their florescence if they are respected and not overly
bent to serve human purposes. Earth’s natural circulatory systems: air,
magma, and water, are intermeshed, often within a particular region. These
have become enmeshed, (and usually contravened), by industrial “flows”.
Returning these natural systems to their natural flows is what is meant by
bioregional renewal. To work with bioregional consciousness is to know
where everything comes from and where everything goes.

Recycling, though it may not impact the larger abusive industrial processes
significantly is often the beginning of ecological consciousness. Citizens who
work on recycling committees soon learn that they must know where the
local dump is, how many years it has left, what can safely be incinerated (if
anything), what their county and state are planning to do with solid waste in
the future, what leachate is and how it gets into the ground water, where
the ground water goes, what markets there are for recycled materials, what
manufacturers are making materials that can be recycled, how to compost,
how to encourage markets for recycled materials. They may even begin to
ask such questions as, “What is the true meaning and purpose of the market
system? How can the true costs of environmental degradation best be
accounted for?” Delving deeply into these questions can change your
consciousness.

But, says Richard Register, the real flow is the mental flow. For example, as
Michael Cohen shows, water from organism Earth “flows into our personal

24 Plant, Judith, “Growing Home”, in Home: a Bioregional Reader, Van Andrus, Christopher Plant, Judith
Plant & Eleanore Wright, eds., (New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, PA, 1990).
25 Johnson, Steve, “Knowing Home: The Basis of Bioregions”, in Knowing Home, (Rain Umbrella, Portland,
OR, 1981).

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