November 15th, 1997
THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER...
By Jackie Giuliano
As I sit looking out the window at an incredible cloudless view of the Pacific Ocean, I am
marveling at the perceptual contrasts in my life. I am spending my honeymoon on Orcas
Island, a member of the San Juan Islands in northern Washington State, in a rented house
nestled in the woods overlooking the ocean. Here on Raccoon Point, I can see the mainland
from Bellingham, Washington all the way to the Canadian Cascade Mountains. Mount Baker
juts into the sky and a number of smaller islands are strewn across the view.
Today brings unparalleled views and a bright, sunny day. So much for El Nino fears of
stormy weather (we understand so little about our atmosphere). I began this trip pretty
tired out and burned out, not only from planning my wedding, but also from seeing the
Earth in terms of her environmental problems on a daily basis.
Try as I might to see the beauty of our world and to heal our connections to her, I easily
get caught up in measuring the passing of time by the number of babies that have died of
diarrhea from bad drinking water (2,500 per hour). I find myself measuring our plane
flight to Seattle by the number of pounds of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere and
our drive to the ferry landing in terms of how much fossil fuel people in the U.S. use in
a day (313 million gallons of fuel - enough to drain 26 tractor-trailer trucks every
minute). During our peaceful one and one half-hour ferry trip to the island, my mind
wandered to what I wasn't getting done (these articles, my doctoral dissertation, etc.,
etc.).
As I was struggling to get my mind into the moment, it struck me again how huge the
challenge is for those of us in major urban areas to develop a relationship with the
natural world. It is so challenging to learn to co-exist with the awareness of our
planet's pain - and even more challenging to live with the personal responsibility that we
must take for that pain. Even though I have a lot of practice coexisting with those
realities, this challenge is still my most daunting obstacle.
"Wouldn't it be nice," I would often ask myself, "if I lived in a small
community on a beautiful island like Orcas Island?" The assumption behind this
statement is that living in that community would relieve me of my urban burdens and
troubled awarenesses. I think that many of us have dreams like this that can often be
helpful visions of what we strive for. But these dreams can also be ways of not living in
the moment and keeping assumptions that distance us from the world alive, never fully
taking responsibility for the here and now. Here are some of my own assumptions that got
shattered during this trip to the island.
Poor Assumption #1: Island life is idyllic, somehow immune from the stresses of complex
urban existence. People who live here must be more connected to the natural world.
We have so many definitions that carry many assumptions with them. What does
"idyllic" mean? What is "stressful?" How do you define
"complex?" To me, idyllic would mean more connected to the natural world, being
more aware of the seasons and cycles of the Earth, working a little harder for the things
that are necessary for my existence, and changing the pace of my life to a slower, more
rhythmic one. Yet others would not call island life idyllic. The roads are not very good,
you can't always get what you want in stores on the island, and the weather is certainly
more extreme than in sunny Southern California. Temperature and weather extremes abound.
People work very hard to take their cultural insulation with them wherever they may go or
live. I saw the same urban and social issues on the island that I see everyday in L.A. -
except they appeared more incongruent against the beautiful backdrop of the island. The
island has many artisans who have lived here for many years and, in some cases, for many
generations. The granddaughter of the original founder of Orcas Island Pottery is now the
owner. Many of them seem more a part of the natural world. I would expect this of those
who are exploring their creativity.
Poor Assumption #2: Island life is free of urban struggles.
I learned during this trip that Orcas Island, like everywhere else in the developed world,
is a microcosm of urban challenges. The San Juan Islands, once considered remote and
rustic, have been discovered by the affluent, folks who can afford 5,000 square foot homes
and who want to clear the land and put up the trees that please them. About 45 percent of
the islands' residents are retired and financially independent. Others are able to work at
home by telecommuting. The average home-sale price has swelled to $237,000. County land
values more than doubled from about $900 million in the mid-1980s to about $2 billion 10
years later.
Although there isn't anything inherent in the human spirit that keeps those who make only
a few thousand dollars a year apart from the more affluent, the barriers feel solid all
the same.
Poor Assumption #3: People who live in beautiful places will greet like-minded people
with open arms.
Sadly, under the guise of wanting protection for the natural beauty of the place, those
that were there first have become just as exclusionary and greedy as the more affluent
they complain about. Everyone wants to preserve a "way of life" - their own way
of life. After reading Coming Home, the premier issue of a magazine put out by those, says
the cover, "committed to the cultural, economic and environmental well-being of the
San Juan Islands," I was afraid to go out that night for fear of being attacked by
roving gangs of preservationists. They spoke well of the attributes of a working
community, using the words of Wendell Berry and Jean Houston, but another message rang out
clearly: go away and leave us alone.
There seem to be basically three factions on the island: 1) the shop keepers who need the
business of visitors to stay alive - although many of them live on the island, so they
resent you at the same time. 2) those who are tired of big city life and want a peaceful
playground, with no interference from anyone, and 3) those who want things to stay the way
they were when the population of the island was about 2,000 people.
Recently the Orcas Island Medical Center decided not to renew the contract of Dr. Jeanne
Olmsted, a successful and popular pediatrician, because her success was taking business
away from the general practitioners working in the clinic.
Poor Assumption #4: Environmental problems will be fewer, giving me room to breathe.
Environmental problems abound on an island whose population is soaring. Most of the
population lives on the four main islands: Orcas, San Juan, Lopez and Shaw. In all, there
are 172 named islands in the San Juan archipelago. At extreme low tide, there are more
than 750. In 1970, the islands had only 3,856 residents. By 1990, following a story on the
San Juan Islands that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1988, the permanent population
climbed to 10,035. In 1996, the islands supported 12,400 people and this is expected to
exceed 20,000 by the year 2014, according to the Seattle Times, December 15, 1996. During
the summer months, the population doubles as visitors storm the islands.
The only way to get to the islands is by ferry. These 100-car or more vessels are a
favorite part of the trip to me. They lumber across the sound at one basic speed, and your
life style and body clock must slow down. Normally, showing up 40 minutes before sailing
is enough (although on my way to Orcas Island to begin my honeymoon, we arrived 2 minutes
before sailing and still got on!), but during the summer months, waits of 2 to 6 hours are
not uncommon.
Although surrounded by water for as far as the eye can see, Orcas Island gets all of its
drinking water from wells charged by rainwater. The large population of visitors can cause
havoc with the water table. If you run a well dry, you may have to wait three or four days
for the water table to recharge it. An increasing number of boats around the island is
adding to the pollution of the waters.
The waters around the San Juans are being overfished. As many as 90,000 salmon fishing
trips and 45,000 bottom fishing trips are logged each year. Rockfish, a popular bottom
feeding fish, are virtually gone. Yet there are no mandatory moratoriums on fishing these
endangered fish - nobody likes to be told what to do.
The air is being challenged more and more every day. Cars, wood-burning stoves, large
construction projects, and all the boats are contributing to this growing problem. On the
last two days of my honeymoon, with clear blue skies all around, a familiar brown haze was
visible on the mainland. Smog has found its way everywhere, it seems.
Indoor air quality is a problem in many climates where houses are well insulated. Double
pane windows and insulation keep out the cold, but they also keep in the toxic fumes.
Plywood, plastic laminated countertops, paints, synthetic carpets and the glues used to
hold them down all give off toxic gasses into the air. One builder on the island, Mike
Macksey, has started building low-toxicity homes. He began this because his
environmentally sensitive wife was becoming more and more ill around the toxics emitted by
typical building materials.
Waste disposal is a growing problem. Recycling on the island is difficult. There is no
pickup for recyclables - you have to take them to a facility. I collected my recyclables
from my 5-day stay in the rented house and took them with me to the ferry landing. Try as
I might, I could not find any bins for recycling and wound up throwing them in a garbage
can.
Orcas Island is a beautiful place, and I had a wonderful stay, but each day, as one
assumption after another was shattered, I was reminded that our human values are not
created or altered by scenery - they come from deep within and are tainted by our culture
and our media.
I believe that we have within us the natural wisdom to know what to do and what not to do.
I believe that within our souls we know that the earth, the air, the water, and the other
beings we share this world with are sacred. This natural wisdom is why we feel so guilty
or sad or angry when we pollute. We know in our hearts that we are only harming ourselves.
I think we need help in becoming more mindful of the forces and assumptions that are
shaping our lives. We must redefine our concept of "progress." Progress may be
better defined as doing less, needing less, and giving more. I really wanted a trinket in
a local shop on the island - so I didn't buy it. A homeless man trying to find work asked
me for a gallon of gas - I bought him a full tank (of fossil fuel, yes I know...).
In a fascinating book called "Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh," Helena
Norberg-Hodge relates her journeys among the people of the trans-Himalayan region of
Kashmir. She relates some stories about her conversations with people in the area. In
1987, when she was talking about pollution with the head of the agricultural department in
Ladakh, it was clear that he had never heard of the dying forests in Europe. He was
shocked when she told him that almost half of the trees in Germany were sick or dead
because of acid rain.
A friend of hers wept when she told Helena that she heard they have lots of bombs in her
country. "When you go back to your country," she told Helena, "please tell
them to stop it. Please tell them that we don't want them." A Kashmiri trader once
proudly told her, "Our vegetables are much better than the local ones. We have at
least seven different chemicals on ours." A Ladakhi engineer once told Helena that
"We must stop building greenhouses." He said, "apparently they cause
terrible damage. There has just been a big international meeting about it."
These examples of apparent naivete show the power of perception and the power of the
information we choose to embrace. How was the woman concerned about bombs to know that
Helena could not influence her society in the same way the concerned woman could influence
hers? Why should the trader question the value of insecticides when he had been told only
of their benefits? We may think that we are making fully informed choices when we are
actually making choices based on cultural propaganda and assumptions.
But when our relationship to the natural world is strong and intact, we need not rely as
much on information. When the sacredness of the world around us is clear and the strength
of our community is a priority, our choices are different.
The ancestral wisdom of the Navajo tells of a powerful, evil substance buried beneath the
Earth. Their teachings say that this substance must never be removed or great harm will
come to the land. When 94 million gallons of water contaminated with uranium mining waste
burst free from a holding pond into the Puerco River in New Mexico in 1979, the largest
radioactive waste spill in U.S. history, the Navajo along the River couldn't understand
why anyone was concerned. Not only did their belief system rule out the possibility that
anyone could have removed this horrible substance from the Earth, but how could they
believe that the river was contaminated. "We are the river," they would
proclaim. "How can we not use the river." Their belief in the sacredness of the
river and its interconnectedness to themselves prevented them from believing that anyone
would harm it. Is this stupidity or wisdom on a scale grander than we can imagine?
In her book, Helena Norberg-Hodge says of the Ladakh people:
"I have never met people who seem so healthy emotionally, so secure, as the
Ladakhis. The reasons are, of course, complex and spring from a whole way of life and
world view. But I am sure that the most important factor is the sense that your are a part
of something much larger than yourself, that you are inextricably connected to others and
to your surroundings."
"The Ladakhis belong to their place on earth. They are bonded to that place through
intimate daily contact, through a knowledge about their immediate environment with its
changing seasons, needs, and limitations. They are aware of the living context in which
they find themselves. The movement of the stars, the sun, and moon are familiar rhythms
that influence their daily activities."
I don't know how we can get to that state of mind, but certainly we can begin by thinking
about what kind of world we want to live in before we buy or clear land or build. We can
decide what kind of relationships we want with our elders, our youth, our community, and
our surroundings. Look at the examples all around us of our disconnections and try to do
something different.
The people of Orcas Island have many challenges to face. Everyone can benefit from fearing
less and opening their hearts more. Those who wish to preserve the island must find the
common threads that have drawn those that own big houses and little houses or no houses at
all together in that beautiful place - and build on them. I think they will find that no
one came there to intentionally ruin it. And expect change - some roads will widen and
some buildings will grow. But we have to find ways to come together - there is no other
place to go.
Tomorrow the drums will beat and I will
dance my last dance as a child.
The beating drums will sound here and
the echoes will reach Nimba -
My footsteps will echo on the hollow
ground and keep time with the drums.
My body will be washed and the white chalk
will run down and sink into the ground
with my footsteps -
And the drums will beat, and we all will dance.
Being a child is over - and I must start the
dance of womanhood - while the drums beat out my
life.
-- Alice Perry Johnson
Releasing the separate one
is a difficult knot.
Finding yourself is something
only you can do.
Imagine yourself coming back
10 years from today
Through time, to help you
where you must now be.
-- Jim Cohn
RESOURCES
1. Visit Orcas Island at http://www.sanjuan.com/Orcas/OrcasHome.html
2. Get information about the San Juan Islands at http://washingtonstatehelps.com/regional/sanjuan.htm
3. To learn about communities, visit the Intentional Communities web site: http://www.well.com:80/user/cmty/index.html
4. The Puerco River story is told in a video called "The River That Harms." It
is available from The Video Project at http://www.videoproject.org/videoproject/index.html
5. Read excerpts from the San Juan Islands journal "Coming Home" at http://www.rockisland.com/~paperjam/cominghome/index.html
6. Learn about other efforts to preserve Orcas Island at http://www.rockisland.com/~paperjam/sustainability/index.html
7. Learn what efforts are underway to preserve the San Juan Islands at http://www.sanjuans.org/
8. Read the ideas of those on UTNE Reader's 100 visionaries list at http://www.utne.com/visionaries/95visionall.html
{Jackie Giuliano can be found thinking about island life in Venice, California. He is a
Professor of Environmental Studies for Antioch University, Los Angeles, the University of
Phoenix, and the Union Institute College of Undergraduate Studies. He is also the
Educational Outreach Manager for the Ice and Fire Preprojects, a NASA program at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory to send space probes to Jupiter's moon Europa, the planet Pluto, and
the Sun. Please send your comments, ideas, and visions to him at jackieg@jps.net} |
