Healing Gardens

Week One

When I was asked how my culture perceives the garden I came into a brick wall trying to think at whom I identify with. What is my identity? What is my culture? It's frustrating that I need to find what I do identify with by defining and sifting through what I don't identify with. I know I hold more affinity with the trees, other animals (I'm an animal too!), wind, rain, mountains and rivers than I do roads, buildings, cities, and all the other facets of this culture. All I know is it will take more than a week to even begin to grasp and wrap my mind fully around the question. I have no idea what my culture is. I know in my heart I don't want to participate in the current mainstream culture. I want to be a part, member, and creature of the land. I don't want to be separate, but I have no idea how to live in the land. I want to learn to be wild again. I feel like a ghost who is trying to grasp onto something tangible but has no solid base to stay grounded. My family has lived on this land in many different ways. My house is a two-acre section of forest that was once part of a larger forest and wetland community, ripped up and then used as a construction waste site, then finally turned into my home. The first few years of my youth every spring when the rains came oil and junk would seep up from the ground bubbling and frothing in a myriad of technicolors until around my mid teens the land was finally purged. We did no gardening. We grew none of our own foods - a whole acre for a backyard, but nothing more than chemically treated grass. However, along the porch we had some unruly rosebushes and some shrubbery in the front for decoration. I had no relationship with my food except from hand to mouth. Food was the Shaw's downtown. The ordered rows and perfectly polished produce. It was boxes and plastic. It was waxed floors and pleasant music. It was all there waiting solely for me -I just needed the money to buy it. I had no idea where it was grown, how the soil felt on my feet or how the roots would resist my hands pulling them from their earthen homes. I didn't even know what plants half the food I ate grew from. Sadly and embarrassingly, I only began to learn many these things when I moved down to Maryland and lived at Meg's house, which was located on her family's farm. Like the farm in Tenino from Fields that Dream, this patch of rural farm battling the encroachment of development. In my brief time there I had witnessed more than a handful of developments make their mark on the land. Only this summer when we planted vegetables on the small garden plot did I understand how pleasant tilled earth felt between my toes and on my bare feet. And how powerful and emotional pulling up a lowly onion could be -the literal tearing from the earth and the resistance of the roots. The learning that the ones that were least resistant were the fullest and most ready onions. Only then did I begin to learn the cycles of the seasons and the ebb and flow of rain and sun. Only then did I learn of the other residents of the fields, the laziness of the farm cats and the songs of the blackbirds, the playful murders of crows and swooping circles of the vulture overhead. The life and history of the land was seeping into my bones and I had only been there two years. However, even then the food was only for Meg and I, I didn't consider the birds, cats (well they pretty much ran shop in the backyard anyways), insects, or even the land itself. This is where the complexity and confusion of my own heritage and identity comes into play with the complexity and confusion of my relation -or non relation- with gardens. First, I need to comment on the wonderful discussions we had Saturday during class. What hit me the most was how Kimberly said that animals gardened too. I knew from my time in the woods how true that was and it was nice to hear others confirm my non-insanity. I also need to comment on how I loved how Alix gave the root definition of gardener "to guard". I felt that the European version of gardening was as defense from the wild and untamed opposed to how I perceive the indigenous ways of gardening as nurturing and bring forth the potential of the land. I thought this gave a lot to think about when put together with Kimberly's comment. I have really no knowledge of my Scandinavian heritage, I have even less knowledge of my Sioux heritage. I have very little knowledge of how to live in place and within the world, let alone North America. I know very well how to consume it, to have freedom with no responsibility. I don't remember how to live in the woods without a tent, or without outside food. I did in my youth. I have trouble remembering how to talk and interact with plants and animals. I did in my youth. These first couple classes have been so much about remembering and relearning. I have no idea who my ancestors were as people. I have some hints and some first names, but they can't teach me their wisdom. I have no idea how to even access it. I could be getting dreams and hints and whispers, but how do I define it? I have no idea how to live in this land. I'm given hints and whispers from the plants and animals, but the communication is still scattered and hard to reach and understand. I'm stuck at this uncomfortable and foreign border of identity between trying to become wild and free in a domesticated and restricting culture. Trying to acknowledge and understand my European and Indigenous roots and how to live honestly and respectfully between those worlds and cultures. Just like coming to this new garden and trying to understand what it needs and wants to become who it's meant to be. That's why these first classes have been so moving for me, the garden has allowed me a time and place to start the awkward process of remembering my humanness -of becoming more full. I loved in The Earth's Blanket when Nancy talks about wealth as the health of the land and community opposed to material gain because I know in my heart that it's so true.

WEEK TWO

We -Derek and I- began our site description and getting acquainted with the open stream bank space. It was midmorning and I loved the way the sun reflected off of everything. The plants still had collected water from the rains the night before and the morning dew and my shoes became soaked within minutes. It's been awkward feeling so unfamiliar with the individuals living at this space and I've been weary jumping right in and disturbing places with out understanding the place first. So just like in human-to-human relationships or exploring new ideas I've spent most of the time sitting and watching and taking in. I've met some plants that I am familiar with, the cattail in particular, but I've been learning a lot of the others. We realized there were lots of horsetails everywhere and just from sitting and being with the space the days before I realized how it was overrunning the place. Usually I am so busy with things that I don't realize things are overrunning my health, or mental space, or my relationships until I sit and allow to be. It was nice to sit and be and realize the world becoming known to me. This is like in the village herbalist where the author talks about wholeness in medicine and herbalism. I really liked how he was talking about medicinal herbs were like little gifts there to be taken whenever in the community and accessible -that you can just go out and pick some herb, or go to a trusted individual in a community, opposed to a doctor who (in my experience) I have never known. I really thought this shows the disjuncture we have now with nature and plants and even with communities. I know I often pass plants not knowing who they are -especially now since I have moved into a new place. I have this potential to be in a healthy and healing relationship everyday, and my separation from it inhibits me from this richness and fullness right outside my door. This relates to different kinds of gardens because pre-civilization - or pre-becoming civilized the world was a garden and there was no distinction, the woods were a garden, the prairie was a garden, the ocean and rivers. Really we can have gardens for everything and for anything. We can have a garden for medicine and nurturing spaces to be medicinal, and gardens for food. I often walk the un-maintained trails and game trails within the Grass Lake Refuge. Yesterday I came across a pile of deer poop that was home to bugs, bacteria, viruses and other creatures. They were cultivating the scat for their young so the poop was a garden. Blackberry and salal are home to countless bird and deer who prune and manage the berries, so that’s a berry garden. Even my body is a garden for the microbes and bacteria that call the sections of my body home. Bacteria nurture my colon to allow it to feed them and stay maintained. Its really beautiful when I think about it because it just shows how fecund, alive, and infinite the world is. Each and every thing is a little microcosm of everything else. Everything nurtures itself. Plant gardens are similar to having a wonderful conversation and how each word I use and question asked nurtures and furthers the conversation to become what it was supposed to be. The whole world is pregnant and living is the act of being born and giving birth constantly. Giving and taking. Swelling and receding. Its beautiful.

WEEK THREE

The flow of the season has been picking up and the speed of work and school has made coming to the garden harder than I have wished. I've had a lot of trouble identifying the plants of the wetland area and distinguishing between the grasses. A goal for week four and five are to get better at identifying the plants. Saturday was a very beautiful and powerful day for me. The two videos we watched in class where so moving. I was so moved by the wisdom and experience of Bruce's voice and stories and how a love and understanding of everything flowed from every word he spoke. His voice just made me swell up with emotion. Each word had the backing of countless generations of knowledge behind it. Learning about the garden and hearing the history and then going and sitting and experiencing it was so humbling. To stand under the same dogwood that Bruce had grown up with and to breath the same air and feel the same soil in my hands - I can't describe it. It was also fitting to hear the inspiring story about the joke played on the plants. It really spoke to me a lot about doing as much as you can and being honest with yourself when you can't go any farther. That its ok that I have my own limitations but to always encourage others to go as far as they can with what they believe in and work for. The reading made me appreciate even more the stories we heard in person and from the movies. It really helped me find where the disjuncture is between civilized and indigenous cultures lies. In traditional knowledge the stories are always participatory and a learning experience. Through the stories about the salmon people, the yellow cedar people, and the black lichen we learn the humanness in everything, and how to walk the world in humility and respect. I wouldn't even say 'humanness' in as much as the quality of sentience, compassion and emotion -spirit- in everything. The scientific ecological way of knowing tells a specific story, one of how something is made, of its parts and processes for the sole reason of utility and dominion. Traditional knowledge tells another story, which I find a lot richer and meaningful way to view the world. I am going to experience the world in a much different way viewing everything as having spirit and sentience opposed to resources and material solely for my use and pleasure. Traditional knowledge views the world as living and alive while the latter views the world in terms of abstractions -the conversion of living to power and perceived entitlement.

WEEK FOUR

Gardens serve many and countless purposes. The intent of a garden is dependent on the intent of the gardener. Gardens serve the purpose of healing as well as nourishing. Even this seems vague, it seems like no matter what gardens are healing or nourishing and in the end that is the same. So maybe a gardens only real purpose is to bring forth the person who is using it. If someone has a very orderly and economic garden, like a large agri-business farm (I mean it is technically a garden) the person will become very orderly and economic. If the garden is a culinary garden, then it will allow the gardener to become more and more a cook. Just as if it is a medicinal garden, the garden will help the gardener become as healing as possible. The Sauyay garden has been really great, as it has served as a place for reconnection and relearning for me. Just I have become to clear again the trails along the garden, making the parts of the garden known again and getting rid of what is not needed, I have done the same in my head. Every time I've gone I’ve watched the crows caw and stand over me and just allowed the place to envelop me. Breathing in and out, each exhale taking away CO2 and more and more unwanted baggage I've been carrying too long from this culture. This program has been so great for me. In the five or so weeks since I have started I have grown and become so comfortable with myself. This really has been a healing garden for me. I am slowly feeling less a visitor. I cannot get over in The Earth's Blanket, the fact that the Europeans thought that the whole land was unused and going to waste. It just feels so arrogant. North America was such a beautiful and alive place and humans fit so perfectly in with the land because they were the land, just as the seagull is the beach and the whale the open ocean. I had gone to see The Valley of the Giants in the Quinalt rainforest. I couldn't get over that before Europeans came that it was all Old Growth. The forests of North America allowed and gave whatever the peoples wanted because it was reciprocal. Where has the reciprocity gone? Why do our gardens now only serve shuffling around paper money thinking it means wealth? I remember just sitting under the largest Yellow Cedar listening to the quiet and the creaks and the smell of the forest and being so overwhelmed of the sacredness of the forest. On the way home we passed mounds of burning debris for miles as the slash piles were burned and the violent roar of large tractor-trailers hauling the bodies of once old and sacred trees. I just can't understand how the culture can just convert life to death so quickly and callously. Just like in the Earth's blanket where the farmer talked about how he felt even the farming practices in North America were still about domination. That he felt more at home doing native plant restoration. It feels like a garden of death and that’s what the culture has been and continues to become, completely opposite of what North America was, a garden of life and healing. When will it again serve as the foundation for a truly healing and complete society?

WEEK FIVE

As I've been taking this class I've found out that the word garden can be defined more and more ubiquitously. The whole world was once a garden. But as civilization has progressed on it's path of eating up places gardens have become smaller and smaller sections of land. Well, except for large monoculture farms and factory farms -they have more in common with the machines than living breathing communities. A garden is defined by what the gardener decides to use the land for. In Fields That Dream the garden means work for the immigrants from Mexico. It means hope and a place to sleep. It means help. If they couldn't work on the garden (farm) then they would be stuck in more difficult predicament. For the first peoples of the North West (as in The Earth's Blanket), the garden can be a very spiritual and sacred place. The whole world was a garden as well as a teacher, brother, sister, and mother. For mainstream American culture the garden means resource. It's taking out all the complex life for one crop. -same with tree plantations. whole forests are converted to monocultures(and then call it a forest). A garden can be a home, as in the goat farmers. They were a vital and integral part of the garden. When I go to Sauyay, the garden is a meeting place. It's a place for learning and growing -physically, mentally, and spiritually. It's been a place for conversation and reconnection. Something about the space just opens me up. When I think what is a garden I think Sauyay.

WEEK SIX

I've been realizing that each reflection question builds upon the one before it, and as I respond to each question the garden becomes more and more clear. The reasons why gardeners garden are intimately tied to a gardens purpose and type. Due to the ubiquitous nature of the garden the reasons for why gardeners garden is equally so. As I've learned in Fields That Dream, even though all the farmers and gardeners are participating through the economic system, and their farms are very much businesses, each garden and farm is unique. For the Mountain people of Laos their farms allows all their families to stay together as well as an anchor for them to maintain their traditional and cultural practices. Thus they garden to maintain their culture. The garden in Seattle is gardened to allow at risk youth the skills and ability to take their lives in their own hands. As we learned up at Islandwood they garden to educate kids and give them agency in interacting with the land, and changing the cultures current course against nature. In the end each gardener gardens to interact with the land, in an either negative or positive way. For some the land is gardened for spiritual purposes and ceremony. The gardener enters into a relationship with the land through the mode of gardening. While others use the land for merely profit and simply garden to make as much money and wealth as possible Gardens were once integral to the health and sustainability of a community -not only human communities, but non-humans as well. For the majority of my life I had no relationship to gardens, as in I had no part in the process of relating and knowing. I knew only products, not individuals. I had no idea what land the trees were from that made my home, probably forests I would now defend with my life. When I ate meat I had no idea what animal I was eating, or what part of the animal, let alone where it lived or how. Even now I don’t know where the majority of my food even comes from, how its made, and what lives the plants leave. The more I think about this the more I realize how truly insane that is. I know how to navigate and “hunt and gather” in shopping centers than I do the forests and bays in which I live. The more I think the more I realize that is mainly due to politics. One way this culture colonizes and destroys native sustainable communities is to cut off the ability for people to live on their own. This culture killed off the bison, a literal act of genocide –no better yet omnicide- for those nations dependent on the bison for the health and vitality of their culture. I don’t remember the indigenous group, but when asked they wanted, the group simply said the ability to grow their own food. If a people do not have the ability or freedom to grow their own food, they are forced into a system of slavery –physically, mentally, and socially. Now we call that slavery a euphemism, economics. To force people into an economic system you must take away their autonomy. You must take away their land. If they have no land they have no place to sleep, to play, to eat, no place to support themselves. Taking a peoples land forces them into dependence on another. When you take their land they are forced to give up their culture. When you take their land they are forced into the slums to make our clothes not to mention all the other meaningless artifacts of this wretched civilization. Taking away a peoples land is an act of violence. It’s an act of war. It’s an act of omnicide.

WEEK SEVEN

Whenever I drive to the coast I pass tree farm after tree farm. I read ridiculous signs like, “future generation’s bounty”. The worst is when these places are called forests. When reality they are genetically modified plants that are only created to serve the needs of the economic system. By that very default they could not be beneficial for the future sustainability of the land. The economic system is not based on the health or necessity of a living and vibrant land base. I don’t even think those who make economic policy think that the land is living –not even in metaphor- let alone in reality. Calling a mono-crop tree farm a forest is like calling a mono-crop cornfield a prairie. It’s so damn arrogant and shortsighted. What are my grandchildren, or children going to say when they have no more forests- besides large mono-crop plantations, what am I supposed to tell them when there are no more fish in the sea, no more large mammals. This continent is littered with bad gardens. This continent is littered with dangerous gardens. Ecocidal gardens. This culture has only and will only relate to the natural world in a negative and harmful way, to do otherwise would mean its death. Who knows what toxins I have lying dormant in my body to give me cancer and kill me someday. How could those who run this society think it was a smart idea to put poison on our foods? I am reading a book called Beyond The Beauty Strip and in Maine they poured millions upon millions of gallons of pesticides and poisons in forests. That is insane. Some of the pesticides used are toxic in the trillionth and people dump them by the gallons into rivers. The mainstream culture hates nature, and it is reflected in the way it “gardens’. The gardens are based on hate and fear –in as much as this culture views them the same. Gardens are sectioned off in simple, mathematical rows. These “gardens” only serve one thing –the economic interests of those in power. Communities only need commercial gardens because they are unable to garden on their own. May it be do to the total toxification of the environment (polar bears have been found with dioxin in their blood, mothers can’t breastfeed their children out of fear of poisoning them), no access to land, or no knowledge of how to garden. If people weren’t forced into the economic system, why would they spend their lives in jobs they hate to buy poisoned food that doesn’t even nourish them? To have good gardens again, we need gardens that have a foundation outside the needs of the economic system. We need gardens that serve not only human communities, but non-human communities as well. We need gardens that bridge the gap between the natural world and ourselves.

WEEK EIGHT

The thing I enjoy most about this class is it gives the space for reconnection. I think that has been the most important aspect of the class, being able to reconnect with the natural world. But I am saddened that at the same time this comes from a place of privilege. There are people who are forced to work on “gardens” many hours a day, under harmful and deadly working conditions. People are forced to work in seas of poison to pick our food. People are forced to work and cannot eat any of that which they sow. It makes me realize that our “freedom” to choose what we eat comes at a very violent price. I can eat oranges in the Pacific Northwest during winter, but at the expense of the freedom of not only the orange trees and the organisms that live with the tree, but the lives of those who pick the oranges. I have the freedom to drink coffee from Latin America at the expense of the freedom and ability for indigenous nations to live outside the exploitive economic system. My “freedoms” to choose what I want to eat are irresponsible and violent. Seemingly innocent and trivial choices of flavors of coffee are based on extremely violent premises and practices. People’s lives are destroyed over such trivial things. No one in the Pacific Northwest, or in Northern America has the right or freedom to drink coffee. The land does not give us coffee; we need to deal with it. The price of me being able to have a Bolivian black blend is insane. The ability for a people to live as they have for countless generations is insurmountably higher than me having some coffee I don’t really appreciate anyways. The sole reality of being able to have choice of coffee, or tropical fruit in The Pacific Northwest shows the pathology of the culture we are often times forced into. If it weren’t pathological we couldn’t cut down ancient forests for Victory Secret Catalogues and toilet paper. We couldn’t of killed 90% of the large fish in the ocean. We couldn’t of systematically destroyed earth-based cultures. We couldn’t dump gallons of pesticides in our drinking water. We couldn’t poison our own food. We couldn’t dam rivers to have lawns and backyard pools or golf courses. But, we have a whole history and mythology to tell us that being able to have these meaningless choices is the height of not only freedom, but also life itself. Having coffee on a cold winter’s morning is a God-given right – in as much as it was the American’s settlers God-given right to rape not only the land of the indigenous but their women as well. In as much as it is those who live in the desert’s God-Given right to water their lawns. In as much as it was their God-given right to have lawns. In the end all these choices boil down to rape, which boils down to perceived entitlement. Since Western Civilization is based upon perceived entitlement we can discern that Western Civilization is a culture of rape. The root meaning of the word responsible is to give in return. My choices are irresponsible because I do not give in return. I do not give back to the peoples who pick my food. I do not give back to those who make my clothes. I do not give back to the trees that make my home or the paper I use. I do not give back to the plants that feed me. I do not give back to the land that has given me life. Ironically, the only thing my actions are responsible towards is the economic system and this culture – the one thing that I have no freedom to leave. When one has responsibility but no freedom they are a slave. We are slaves to this culture. I work a job and pay rent not to give in return to those that I take, but from those that take as well. I am forced not only to destroy that which gives me life, but also to support those that take away that life.

WEEK NINE

I don’t think that the world can only be viewed in metaphors. I am in as much a mountain as I am a river. I am permeable and my identity is ubiquitous. My body is mostly water -water that came down from clouds from mountain streams or the open sea. I am as much those streams and oceans as I am a human being. I am the plants I eat. I am the microbe that out number my human cells three to one. I am the cells those came from and the cells that those came from. I am the molten rock that formed the earth. I am the big bang. I am the star that this planet was formed from. I am the space between the atoms that make up my DNA, which make my every inch of my physical body. I am the space in my head when I close my eyes. I am infinite in nature and reality and only become definable when I wish to define myself. One of my favorite quotes is from Derrick Jensen’s book, Language Older Than Words, where he says, “We are the relationships we share, we are that process of relating, we are, whether we like it or not, permeable -physically, emotionally, spiritually, experientially- to our surroundings. I am the bluebirds and nuthatches that nest here each spring, and they , too, are me. Not metaphorically, but in all physical truth. I am no more than the bond between us. I am only so beautiful as the character of my relationships, only so rich as I enrich those around me, only so alive as I enliven those I greet.” We are as healthy as the relationships we have. So if we want to define who we are we must first look at our relationships, and from there we will know what to do. If this quarter taught me anything, it taught me this.