KAW Council

My New Love Affair with Rain Boots

2008-10-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

I didn’t have rain boots when I was a kid. (Did anyone in 1970s suburbia?) My older son didn’t have ‘em in his early years either. We try to keep the shoe count to a minimum, and there have been entire seasons when Simon had only a single pair of shoes. But this year I have fallen in love with rain boots.

Simon’s pair came to us when he was five, an inexpensive “Well, why not?” purchase at Lasting Impressions. Boots were pretty nice, I soon realized. They really did keep out water, they were eye-catching (dark blue with yellow stripes, haphazardly pushing up the pant legs), and they made a nice –clunk! clunk! clunk!- sound.

But those boots really began to make my heart go pitter-patter after I read Rachel Carson’s essay, “A Sense of Wonder.” Carson writes about sharing nature with her young nephew and recalls that some of their most special moments were at times we moms might consider inconvenient—after dark (i.e., after bedtime!) or during or after a rainstorm (i.e., wet and muddy times!) Carson’s essay re-awakened my belief that children should go outside in all seasons and all weather, and I vowed to take more walks at “inconvenient” times. Since then, Simon’s boots have accompanied us in the rain, snow, and mud. They’ve even gotten stuck in what Simon calls “quick sand” during a winter walk on a local golf course.

A pair for little brother moved in a few weeks ago (ankle-high yellow ones, with zippers). This time, I deliberately searched them out on e-bay. Max loves them, and I get a giggle out of seeing him clomp around in public when it hasn’t rained for days.

Most importantly, we’re finding our muddy backyard a little less problematic. And the fact that we all have boots makes me want to go out in search of puddles! Last week, we found a humungous puddle on a nearby cul-de-sac, so now we can stomp to our heart’s content without worrying about traffic.

It seems like a little thing, I know. And it is a bit inconvenient to come home muddy and wet. But my heart tells me that kids need this messy, carefree outdoor time. Heck, I need it! And having boots just gives us an excuse. Hooray for rain boots!

Walkabouts and Talkabouts: Join Us!

2008-10-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, we gather each month to walk, visit, explore and land ourselves, step by step, on the prairie and in the woodlands. Here are the next four walkabouts, which all include a talkabout feature afterwards (perfect for people who find walking long distances difficult). Please feel free to come to any or all!

10:30 a.m. walkabout; 12:30 p.m. talkabout, Sunday, November 16th: Baldwin Woods. Meet at entrance to Bridenthal Forest entrance at 10:30 a.m., walk for a while, then convene in Baldwin at Wheat State Pizza, 711 8th St. Call 843-0253 for directions.

10:30 a.m. walkabout; 12 p.m. talkabout, Sunday, December 21sth: Kaw River. We'll meet at Burcham Park, walk along the river, and then mosey on downtown for lunch and/or coffee at the Global Cafe, 820 Mass. St.

10:30 a.m. walkabout; 12 p.m. talkabout featuring our annual amazing book discussion!, Sunday, January 18th: Caryn & Ken's, 1357 N. 1000 Rd., Lawrence, KS. 66046. 766-7159. We'll walk in the beautiful cedars to the top of the hill (the backside of Wells Overlook) on family land, and then meet in the house for soup and potluck. Bring a favorite book or two that changed or is changing your life to talk about at the talkabout. Call 766-7159 for directions.

10:30 a.m. walkabout; 12:30 p.m. talkabout, Sunday, February 8th: Clinton Resevoir. Meet at the Vistor's Center, and we'll walk in a protected (from wind) part of the park, and ferry to Bella's Bistro, 23rd and Kasold (in HyVee shopping center) for coffee and/or lunch.

Hope and Inspiration on the Prairie -- by Sandy Beverly

2008-05-12T07:11:00.000-07:00

Just returned from a lovely weekend with KAWsters at Camp Hammond. My family and I are relative newcomers to KAW Council, but the spring weekend is becoming a family tradition. Our five-year-old has been three times (we skipped 2006 due to rain), and our 18-month-old has been twice.

There’s so much to appreciate about this event. I love that we are outdoors all day long. I love hearing and seeing birds that don’t live in my central Lawrence neighborhood. I love sharing group meals and gathering for the three “kaws” before we eat. I love anticipating the hoots of owls and howls of coyotes. I love that my older son is beginning to build memories about this weekend. (“Let’s go swing on the tire swing!” and “That’s where we set up our tent last year.”) I’m grateful for the adults who take an interest in my children.

Spending time with the boys keeps me floating in and out of group conversations, but I catch snippets. I learn about plants by eavesdropping on Ken, Dan, and others. I pick up knowledge about building fires and making rope by watching Stephen. I feel a sense of awe and hope in the presence of wise, powerful ones like Dianna and Lavetta. I’m inspired by Caryn’s commitment to community and the fact that these folks have been camping together in the spring for 27 years!

Even after I return home, these impressions and feelings bounce around within me, stirring up a sense of “what could be.” What might this world be like if I and others spent more time barefoot on the prairie, noticing the prairie violets? What if I and others heard the coyotes and owls and whip-poor-wills every night? What if more of us had deep Earth-centered friendships that lasted more than a quarter of a century? What if I wasn’t afraid to speak about my desire to do something big and important—or small and important—for the Earth?

I live, it seems, with my feet in two different worlds. One foot wears a shoe and spends too much time in our too-big house. One foot walks barefoot--skin to sacred ground—and leads me to unpaved places. This dissonance weighs heavy on me, like a rock. Weekends with KAWsters and bluebirds and mayapples give me hope and inspiration, helping me set my bearing more in the direction of wholeness.

Backyard Maple Tapping

2008-03-17T14:12:00.001-07:00

Check out KAW Council member Sandy Beverly's photos and writing about maple tapping at home.

1873 6th Grade Quize -- Found by Dan Bentley

2008-03-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some research and ran across this in the Report of Public Institutions City of Lawrence (schools) 1869-1885 Douglas County Historical Museum

6th Grade Quiz  1873

1.What townships are to the south and the west of Lawrence?  Name the townships of Douglas county.
2. What river runs between north and south Lawrence?
3.  What railroad runs south through the eastern part of Lawrence?
4.  Name various manufacturing in Lawrence.
5.  Tell what an island is.  What direction from your school is the nearest island?  (hint...there used to be some islands in the Kaw, DB)
6.  What is a map?  Draw a map of Lawrence.
7.  Tell all you know about lumbering.
8.  Tell why the people of the New England states are engaged in manufacturing.
9.  Tell some other occupations of the New England people.
10.  In what occupation are the people of Kansas principally engaged?

Poems for Spring and Doggerel for Delight -- by Nancy Hubble

2008-03-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

My friend who does Farm News is Chief Fool at the Oskaloosa Library and this year he asked me to make up some 'poems' for kids and adults to use on bookmarks for the Oskaloosa Library celebration of Literacy... Every April 1st the Chief Fool (Jim Ware, Paula, the librarian's husband) has a group of young girls who do cheers for literacy but I am sending you the ones that will be on the free bookmark handouts as the cheers are much worse. The library usually has a plant and book sale or bake sale too. Dixie calls these poems doggerel so they may be too low on the totem pole for you to put in anywhere. Maybe the one with the limp about wind power would work....? Peter, Peter, a great book reader. Had a job as an old rug beater. Read a book about wind power Now he makes his money From an energy tower!

              ****
Little Miss Muffet  
Sat on her  tuffet
Reading Edna St.  Vincent Millay.
Said a small  flower in her basket
“I really must ask  it.”
“Would you please  read the one about May?” 
Little Miss Muffet
Sat on her  tuffet 
Reading some poems by  Verlaine.
Along came a spider
And sat down beside her
And said “Please read  me the one about Rain.”
                    ******
Tom, Tom, the farmer’s  son,
Checked out a  book
And away he  run.
Tom got a  treat,
The book was  neat!
Now, Tom would rather read than  eat! 

              *******
Houdini was nimble!
Houdini was quick.
He read every book
On The Magic Trick.
He read and  practiced
He practiced and read.
He could do hard tricks
Standing on his head!
If you learn to read,
You can learn a lot!
Reading’s like Magic, 
And Magic is HOT!  
  *****
My poem that I read for
Bill's remembrance gathering:  
Seed Koan
Before blossom,
Bud.  
Before bud,
Stick.
Before stick,
Root.
Before root,
Seed.
Before seed,
AH!

Annotated Bibliography on Bioregionalism

2008-02-24T20:28:00.001-08:00

When compiling a bioregional bibliography, I was struck by how impossible it is to determine what to include and what not to include due to bioregionalism’s extremely multi-disciplinary nature. My guess is that most bioregionalists, if asked to name the most important sources on bioregionalism, might include certain standards (such as David Abrams’ Spell of the Sensuous, Kirkpatrick Sale’s Dwellers on the Land, Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, Thomas Berry’s The Dream of the Earth, etc.), but that beyond these standards, we would have a lot of variation. For my bibliography, I tried to include books that look at bioregionalism through widely varied lenses, such as poetics, sustainability studies, child development, environmental education, culture, embodiment, sustainable business, ecofeminism, literature, neurology, physics, alternative agriculture, phenology, etc. Please keep in mind that probably hundreds more sources would easily fit on this list. Learning how to live from where we live is a life-long art, and so is finding the sources that sustain us in this mission. -- Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Kansas Area Watershed

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. This classic memoir about living in the desert looks at culture, land and climate from a unique and particularly activist perspective. As Doug Peacock writes of Abbey, “Abbey traveled less widely than some, but he saw clearly and wrote with more fortitude and honesty than all but a handful of his contemporaries of the suffering and destruction seen everywhere on the Earth.”

Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. New York: Pantheon Books, 1996. Winner of the Lannan Award for non-fiction, this pivotal and paradigm-shifting book is a necessary read for anyone concerned with ecology. Abram’s interdisciplinary work draws from philosophy (including a challenging romp through ecological philosophy), ecology, the Oral Tradition, Indigenous studies, Language and Linguistics, Literature, and Human Development. His premise is that our written language and our cultural disposition have distanced us from engaged and reciprocal relationship with the living earth. Abram, a magician and philosopher in addition to a writer, is a long-time bioregionalism, and he developed the MAGIC committee work that so infused many continental congresses with a greater sense of the more-than-human world in which we dwell. This book is both extremely poetic and extremely scholarly, making it a dense, rich and long read. The titles alone are provocative: “The Ecology of Magic,” “Philosophy on the Way to Ecology,” “The Flesh of Language,” “Animism and the Alphabet,” “In the Landscape of Language,” “Time, Space, and the Eclipse of the Earth,” and “The Forgetting and Remembering of the Air.” This book can help us broaden our ability to perceive the world on a sensory and intellectual level that cannot help to ripple out into everything from our gardening to our writing to our meeting facilitation. Most of all, this book calls for us to re-learn how to trust our senses. “Only as we come close to our senses, and begin to trust, once again, the nuanced intelligence of our sensing bodies, do we begin to notice and respond to the subtle logos of the land” (268).

Aqua Terra: Water Concepts for Ecological Society edited by Jacqueline Froelich with Barbara Harmony; artwork by Jacqueline Froelich. Eureka Springs, AR.: The National Water Center, 1991. This fine anthology of works about water looks at everything from waste water disposal to the poetics of rushing rivers. Its strong interdisciplinary focus helps us see the full circle not just of the water cycle but of water symbolism in our lives.

Alinsky, Saul. Rules for Radicals. New York: Random House, 1971. Alinksy’s theory and practice of political activism involved catalyzing communities to find the power within them to make and sustain change. He saw organizers as being largely facilitators (often invisible to people outside the organization) of change who help mentor leaders and develop consciousness. With this no-ego, no-bullshit approach to activism, and with the comprehensive thinking that went into Alinsky’s protocols for poor, working and middle class organizing campaigns, this book is a classic in how to change the world, one group, one event, one issue at a time.

Allison, Linda. The Reasons for Seasons: The Great Cosmic Megagalactic Trip Without Moving from Your Chair. Covelo, CA.: Yolla Bolly Press, 1975. This unusual guide features hundreds of exercises to awaken the senses through closer observation of seasonal shifts. The book itself is more circular in structure (like the seasons) than chronological, and a person can open it to any place to find how to do anything from make spore prints to build a kissing bough. Drawing on a multi-cultural and historic perspective, this book is a gem when it comes to helping kids and adults better understand constellations, apple grafting, the architecture of features and much more.

Anderson, E.N. Ecologies of the Heart: Emotion, Belief, and the Environment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Okay, this is a wild book which promotes the premise that all ecological change and restoration must come from an ethics born of love, yet this wild book does a nice job in showing how humans process information, and how such processing gives us ecological choices to pursue. The author, a cultural ecologist, proposes that we can shift our actions only through shifting our emotions, and he especially makes his argument by looking deeply at tribal beliefs and actions.

Barasch, Marc Ian. Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A Search for the Soul of Kindness. Rodale Press, 2005. This superb collection of essays on cultivating compassion shows us, story by story, how to open our empathic channels to the mysteries of living in a body and the wide varieties of living with others. The writing is lush and moving, rich and funny, and ultimately very enlightening. As Barasch begins this book, “Every now and then, I’ll meet an escapee; someone who has broken free of self-centeredness and lit out for the territory of compassion” (1), he lays the groundwork of learning from the examples around and within us. His essay on a camp in the U.S. that brings together Palestinian and Israeli teens is especially profound (“Another Little Peace of the Heart”) as are so many essays in this book, which ultimately help us understand how to live with greater awareness of and compassion for the other beings on this planet.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964. One of the most important books written on both poetics and how our imagination intersects with symbols and places, this marvelous collection of essays looks at such things as the house; drawers, chests and wardrobes; nests; shells; corners; miniature; and even “The Dialectics of Outside and Inside” and “The Phenomenology of Roundness.” Bachelard’s aim here is to show that the places we dream of, imagine, write about and dwell in tell us volumes about how we “….integrate…the thoughts, memories and reams of mankind” (6).

Berg, Peter. The one who came up with therm, bioregionalism, and called for reinhabition of our planet is Peter Bergs, founder with his wife, dancer and activist Judy Goldhaft, of Planet Drum.
Read some of Peter's interviews at Sustainable City, the Digger archive, Whole Earth Review, and you can google his name to find more.

Bienvenidos a Casa: Vivencia y Pensamiento Bioregional edited by Laura Kuri. Mexico City: Ayotl, 2003. This bioregional premier, edited by the pioneer of bioregionalism in Mexico and funded in part by the Continental Bioregional Congress, is an essential work when it comes to translating much of the theory developed for bioregionalism north of the border into Spanish. The collection also focuses on actions taken through Mexico and Central America where bioregionalism has flourished. Contributors include Alberto Ruz, Ana Ruiz Diaz, Beatrice Briggs, Cristina Mendoza Dawe, Christopher Wells, David Haenke, Ekiwah Adler Belendez, Gene Marshall, Giovanni Ciarlo, Mike Carr, Peter Berg, Starhawk and others. The book release party for this volume brought together over 3,000 people eager to have a copy.

Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Publishers, 1988. Berry’s pivotal book on becoming native to our place explores our place in the earth community, how to better use our creative energy toward a new story of our life here, and especially how we can draw on spiritual and religious traditions (particularly Christianity) along the way. One of the more intriguing angles here is Berry’s assertion that we’ve been autistic when it comes to relating to the earth. Much of this book also reads like a prose-bound poem:

….Soon the late summer moon will give a light sheen to the landscape.

Something of a dream experience. Perhaps on occasion we participate in the

Original dream of the earth. Perhaps there are times when this primordial design

Becomes visible, as in a palimpsest, when we remove the later imposition. The

Dream of the earth. Where else can we go for the guidance needed for the task

That is before us. (223)

Berry, Thomas. The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future. New York: Bell Tower, 1999. This gorgeous, wise and important reflection on the great work before us to make the future we envision is full of deep insight, far-reaching connections, and both clear-eyed vision and hard won inspiration. As Berry concludes,

We are now experiencing a moment of significance far beyond what any of us can imagine. What can be said is that the foundation of a new historical period, the Ecozoic Era, have been established in every realm of human affairs. The mythic vision has been set into place. The distorted dream of an industrial technological paradise is being replaced by the more viable dream of a mutually enhancing human presence within an every-renewing organic-based Earth community. The dream drives the action. In the larger cultural context the dream becomes he myth that both guides and drives the action. (201)

This book unpacks that vast statement, looking at fields varied at economics, literature, mythology, culture, energy, spirituality, and then into all societal institutions that we need to transform with vision and action.

Bernard, Ted and Jora Young. The Ecology of Hope: Communities Collaborate for Sustainability. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 1997. This delightful collection of ecological community portraits takes us to Monhegan Island, ME., Chattanooga, TN., Menominee, WI., the Sky Islands of the American Southwest, and to other locales. Each story is informative, inspiring and lucid in showing how communities can work together to reclaim and restore wild lands. What’s so helpful about this book is that it’s totally about examples of putting theories of restoration into everyday practice.

Berry, Wendell. Recollected Essays 1965-1980. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981. While all of Berry’s essay collections are vital and informative, this collection brings together important investigations of wilderness and culture. Some of the key essays are “The Body and Earth,” in which Berry calls for embodied work and life; “The Unforeseen Wilderness,” which questions our cultural assumption of control over nature; and “The Making of a Marginal Farm,” on living close to the land, day by day. Berry is astonishingly clear and direct with an eye toward poetic awareness of the land.

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. New York: Avon, 1977. “This book is about culture in the deep, ripe sense: A nurturing habitat,” writes Gary Snyder, and he couldn’t be more right. This is an astonishing collection of essays, focused primarily on how the ecological crisis in agriculture is a cultural crisis. Along with sounding the alarm, Berry is plenty inspiring, writing that “….the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope” (14).

Bioregional Education edited by Frank Traina and Susan Darley-Hill. Troy, OH.: North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), 1995. This excellent guide to bioregionalism focused on core concepts in bioregional education and methods and techniques for bioregional education. Contributors include Chris Wells, founder of the All Species Project, Ken Lassman, Amy Hannon, Jim Dodge, Marti Crouch, Marnie Muller, Frank Traina, Thomas Berry, David Abram and others.

Blackmarr, Amy. Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond. New York: Penguin, 1997. This simple and clear collection of small essays and vignettes about learning a place well is refreshing and quietly illuminating. While it’s not the most startling or life-changing ecological memoir I’ve read, I found that its lyricism and deft focus make it worth reading and reflecting on in relation to other well-studied and well-loved places.

Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment edited by Doug Aberley. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 1993. Aberley’s edition (part of the New Catalyst Bioregional Series) of this valuable anthology on bioregional mapping includes essays by Kirkpatrick Sale, Beatrice Briggs, Whitney Smith, Freeman House, Kai Snyder, Seth Zuckerman, Gene Marshall, David McCloskey and others active in the development of bioregional and cognitive mapping. While book could use even more illustrations, it does a good job in communicating how to create step-by-step descriptions of place through available local sources, and what value such mapping has for political and social change.

Butala, Sharon. Perfection of the Morning. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995.This powerful memoir unfolds what it is for Butala to make a life on the wide open prairies of Canada after years of urban living. But more than the story it tells, this memoir takes close-ups and wide-angled views of the land and sky in precise and profound ways. In doing so, Butala shows what she learns about being human and how she learns it.

Capra, Fritjof. The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living. New York: Harper Collins, 2002. This visionary investigation of systematic understandings of life on many levels – written by the author of The Tao of Physics and drawing strongly on new physics – looks at human social structures from a bioregional and biological point of view. Capra particularly discusses how the global economic structure is one a collision course with the planet, and he does a good job of looking at power dynamics all around.

Carr, Michael. Bioregionalism and Civil Society: Democratic Challenges to Corporate Globalism. Toronto: UBC Press, 2004. This is an important book understanding the theoretical underpinnings of bioregionalism in terms of consumerism, community building, and many strategies, tools and visions. Carr also narrates the continental movement through the 1996 gathering in Mexico. This is also an important book in terms of better understanding reinhabition as value and action, and how reinhabitation catalyzes a new view of civil society.

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. Under the Sea-Wind. Oxford University Press, 1952. The Sea Around Us. Oxford University Press, 1954. The one, the only, the first and the last in many ways when it comes to ecological activism through the written word, Rachel Carson remains a hero for anyone concerned about the effects of pesticides and other poisons on the environment. Her work resulted in the world’s ban on DDT and the eventual creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Silent Spring, according to Linda-Ruth Berger, “is a manifesto.” Her earlier books on the sea are also important sources in terms of inspiring awe and concern for the natural world. Carson’s questioning of who makes the decisions that destroy habitat and endanger many species (including humans) is chilling and still very much needed.

Cohen, Michael J. Reconnecting with Nature: Finding Wellness Through Restoring Your Bond with the Earth. Corvallis, OR.: Ecopress, 1997. Cohen’s talent for discussing complicated issues in innovative ways and then devising creative exercises and approaches is applied to health and healing here. This very embodied book advocates listening both to our bodies and the natural world, and writing new chapters in our health and life.

Cohen, Michael J. How Nature Works: Regenerating Kinship with Planet Earth. Portland, OR.: Stillpoint Publishing with World Peace University and Center for Peace, United Nations, 1988. This fairly unknown volume is simply one of the best guides we have found for environmental education. Part One: Touch the Earth includes amazing exercises and discussions to help people familiarize themselves with their home environment. Part Two: The Civilization of Nature explores ways of seeing ourselves and our part in nature from other angles. The exercises especially are amazingly innovative, and the discussion questions always provocative such as “From your own life, find examples of misusing a physical map and having your internal map mislead you” (214). Plus, this book has great charts, maps, illustrations and thinking throughout it, making it a gem for anyone doing environmental education for any population.

A Continental Bioregional Congress on the Prairie: An Audio Documentary of an Eco-Revolution produced by Jacqueline Froelich, hosted by Pete Hartman. Fayetteville, AR.: KUAF National Public Radio, 2002. A marvelous 29 minute NPR report of the bioregional congress featuring Judy Goldhaft, David Haenke, Stephanie Mills, Gene Marshall, Alberto Ruz, Anna Diaz, and many others. Contact Jacquie at froelich@uark.edu in Fayetteville to have her email you an audio copy.

Costner, Pat with Holly Gettings and Glenna Booth. We All Live Downstream: A Guide to Waste Treatment That Stops Water Pollution. Eureka Springs, AR.: National Water Center, 1986. This is an excellent collection of writings about the effects of and possibilities for reforming our current disposal system for waste water. With examples of the political campaign against a water sewage plant for Eureka Springs and lots of information on low-flush and no-flush, and composting toilet option, it’s considered by many the best source on waste water disposal.

Davis, Donald Edward. Ecophilosophy: A Field Guide to the Literature. R. & E. Miles, 1989. This collection of reviews and discussions – in annotation style – does wonders in unpacking many sources related to ecophilosophy from human ecology, animal rights, ecological feminism, theology, ecology and philosophy.

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking, 2005. Diamond does a startling thing here: He undertakes the study of many civilizations, analyzing exactly why some went the way of the dinosaur while others flourished. He then applies what he learns to our civilizations, and he finds that we need to basically do 12 things (not doing any one would hasten our fall) to survive (and greenhouse gases is just one half of one of the 12!). He covers enormous ground (in all ways) in looking at Easter Island, Montana’s mining history, the Anasazi, China today, the Viking past, Rwanda’s genocide and so much more. This is the kind of book a person needs time to read and absorb, yet this book makes the strongest argument I’ve ever seen in one place for bioregionalism and other forms of ecological sustainability.

Dilliard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. While over 30 years old, this book still sings in brilliant observation and daring perception as to the luminosity and constant motion of the natural world. It’s a joy to read with writing always startling and surprising without ever getting sentimental.

Ecovillage Living: Restoring the Earth and Her People edited by Hildur Jackson and Karen Svensson. Green Books, 2002. This marvelous collection of essays on ecovillage living has a distinctly international focus and covers everything from group process to building techniques, but all as part of a photographed-full journey through various ecovillages around the world. There are testimonials, vibrant portraits of individuals and communities, and plenty else to inspire anyone who’s thinking of ways to reinhabit the earth on a community level.

Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces. New York: Penguin, 1985. This Western view (from Wyoming horizons) of Ehrlich’s relationship to the land in the aftermath of a broken heart shines with truth. Her perceptions of places and people enlarge how we might see the world.

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. This critical book investigates spiritual development over the last six thousand years, looking at how patriarchal religious traditions took hold, and how these traditions separate us from the earth and from each other. There are ample ramifications in this work not just for spirituality but for education, ecology, and day to day living.

Elder, John. Imaging the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature. Athens, GA.: University of Georgia Press, 1985. Elder’s marvelous investigation into poetry as a gateway into environmental consciousness is considered a premier work of ecocriticism and ecopoetics. Elder looks at how poetry highlights ecological loss and ecological restoration in our land and in our souls, and he draws on both traditional and contemporary poets (from Basho to Wordsworth to Oliver), plus many bioregional writers, to show “the wilderness at poetry’s edge” (chapter title).

The Essential Whole Earth Catalogue edited by J. Baldwin. New York: Doubleday, 1986. Few books are as fun as this oversized guide with all kinds of nuggets of information, charts, maps, reviews, instructions, dialogues and provocative essays and reviews. The focus on tools to make a decent life in balance with the natural world runs through all the quirky and profound entries. This is the kind of book best found in an obscure used bookstore or by other tilts of chance.

Evans, Howard Ensign. Life on a Little-Known Planet. New York: Delta Books, 1966. This is an amazing and fabulous book in all ways, and everyone should read it! Where else can you read “The Intellectual and Emotional World of the Cockroach” or “Parasitic Wasps, and How They Made Peyton Place Possible”? The writing is superb, the insight is profound, and the details are mind-blowing. This stimulating account of insect life shows us our planet from a point-of-view often well hidden from us, and the ramifications tell us volumes about the more-than-human life around us. As Evans concludes, “The earth is a good place to live. We shall appreciate it more and more as we explore the moon and the planets. If man shall ever have another home, it is presently unimaginable. We had better learn to respect the little-known planet beneath our feet” (293) after he shows us what – in its infinity – there is to respect.

Foxfire Books, edited by Eliot Wigginton. New York: Anchor Books, 1970s and beyond. This series of books, popular in the 70s when they started coming out, were collectively created by the editor and his Georgia community, thanks to various grants and just a lot of hard work. Each book is full of folk tales, instructions on growing and eating wild foods, stories and techniques for everything from midwifery to corn shucking, charts, drawings, instructions and more. Foxfire 2, for example, starts with a story of Maude Shope, an elder very attached to her mule, and then moves onto an essay on “Sourwood Honey,” an article on beekeeping, and then an essay on spring wild edible plants. These are marvelous guides not just for their information but for the model they give us for collecting and preserving local wisdom.

Giono, Jean. The Man Who Planted Trees but Grew Happiness. Brooksville, ME.: Friends of Nature, 1967. This classic fable shows the effects of planting trees – excessively, whimsically and passionately. This book is also a good remedy for reading too much about ecological devastation since it’s a story of rebuilding after war and destruction. Perhaps this is best summed up by this conclusion to the book:

On the sites of the ruins I had seen in 1913 now stand neat farms, cleanly

Plastered, testifying to a happy and comfortable life. The old streams, fed

By the rains and snows that the forest conserves, are flowing again. The waters

have been channeled. On each farm, in grooves of maples, fountain pools

overflow on carpets of fresh mint. Little by little, the villages have been rebuilt.

People from the plaints, where land is costly, have settled here, bringing youth,

motion, the spirit of adventure. Along the roads you meet hardy men and

women, boys and girls who understand laughter and have recovered a

taste for picnics.

Green Business: Hope or Hoax? Toward An Authentic Strategy for Restoring the Earth edited by Christopher Plant and Judith Plant. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 1991. This volume, part of the New Catalyst Bioregional Series, includes lively and well-written essays on a wide variety of making and keeping the local economy. The offerings include Sandy Irvine’s “Beyond Green Consumerism,” Brian Tokar’s “The Greening of International Finances,” Barry Commoner’s “Environmental Democracy is the Planet’s Best Hope,” Kirkpatrick Sale’s “The Trouble with Earth Day,” Gar Smith’s “50 Things You Can Do to Save the Earth,” Alyssa Lovell’s “Community-Supported Agriculture,” Gene Logsdon’s “Amish Economics,” and David Morris’s “Free Cities At Once” plus many other essays. So much of what this 16-year-old book discusses is front and present as the newest thinking today, so clearly the collection was ahead of its time. The critical edge in the book is particularly helpful in articulating why environmentalism and green corporations aren’t enough.

A Green City Program: For San Francisco Bay Area Cities and Towns. Written and edited by Peter Berg, Beryl Magilavy and Seth Zuckerman. San Francisco: Planet Drum Books, 1989. While this guide is focused on San Francisco, it’s an excellent model for other urban areas with lots of practical directions, illustrations, research and inspiration. The book covers everything from urban gardening to street construction.

Griffin, Susan. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. New York: Harper and Row, 1978. This is a landmark book in so many ways. Its structure, pastiching fairy tale, personal experience, scholarly analysis and deep reflection, challenges traditional patriarchal ways of presenting information. The book is also divided into two sections, very much in line with the Old Testament and New Testament of the bible, but obviously with a very different intention. Griffin also uses mythology and story to show how the same forces that divide women from their own power also divide humans from the land. As Judith Plant writes, “The book is designed to stir this roaring as it traces Western civilization’s history, showing how woman and nature have been regarded by patriarch – as existing for the use of and abuse by the self-interested.”

Haenke, David. David Haenke is the one of the founders of bioregionalism on the continent, starting the first bioregional group, the Ozark Area Community Congress, and serving as one of the team of organizers for the first continental congress. See his writings, where you can read, "Organizing a Bioregional Congress," "A Template for Political Ecology," "Bioregionalism and Ecological Economics," "Forest Futures," and "Floor It, You Moron." Also, google his name to find interviews and more. Read his vision of bioregional congresses at New Context.

Harker, Donald F. and Elizabeth Ungar Natter. Where We Live: A Citizen’s Guide to Conducting a Community Environmental Inventory. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995. This how-to guide is a gem for any community groups ready to do battle with planning commissions, highway departments, or local governments. Many of the tools are right here to help people create not just environmental inventories but also the basis for citizen-group shadow Environmental Impact Statements (to make sure any official EIS’s are done accurately). This guide also helps readers to name what’s right around them, a necessary step toward preservation.

Hasselstrom, Linda. Land Circle: Writings Collected from the Land. Golden, CO.: Fulcrum Publishing, 1991. Hasselstrom’s close viewing of the land and sky; her way of capturing – with lucidity and concision – human, plant and animal behavior; and her extraordinary ways of writing of the ordinary (such as digging a ditch) make this book a treasure. It’s also useful in seeing many ways to write about our relationship to place, including through dialogue and poetry.

Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism edited by Judith Plant. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1989. This superb anthology of ecofeminist essays – from Susan Griffin to Starhawk and beyond – is a wonderful introduction to ecofeminism. The critiques of the patriarchal paradigm and the call for a new vision inform all the intriguing essays of this collection.

Heart of the Land: Essays on Last Great Places edited by Joseph Barbato and Lisa Weinerman. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. This moving collection of personal ecological essays features the work of Terry Tempest Williams, Rick Bass, Bill McKibben, David James Duncan, Joel Achenback, Thomas McGuane, Gary Paul Nabhan, William Kittredge, James Welch, Ann Zwinger, Barbara Kingslover, Peter Matthiesson, Dorothy Allison, William Least-Heat Moon, and many others. The focus is specific places endangered, being lost or already lost, and the writing is exquisite.

Henderson, Hazel. The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives in Economics. Knowledge Systems, 1988. This wild and effective activist in solar energy’s manifesto brings together solar and alternative energy theory with activism savvy. The writing is lively and encourages us to develop collations to move toward positive change.

Hogan, Linda. The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir. New York: Norton, 2001. This quilted (small vignettes that fit together) memoir tells the story of Hogan and of her people, looking at the harshness of life on the reservation as well as individual losses and challenges, tribal histories, generational stories, and much more. Her deft and poetic melding of the personal, political, social, tribal and western infuse this book with a kind of integrity and wisdom only born of deep experience, reflection and art. She writes, “We are, in part, the body of earth. It might be that this place of ours is alive and radiant with the dreams of human kind as well as the power of, the motion of, air on a feathered wing as the eagles remembered flights when the wind blew” (206). Also see Hogan’s superb book, Dwelling.

Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. New York: Vintage, 1983. Few books are as important to read today as this one. Hyde’s journey through culture and ecology looks specifically at how living in a market-economy-based culture (where the more you have, the more you have) versus living in a gift-based culture (where wealth is measured by what you give to your community). Hyde’s understanding of gift-based cultures, coupled with his astute reading of mythology (particularly through cultural folktales), make so much of what he writes provocative and challenging. His writing style itself is a gift: clear, precise, and insightful in ways that most readers will long remember long after finishing the book. Overall, this little gem of a book helps us challenge our underlying cultural assumptions at the base of so much environmental degradation. Hyde also calls on us to develop a sustainable cultural aesthetic, and he shows us how to do this through our daily exchanges with one another.

Home: A Bioregional Reader edited by Van Andruss, Christopher Plant, Judith Plant, and Eleanor Wright. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Press, 1990. This excellent bioregional reader features articles by all the usual suspects (David Abram, Stephanie Mills, Peter Berg, David Haenke, Marnie Mueller, Doug Aberley, Starhawk) along with photographs, seasonal charts (and discussions of how to create your own), and other illustrations. It was one of the first bioregional collections, and it’s still very helpful when trying to get a sense of bioregionalism and the bioregional movement.

In Praise of Nature edited by Stephanie Mills. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1990. This unusual annotated bibliography is divided into the sections of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Spirit, and it includes annotations on a great many ecological sources plus small essays on important thinkers, activists, artists and scholars over the years (such as West Jackson, Rachel Carson, John Muir and others). It’s a treasure trove of great sources, and its only limitation is that many good books have come out since this annotated bibliography was released. All in all, this is a fascinating read that can easily expose you to many important sources in a short but illuminating time.

Jackson, Wes, Wendell Berry and Bruce Coleman, editors. Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. This anthology includes essays such as “The Importance of Traditional Framing Practices for a Sustainable Modern Agriculture” by Gene Logsdon; “Thinking Like a River” by Donald Worster; “Energy and Agriculture” by Amory B. Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins, and Marty Bender; “The Sustainable Garden” by Dana Jackson (co-founder of The Land Institute); “Sunshine Agriculture and Land Trusts” by Jennie Gerard and Sharon Johnson; “The Practice of Stewardship” by John Todd; and “Good, Wild, Sacred,” one of Gary Snyder’s finest essays. This clear-eyed, strongly researched and well-written collection speaks to how we can live in concert with our life places and those places’ role in feeding us.

Jordan, III, William R. The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. This essential book is pivotal in understanding the ramifications and possibilities available to us through a new understanding of restoration. As Stephanie Mills writes of this Jordan’s thinking here, “An argument so brilliant that it’s a work of art, The Sunflower Forest envisions evolution, ecosystems, and human action as integral, dynamic, and harmonious.” Jordan, the director of the New Academy for Nature and Culture, has extensive experience in restoration and the theory behind the practice, but it’s his understanding of community and communion that bring his experience and practice to new levels here.

Kingslover, Barbara. Small Wonder. New York: Perennial, 2002. This superb collection of political, personal and ecological essays studies everything from genetic engineering to the war in Iraq to vegetable growing to American mythology, illuminating surprising and easily recognizable connections and insights. Kingslover, an excellent writer in many genres, draws on her background in botany and technical writing, gardening, jazz, motherhood, and being well-grounded to places in Appalachia and the Tucson desert.

Kingslover, Barbara. Prodigal Summer. New York: HarperPerennial, 2001. This bioregional novel celebrates the lushness of the earth, and the gifts and challenges of the seasons through the lenses of three linked stories: that of a young widow (“Moth Love”), a solitary woman in the woods (“Predators”), and a stubborn old man (“Old Chestnuts”). The sensory descriptions of everything from how a coyote moves to the smell of rain to the taste of wild berries alone would make this book worth reading because in such descriptions, we can glimpse greater insight into the vibrancy of the world. But the stories also are compelling and important, touching on topics such as alternative agriculture, stewardship of woodland, protection of endangered species, culturally diverse impacts on living on the land, procreation, the plight of the Chestnut resurrection, the function or non-function of love, and what good are humans anyway. It’s one of my favorite novels for its poetry, vision, characters, and window into the life all around us.

Lassman, Ken. Wild Douglas County. Lawrence, KS.: Mammoth Publications, 2007. This deep map and seasonal approach to knowing and living in one place well has three important sections: One containing essays on living bioregionally in place, which would apply to people well beyond the one Kansas county the book focuses on; another of seasonal charts, which serve as excellent models for charting cycles of animal and plant life in any place (and each circular chart is arranged with the months around the perimeter, showing what plants are blooming, or amphibians hatching, or birds passing through at any time in the year); and the final focused on what to look for in the natural world on a day-to-day basis, which Lassman created after eight years of charting the seasonal activity. While this book has a very local focus, all of it would be particularly helpful as a tool to use in bioregions and watersheds around the world; this tool is all the more valuable as a way to map how global warming is effecting life places. The writing is beautiful, clear and pertinent, such as, “One of the most potent connections we have with the land, the air and the life around us is through water. Every time you take a drink, you are recharging your cells with water that has been in intimate contact with other forms of life, been in the soil, a thunderstorm, a river, a snowflake, a lake, or an ocean” (11).

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. This is the premier book on nature writing in terms of its historical precedent and its impact on generations of nature writers. First published in 1949, this book by one of the world’s great naturalists includes essays divided into three parts. “A Sand County Almanac” focuses on Leopard’s observations at his weekend refuge in rural farm. The second part, “The Quality of Landscape,” explores how he found his concern for the land over many decades, including a strong emphasis on what conservation is and could be. “A Taste for the Country,” the third part, is full of aware reflections of being outside and learning from the earth. As Leopard concludes, “Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.”

Least-Heat Moon, William. PrairyErth: An Epic History of the Tallgrass Country. Mariner Books, 1999. This deep narrative and cognitive mapping of Chase County, Kansas – the heart of the Flint Hills and the tallgrass prairie – is an exquisite quilting together of portraits of individuals and places, history and geology, time and space. Least-Heat Moon spent six years researching what he called a “participatory history,” and his careful listening and detailed study of history shines through his excellent writing. Written on the tail end of his acclaim over Blue Highways, PrairyErth traces Least-Heat Moon’s connection (through family) to the Flint Hills while also striving for a balance view of what this land is and who lives here. This book is also a brilliant example of bioregional autoethnography.

Lopez, Barry. Artic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape. New York: Bantam Books, 1987. This important memoir and travel journey, telling of Lopez’s immersion in various communities and expeditions in the Artic, also is an enthnographic, historical and scientific view of our coldest climates. Lopez writes beautifully of the North, showing us – by example – how to co-exist with each other and this climate.

Lovelock, James. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1979. The Age of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Planet. New York: Norton, 1988. These classic philosophical, biological and ecological books unpack the Gaia Hypothesis, the realization of the atmosphere as a product and protector that shows us that the Earth is one organism. Lovelock’s first book focuses on the central evidence for the Gaia Hypothesis, and his more recent one looks at the ramification of being one big organism, especially in a time of environmental crisis.

Lovins, Amory B. Soft Energy Paths: Toward a Durable Peace. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1979. This oldie is still a goodie with lots of good thinking and clear analysis of sustainable energy theory and practices by the guru of solar energy (along with his wife, Hunter Lovins). Written in a clear, discerning matter with lots of strong (and well-credited) research and studies, Lovins makes many good arguments for pursuing sustainable energy sources.

Lowry, Susan Meeker. Economics As If the Earth Really Mattered. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1988. Meeker’s hands-on guide to socially responsible investing emphasizes ethics and community viability. There’s ample material here even if it’s almost 20 years old.

Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments For the Elimination of Television. New York: William Morrow, 1978. This classic book, a radical critique of television, still holds strong ground and is worth taking a look at, especially in light of environmental education for children and adults.

Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan. Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution. Summit Books, 1986. This thoughtful, entertaining and important book looks at the forefront of ecology: microbes, the invisible life-forms that compose all of life. Telling the history of microbes and the composition, this book has vital ramifications for ecological problems of our present day, particularly when it comes to our changing atmosphere.

Marshall, Gene. The Call of the Awe: Rediscovering Christian Profundity in an Interreligious Era. Bonham, TX.: Realistic Living, 2007. This new book by Gene Marshall (who has many excellent books and articles on religion and bioregionalism – many available for free downloading at www.realisticliving.org) looks at the interface of interreligious dialogue and ecological community building. As Marshall explains on his website, “Religion appears in human life because every human being, even if not fully aware of it, lives in a land of mystery with rushing rivers of freedom, imposing mountains of care, and wild seas of tranquility. This land of mystery penetrates the land of ordinary living at every point. Awe is our experience of this ever-present Eternity.”

Mathews, John Joseph. Talking to the Moon: Wildlife Adventures on the Plains and Prairies of Osage Country. Norman, OK.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1945. Mathews, an astonishing writer and scientist, wrote this and several other essential books for seeing the earth through the lenses of the culture and rituals of the Osage. His descriptions of the land, his understanding of white and Osage cultures, and his careful and attentive observation make for refreshing clarity and meaning. This book mainly looks at the phases of the moon, according to the Osage, which include the Light-of-Day-Returns moon, the Just-Doing-That moon, the Deer-Hiding Moon and even the Little-Flower-Killer moon. By reading of these phases, we can come into an alternative – and much closer to the land reading – of the seasons.

McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. New York: Random House, 1989. This pivotal book looks at how destruction of the natural world is tied to our daily acts and consumption habits. Yet McKibben is also optimistic about the return of nature through community initiative (and these days McKibben is leading the charge of such initiative, including walks across the Northeast to raise awareness).

Mills, Stephanie. In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. This is a combination travel guide to places where ecological restoration is particularly inspiring or effective, a memoir of learning more about restoring one’s home place, and a study of how, why, where and when ecological restoration works. Mills visits Aldo Leopolds’s Wisconsin shack, the salmon restoration project in the Northwest, a Utopian restoration community in southern India, and other locales to write – in eloquent, lingering and clear prose – of what she witnesses. She also writes in great depth into the questions of what it means to be wild, virgin, undisturbed. This is an important book for anyone doing anything related to restoration.

Mills, Stephanie. Epicurian Simplicity. Wash., D.C.: Island Press, 2002. This is a marvel of a book! It’s mostly a memoir intertwined with thoughtful discussion on the ecological state of the world and particularly of a small Northern Michigan area, and deep reflection on how to live. In the model of Thoreau, Mills tells of her own largely solitary life in the Michigan woods while also exploring the Greek philosopher Epicurus’s views on simplicity and pleasure. More than most ecological memoirs, this one grapples with the constant question of how to live in balance with place while writing of the seasons, vocation, travels, community, and our common fate. As she writes,

A life alert to simple pleasures, with perception cultivated and attuned to beauty, and a large capacity for friendship can serve us well come what may, be it Ecotopia, corporate fascism, or Armageddon. Whatever befalls, it behooves us to honor the moment by savings what there is: light and shadow, bitter and sweet, harsh and tender, fragrant and foul, lyric and discord. (206)

At the same time, she also writes of our task, our work to change the world while also living fully in it.

Mills, Stephanie. Whatever Happened to Ecology? San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1989. This political and social change memoir is both a story of living, writing and working with an ecological focus, and a critique of societal diminishment of the ecological movement. Written in 1988, this book obviously came out of a time when global warming, the end of peak oil, and the disappearance of honey bees weren’t common knowledge, yet Mills clearly outlines the devastation already unfolding and the need to reclaim our vigilance. This book is also a love story about place and community, and returning to one’s roots.

Mills, Stephanie. Tough Little Beauties: Selected Essays and Other Writings of Stephanie Mills. North Liberty, IA: 2007. This astonishing collection of Stephanie Mills’ essays shines with eloquence, wisdom, daring and a tender fierceness. Mills, one of the clearest and most profound essayists of the bioregional movement, covers everything from the coming ecological apocalypse to the limitations and blessings of St. Herpes to spiritual swimming to a small jewel-like wild iris both promising and vulnerable. While there are a good many words illuminating life in the Northern Forests, where Mills makes her home, there are also forays to other lands around the world, and a balanced and clear-eyed contemplation about both the private life and the public world as both interface with ecology. This collection is alarming and uplifting, humorous and daring, and thoroughly brilliant in its honesty and lucidity.

Mollison, Bill. Permaculture: A Practice Guide for a Sustainable Future. Island Press, 1990. Mollison’s book, often touted as the bible of permaculture, unpacks the philosophy and practice of growing our food in a whole-systems, sustainable manner. Permaculture combines much of what has been developed, unearthed or rediscovered about sustainable agriculture and organic farming as well as earth-friendly energy generation. As Mollison explains, “Permaculture as a design system contains nothing new. It arranges what was always there in a different way, so that it works to conserve energy or to generate more energy than it consumes. What is novel, and often overlooked, is that any system of total common-sense design for human communities is revolutionary!”

Mother Earth: Though the Eyes of Women Photographers and Writers. Judith Boice, Ed. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1992. Divided in Mineral, Plant, Animal and Human Realms, with a final section on “Oneness,” this imagination combination of image and words features the likes of Leslie Marmom Silko, Alice Walter, Annie Iberio, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Annie Dilliard, Brenda Tharp, Diane Ackerman, Ntozake Shange, Dolores LaChappele and many other women photographers and writers. The book reads like a journey composed of fencepost moments, and particularly intriguing is the appendix, “The Passion to See: About the Photographers” in which each photographer speaks of her process and passion for the earth.

Nabhan, Gary Paul. The Desert Smells Like Rain. North Point Press, 1982. All of Nablan’s nature writing (usually in the form of memoir-esque essays) is superb and vivid with close attention to language and to his subject. An ethnobotanist by trade, Nabhan looks deeply at culture and agriculture.

Olsen, Andrea. Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide. Middlebury, VT.: Middlebury College Press, 2002. This hands-on guide leads readers on an embodied, bioregional, expressive arts approach to feeling more alive and finding more of their purpose and place. The exercises are excellent and include writing, guided meditation, drawings, walking, moving, breathing and even doing a place scan. Each day focuses on a theme such as “Breath and Voice,” “Art and the Environment,” “Movement,” “Bones,” “Soil,” “Underlying Patterns: A Bioregional Approach,” and “Perception.” This is a treasure of a book for individual practice and educational settings.

Putting Power in its Place: Creative Community Control edited by Christopher Plant and Judith Plant. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 1992. Also part of the New Catalyst Bioregional Series, this volume gathers excellent essays on working together in community, including deep discussions of consensus, shadow governments, watershed stewardship alliances, working councils, urban communities, and even eco-constitutions. Some of the particularly exciting essays are John Papworth’s “The Best Government Comes in Small Packages,” Murray Bookchin’s “The Meaning of Confederalism,” Oren Lyons’s “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave: Iroquois Democracy,” and Robert Swann’s “The Need for Local Currencies.” There’s excellent discussion throughout this book on power dynamics in group process.

Ray, Janisse. Ecology of a Cracker Childhood. Minneapolis: Milkweed Publications, 1999. Like Terry Tempest-Williams, Ray combines memoir with ecological discussion, but in her case, she is advocating for backwood Georgia, a land often forgotten or seen as throwaway land, and for a people often marginalized by poverty and neglect. Throughout her writing, the earth breathes, and we can almost smell the pine trees as well as the rusting cars. This work is also full of a kind of unrequited love and yearning while also deeply honoring the real and available beauty in unexpected places.

Rezendes, Paul. Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to See Animal Signs. Collins, 1999. While this book is a wonderful resource on how to track various North American mammals, what really makes it glow is Rezendes’s superb discussion of living in concert with the wild. His ways of honoring stillness and silence to find the more-than-human world are information and inspiring.

Rezendes, Paul. The Wild Within: Adventures in Nature and Animals Teachings. New York: Berkeley Books, 1998. Combining stories with reflections and insights, Rezendes writes of animals but even more, the places between seeing and meeting. His wanderings through woods and swamplands, learning to wake up to this other reality, brims with awareness and immediacy.

Reinhabiting a Separate Country: A Bioregional Anthology of Northern California. Peter Berg and Raymond Dasmann, editors. San Francisco: Planet Drum Foundation, 1978. One of the first books on bioregionalism, this one is important in its call to congress and in its clear definition of bioregionalism and its potential worldwide. Continue to read Peter Berg’s work – including updates from his bioregional pioneering work in Ecuador – at www.planetdrum.org.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. Dwellers on the Earth: A Bioregional Vision. University of Georgia Press, 2000. This classic bioregional book, first published in 1985, conveys a full range of bioregional visions in a clear and scholarly manner while also giving real-life, illuminating examples of bioregionalists in action. Sale divides his book into “The Bioregional Heritage,” “The Bioregional Paradigm,” “The Bioregional Project” and the “The Bioregional Imperative” while looking at economics, culture, politics and the understanding of the earth as alive and dynamic.

Schumacher, E.F. Small is Beautiful: Economic As If People Mattered. New York: Harper and Row, 1973. This famous book is key to the global environmental movement, exploring and challenging economic theories that degrade the planet and its people, and proposing very workable small-scale economic systems that can help restore communities and life places. The writing is lucid, comprehensive, visionary, even 35 years later, and Schumacher also looks widely at global issues as well as local ones to make his case.

Seed, John, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming and Arne Naess. Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards a Council of All Beings. Santa Cruz, CA.: New Society Publishers, 1988. One of the most important approaches I’ve experienced are the workshops and discussions related to Thinking Like a Mountain. This book, which basically encapsulates the workshops, is a good introduction, but the workshops themselves are amazing experiences that take participants through their own relationships to land and sky, and help participants transform the despair and numbness that comes of witnessing ecological devastation into insight and action.

Snyder, Gary and William Scott McLean. The Real Work: Interviews and Talks 1964-1979. This is one of the best collection of Gary Snyder writings and interviews, with such essays and interviews as “The Landscape of Consciousness,” and “On Earth Geography.” While Snyder has been criticized for traveling the world to tell people to stay home, his writing and his travels had planted bioregional ethics (not to mention Asian poetics) worldwide over the last 50 years.

Starhawk. Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2002. This field guide to the anti-globalism movement is valuable in learning more about non-violence in action, the importance of continually working to diminish the reach of corporate control in local communities, and how to be an effective activist in concert in other activists. While it’s surely a way to sing to the choir, choirs do need renewed and inspired singing from time to time. Her attention to group process is particularly valuable and insightful.

Stein, Sara. Noah’s Garden. New York: North Point Press, 1995. Noah’s Children: Restoring the Ecology of Childhood. New York: North Point Press, 2001. Planting Noah’s Garden: Further Adventures in Backyard Ecology. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. Stein is astonishing as a writer and thinker. Her clarity, her insights, her understanding of the complex and her ability to unpack it for the reader in a way that both informs and inspires – all of this is evident in her important work. She possesses one of the most acute understandings I’ve ever encountered of how to grow both gardens and children (and how to tend to both, including the gardens and children within us). She’s also a helluva storyteller. Read her!

Tempest-Williams, Terry. Refuge. New York: Vintage, 1991. Terry Tempest-Williams’s fine memoir interlaces the story of her mother dying of breast cancer and her families’ cancer legacy with the history and current conditions of birdlife in the Great Salt Lake area.. She makes a visceral and storied link between the effect of nuclear testing on the environment and our bodies, but she also looks deeply at the social changes needed for healing and the spiritual graces possible in the face of such suffering. The chapters are all named for bird species, and all record the lake level to show how human activities impact the local ecosystem in such an extensive and culminating way. She also writes of her hope for the future: “One night, I dreamed women from all over the world circled a blazing fire in the desert” (287), and in its own way, this book has been and continues to be its own fire in the desert.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1854; 1942; 1960. This is one of the earliest environmental memoirs and ecological guides, focusing on a small pond and a big vision. While Thoreau calls to us to simplify our lives, his complex analysis of the industrial societal growing around him speaks to many of the same issues we face today. As he writes, “The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men, and so with the paths which the mind travels. How warn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity.”

Todd, Nancy Jack and John Todd. Bioshelters, Ocean Arks, City Farming: Ecology as the Basis of Design. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1984. This important tome on ecological design and practice blends high tech approaches with biological principles, and it also narrates the adventures of the Todds and their community in bringing ecological design to the forefront in various ways. Mostly, the Todds advocate for a kind of design that is perpetually self-sustaining.

Turtle Talk: Voices for a Sustainable Future. Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 1990. Part of the New Catalyst Bioregional Series, this anthology features essays by Christopher Plant, Gary Snyder, Peter Berg, Starhawk, George Woodcock, Susan Griffin, Dave Foreman, John Seed, Marie Wilson, George Watts, Caroline Estes, Freedom House, Susan Meeker-Lowry and Murray Bookchin – the usual gang of bioregionally-identified writers at the time. The topics range from consensus to deep ecology to Native people projects with non-natives to economics to spirituality. It’s a lovely primer to bioregionalism, illustrating through its examples what Kirkpatrick Sale writes in the introduction: “And it is the great lesson of the turtle, of course, that you can get ahead only when you stick your neck out.”

Wild Culture: Ecology and Imagination, edited by Whitney Smith and Christopher Lowry. This now-defunct journal/still-available book is a superb collection of explorations on what it means to be wild and to celebrate the wild in our culture. This volume includes essays such as David Cayley’s “New Ideas in Ecology and Economics,” B.P. Nichol’s “R-Toys-Us?”, Marni Jackson’s “Hormones or History?”, “Paul Shephard’s “Nature and Madness,” plus pieces on paleoecology, natural selection, the goddess, wild foods, Walden Pond, gender studies, recycling, and fear of knowing. There’s music, photographs, illustrations and many surprises. It’s a delight!

The World and the Wild: Expanding Wilderness Conservation Beyond Its American Roots edited by David Rothenberg and Marta Ulvaeus. Tucson, AZ.: University of Arizona Press, 2002. This international anthology looks toward traditions around the world of conservation and ecological restoration, including such essays as “In the Dust of Kilimanjaro,” “Recycled Rain Forest Myths,” “They Trampled on Our Taboos” and “The Unpaintable West.” The strong claim flowing through each essay is that our American view of wilderness is a privileged one, and that indigenous peoples must be entrusted to steward their own resources.

Worster, Donald. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Cambridge, MA.: Cambridge University Press, 1985. This fascinating history of ecological ideas and movements, written beautifully, looks at the influences of Thoreau, Darwin, Lyell and many others. It’s particularly strong in making a scientist and historical argument for our ecological tradition of conservation and activism.