ECOFEM-UNDERDTANDING PLACE

1. A landscape that informs my history-functions as bedrock of democracy?

Place+ people = politics. Very appropriate for Stone Mountain Park in Georgia.

This park is not considered a wilderness, but the question of feeling displaced as part of my history, in this environment has no clear answer.

 

This monument in the village is the largest flat rock relief sculpture in the world. It features three confederate generals. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Carving on the rock began in 1923 at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Stone Mountain the city, became then the modern birth place of the Klu Klux Klan, (KKK) who helped to fund the project. For many Americans, this sculpture on the mountain is an icon of white supremacy.

Terry Tempest Williams stated “the region of the American West shares common ground with the South: each has found its voice in loss. The South was forever shaped by the civil war … and we in the West are in the midst of our own … it is a battle over public and private uses of land… what will remain sovereign.” (Home work 7) Over 4 million people visit this monument annually-Americans and foreigners. The monument boasts a laser show from May-October where people picnic beneath it to watch in amazement. The killings of some members of the African American church in South Carolina, in 2015, and Stacey Abrams (the first African -American minority leader in the Georgia House of Representative and gubernatorial candidate 2018) declared it “a blight on our state” galvanized supporters for and against the monuments’ removal.

One Race Movement led by Reverend Ferrell Brown, grandson of founder of the KKK, met on the mountain and sought to “depoliticize and bring restoration and healing “to the place. (Washington Post. September 2017.) Williams wrote that attempts to rescue the last viable population of bull trout in Elk County Nevada by closing off access to them triggered a firestorm among ranchers against the move; so too the calls by Georgians and other Americans to remove or destroy the monument, because of its racist birth, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, The League of the South and their supporters erupted in a firestorm of support in protests in Stone Mountain’s village “convinced their way of life and legacy were under attack” (Debra McKinney. Southern Poverty Law Center. February 2018) There are notable voices for removal, like the NAACP, and for its stay, like civil rights icon and confidante of Dr. King, Ambassador Andrew Young. The NAACP join those whose say removal would help to wipe away a deadly American chapter, the supporters insist its presence reminds us of it, thus eliminating repeat. No one tears up history books, the past horrors are still being taught.  Perhaps democracy from this monument is the freedom to express opposing views without violence. Those who oppose its presence go there for picnics and protect its surroundings for the next generation. The monuments’ supporters  ”have a participatory relationship with it” and  supporters feel “the passion of love, concerned with or treating of love…” (Red 16)

2. …you agree with Kingsolver we need wilderness? …you are a city dweller- express a connection with earth?

Kingsolver reminds us of environmental damage, in delicate places “a riparian woodland with an ill-placed dam …ranch or subdivision could permanently end the corridor where hordes of delicate creatures, flutter, swim, prowl, or hop from the mountains down through the desert and back again.” Kingsolver’s love of the wilderness seems rooted in her childhood ancestral home with its scent of decades of tobacco. With the dusty sweetness and all other odors that exist.  Kingsolver goes on to expound on that love, her soul, she says, “hankers for the rain she loves, or butterflies that traverse a column of light, or walking half mile to the mail box, or have a discourse with a farmer about the weather.” Yet for all this love, she only stays from May to August.  Needing the wilderness am told is romanticizing what was, and city dwellers who become environmentally conscious, romanticize the idea of the wilderness, but will not leave the city. I see the benefit of both dwellings. For all its beauty-the wilderness, whether in Southern Appalachia where the rain pummels the tin roof, while Kingsolver watches the tulip grow through a curtain of rain, or in the Arizona desert with its dominant mesquite and cotton wood trees, she needs a computer-no doubt bought in “the natural habitat of our species” where one would find the pavement with its “street lights, architecture and hominid agenda.” These lights and architecture are consequences of the human exodus from the land which Kingsolver argues cause us to lose a “rooted sense,” which is deep and intangible as religious faith…” On encountering people who exodus the wilderness, they speak of the harsh environment of survival- the unexpected encounters with wild animals, often limited or no electricity, no sanitation pickup- and burying trash-non-biodegradable items, no recycling, or driving great distances to do so, and difficult access to health care, or even 911.

Change in the human experience is inevitable, from hunter-gathers, agriculture, industrial revolutions etc. All these changes brought concomitant diseases. Whatever the change, Kingsolver reminds us that most of our food comes from “dank, muddy earth, and oxygen in our lungs was recently inside a leaf, and that newspapers or books are made from the hearts of trees that died…”

Protecting the wilderness can be divisive. My Guyanese friend complained bitterly that their government pressured by environmentalists, designated a large area of land with natural resources to the indigenous Amerindians-less than 10percent of the population, leaving the rest of the country without those benefits. “How is that justice for the whole?” he asks. “Access to those areas could improve our lives as a people, economically, intellectually and our health.” This governmental step seems to echo Kingsolver, “… people need wild places. We need to experience a landscape that is timeless, whose agenda moves at the pace of speciation and glaciers.” My friend says that describes the Amerindians.

There are city dwellers with an ethos of saving the planet who find a like-minded community. Many plant fruits and vegetables on patios and roof tops in dirt or hydroponics, and often show children from a school or community center as Kingsolver’s husband did how food is grown. City dwellers do composting-many on a small scale, they are adept at recycling-often non-existent in the wilderness, even if there is less material. City dwellers often walk to most places, ride bikes, take public transportation, unlike wilderness dwellers, whose cars like Kingsolver, an old dirt colored sedan, of many years, perhaps don’t get emissions’ testing, and drive to most places. City dwellers pressure city governments to plant trees in areas where many were destroyed to build their homes, and to improve and build more parks. City dwellers frequent farmers markets, or grocery stores with a large organic produce section, and restaurants that boasts menus from farm to table. A growing number of city dwellers are becoming vegans and vegetarians. Most wilderness dwellers are not. Even clothing shops in cities are offering clothing made from recyclable material, probably not found in the wilderness. One could argue that environmental awareness by city dwellers is the offspring of what Kingsolver calls “exodus from the land with the wondrous ways people invented to amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces… it makes me unspeakable sad.” So, city dwellers have adopted Barry Lopez’s recommendation of protecting natures other than our own, by “reimagining our lives as a humanity … and a grace we were not aware we desired until we had tasted it.”

City dwellers believe what Kingsolver admonishes, “the species who surround us with their commotion of howling, singing, or mating love their lives as much as we do ours … and the land still provides our genesis …”