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poe 0.frontmatter 5/18/06 4:13 PM Page i THIS PLACE ON EARTH poe 0.frontmatter 5/18/06 4:13 PM Page iii THIS HOME PLACE AND THE ON PRACTICE OF EARTH PERMANENCE ALAN THEIN DURNING q SASQUATCH BOOKS SEATTLE poe 0.frontmatter 5/18/06 4:13 PM Page iv Copyright ©1996 Northwest Environment Watch. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books Ltd. 02 01 00 99 98 97 5 4 3 2 1 Cover design: Karen Schober Cover illustration: Debra A. Hanley Interior design and composition: Kate Basart Map:The map of the Pacific Northwest, on page ix, was created by Cynthia Thomas for Northwest Environment Watch. It appeared in State of the Northwest, NEW Report No. 1, by John C. Ryan, copyright 1994 by Northwest Environment Watch. The map is based partly on Conservation International (CI) and Ecotrust, “Orginal Distribution of Coastal Temperate Rain Forests of North America,” Portland 1991. Revisions for the NEW publication were based on forest data in CI, Ecotrust, and Pacific GIS, “Coastal Temperate Rain Forests of North America,” Portland, 1995. See also David D. McCloskey, “Cascadia,” Cascadia Institute, Seattle, 1988. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Durning, Alan Thein. This place on earth : home and the practice of permanence/Alan Thein Durning. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57061-040-1 1. Life style—Northwest, Pacific. 2. Simplicity. 3. Home. 4. Environmental responsibility. I.Title. HQ2044.U62N674 1996 306—dc20 96-20592 Sasquatch Books 615 Second Avenue Seattle, Washington 98104 (206)467-4300 [email protected] http://www.sasquatchbooks.com Sasquatch Books publishes high-quality adult nonfiction and children’s books related to the Northwest (San Francisco to Alaska). For information about our books, contact us at the above address, or view our site on the World Wide Web. poe 0.frontmatter 5/18/06 4:13 PM Page v Contents chapter one Place / 1 chapter two Past / 23 chapter three Cars / 67 chapter four Stuff / 127 chapter five People & Prices / 185 chapter six Politics / 239 Debts / 293 Sources / 296 Index / 311 poe 0.frontmatter 5/18/06 4:13 PM Page vii This Place on Earth is the flagship book of Northwest Environment Watch (NEW), a wholly independent, not-for-profit research center in Seattle, Washington. NEW’s mission is to foster an environmentally sound economy and way of life in the Pacific Northwest—the biologi- cal region stretching from southeast Alaska to northern California, and from the Pacific to the crest of the Rockies. NEW is predicated on the belief that if we cannot create an environmentally sound economy here, in the greenest part of history’s richest civilization, it probably cannot be done. If we can, we will set an example for the world. Founded by Alan Durning in 1993, NEW serves as a monitor of the region’s environmental conditions and a pathfinder for routes toward a lasting economy. Through action-oriented interdisciplinary research, NEW provides its citizens, elected officials, educators, and the media with reliable information about what sustainable development is and how to achieve it. NEW creates the tools for reconciling people and place, economy and ecology. NEW’s book series strives to provide both generalists and experts with cutting-edge findings on a wide range of topics, such as the current health of ecosystems, the relationship between cars and cities, the creation of green jobs, getting prices to tell the ecological truths, and the hidden costs of everyday objects. Publications include Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things, by John C. Ryan and Alan Thein Durning; The Car and the City, by Alan Thein Durning; Hazardous Handouts, by John C. Ryan; and State of the Northwest, by John C. Ryan. Northwest Environment Watch is governed by a seven-member board of directors and is funded by individual member contributions, foundation grants, and publications sales. NEW’s work is carried out by a small staff and large corps of volunteers. Northwest Environment Watch 1402 Third Avenue, Suite 1127 Seattle, Washington 98101-2118 206-447-1880 206-447-2270 (fax) [email protected] http://www.speakeasy.org/new/ poe 1.place 5/22/06 3:55 PM Page 1 chapter one place August I AM BACK IN SEATTLE. I am exhausted, lonely, and off- balance—the damp air smells disconcertingly like childhood. At the moment, being here feels like defeat. It reminds me of the times when my brother and sister swam out to the log and I turned tail and crawled onto the beach. I am haunted by the fear that by coming here I have turned tail on the cause that has occupied my last decade. I tell myself I am changing tactics, but I do not always trust this idea.At a minimum, I cannot fully explain my reasons for being here, nor why I am so determined to stay. I came here, I suppose, to find out what it means to live respon- sibly in desperate times. Perhaps I came here in hopes of finding out what permanence would look and feel like—and to practice it while we still have the chance. Perhaps I came to confront head-on 1 poe 1.place 5/22/06 3:55 PM Page 2 This Place on Earth the pain and paradox of living in an economy that seems to thrive on the death of nature. Maybe I came here in the hope that place might be the escape hatch for a fractured society hurtling toward the environmental brink. All I can say with confidence is that I came here because, a year ago, a grinning barefoot peasant in the Philippines pitied me—the one thing I could not stand — and her pity became like a seed in my shoe. It sprouted, grew into my dreams, and tormented me. It sent me scurrying to the only place that ever felt like home. And it put down a taproot that has now bound me here, in this moss-cloaked neighborhood where everything is smaller than my memories. Coming home did not come naturally because allegiance to locale is alien to my family. I am from a line that reveres wan- derers. My father, second son of a self-taught Irish merchant and a Polish Jew, fled the bigotry of the South at age sixteen and never looked back. My mother is a tenth-generation descendant of Puri- tans who sailed to Massachusetts from England after the Mayflower’s voyage. Beginning with the third generation in the New World, the family began moving to a new town with each generation. By the sixth generation, they had crossed the Mississippi. The seventh generation reached the Pacific; the eighth crossed to Asia.The ninth and tenth also kept moving. For two centuries or more, my ances- tors died in different states than the ones in which they were born. I grew up hearing the stories of these people—pioneer farmers, merchants, missionaries, military officers, and geographers. Even the friends my family has attracted have been international vagabonds: my grandmother’s guest books, kept since she was first married, record all the places where her many visitors ever lived. Seven ink-filled volumes stand on her shelf, reading like cat- alogs of exotic ports. I grew up paging through them, dreaming of the places I would one day inscribe in Grandma’s book. Recently, 2 poe 1.place 5/22/06 3:55 PM Page 3 place I found an entry in uneven script: “Alan Durning, age 11, world traveler.” The three of us in my litter have collected stamps in our pass- ports the way we used to collect bottle caps. Until recently, it has been uncommon for any two of us to be in the same time zone at once. I have been especially successful at mobility.The longest I have ever lived in the same room is three years; in the same house, six. Most of my life, I have surpassed the national average of moving every fifth year; I have rarely put up more than two con- secutive calendars at the same address. Shortly after college, I set up base camp in Washington, D.C., where I joined the staff of a research center charged with monitoring the world’s social and ecological health. A few years of seventy-hour weeks later I had been promoted and began hopscotching the globe myself, studying everything from poverty to atmospheric chemistry.It was urgent stuff: documenting injustice, testifying before Congress, jet-setting on behalf of future generations. Then came the seed. I was in the Philippines interviewing members of remote hill tribes about their land and livelihood. On a sweltering day in the forested terrain of the Banwa’on people, a gap-toothed chief showed me the trees, streams, and farm plots that his tribe had tended for centuries. It was territory, he insisted, they would defend with their lives. As the sun finally slid lower in the sky, he introduced me to a frail old woman who was revered by the others as a traditional priestess. We sat under a sacred tree near her farm and looked out over the Ma’asam River. She asked through an interpreter, “What is your homeland like?” She looked at me with an expectant smile, but I was speechless. My eyes dropped. Should I tell her about my neighborhood on the edge of Washington, D.C., the one where I then lived with my wife, Amy, and our son, Gary? The one where we could not let Gary play outside our apartment because of the traffic? 3 poe 1.place 5/22/06 3:55 PM Page 4 This Place on Earth She repeated the question, thinking I had not heard.