Wes Temby Tumbles

Wow, it felt funny just using that as a blog post entry, I can’t imagine what it would feel like to say it in front of a crowd! Anyway, it’s June now, and I’m due for an update to this here readin’ Internet online web log site.

It has been almost a month since RDNA concluded and I was sent back out to the wilds of civilization. In that time, I have travelled back to the East coast for a friend’s wedding and had a good opportunity to see a different slice of life. It was my first extended trip to New England, and my first time ever to Maine. Firstly, let me say, Maine is beautiful. It’s a rugged country carved by glaciers. Pine trees and islands, cold surf and lobster. There’s a lot of American history there, and I really enjoyed seeing how people live out there.

How people live is important to me, since as a permaculturist I’m extremely curious about the living arrangements we as a species engage in. Maine, for example, was at one time a heavily extraction-based economy. They had lumber, and they had ports. They cut down trees and shipped that stuff out. Trees and pelts, if I’m not mistaken. As that slowed down with competition from other regions, they transitioned into a tourist economy and have been known affectionately as “Vacationland” ever since. And it’s a good place for a vacation, I must say. It’s pretty, fairly sparsely populated, and not that hard to get to. But can people live there like that, given the current arrangement?

As we drove around Maine (and you have to drive, since there is virtually no passenger rail to speak of), I realized how the car is an integral part of life there. The weather was not too cold, but I couldn’t help by also think about how harsh the winters are and how much energy it takes to maintain a household. For instance, I was in Pownhal, Maine a lot and this little burg is about 30 minutes by car to Portland, Maine. Now, Pownhal at one point was largely an agricultural community. I know this by having read a local history book, and also just by driving about and seeing what used to be fields turned into huge lawn tracts, or second-growth forest.

Gas prices currently hover around $4/gallon in the U.S., while our British counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic (not too far from Maine) pay almost 4X that much for petrol. All around Portland, the biggest city in the region, I noticed a lot of commercial empty space. I saw a similar arrangement in Connecticut, where we also visited some family. Lots of ticky-tacky plastic siding homes spaced a few miles out of what would otherwise be town center. It’s my assertion that if prices in America where to become what they are in the UK, a radical shift would inevitably have to occur in this country. A radical shift in how we live, how we view our communities, and in how we think of ourselves as a nation.

The America I was brought up to believe in, to think of myself as a citizen of, is no more. All the theories that our republic is based on are bankrupt, and never applied in governance. Corporate lobbies control government with far more power than the electorate. How this will play into what will be an inevitable shift in living arrangement is anyone’s guess. For my part, I try not to be too curmudgeonly about things. It’s all too easy to point fingers at one demographic and lay blame, or to lambaste others for this or that, but I don’t think that’s a productive or useful posture. What I’ve learned in the last year is to be show up, be helpful, and be kind in the process. See ya in the field!