A stranger called me for an
interview, convinced that environmental concerns alone qualified me as a
journalist. I listened patiently. She concluded her appeal with: “If you
promise to safeguard my identity, I’ll tell you how to save the world.”
It was hyperbole, of course. And
smacked of arrogance. But in the end, her self-confident voice ruled. A day
later, I turned onto a gravel road in the middle of a 20-year-old subdivision.
A painted Victorian was the only house with breathing room. Behind its white
picket fence grew food: rosemary, sage, quince, blueberries, raspberries,
artichoke, asparagus and two dwarf fruit trees. Dozens of winter squashes sat
on the stairs and porch; hand-made Christmas wreaths leaned against the wall.
She greeted me through the screen
door; then, in clogs, led me around the 2-acre ‘farm.’ The north half was still
forested with old-growth firs, harvested not for firewood, but for mulch.
Beside an orchard stood a sturdy, wooden barn topped with solar collectors.
Inside, two bee hives, a goat pen and a hen house, with openings to the
outside, contrasted with a neat bank of electric batteries and a pump for his
well. Rough-sawn, old-growth posts had been sanded and varnished. There was a
recycled linoleum floor. Corn hung in the rafters. Large, screen-bottomed bins
held 300+ onions, 100 squash and perhaps 300 pounds of potatoes. On shelves
were one-gallon jars of red, black and white beans, as well as 100 or so quarts
of canned tomatoes. Attached to the stainless-steel counter was a hand-crank
food mill.
Between the barn and the house lay
her summer ‘pantry’, a half-acre of orderly vegetable beds in various stages of
winterization.
We sat at the kitchen table in
stocking feet. Stainless steel sinks and counters would make clean-up easy; the
small refrigerator seemed inadequate for the four people who supposedly lived
here. I could feel radiant heat through the bamboo floor.
“I get it,” I said. “You’re off
the grid. You grow all your food. But not everyone can live this way. What was
your plan for saving the world?”
“Ah,” she said. “It’s not food,
but flowers. Wildflowers. Billions of them. Look at most new landscaping:
ornamental shrubs surrounded by bark mulch. I challenge you to find a single
insect, reptile or amphibian. But look in the drainage ditches around here, in
the swales and empty lots. I’ve been scattering wildflower seeds. Even though
worldwide insect populations have declined 70% in 40 years, here they’re coming
back. Birds and amphibians return. It’s beautiful!”
“But lawns,” I objected. “The most
chemicalized acreage in the world is the American lawn. Don’t herbicides and
pesticides leach into your swales, kill flowers and poison bees?”
“Some neighbors think a ‘pristine’
lawn proves something. Most around here have concluded that when chemicals
designed to kill plants and animals turn up in their kids, then lawns with
dandelions don’t look so bad.”
I nodded.
“It’s the kids’ world ultimately,
isn’t it? Even the youngest see what’s happening. Life shrinks. And they’re
worried. They want a safe, healthy future. Teenagers ask me where to buy
wildflower seeds free of insecticides, uncontaminated by neonicotinoids, which
is encouraging. Maybe I’ll see more front yards blooming this spring, more
untamed shrubs and fewer lawns? I’m sure Life can recover, step by step, one
meadow and marsh at a time.”
As I drove back to LO, the borders
along the roads looked like stretched canvass.
