The Interview

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.