I have this picture. It is a picture of the neighborhood. It takes place in the suburbs. It looks like a farm, or to define it more properly, it looks like, and it is, a food forest, a medicinal forest, a utility forest. And the animals that roam this neighborhood are not the typical cats and dogs. There is my neighbor milking a goat, and another neighbor harvesting paw paws and hazelnuts.
Up the street little Noah is learning how to graft the scion he harvested this winter onto the crabapple tree in his yard. Or should we say that the distinction of “yard” is not appropriate here?
Someone relieved the neighborhood of its fences. There are no property lines to be found here. But, there are many foragers, wildcrafters, wildcrafting medicine from what used to be a fenceline.
No carbon leaves this neighborhood, and the trash haulers are a remnant of the past.
Storm drains have been rendered inoperable, and the tops of the ridges, the roofs, water future yields.
“Waste” has been relegated to the garbage heap of ancient dictionaries and composted there.
There is no “gray” water, so to speak. There is only nutrient dense liquid flowing endlessly to the trees.
The word “excrement” is excised, pruned from the vocabulary, and replaced with, “fertilizer”.
Those that pass through the neighborhood prefer to do so on foot, to take it all in, slowly reinvigorating the senses. And they have this unquenched thirst to observe, participate, converse, find repose in relationship.
Homes have retrofitted to collect and direct sunlight and wind.
A wetland can be found here, fish there, acorns strewn about for the taking (and processing) seemingly everywhere.
And there is this stultifyingly exquisite table, handcrafted from palettes, where those from all the surrounding neighborhoods congregate, and place the gifts of infinite harvest, gently, for consumption.
And then the whole thing starts all over again because you know…people make fertilizer after they eat. And it is all good…