I often wonder at the two words that Bill Mollison put together many years ago: “protracted observation”. Why these two words in particular? He originally stated that, for one year, we observe a property before we make the changes necessary for the development of what could potentially be a high yielding site, an integrated land base where the built environment, the waste stream, and the agricultural systems that we set in place merge into a circular model that coalesces in to an ecosystem of our own making, where nothing goes to waste, where everything in the landscape stands in functional relationship to everything else.
But why a year of protracted observation? Is it that we purchase a place and leave it untouched for a whole year? What if we need to grow food for our sustenance, or we need to construct shelter for our comfort, and we cannot wait a year?
Well, I feel there is a much deeper equation here, and I do not feel that it is about the year per se. What it is about is the “protracted observation”. For how can we, as designers, do anything whatsoever without coming to some understanding of the climate, the landform, the movement of water, the plants and animals, and all the other natural proclivities endemic to a piece of property? How can we utilize the biological intelligence that pervades a place if we have not completely immersed ourselves into that place and allow it to speak to us, to tell us what “it needs”?
Inevitably we will impose patterns on the site, but what of the patterns that already exist? Have we taken the time to rid ourselves of concepts and simply see what we are looking at? Do we walk the land quietly with clipboard in hand and field guides in pockets? Why did Mollison in the Designer’s Manual begin the book with chapters on climate, landform, water, soils, trees, the larger picture of how the ecosystemic services flow in and out of our property, and what they are to begin with?
Design comes later. It always follows the inventory we take, the assessment we make. The Permaculture realm has become bogged down in building more gadgets, discussions about peak oil, facts and figures about the collapse and demise of the world, about the next new piece of the most efficient (dare I say) sun capturing and fuel saving device available.
Is this the stuff that a comprehensive plan is about, or are these simply pieces of a deeper and more essential interlocking puzzle? What of the land itself? And how many wood gasifiers would it take to grow enough food to feed a family of four, or ten, or twenty? How would we really stay warm or dry or cool based on the movement of the wind (from whence it blows) and the configuration of the clouds and the feel of the soil? What about all that rain that falls to the ground and flows away, away, away? Aren’t these entities the stuff that dreams are made of?
What has happened in our courses when the only ripple stirred is about gadgets, the quick fix, the next toy, the next lightweight, high-speed automobile?
Ultimately, doesn’t it come down to how present we are to our immediate environment, what it can tell us, what it needs even beyond the year and into the future? Trees do not till the soil beneath their feet. They simply chop and drop according to season, at the appropriate time. And all are fed.