The Plowboy Interview
(Page 9 of 18)
So in a sustainable society-one based upon its own local
resources-the political boundaries and the social
boundaries would follow the natural boundaries. There it
is.
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And those of us who are now promoting bioregional
consciousness would. as an ultimate (and long-range) goal,
like to see this continent more sensitively redefined, and
the natural regions of North America=or Turtle
Islandgradually begin to shape the political
entities within which we work. It would be a small step
toward ecological sanity, and a larger step toward the
accomplishment of political decentralization and the
deconstruction of America as a superpower into seven or
eight natural nations ...none of which would have a budget
big enough to support missiles. It would also be a step in
the direction of amiable, intimate, face-to-face community
politics and societies ... and, ultimately, it would help
us develop sane and sustainable economies. (I think I just
gave a long answer to a simple question.)
PLOWBOY: It seems to me that having a
sense of one's own bioregion would also be an advantage in
terms of maintaining personal sanity.
SNYDER: That would certainly come with
having a greater involvement in community life and an
increased sense of power over your own world.
PLOWBOY: I was raised in upstate New
York's "grape belt," in the foothills of the Alleghenies on
the Lake Erie coast, and later lived out in California for
years. I was never really comfortable on the West Coast,
but when my family moved to western North Carolina, in the
foothills of the Blue Ridge, all of a sudden everything
that I'd been familiar with when I was growing up-all the
plants I knew and relationships between the plants-was
almost the same again. And it's very comforting just going
out for walks in that country.
SNYDER: Yeah. In the same way, I get the
feeling that I've never adjusted myself to deciduous
hardwoods. For me, a real forest has to be a
conifer forest.
PLOWBOY: And I can't get comfortable with
evergreens; it's oaks and hickories for me.
SNYDER: Those things really stay with you
...but they're certainly not reasons to go to war!
[Laughter] At any rate, several of us-independently,
almost-began to see the bioregional possibility as being
part of the overall work we were already involved in ...12
or 14 years ago. Allen Van Newkirk started talking about
the idea back then. And Peter Berg and his circle of
friends, plus the North Coast people (Jim Dodge and Jerry
Martien, Lynn House, Peter Coyote, and two individuals who
go by the names of Bobcat and Ponderosa Pine) have long
been comrades with me. All of us together, really, have
been exchanging ideas and thoughts about these things. Then
there's Zach Stewart, who runs the Canessa Gallery and is
an architect in downtown San Francisco. He's long been a
proponent of urban bioregionalism and a champion of the
definition of cities as part of natural regions. He did,
and probably still does, lead people on nature walks, right
down in Montgomery Street and North Beach and around in San
Francisco, showing them how natural borders still exist in
the city.
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