Permaculture

Permaculture can turn into a cultish dogma.

Instead of seeing the permaculture principles as instruction, what if they are used as jumping-off points for inquiry into our relationship with the land?

Permaculture is a repackaging of indigenous knowledge. What are the roots of these principles?

Observe and interact
With what gaze?

How open are we to non-human perspectives?

With what purpose?

What are our intentions?

To categorise or to name?

To concretely understand or be open to complex and continually changing ways of knowing?

What do our interactions look like?

Does our inquiry replicate the reductive and objectifying violence of western science?

Do our inquiries go deep into the science so that we can understand that life?

How about the stories, sounds, images and feelings?

Catch and store energy
"by collecting resources when they are abundant, we can use them in times of need"

Sure, make hay while the sun shines. But energy is more than a resource to be hoarded for human use.

Energy is relational.
It only functions when two things relate to each other.

Potential energy is "stored" due to "tension" between objects, be that differently charged atoms that are attracted to each other, or a pinecone ready to succumb to earth's gravitational pull and fall from a tree.

Understanding energy as relational could encourage us to think of it in the same ways as we think of other relations and ways of relating.

Rather than just collecting a hoarding what we think of as energy sources, taking that energy for ourselves and away from others, what if we treat these 'energy sources' as relations.

Can we increase the potential energy of the land by building and fostering healthy relationships?

A transfer of energy given willingly is an act of care. A transfer of energy taken by force is violent extractivism.

Gathering council
Energy as relational in combination with "observe and interact", reminds me of something that Sophie Strand calls 'gathering council', and which echos lots of indigenous practices.

In Strand's practice they name and call on all of the life that they know of in a twenty mile radius. You could also name other life-forms or species that are important to you. Naming these relationships can make you feel more connected and supported, and this can give you energy.

The wood pile
Does this tie us up in knots, or does it point us to new practical ways of doing things?

Encourage us to reflect on the ways that our actions impact all life?

Rituals and practices for enquiry?

Lately I've taken to asking the wood if it minds being burned. Really what that means is checking to see whether it already doing something else, like is it already a home for many creatures, and whether it would burn well.

The wood pile is a home for all kinds of life. The other day a little lizard fell out of the log i was splitting.

The pond
We can keep water in a sterile tank.

Sometimes we need to.

A leaky water tank is a bad thing.

Unless that leak feeds a pond where the salamanders give birth.

Or seeps into water reserves and strengthens the water retention capacity of the land in ways we can't even fathom.

There is difference between wasting and sharing.