Story about Myself: from Personal History to Land Ethic

Introduction

My personal history began in a small rural community of Black Forest, Colorado, known most recently because of a fire that devoured many homes, including my parent’s home where I grew up. In the 18 years I spent there, the neighborhood morphed from a small rural community into an affluent hotspot for the growing Front Range community. This space matured at the same pace I was maturing and influenced the way I am shaped today. The tangled timeline of events led me to one word: impact.

Body

Story of Self: A Journey Shaped by Impact

I grew up outdoors; I really don’t remember playing anywhere else. My sister and I built forts from limbs and branches about the area, I created canal systems in the back yard for the rainwater to make pools for the ants and squirrels, my grandma and I would look for mushrooms and “special” rocks, and I rode my horse for hours and hours. I felt like we owned the entirety of the Black Forest. Our neighbors were the same, too, and raised bottle lambs, goats, and a menagerie of other animals. By the time I was in high school, the area I lived in was slowly altered. Three and five-acre plots of land sold with homes that consumed a big portion of that footprint. On the cusp of this change, I began to realize the rapidity of our routines of expansion is faster than we can plan for with any degree of provision for the future.

I began to study Geology, and upon graduating, I started my first job with the Colorado Geological Society, where we were mapping areas for land use purposes in the Breckenridge Quadrangle and the Cheyenne Mountain Quadrangle. By the time our mapping project was underway, already the areas were congested with construction equipment. The pace of development surpassed the pace of proper planning. It bothered me that the work we were completing was already irrelevant before we started. Some homes that were built were already buckling as slumping occurred in the neighborhoods. With our project culminating and at the precipice of my future, I embarked upon the hardest job I have ever done. Teaching.

Impactful Teaching: Fostering Environmental Awareness

I just knew that with passion in my heart and excitement about science, every student would like to learn about science as much as I did. It was not so easy; the nature of teaching is not that idyllic. One idea has been unwavering since I began teaching; I know that student’s knowledge of their world and the influence they have upon it is vitally important. My purpose is to impact. In order to spur the young minds of our students, I sought to learn all I could about subject areas and teaching practices.

I still consider myself a lifelong learner, and the experience of being a parent is a life-changing learning experience. My son challenges me in ways I never imagined. He is compassionate, caring, and intelligent in ways that I have never experienced so closely. He is thoughtful, especially when we get in the outdoors; he asks innumerable “what if’s.” He finds birds fascinating, something I knew nothing about. He is meditative and deeply thinking about his future as we plod along backpacking. We are lucky to be able to provide this very Thoreau learning for him but also for our family. His thirst for knowledge is unquenchable, and it inspires me to know that our future is in capable hands.

People protect what they love. I know that teaching students to not only have knowledge of the Earth is important but to enjoy it is equally important. The greatest advocates of conservation and environmentalism are people who first learned that they love the connection to their natural environment. It is a professional goal to get students outside as often as possible to foster a connection to their sense of place and self. I want to impact the future of our planet, by impacting the future of my community, by impacting the future of my classroom, with an impact on one or many futures of my students, and an impact on my son’s future.

Story of Us: Building a Sustainable Community

Nestled between the vast San Juan Mountains and the San Luis Valley is the town of Del Norte. We are neighbors to the Rio Grande National Forest, with 1.82 million acres located in southwestern Colorado. The area presents a myriad of ecosystems, from the 7,600 ft. alpine desert floor to over 14,000-foot mountains. The Rio Grande National Forest includes Wilderness Areas and the headwaters of the Rio Grande River. For the outdoor enthusiast, the surrounding area of Del Norte has recreation and adventure opportunities for the heartiest of souls. The San Luis Valley to the east is a large rural agricultural valley. This transitional zone of environments mirrors the variety of the people who live here. To capture the essence of the people would prove to be incomplete because no part would fit our known stereotypes of people. One common thread is the river. The Rio Grande serves recreation and agriculture. Del Norte, Colorado, is a small farming community with a population of about 1,500 people. The downtown area of Del Norte covers only a few blocks and consists of one grocery store, a bank, a post office, two gas stations, and a few other small businesses. Our small little town has one stoplight in it.

Being in a small community like Del Norte comes with challenges and opportunities. The area is economically depressed, which means that over 75% of the students in the school I teach receive free and reduced lunch. The misconception of poverty is inability. Students who are poor are not intellectually challenged. Brilliant, even, are the minds of students in poverty. Often I have to remind outsiders or even people from within small communities that we do not need to express sympathy for students in poverty but rather give them challenges and opportunities to learn and succeed. If necessity is the mother of all invention, our future depends on students who have had challenges in order to come up with unique solutions to problems that maybe mainstream school students would not.

A small town and a small number of students don’t mean that the high school structure is small at all. On the contrary: our school offers as many activities and learning opportunities as possible for boys and girls, including clubs and sports of all sorts. Del Norte High School offers the traditional classes that you would expect for high schools but also has a Natural Resources class, Geology, and 3D Printing; we even have an Aquaponics Class. The small school atmosphere allows different and unique learning experiences that would not be possible if the school had classes of twenty-five or more. For example, our students worked with the Rio Grande National Forest to collect phenology data, worked with Colorado Parks and Wildlife to collect river water health, students went to Nebraska to watch the 2017 eclipse, and we are able to learn about snowpack on Wolf Creek Pass with the avalanche forecaster. Planning these types of experiences would be a massive undertaking rather than commonplace with a large class.

Small communities are entrenched in history. This sense of history makes movements difficult because people cling to what they know and how they “have always done it.” It is important to see the challenges as strengths. The history of the area can be what helps sustain our small gem. People remember the area as a wetland valley. Migratory birds used this as the route for centuries before settlers of the 1800s came to the area. Early farmers had enough water to grow rice on the valley floor. My hope is they will want to work toward practices that can one day maintain the area we love and preserve the area we love.
Our community is one unified entity especially seen when tragedy strikes or just at the local sporting events. This caring and unified community is a strength that should and could be harnessed to move toward a greener sustainable community, even if we are a small town. Del Norte High School could link knowledge and action to help students build a healthy future for our community and the planet.

Story of Now: Overcoming Complacency towards Environmental Action

It’s a secret how special our place is. Somehow the remoteness of our location, the poverty, and the physical barriers has kept our area unspoiled in many ways that highly trafficked outdoor recreation areas are burdened. The thinking is that the environmental movement is far away from this special area and does not affect us. It is not something that affects us but rather a problem in the big city. This complacency is a hard challenge to overcome, and often, the norm is inaction. Our community’s apathy toward even the most commonplace environmental ideas, like not littering or recycling your tires instead of dumping them in the forest, seeped into our schools.

The complacency toward environmental action feels personal because I am an educator. I should be able and responsible for sound education about the environment and its role within it. Just this year, I started a Sustainability Class in which I have invented a curriculum. I chose to focus on three points, including a sense of place, awareness of environmental issues, and finally, action.

I started the year teaching students about their sense of place and the reasons it should be held dear. It has always been a belief that people who do not love the land will not care for it; therefore, I try regularly to take students outdoors to learn and play. Next, I have focused my class on awareness. I begin teaching awareness with lessons about the population. We look at our footprint related to other countries. We connect to our river by learning water chemistry, basic entomology, and how this relates to a healthy river system. Students also have learned the basics of climate change. Lastly, our class focuses on action. We have some classroom action that we contribute to by collecting data for the River Watch Program and for the National Phenology Network. This also teaches a sense of place because we are able to spend about two to four days a month outside in our local public lands. In addition to our classroom action plans, I invite students to determine how to contribute to our school and community. Some ideas students came up with this year were to start a ban the bottle campaign, a recycling and composting awareness group, and UpCycling tire fashion. Slowly, I am happy to know that our ideas are forward-thinking.
Maybe this forward transition in the school is a mirror of the slow advancement of our community too. Very few jobs and employment are available currently, but there seems to be a feeling of being on the cusp of something bigger. We have a few changes that could cause our local economy to grow and maybe even grow our population. A new school is being constructed for the community in 2020, the Rio Grande National Forest Office is thinking of moving into the area, newly constructed biking trails and our brewery are gaining some recognition, and we have just constructed a nursing home locally. I see this as an incredible opportunity to help make connections in our community and school. This could be the opportune time to move Del Norte into a more modern, thoughtful, and connected community.

Land Ethic: Guiding Principles for a Sustainable Future

Upon developing a Land Ethic, it is important to distinguish between ethics and morals. While all relate to what is “right” and “wrong,” there is an important distinction between the intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that guide what is correct. Ethics relate to conduct within a group or culture, while morals are related to a person’s internal compass. In order for a code of ethics to be effective, a person must also feel that it aligns with their moral belief system first. Likely a rule book full of do’s and don’ts will not be effective unless the set of ethics is tied completely to the person’s intrinsic moral values. The power of humans is more impressive as our population rises; having ethical use and behavior guidelines becomes more critical.
Caring for the Earth, the people of today, and the people of tomorrow should be our Golden Rule that guides our codes of conduct on Earth. The Golden Rule, which aligns with almost all religions and even nearly all non-religious peoples as well, seems most obvious when discussing morals and ethics. Doing unto others is the most basic of all behavioral rules, but “others” are usually applied to humans exclusively. This should extend beyond the human component to nature itself. The Earth-inclusive Golden Rule is not new; in fact, it is distilled from communities and cultures that have existed in relative balance with their environment for centuries. This does not mean that we ignore the teachings of modern times, but as we build our sustainable future, we can be inclusive of the values and concepts of these culturally evolved mores that regulate self-interest.

Caring for the people of today is critical to our sustainable future. If people’s needs are met, the environment will prosper. This begins with the self and then expands to include families, neighbors, and communities. Having personal responsibility for reliance on the Earth is easier when one focuses on non-material well-being. Caring for the self is empowering. Empowered people are who bring change, and then one can begin to bring positive solutions to larger community circles. Starting with oneself forces focus on being small, looking to sustainable change locally. Caring for the people means creating culture and communities, even expanding these communities to encompass a wider connected world. Communities are powerful at encouraging personal responsibility for their role in the world. Recognition that greater power and wisdom lie within a group of people, we can contribute to a greater good collectively.

Caring for the people of tomorrow means that we recognize the limits to how much we can give and take today. The growth and consumption and the accelerating need for more means we need to make tough decisions about what enough is and what is appropriate for us to do. Finding balance is easier said than done unless our focus is not solely monetary but rather on healthy well-being. Being well is entirely different for many people and sometimes means that perspective is necessary for what is enough for a person’s well-being. Enough by American standards and enough by the standards of India, China, and Nigeria are not the same. The state of being comfortable, healthy, and happy is not translated equally in our world, nor does it need to be; yet, the need to be fulfilled is universal. When we calculate what is enough for ourselves, quality over quantity must be the standard of living.

Care for the Earth is the final piece of a Land Ethic. If well-being is the measure of success for the people of today and tomorrow, it makes sense that well-being is the measure of success for our planet. First, we must agree that all life, soil, water, and air have value for the functions they perform. We, then, can gauge the wellness of our planet. We know that when we damage the Earth, we damage our own health. We are just as susceptible as any other species. We are interconnected, and variety (biodiversity) provides balance to our health and well-being. Rich biodiversity provides natural pest management, soils with nutrients needed to produce healthy crops, and insects that are needed to pollinate. The rivers and waters are the veins of our planet; the changes to our environment threaten the supply of fresh water. The forests are our lungs; with continued urbanization, air pollution is causing harm to the people of today and tomorrow. Loss of biodiversity threatens the resiliency of the earth to cleanse itself of contamination. The global health challenges we face will be determined by the way we respond to and manage environmental change resulting in biodiversity loss.

Conclusion

It is unacceptable to treat the land as a limitless resource. Many people still fail to recognize the relevance of environmental issues to human health and well-being, especially when they do not see the immediate impact on them now. A person who is able to understand both science and human nature is the best advocate for our planet. Without a moral intrinsic value assessed to all living things, a set of rules is without value. Rarely does lists of do’s and don’t work to teach the world to care and create a just living arrangement with our environment. With the moral compass set upon wellness, our culture begins to behave ethically by nurturing the future, our planet, and ourselves.

References

1. Norton, B. G. (1991). Toward Unity among Environmentalists. Oxford University Press.

2. Meine, C., & Knight, R. L. (Eds.). (1998). The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries. University of Wisconsin Press.

3. Regan, T., & Singer, P. (Eds.). (1989). Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Prentice Hall.

4. Goodpaster, K. E. (1978). On Being Morally Considerable. The Journal of Philosophy, 75(6), 308-325.

5. Brennan, A., & Lo, Y. (Eds.). (2010). Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application. Broadview Press.

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