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Mary Wildfire's avatar

Well. I usually don't get a lot out of the essays here that are full of philosophy and the origins of words and all that. But there are two things that inspire comment from me here. One is that you speak of a wound, a longing, because you are separate from the land, and you imagine a life in which you grew food on your own land...well, that life is mine. I live on a land trust so technically I don't own the land--I have a lifetime lease, and do own the house my husband and I built, and the other "improvements." I think this is maybe a better cure for that wound than a deed to the land, because it's more honest--I have temporary stewardship of this land, and it's understood as a three-way legal relationship--not just between me and the land but between me (and my husband) in RELATION to other people, about the land. Anyway, I don't have the wound James describes, I live the life he longs for. Yet I also am wounded, also live with a longing I see no satisfying--because as a person who cares about the state of the world, who sees the polycrisis bearing down on us, and who lives in West Virginia--I have been FIGHTING for 30 years, fighting first mostly the coal industry, then the gas industry, because they and their associates in the chemical industries are the primary local sources of harm. But the environmentalists in this area are way outgunned by the industry and by local indifference, and "Appalachian fatalism." So I'm tired of losing most of the battles, but also--I'm tired of fighting. I so want to join with others to work for making things better, to BUILD something. As James longs for the relationship with the land I have, I long for a relationship with community (of humans) I don't think I could ever have here, or maybe anywhere.

The other comment is based on the image chosen to go with this essay. It's the kind of image that comes to my mind in relation to discussions of Smaje's work--people have said "If that many people move to the country, how can their housing and other needs be provided?" (An objection he makes in his forthcoming book that argues against ecomodernist ideas that, among other things, say we should all move to cities.) My response is based on spending much of a couple of years in Iowa and surrounding states in the late 70s, working on grain elevator construction crews to raise money to buy land in WV. And then traveling through that area a couple of times in more recent years. It was shocking to keep seeing--that image, the houses and other buildings going to ruin, large numbers of them--which I understand has resulted from the control monopolies have on agricultural policies, which results in family farmers being unable to make a living and being driven off the land, so four small farms are now part of one huge one, perhaps with an absentee owner. Looking at that image, I note the buildings appear to be made of brick and wonder--could they be reclaimed? The remnants of the roof removed and replaced with a new roof, the doors and windows replaced, more insulation put in than was ever there before, and it becomes a home for a couple of families tending a multicultural small farm?

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Dougald Hine's avatar

"I'm talking about the kind of rootedness that can move."

An ecstatic rootedness, perhaps? There's a wounded ecstasy to your writing, James, and dare I say, you have a touch of the holy fool. (Someone said the same of me once, and I took it as a high compliment.)

And there is magic in that title, indeed. It brings into view the etymological link between doors and journeys. The "port-" in "portability" comes from the same route as the "porte" in "Fermez la porte!" The doorway, the literal threshold, is for coming and going, as well as for staying put. It is neither simply an opening, nor simply a barrier. And a "porter" can be one who carries back and forwards, or one who keeps the gate.

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