Natural Communities
...the great forests of the West Coast can be taken as a model of what has been happening elsewhere on the planet. [Clear-felling followed by monocultures.] All the natural communities of the world have been, in their own way, “ancient” and every natural community, like a family, includes the infants, the adolescents, the mature adults, and the elders.
Gary Snyder (1990)
While it would be delightful to promote this as a photo of a ‘natural community’, it would divert from the main point - and of course mislead. The key point to take from the convivial
meal,
That page offers a little more on the social importance of conviviality.
is more specific. Central to the picture is a man in his 90s, to his left is his daughter, standing behind the group is his grand-daughter who is holding her own
son.
Extended families, such as this, have deep roots into local communities.
Snyder’s ire is directed at those who believe it is sustainable to plant a single species of tree at one point in
time
Daoist traditions emphasise the need to work with rather than against nature.
and to ‘harvest’ them at a later point in time. From his first hand experience he illustrates the different roles trees have in the local ecology throughout their lives - and their remaining importance to their fellows once dead. An associated point can be made for, very much alive in contemporary Vietnamese society, is the regular acknowledgement of the contribution past generations make to contemporary
life.
To another aspect of the way communities grow from their past.
As with trees so with humans.
The quotation is from page 139 of his essay collection published by Farrar Straus and Giroux entitled The Practice of the Wild (ISBN 9780865474543)
The photo was taken at an afternoon meal with friends in their house in Thanh Hoá Province, Vietnam.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 18th January 2025
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