permaculture

[Saor Stetler <saor@ycbtal.net>]

COMMENTARY
Portland's Green Scene
The Pacific Northwest Has Much to Teach
By Annie Birdsong

Many environmentalists and well-educated idealists have moved to 
Portland, Oregon, in recent years, drawn by the pristine natural beauty 
of nearby areas, by wild salmon splashing in clear mountain streams, 
thundering waterfalls, elk wandering through old-growth forests, 
snow-capped mountains and wildflowers dotting the meadows. But after 
arriving, many were soon numbed by the diversity of threats to the 
wilderness by man's consumption: majestic forests cut to stumps to make 
toilet paper, rugged mountains flattened to extract coal and metals and 
woodland streams turned green with pollution. 

The peaceful "sanctuary" at a Portland school gives visitors the gift of 
a relaxing space.
© The City Repair Project

"When you go on a hike in Oregon, it's disturbing on a deep level when 
you walk by a clearcut," says Portland resident Barbara Holisky. "To 
live, you have to let it go, but it has an effect on your psyche."

Now, awakened citizens in the city are embracing simpler, more 
sustainable lifestyles, closer to the Earth, and have formed a fervent 
movement that is helping transform the West Coast into a mecca of 
sustainability. People aren't waiting on nonprofit groups or government 
agencies to educate the public on environmental issues. "They are 
getting together with people of like mind and taking their own 
initiative, finding their own meeting spaces and speakers, and doing 
their own publicity," says Pam Leitch, who helped organize the Portland 
Permaculture Guild. "There is a film, discussion group or speaker almost 
every night of the week." 

There have been workshops on rainwater harvesting, raising chickens in 
the city, using biodiesel and creating a food forest; demonstrations on 
making an earthen oven, creating electricity with solar photovoltaics, 
using solar hot water, and green kitchen design; and workshops on 
organic gardening, composting, seed saving and getting around in the 
city on a bicycle.

There is a lot of enthusiasm for environmentally responsible "green 
building." There have been workshops on how to build living roofs, which 
are now sprouting up across the city. An architect from Northern 
California came to Portland to help build a house out of bamboo and 
strawbale. Every year, green builders from all over the country come 
together in Portland in what they call the Village Building Convergence 
to help neighborhoods. Participants have built a variety of structures 
with cob, a material made of clay, water, sand and straw that doesn't 
deplete forests, is nontoxic and available locally.

"Everyone is so excited about it," says Maitri Ersson, who participated 
in a project to build a sanctuary at the New Day School with a "living 
roof" made of drought-resistant plants that don't have to be watered 
often. "It's beautiful," she adds. The sanctuary gives teachers a quiet 
place to enjoy breaks from their busy days.

A student and community group called Project Sustain Urth recently 
finished a 2,500-square foot, open-air "dialogue dome" on the Portland 
State University campus. "It's a space where we will have dialog about 
the actions we are taking on our campus to stop [environmental damage]," 
explains Heidi Moore, who helped organize the project. 

The dialogue dome has two benches made of cob built on a stone 
foundation, an eco-roof, an earthen oven, an herb spiral and a 
worm-composting bin that will be used by the Food for Thought Cafe in 
the Student Union. This café will also use the earthen oven to bake 
organic bread and the herb spiral to grow organic seasonings for use in 
cooking. Project Sustain Urth also has plans for a permaculture garden 
in the center of the campus, where food will be grown for the café.  

The earthen oven at the school's sanctuary is used for fresh organic bread.
© The City Repair Project

"A big part of the movement" in Portland is centered around discussion 
circles on such topics as deep ecology, voluntary simplicity and 
globalization through the Portland-based Northwest Earth Institute, says 
Connie Van Dyke, a local resident who spins her own silk, grows 80 
percent of her own food and teaches permaculture classes. Volunteers 
with the Northwest Earth Institute have over time enrolled approximately 
17,000 Portlanders in these eight- to nine-week-long discussion circles, 
which are held for an hour during lunchtime in work places or in the 
evenings in churches and homes. Participants are given a book of 
articles by leading environmental thinkers to read at home, which they 
discuss in the circles. 

The readings and discussions are designed to awaken a deep love and 
reverence for the Earth and a desire to harmonize with the will of the 
land. For instance, participants are encouraged to identify with a 
territory, river, mountain or other specific area and defend it. 

Readings by Arne Naess, a Norwegian mountaineer who taught philosophy 
for 40 years and coined the term "deep ecology," encourage them to "live 
light and traceless." To Naess, this doesn't mean poverty and denial of 
beauty. In one of the readings, he wrote:  "I have tremendous 
ambition. Only the best is good enough for me. I like richness, and I 
feel richer than the richest person when I'm in my cottage in the 
country with water I've carried from a certain well and wood I've 
gathered from the forest." Naess advocates that we "appreciate 
lifestyles that are universalizable, and not blatantly impossible to 
sustain without injustice toward fellow humans or other species." He 
encourages "appreciation of, or participation in, primary 
production--small-scale agriculture, forestry, fishing."

In one of the deep ecology discussion circles, participants question the 
idea that the only true expression of your values is how you spend your 
time and money. In the course on voluntary simplicity, participants 
discuss the role of money in self image. "It's a new set of lenses to 
allow participants to understand the culture we have created and what 
it's doing to the Earth," explains Dick Roy, a co-founder of the 
Northwest Earth Institute.

After attending the discussion circles, Portland resident Barbara 
Holisky says she and her husband "made a lot of changes in a short 
period of time" in their mindset and some personal habits. For instance, 
they joined a community supported agriculture program and later dug up 
the grass in their yard and planted a garden. They built a compost bin, 
made a decision to use reclaimed and recycled lumber that was 
sustainably harvested and phased out the use of disposable 
dishes. Holisky and her husband, Gary McDonald, also began promoting the 
practice of "no throwaways" through a service they call "Community 
Cups," in which they lend out up to 500 glass cups, purchased from 
thrift stores, as well as dinner plates, appetizer plates, silverware 
and cloth napkins to organizations holding parties or other events. The 
dishes, which have so far been used at 150 to 200 events, are now held 
at a church.

The Northwest Earth Institute's discussion groups have spread to 650 
communities in 50 states and have pulled in 68,000 people, revealing how 
receptive the public can be to the sustainability movement. When Dr. Ole 
Ersson and his wife Maitri held the institute's voluntary simplicity 
discussion circle in their Portland home, the participants were so 
engrossed that they met for seven years instead of eight weeks. Ole 
Ersson, a physician, sometimes speaks to groups on the topic of living 
lightly on the Earth. "Clean air and water, forests and other wild 
landscapes are not infinite," he says.

By recycling and curbing their consumption of resources, Ersson's family 
of five has reduced their garbage to half a grocery bag every two 
months. Out of reverence for trees, he and his family use sturdy totes 
or backpacks when shopping rather than paper or plastic bags. They buy 
in bulk when possible, use reusable dishes, use handkerchiefs rather 
than disposable tissues, photocopy and print on the back sides of paper 
and use paperless communication via electronic mail. 

The females in the family use washable feminine napkins, and they've all 
given up toilet paper, opting to clean themselves with water and soap 
and pat dry with a towel. "You'll find it definitely much cleaner!" says 
Dr. Ersson. The family saves energy by hanging their clothes on a line 
or drying rack rather than using the clothes dryer. And like many in 
Portland, they rarely use their car. "The only time we drive it is if we 
are leaving town, doing hauling or carrying something we can't carry in 
our arms or in a basket," he says.

After 15 years of composting, the Erssons added one foot of compost to 
the lawn of the home they recently moved from. "The fertility is 
astounding," says Dr. Ersson, a permaculturist. "It's rich black earth 
full of humus.... You can almost just dig your hand into it, it is so 
soft."

They even add their "humanure" to their compost bins, covered with lots 
of sawdust. "In about six months, it smells like fresh earth," he 
says. By cutting out flush toilets they not only help protect the water 
quality of streams and rivers, they also save 50,000 gallons of water a 
year. Also to save water, the Erssons use rain barrels to capture water 
for irrigating the lawn, as do many in Portland. In the Erssons' 
previous home, their water catchment system provided 95 percent of the 
water for all their daily needs. Many commercial buildings in Portland 
collect rainwater for irrigating the landscape, as well as for flushing 
toilets. 

Also notable in Portland are individual initiatives to reduce automobile 
usage. On workdays, about 10,000 people on bicycles cross bridges from 
the Eastside going into downtown. Approximately 45 percent of commuters 
going into downtown to work are either taking the bus, light rail or 
streetcar, according to a survey done this year by the Portland Business 
Alliance. Add to this three percent who are car pooling, five percent 
who are biking and three percent who are walking, and the total is 56 
percent of commuters going into downtown who have abandoned 
single-occupancy trips.

If such good environmental behavior flows out of a deep love and 
reverence for the Earth, then maybe what we need to save the world is 
more hiking trips, more community gardens and more chickens in the city.

ANNIE BIRDSONG is a Maryland-based freelance writer.