Here is a sumac that has closed off the light to others and opened into the light it keeps to itself.

Here is an applied Homo sapiens idea of how this might be turned into a civic environment.

Here’s how the land does it, with a fence in back separating the land from the land, as if that were possible. Note that this thickening calls you to it.

Here’s another example. Note how the rock has called multiple species to itself, and how they life together, at spaces delineated by how they pass water between each other underground, in balance with how they keep it to themselves.

That’s quite a different thickening! It makes the land thick, yet allows passage. It collects light in order to pass it on. In response, “landscapers,” that class of Homo sapiens tasked with civilizing (making into cities) this natural giving, have developed a response.

Smoke Bush’s gift of medicinal chemicals was turned into compost. Bulgarian and Greek ancestral memory records Smoke Bush as the dragon that won the Peloponnesian War.

This is a clear image of North American culture. It comes into woven space and cuts it into an orderly shape by depersonalizing it, then taking away the giving and then throwing it away, as something unwanted. As a new, invasive culture, in this place …

Invasive Chinese Elm

… with no history of its own it reads history as “nature,” then replaces history with streets and surveyed grids suitable for human-machine combinations…

… as an image of its primary force. In terms of the syilx world, where all beings are persons and all are woven together, and where it is the task of humans to do this weaving…

… such mechanization is inhuman. The argument in favour of agricultural development is that it builds economies and feeds people. Fair enough, but as we blunder forward, we should remember, with clear sight, that economies include natural economies and people include all people on this land, not just Homo sapiens. Its complex. I mean, a fence, right? It’s porous to deer, birds and coyotes…

… makes a great perch for birds, keeps people out and makes any Homo sapiens inside it feel safe, but killing the wasps? Really?

Fencing Off the World As Declarations of Human Social Boundaries is Hardly Civil

A post or two for the birds would have sufficed. Trees would have been simpler. They are self-maintaining and create richer, thicker environments with more connections to the land. Besides, they are people, and posts are just rude.