Table Of Contentthe nature of home
The Nature of Home
taking root in a place
Greta Gaard
Th e University of Arizona Press / Tucson
Th e University of Arizona Press
© 2007 Greta Gaard
All rights reserved
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Gaard, Greta Claire.
Th e nature of home : taking root in a place / Greta Gaard.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn 978-0-8165-2576-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Home—Psychological aspects. 2. Ecofeminism.
3. Social justice. 4. Gaard, Greta Claire.
5. West (U.S.) I. Title.
hq503.g22 2007
305.420978—dc22 2007025508
Manufactured in the United States of America on acid-free,
archival-quality paper containing a minimum of 50 post-
consumer waste and processed chlorine free.
contents
Preface vii
Looking for Home 1
year one: history and identity 9
Women/Water 11
Family of Land 25
year two: place and workplace 41
Whatcom Creek 43
Wilderness 52
year three: home/economic 79
Climbing 81
Silver Lake 104
year four: oil and water 131
Explosion 133
Body, Midlife 143
year five: impermanence 155
Food and Shelter 157
Th e Dance 180
epilogue 191
Th e Headwaters 193
Acknowledgments 201
Bibliography 207
Credits 211
Preface
Written and revised over a ten-year period from 1997 through 2007,
these essays explore the intersections of feminism, ecology, and social jus-
tice through the lens of personal experience. At the time that I began this
volume, there was no queer feminist environmental writing. I wrote these
essays, in part, to fi ll that literary gap.
Larger than essay, memoir, journalism, or poetry, creative nonfi ction
includes these genres and goes one step further: it allows writers to address
topics of importance through the lens of their own life experiences. Creative
nonfi ction utilizes research and refl ection, dialogue and narrative and anec-
dote, the techniques of fi ction and the tangible details of contemporary
life. Neither this nor that, creative nonfi ction is a hybrid genre well suited
to writers with hybrid identities, and writers who see culture and nature,
social justice and environmental health, as inseparably intertwined.
Writing about places that have been or could be home to me, I wanted
to explore the ways that humans, like other life on Earth, both shape and
are shaped by our environments. But there are no wholly adequate frame-
works for this exploration. Traditional Western psychologies describe iden-
tity development as a process of separation and individuation, equating
maturity with autonomy. To me, these psychologies seem antie cological,
implying that a separation of self from environment is not only possi-
ble but desirable. Feminist psychologies in this same tradition provide
an alternative view, describing women’s identity development as taking
place primarily through relationships, and women’s mature self-identity as
vii
viii preface
a self-in-relationship, interdependent but not subsumed by relationship.
For the most part, feminists have not explored the power of nonhuman
relationships in shaping self-identity. For that perspective, we can turn
to ecop sychology. Initially an outgrowth of deep ecology, ecopsychology
shares that philosophy’s emphasis on wilderness, and focuses on the shap-
ing power of wild places in forming human self-identity. But environments
are both wild and cultured, both ecological and economic. Bringing the
environmental justice movement’s defi nition of environment as the place
where we “live, work, and play” to a feminist ecopsychology of human
development, we can begin to ask questions about the shaping power of
place in all its dimensions—social, ecological, economic.
Th ese essays approach the relationship to place as a primary relation-
ship, seldom acknowledged and yet potentially equal in force to any mar-
riage, partnership, or family relationship. As a relationship with a mate
defi nes a marriage, a relationship with place provides the foundation for
our sense of home. And what if place changes, as it does for so many of us
in an era of increasing mobility? How do these fl uctuating relationships to
place aff ect our human relationships and our self-identity? And how do
we reestablish relationships with place so that we can be at home wherever
we live?
Bioregionalists suggest several strategies that in my mind parallel a pro-
cess of courtship and commitment to place, and the essays in this volume
attempt each of these strategies separately or in combination. To nourish
the process of “inhabiting” the places I have called home, I sought to learn
the land (in “Wilderness,” “Climbing,” “Whatcom Creek,” and “Silver
Lake”). I paid attention to the cultural and ecological histories of place (in
“Family of Land,” “Whatcom Creek,” and “Explosion”). I invested time
in getting to know the inhabitants (“Body, Midlife,” and “Silver Lake”),
exploring local economics (“Silver Lake” and “Food and Shelter”), and
practicing engaged citizenship (“Looking for Home,” “Women/Water,”
and “Food and Shelter”).
At the same time that I was exploring my relationship to place, employ-
ing the strategies I thought would make me feel at home, I overlooked the
reciprocity of the process: I too was changing. Th e spaces of wilderness
I found most welcoming at 27 were not the same places of wild earth I
sought out at age 37. Th e place I had considered to be home as a youth was
preface ix
less satisfying at midlife. And the places where I had built only temporary
relationships had infl uenced me nonetheless, aff ecting what I wanted from
my home place, and what I wanted to give in return.
To convey these shifts with any accuracy, I chose for this volume a spi-
raling narrative that brings together place and perspective in a loose chro-
nology. Life develops this way, too, not in a linear progression but as a spi-
ral: questions return again and again, each time fi nding diff erent answers.
Accordingly, in each essay, place shifts; the essays explore one or more
specifi c environments, both social and natural. Time shifts; explorations
from the past are mapped onto the present. Identity shifts. Our “authentic
self” is no more static than our experience of home.
Ultimately, I found a sustainable relationship with place that balanced
work, community, and ecological environments. My hope is that these
essays may serve as a map for others seeking to do the same.
