LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and PracticeRobert Thayer brings the concepts and promises of the growing bioregional movement to a wide audience in a book that passionately urges us to discover "where we are" as an antidote to our rootless, stressful modern lives. LifePlace is a provocative meditation on bioregionalism and what it means to live, work, eat, and play in relation to naturally, rather than politically, defined areas. In it, Thayer gives a richly textured portrait of his own home, the Putah-Cache watershed in California's Sacramento Valley, demonstrating how bioregionalism can be practiced in everyday life. Written in a lively anecdotal style and expressing a profound love of place, this book is a guide to the personal rewards and the social benefits of reinhabiting the natural world on a local scale. In LifePlace, Thayer shares what he has learned over the course of thirty years about the Sacramento Valley's geography, minerals, flora, and fauna; its relation to fire, agriculture, and water; and its indigenous peoples, farmers, and artists. He shows how the spirit of bioregionalism springs from learning the history of a place, from participating in its local economy, from living in housing designed in the context of the region. He asks: How can we instill a love of place and knowledge of the local into our education system? How can the economy become more responsive to the ecology of region? This valuable book is also a window onto current writing on bioregionalism, introducing the ideas of its most notable proponents in accessible and highly engaging prose. At the same time that it gives an entirely new appreciation of California's Central Valley, LifePlace shows how we can move toward a new way of being, thinking, and acting in the world that can lead to a sustainable, harmonious, and more satisfying future. |
Contents
Bioregional Thinking | 1 |
Finding the Physical Place | 11 |
Awakening to a Live Region | 32 |
Recovering a Bioregional Culture | 52 |
Celebrating the Spirit of Place | 71 |
Creating Art of the LifePlace | 90 |
Exchanging Natural Values | 107 |
Designing a LifePlace | 144 |
Making Bioregions Work | 182 |
Spreading Local Wisdom | 231 |
Taking Personal Responsibility | 256 |
Notes | 273 |
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| 295 | |
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Common terms and phrases
agricultural American areas Basin biodiversity blue oaks boundaries building Cache Creek Cali California Central Valley civic conservation consumers corridors County Creek watershed crops culture dams David Robertson Davis downstream ecological economic ecoregions ecosystem electrical emerged energy environmental farm farmers farmland fields Figure fish flood foodshed foothills fornia fuel geographic global gray pine groups habitat human irrigation Joaquin Lake Lake Berryessa land landscape landscape architecture learning life-place planning live markets miles native natural regions nearly North participation patterns Patwin Photograph by Robert plants political population potential production Putah and Cache Putah Creek Putah-Cache regenerative residents restoration rice riparian Robert Heizer Robert Thayer Sacramento River Sacramento Valley bioregion salmon scale sloughs social soil spatial species stream sustainable territory tion tule fog unique urban valley oak watershed wetlands wildlife Yolo Yolo Bypass