I learn by going where I have to go —Theodore Roethke

key concept advanced in this website concerns the growing need in these Pandoracenean times for acceptance of personal responsibility with respect to the Living World that Sustains Us.

The act of opening out to such responsibility is Gaianism, the practice of aligning ourselves with planetary imperatives for the long-term persistence of human civilization.

A second key concept concerns the born naturalist, defined as individuals endowed at birth with high naturalistic intelligence coupled with a sense of kinship with the non-human world.

Briefly, I suggest that born naturalists in our time should and, indeed, must be encouraged to perform two as-yet-scarcely-contemplated societal functions:

• first, and at the level of society itself, they should act as “Pathfinders“, helping to disseminate recent and ongoing scientific insights into the deeper nature of our relation to the Living World;
• second, and at the community level, their capacity for sustained close attention to their home place should be integrated as a Naturalist Neighbour function at a time when potentially destabilizing ecosystemic change requires heightened vigilance.

The purpose of this web page is to announce my decision to serve, or attempt to serve such a Naturalist Neighbour function for Upper Clearwater, my home place.

Now I grant that offering to step up to a social function that doesn’t as yet exist is a bit of a fool’s gamble. Still I’d like to give it a try if only to show, if I can, that having a Naturalist Neighbour in the neighbourhood (two actually, with my partner Curtis Bjork) is no bad thing.

What does proposed Naturalist Neighbour service look like? Well it has four parts: (1) keeping abreast of climate-induced environmental change in the valley; (2) inferring possible impacts of this change on our quality of life; (3) contemplating best responses to these impacts; and (4) from time to time broadcasting these observations to any neighbours who’d like to hear about them.

If this includes you, please just drop a line and I’ll add you to my mail out list. Reach me either at my e-mail address (if you have it) or else by linking here (if you don’t).

For weather summaries and other big-ticket items, you might want to check Valley Notebook from time to time. Also, you should consider signing up for to Curtis’ blog posts.

Finally, don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like to organize a group educational here at Edgewood – I’d be happy to do my part. But before you reach out, please have a look at our terms of engagement.

Stay tuned. I’ll have more to say on this subject once I have more to say on it. Until then, let’s see how we go.