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Speculating Place


Eighteen months ago, that’s my guess, the county roads of Bozeman Montana began to change in condition and quality. The quiet rural roads that we would drive as a back way in and out of town transitioned to the roads to the next neighborhood. And then the next. Today pastures and farms that were the wide open spaces that surrounded Bozeman are now covered over with homes and new roads that extend from “feeder” roads are no longer quiet country roads. Homes are made from over-night speculative structures presented as some version of Western style, ranch, ranch home, Dwell infused modern or modified craftsman….

I have heard that Bozeman is currently hovering at 105 percent occupancy. Which means to me that either families are waiting on the side of the road to move into their homes, or people are living in places beyond the capacity they were built for. I wonder what the interpreted occupancy of Manhattan would be if this ratio of habitation were considered. A big difference, one of many, between Manhattan and Bozeman is that one is an island with definite boundaries while the other is a large, flat valley floor open for modern speculation. Any thoughtful visions for the future of Bozeman are now run over by the madness that is brought from primarily using real estate as a mode for maximizing profit instead of understanding that what is built becomes the place, that is the town or city we live in. Without greater interest in what makes and becomes community we all lose the significance of the origin of the place we originally came to find. 

What is Bozeman to become? As I watch it quickly evolve from a unique western town to a suburban city, outweighed by its ill considered developments of homes and large company stores and franchised retail, I know I can no longer ignore the suburban development homes that were slowly accruing along the fringes a few years ago. 

The realtors report that the builders intend to build homes to an 80 percent occupancy before they stop building to maximize their profit in response to the multiple families that are arriving to Bozeman everyday as refugees who gave up hopefulness in their last place. Must we must accept that under considered speculation will mark the future that will be Bozeman? Are we to lose the organic quality of this place which emerged from a slowly brewed vision combined of thoughtful imagining of useful, inspired, integrated, grounded, heartfelt, responsive growth and development that made this small town unique, and often lauded as “one of the best small towns” to live in.
Is this my Not-In-My-Backyard rant? Maybe. The interpretation depends on your alignment with my concern. I am transplant who arrived almost twenty years ago. Bozeman was of course smaller then. There were many things and experiences I missed from larger cities, including those found in Manhattan (NYC). I am not against change, I am not against development or growth. I am against the growth of sameness that plagues so many smaller towns as they grown into small cities, or cities that expand into mega-environments of sameness. The sameness that comes directly from speculation and expansion of large planned retail developments that bring the same universally bland and consumptive exploits found everywhere. I am against the sameness that makes place disappear under commerce and greed. Sameness that makes where we live nowhere instead of somewhere.
Instead of bland speculation as the town of Bozeman takes its last breaths as a small town, can we instead aspire and require that what comes next springs from thoughtfulness, inventiveness, curiosity, inspiration, commitment, collaboration, and care; a place born of the diversity and richness of evolving culture and humanity that rests surrounded by the mountains and rivers and wildlife that brought most of us here in the first place.

Let it be a new Bozeman, not a lost Bozeman.


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Reading Leopold

Louisiana Wetlands

Louisiana Wetlands at Sunset

I fell in love with the wetlands of Louisiana in part because I read Aldo Leopold, and in part because the grasses that wave against the blue sky of the Gulf remind me of the grasslands of the Great Plains of North America, which brings me back to the legacy of Aldo Leopold. I don’t use the word LOVE as a simple term, but as a description for that deep feeling we have when someone, thing, or experience moves our soul. That sense that we have when we believe we have found meaning in our world where so little existed before.

But this takes me a bit off-course, and the course I intend to take you on is the ground breaking trajectory of Aldo Leopold. Actually we will explore, his words, thoughts, and the legacy of Aldo Leopold.

As every Remote Studio begins, so will this one in the summer of 2015, with the reading of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River. Even if you don’t realize it today, in a a few weeks you will. You will understand the great debt you owe Leopold for the places we call wilderness today, for the endangered species that are protected, for the idea that poetry can be found and experienced on the land, and then written about, and shared with all of us. That the fast paced day you spent online, driving in traffic, and answering texts, can be slowed down and valued relative to the place you find yourself: with the experience of sun, wind, scent and birdsong.

And if you wonder why we would be reading a book written by an activist (although he may not have called himself such) in 1949 , you only need to read the book to learn. The obviousness of this request will appear as you understand how necessary words written sixty-six years ago are in 2015.

Aldo Leopold’s book, the whole book, will be discussed at the end of the first week of Remote Studio, a week of hiking and making, with very little time for sitting still. To give yourself the opportunity to savor his words, thoughts, and to commit to your future, I recommend that you start reading the book before Remote Studio begins. And to take notes, and to write notes to yourself and underline passages you value in the book.Live in the book.  And perhaps someday, if you pay attention you will have a place you love, too.

From this place that Leopold provides we begin our journey with Remote Studio, and the understanding of why architects so desperately need to know the world as he saw it.

 

 

 


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The Distance Between

 

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I live in one of the wildest places that remain in North America. I did not say THE wildest, mind you. Its not Alaska, or the Yaak, or parts of Canada. But this place is Montana. Specifically up a canyon drainage and surrounded by Public Land, not far outside of Bozeman. I have had bears and mountain lion on the roof of my house. So of course they are walking the land around my house. But that does not mean I find their visits common. Nor am I so naive to believe that my 70 pound German Shepherd would be any match for one of these large creatures which is why she is not let out at night alone.

Tonight, just a few minutes before the curtain of night extinguished the remaining bit of light we took a walk around the house. Spring has arrived. Even early this year. But last night about two inches of snow fell on the ground. Nothing dramatic. But this is where it gets good, and where, no matter how many times I see the footprints in the snow around the house that are not hers, I am still impressed. Because the snow is new the tracks in the snow were distinguishable tonight, not the cacophony of prints that criss-crossed the land as the winter snow melted into the ground last week. As Noel followed whatever smells and tracks interested her I looked down to see some large melted spots not far from the entry of the house. The shape of the melt was not exactly recognizable, but it was not shaped like an Elk or Moose. I looked for others that were more distinct. And that is when I found them. There must have been a pair together in the early morning striding across the snow in front of the house. I checked the prints for size compared to Noel’s. My fist fits just nicely inside of hers. But these, these require two of my fists while the back pad of the foot that sits a bit up the leg was also impressed in the snow a good 4-5 inches behind the primary paw print. But the most amazing condition of the set of tracks was that there were four paw prints in a line very close to one another with a space of about four feet between each set of four. Each set of four taking about four feet, too.

If you cannot imagine this in your head, get out your sketch book and draw it. Two animals walking in-line, with one filling the gap between the first set of prints filling in the stride of the first animal for every other stride. The distance between a single stride being four feet, a large jump for me. I looked across the slope of the land where the prints emerged and then the other direction where they walked into Noel’s favorite place to visit when she was outside. Either a pack came across the land at one time, or this pair silently circumnavigated the land around the house making multiple passes and patterns. I will never know, but can only wonder and imagine.

Its dark now. Black outside, and we are inside. Until tomorrow. In the early morning we will again go check what remains of the snow for new stories, new reminders of the wildness I am lucky enough to live with.

 


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Winter Wolf


 winterwolf

 

 

Years Ago, when I was still new to Montana and the Yellowstone Eco-system I had the opportunity to hear the wolves howl above us in the mountains while working on a Remote Studio project miles from a paved road. The experience was heartening, beautiful, and musical magic. Reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, the wolves have grown into families who expand across the Mountain West. They are a part of the West, this place is their home. They are the wildness that makes place for us and reminds us that we are a part of a larger community that we cannot always control, but simply honor. The wolves, like the bear and mountain lion are the creatures that bring alertness to our experiences in the wilderness. They are critical to the health of the eco-system, and bring magic and mystery to us everyday. This year I hope for peace and greater respect for all those that we do not quite understand, who challenge us, and may bring a bit of humility into our lives. Without them the World would be less beautiful.

 

“Winter Wolf” is the third piece in the Bear Canyon Series.


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Manufactured Landscapes

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I’ve lived in Montana since 1998. When I arrived there was still a realness, a grittiness to the place, that, as I look around today, seems to be slipping quietly away. What is disappearing is that sense of a community when folks have slowly built up their surroundings responding organically to the place in which they live. The growth over time that occurs as people scrape together their savings to open a mercantile, or a bakery, or build their home. These are individuals who become a collective, who put down roots, people who truly commit and live in the place of their business. The collective of place that I am missing today evolves beyond the hands of trained designers who have learned to execute an industrialized model for living. What I see today are the designed landscapes that have vegetation spaced correctly, trees and shrubs (not bushes) growing from a  pattern of circles specified while looking down at a two-dimensional drawing instead of making decisions while standing on the ground, designers who have the landscape smoothed and weeded, and de-wrinkled the nature of the place.

I know, you’re saying to yourself , she’s just romanticizing the past. But I don’t believe that’s what is happening. Instead, I am witnessing my hometown of Bozeman transform into the sameness of the industrialized American development model. These are the manufactured landscapes that support the commercial and economic successes of Costco, Home Depot, Lowes, World Market, The Gap, and Starbucks (yes we finally have them here, too). These are the places that now look the same across the United States. The trees and shrubs that decorate and edge these big box stores ring them like imitation stones of cheap jewelry. The curb cuts and edging and bark islands, the four layers of vegetation from Trees, to shrub, to some ambiguous flowering plant selected for its long blooms and easy maintenance growing up against bermuda grass or its equal, these living things are used to make a new place that we know, but not really. The easily recognizable non-place.  A place that is everywhere but nowhere. A place that makes us feel comfortable so that we easily slip into the ridiculously large parking lots of suburban America without question so that we can happily pop into the big box store of choice. And as we drive in we think, isn’t this pretty, with the greenness of the world around us. When actually, we are just holding nature hostage for our own use, our own manufactured excuse of a natural landscape.

Who is to blame for all of this? We are. We all are, every time we forget where we are as we slip into that lull of commercialism that makes us feel better, or even good about shopping for things we don’t necessarily need. We, the designers, are responsible because we have passively accepted the instruction of “how to design” the edges of these places, that we have followed city planners who have created such sweet little places for their community to come and go from. We are responsible because we are not getting out into the wild enough to recognize the difference, or care about the difference of what this lack of understanding does to us or our impact on the world. We are, because we fail to recognize that we continue to use the natural world in ways that discourage and erase our sense of being a part of a larger whole, instead encouraging even the simplest use of the living world in dishonorable ways.

 

If we do care, how do we find that integrity of place, how do we retain it? How do we respect these places in their specificity and richness of conditions while knitting together our sense of belonging to these places, too? How do we honor where we live, and how do we create them?

Perhaps we start by not fully and completely erasing the world that appears scrubby and unresolved, the place that is living, cyclical, jagged, and constantly changing. The place that was here before we moved in, before we used that can of upside down marking paint and staked the land. We can start by standing, feet on the ground as Ed Abbey said, and feeling and observing and learning the world around us. By not accepting the lessons that we are taught at school without question, the lessons that are same all over, lessons of ubiquity for providing generalized backdrops where we live. By valuing the need to take time, to live local. To live the local, not the commercial, to live the place, not the sameness that is expanding across the United States.

I think you know what I’m talking about. If not take a look around. If your hometown looks like the one down the road you are living in a Manufactured Landscape. If not, then there is still time to give deep consideration, time and commitment to where you live, to not erase the community that already lives there, all of it,  plants and animals alike.

The Wilderness that surrounds us

The Wilderness that surrounds us


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Dreaming of Utah

Utah, South of Moab

Utah, land of dreams

I have been dreaming of Utah these past nights. Not those kind of dreams you have when you are wishing you could go somewhere. Not the melancholy type. But the kind of dreams that are had from experience, when your subconscious is so full of an experience that it pours out of you after you have had it. The dreaming is rich of the landscape. They are not full of saga or people, or any far-fetched narrative. They are full of the place, the feelings, textures, smells, and colors. Every night after I close my eyes I relive the place. The overwhelming beauty.

I have never had such realistic and vivid dreams before of a real place, portrayed in a true and actual dynamic. I am wondering what this means for my psyche. Have I found my spirit home? Or was the experience simply overpowering that my subconscious is relishing the intensity of the memories?

Utah. I await the next adventure.

 

rain falls on Utah, the mist of magic

rain falls on Utah, the mist of magic


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love and landscape

Summer is here in Gallatin Valley and we race to meet it before it passes.

I had a hike up the Gallatin Mountain trail this evening. The valley below tells its story of the day. The fields of mature seed-heads, be it weeds or wheat are dry and brittle. The waterways move down-land in curls of green trees, flowering plants and berries. Heat rises into the smoky haze of the sky. I stood and looked over the valley, its beauty, and thought of our briefness. The moment passes into memory, then a poem, moving on to remembrance of another women’s life.

The poem, “To An Athlete Dying Young,” belongs to A. E. Housman…. it is the poem’s end that lives in my memory:

And round that early-laurelled head 
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered onits curls

The garland briefer than a girl’s.

I look across the valley floor before me, the valley of Africa – only ever an experienced in film – is recovered from a memory gained years ago. I am now thinking about Isak Dinesen and the path her love took when living in Africa. The years of love for one man known. The path of friend recognized through as many experiences as could be taken or allowed, life-long lover, loss and longing, patience, and ultimately the arrival of perfect timing. Dinesen must have thought the universe played some cruel joke when her lover was killed on his way to her as she waited one windblown day. Looking to the valley floor below I see the plain of Africa. Windswept and dusty. Dry and fearless.

Timing is the universe’s folly. From its space we live together or apart. In response to our inability to control time we often choose limitations instead of taking the opportunities that are living with us. Dennison was a brave person to choose love with imperfect timing. She chose a dynamic life, ever changing, never definite, discoverable but not pre-known.

Love and landscape. Memory and timing. Living and bravery. Life speeds by and with the closing of the night our head hits pillow. Timing. The moment passes to years before the morning comes.