Standing upon the Shoulders of Giants

Following my forty-fourth birthday, a glorious reflection on warm friendship on the cold day afterward, a thank-you note seems long overdue and impossibly long. Best get started.

I just created a fan page on Facebook for my company, Tresala. Tresala is an abstraction for tree and salad. Tresala is a Limited Liability Corporation, a shingle I'm developing that represents purposeful landscape planning and design. Tresala, why not?

And thank you.

Thank you Gino Fordiani for getting the rock rolling in the summer of 1983. I love the small, aching scar etched in the tan leather of my right hand from the bowling ball sized stone I dove on when dislodged from the hillside we were preparing to plant God-only-knows-what into. Rock Lobster and Aliso Pier (before the storm waves tore it asunder).

Thank you fellow biologist, river runner and friend, Jim White, for trading back and forth the role of leadership as budding field biologists. From Southwest deserts, rivers both mighty and not so, trails, streams, reservoirs and mountains with and without skis, to Seattle and the Pacific Northwest then the dread Bering Sea and alas, Costa Rica's pura vida. Thank you, Jaime, for leading me to Doug.

Doug Sutton, you put me to work digging a hole in your backyard then gave me a longer and longer leash with your San Juan Mountain Nurseries. Thanks for giving me time off to immerse in permaculture. Now and forever in the back of my mind remains lodged Bill Mollison's silver bullet, "In Grave Danger of Falling Food."

Thanks to Permaculture Drylands Institute and the Lama Foundation in Taos, NM which preceded grad school in Conway. And again, Doug, thank you for suggesting I apply to attend the Conway School of Sustainable Landscape Planning and Design oh way off in Western Massachusetts. Thank you Don Walker & Randy Griffith for pointing toward Ian McHarg.

Doug, Sam, Yuriko and Joe Bullock - thank you for offering safe and sane moorage between wet sailings. Thank you Zephyr for demonstrating determination, courage and strength required to acquire coconuts from aloft. Thank you Scott and Manis in your days before Pangaia. Thank you Manis for snapping me out of my slumber and giddy intellectual stew at the sacred heiau where Pele and Iniki roar together.

Bill Roley for taking me under your wing and praising my design genius. Thank you for sharing credit on the mulch article and introducing me to Southern California's architectural smarties, for working together on site design processes throughout Southern California. Thank you for opening to me your juicy citrus home among towering eucalyptus at Sprout Acres in Laguna Beach.

Federation for Intentional Communities folks are right. Especially thank you for being mothering, women of the communities. Thank you Lois Arkin for demonstrating traffic calming and peace actions, for sharing your home and duck eggs in Los Angeles Eco-Village. Thank you and Mary for planning a route north, a trail through intentional communities leading me home. Thank you N-Street Cohousing for cooperatively tearing down the suburban fences in Davis and sharing the heat and wisdom of your elders in the otherworldly sauna near the chicken coop.

Alpha Farm consensus-builders: Bob, Sally and Amber thank you for playing with me and suggesting we live unapologetically. Thank you Caroline and Jim Estes for teaching so many of us about invisible structures we can agree to respect in community.

Spike, thanks for taking messing about with boats seriously. Thank you Lori Bertis for companionship in the wildwest of Taos.

Michael Reynolds, James Bell, the list goes on and gloriously on.

As Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have seen farther than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."

Clean As You Go

Slogans move design principles forward. Doug Sutton, owner of San Juan Mountain Nursery in Durango, Colorado regularly reminded me, Clean as you go. As often as not, I'd look behind me and see mud or dirt ground into the sidewalk I had been using all day. Life is messy. I cannot always clean as I go. However, as with many good ideas, I find myself applying this useful principle in all areas of my life, not only planning and designing sustainable landscape.

Packing boxes, preparing to move into a different place, the clean as you go principle is to time management. Rather than dropping pieces of tape, cardboard and the like on this hardwood floor they go into a discard pile or the waste/recycle bin avoiding a future time-consuming chore of scraping tape and picking-up later. By investing wisely in time as we go, time accumulates in a virtual account immediately available when it is time to relax.

Clean as you go also reminds us to apologize when wrong.

To err is human, to forgive divine

Alexander Pope

We all make mistakes, especially interacting with the natural world. Traveling around Asia can reveal how Westerners overvalue and defend our small self. There have been innumerable times when I refused to admit fault nor failure. Rather, I ran and hid or fought back with the vigor of a crusader - knowing I had made a mistake. And wanting secretly to correct, set things right. In such events I would only apologize if caught. Now I find abundant freedom in regularly cleaning up relationships, personal and business, with honest and prompt communication. 

A stitch in time saves nine. If I am running late on an appointment I always feel embarrassed calling on the road, letting them know an estimated time of arrival, eta. However, I know I appreciate being allowed the dignity of such a call so I can decide what to do with the additional time before the meeting. It takes courage to admit fault, to apologize, to set things right and clean as you go.

Design is Driven by Constraint

One of our last sessions, forever memorable, an Ex-Con stood breathless and dumbfounded in disbelief. No slogans? It was, after all, Don Walker's first year running The Conway School without founder Walt Cudnohufsky pitching his infamous design slogans. After a brief pause to collect and compose, timeless design idioms began pouring out one after another into our sponging minds. From that chilly Spring morning in the Conway sugarhouse, a seeming lifetime of sustainable landscape planning and designing ago, these principles and innumerable others continue to prove useful tools for living, as well as for planning and designing sustainably. 

One, design is driven by constraint, reminds me when life is difficult an opportunity to innovate using other design tools beckons. Say that my friend wants to go to a movie and I need exercise. Hmm, if design is driven by constraint then inherent in the problem is a solution. By parking some distance away or walking from home/work to the theater we both get our needs met.

The most difficult design is done in thin air on a blank slate. Even before site analysis begins, every landscape plan and design begins with a base map drawn to scale with: a scale, contour lines, a north arrow, significant existing natural and built features, and context.

 

Now digital layers or thin sheets of trace paper can overlay the base map to analyze the site's constraints. Constraints - winter and summer sun/shade, views in/out, vehicular and pedestrian circulation, vegetation and wildlife, drainage, microclimate, wildfire, summer/winter wind, snow - drive design.