Preview Issue Twenty-Six
The Commons
I’m pleased you found The Understory—my biweekly essays on consciousness during the climate emergency. If you’re here for the first time, hello! Enter your email below to ensure you get Issue Twenty-Six delivered to your inbox, free.
The Understory is an ongoing experiment in how to build ongoing climate consciousness. Each issue is a horizontal and vertical plunge into the waters of a theme.
I often hear from subscribers the value of the many sources embedded in each issue and their desire to spend time with the cited primary sources. I’d like to offer a preview of what is to come in the next issue alongside a piece of media that currently inspires my thinking on the theme. The hope is that my exploration of the topic might synchronize with your own and utilize the time between issues as a space to explore one of the sources more deeply.
Over the past few weeks, I have been reading The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes. The book is a joyous and provocative frolic through English lands and waterways. While the book periodically expands into interludes of the beauty and our connectedness with nature, Hayes embarks on a project that is much more restless than content with our current paradigm of enclosure. Rather than celebrate the victory of the Countryside and Rights of Way (CROW) Act that “opened up” approximately eight percent of English lands for roaming as I wrote about in Issue Ten, Hayes concerns himself with the other 92 percent of land and 97 percent of waterways which are “owned” privately. By travelling these lands and waterways, we become trespassers.
I invite you to consider with me the privatization of the planet, and how concepts of ownership and authority change our relationships with each other and the more than human world. In commemoration of the 89th anniversary of the Kinder Trespass, Hayes and Guy Shrubsole shared the following “Dear Landowner” letter as part of their expansive Right to Roam website to re-open the conversation about the conditions for stewardship of the natural world and relationships that surround us.
Go forth and make a difference in the week ahead. See you next Saturday with Issue Twenty-Six on the commons.
Adam
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Why I Write The Understory
We have crossed the climate-change threshold from emerging to urgent, which demands a transformative response. The complexity of climate change demands continued focus and the courage to take bold action. I've found that the persistence of climate consciousness improves resilience to the noise and distractions of daily life in service of a bigger (and most of the time invisible) long-term cause.
The Understory is my way of organizing the natural and human-made curiosities that are presently altering my worldview. Within the words, research, and actions of others lies the inspiration for personal and organizational journeys. I hope that my work here helps to inform not just my persistent consciousness but yours as well.
England - hopefully a sign of more to come along these lines, having removed the commons now moving to restore the concept!