One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
What sort of ecological education is fitting for a few dozen designers working together in an old house in Charlottesville, Virginia? And why would we wish to be punished in this way? Once enlightened, would we endeavor to harden our shells, as Leopold observes somewhat depressingly, or begin the unpleasant work of seeing the marks of death that surround us? And once seen, how might we begin the sacred work of healing?
Each of us is implicated in our much-discussed ecological predicament. Today, it is simultaneously more possible and less likely for us to observe the intricate complexity of relationships between humans and our places. Mountains of data and analysis leave most of us depressed and impotent, approaching the problem as individuals with finite resources. There’s just not enough to go around! We’ve been conditioned to seek and value abstraction and stockpiling in response to perceived scarcity.
This perception—reinforced everywhere—reduces trust, mutuality, and interdependence. The resulting ailment is absolute devotion to individual comfort and convenience. Symptoms include, but are not limited to, the relentless acquisition of new things, the endless sterilization of our environments, and evermore commoditized friendships and hobbies. It is a world of make-believe.
Leopold sentences those of us who would push back against this vast fiction to a life lived alone in a world of wounds. Ecological education as exile. Wouldn’t it be better to gain knowledge, soften our shells, and work toward a community of doctors?
Perhaps the best medicine for this untenable approach is to shift our perception toward abundance. What if we set out to resuscitate our collective, ancestral imagination for the simplicity of subsistence and the deeply satisfying work of growing tolerant of our actual ecosystem? How many households would we need as members? How long would it take for the abstractions to come into focus—our softening shells—and to normalize the elegance of use and the spiritual nourishment of thrift?
Might a healing community living from a posture of abundance voluntarily reverse course? Could we cast a shared imagination for a version of the good life that attends to the whole?
Earlier this year, designers at Journey Group set out to identify practices in seven overlapping types of knowledge informed by our collective research. Our office is situated on a quarter-acre in a mostly residential neighborhood just north of the historic downtown area in Charlottesville, Virginia.
We have a little over thirty folks on our team representing a diversity of lifestyles, backgrounds, and values. Cumulatively, we provide income for over a hundred spouses and children by working typical business hours. Nothing about our nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday design consulting business is particularly radical. So what could we realistically do?
What follows are what all of us—talking over some weeks and months—identified as a sort of informal social contract. A sketch. And in this season of public expressions of gratitude—and perhaps an openness to reflection and resolution—it seems appropriate to share our thoughts. After all, a thankfulness that looks like neglect or indifference might more accurately be called entitlement.
If we intend to continue our work of healing—individually, in households, as a company, and in partnership with our greatest public institutions—our gratitude must take the form of stewardship.
Sustainability is simplicity and it starts small.
Already, our modest attempts in this direction have resulted in a nascent subculture oriented around an upside-down market of esteem that stands out from our surrounding context. We are more aware of the inputs it takes to do what we do—and what we’re invited into by more honestly counting those costs. And we are, I think, a little more aware of what it means to live well as humans in this place. The fruit is so much sweeter when you have a hand in tending the trees.
1. In a culture that encourages us to use clothing for self-expression and discard damaged or worn items or pieces that no longer elicit happiness, we will prioritize restoration, repair, and longevity in our wardrobes. Aware of the real costs of both acquiring and discarding clothing, we will celebrate and admire the clothesline, the well-worn, and the mended.
Our commitment at Journey Group is to prioritizing secondhand clothing and to limiting ourselves to a single new item per month. An open and candid conversation about clothing has allowed us to interrogate social pressures, expectations, and the ethical challenges of getting dressed. We share unneeded garments and sources for clothing plus knowledge and tools related to cleaning and mending the items we already possess.
2. In a culture that encourages mindless use of fuel, electricity, and batteries, we will align with nature (dark, light, cool, warm) and manipulate carbon in proximate and restorative ways.
Our commitment is to lessen artificial heating and cooling through better alignment with zones in our office building and seasons of the year. Journey Group offices in an old house with all the charm and draftiness you’d expect. We have a central system using heat pumps, gas logs, a wood-burning fireplace, and a variety of space heaters. We also have magnolia, catalpa, and pecan trees offering shade. We are working on developing tolerance for our climate.
3. In a culture that fetishizes novelty foods, we will seek and reclaim simple, whole, and seasonal food traditions that promote integrated production and overall health.
Our commitment is to grow a network of hyper-local and seasonal sources of nutrient-dense dairy, eggs, meats, and produce while encouraging rampant consumption of whole fruits and veggies. We make a lot of seasonal salads for lunch and have an informal-but-growing network of local producers providing food for our community. We’re also fortunate to live in a place with an abundance of CSA and farmer’s markets.
4. In a culture focused on new and increasingly sealed modes of shelter, we will seek out modular, scalable dwellings and villages that allow individuals and families to remain in one place for a lifetime while creating pathways out of displacement.
Our commitment is to small-scale alternative economies of interconnected households around Charlottesville in which multigenerational “villages” reduce our reliance on monetary systems, dislocation, and mindless development. Rather than competing for more square footage and excessive amenities, we are pursuing a diverse and human scale. Our team lives in the city itself, in the suburbs around Charlottesville, in the surrounding countryside, and in neighboring towns. We celebrate staying put.
5. In a culture obsessed with the unrestricted mobility of goods and people at any cost, we will celebrate the maintenance, repair, and efficient use of existing vehicles. We promote walking and human-powered modes of transport and design places that prioritize them.
Our commitment is to walk whenever possible and prioritize biking to the office. We share vehicles and carpool whenever possible. It’s not uncommon for minor automotive maintenance, diagnostics, and even repair to take place in our office parking lot. As a community, we’re evaluating the benefits and costs of EVs and e-bikes. Whenever possible, we skip Amazon and Walmart in favor of walking to nearby merchants for our office needs.
6. In a culture eager to be separated from the outputs of civilization, we will value and make use of all organic waste, reduce landfill, and esteem the elegance of thrift.
Our commitment is to producing as little rubbish as possible. We prioritize reusable containers, recycle, and compost everything we can (which is a lot). We love our local refill store, allowing us to buy as a group to benefit from reduced packaging, shipping, and bulk prices. We’re increasingly concerned about the hidden costs of data—not to mention all the printing, shipping, and fabrication—involved in our work. We aspire to be skilled at navigating the tradeoffs between the communication of vital truths and the various scales at which a given story can be told.
7. In a culture that assumes clean water as a given, we will be better stewards of what falls on the places we inhabit via thoughtful capture, storage, use, and infiltration.
Our commitment is to minimal use throughout the workday, fostered by growing awareness of our local watershed. Just learning the names of the humble branches and creeks our city block supports is a start. We’ve also designed and installed native perennial habitats around our office, eliminating the need for irrigation and improving permeability. Lastly, many of us share best practices and equipment for catchment and use at home while getting involved in local river and stream restoration and conservation.
These are small and simple steps. They require diligence and undermine our preference for privacy and comfort. What we wear, our preferred climate, and the stuff we eat are profoundly personal. It can seem countercultural even to discuss them in a group. Being openhanded about our choice of homes, vehicles, and acquisition of new goods creates accountability but also creates new and weird social dynamics. And initial attempts at whole cost accounting in our business practices and the land on which we operate are clumsy, imprecise, and inconvenient. We’re unsure about sharing. We’re allergic to collectivism. We still tend to evade criticism. But we’re working on it.
In other words, we desire the ecological education Leopold embodies but are unwilling to live alone. We believe lasting reform can take root in small, integrated communities like ours. Perhaps those are the only places it can. As our imagination for wholeness grows, so too does our tolerance. Tolerance for accepting the stains on our trousers and wearing thicker socks in February. For kale and parsnips (again). For being a little less punctual and maybe a little sweaty. And for all the awkwardness these changes entail.
Creativity can save us—and will—but we need more healers. We must move from scarcity to abundance and allow our shells to soften. We must believe in enough. We must confront the marks of death, including those we make ourselves, and resist the urge to turn away. This world contains far more grace than we’ve been taught. It is positively brimming with miracles. It’s truly astonishing how quickly the scars of waste and stupidity are overrun by marks of attention and affection. These are the marks of healing and they are best made together.