A Wild Glen Tana. Rewilding our Suburbs

“Don’t plan to go out and save the world. The world is here to save you.”

If we learn to listen.

This Commencement message is perhaps meant for us all in these times. It implies there is a wisdom in wild places like Glen Tana, that can map humanity’s way forward.

Inland Northwest Land Conservancy’s purchase and commitment to keeping Glen Tana wild promises to contribute to the health of Spokane’s Natural Capital – clean water, fresh air, healthy soils and thriving wildlife – in measurable ways. But this former dairy farm on the Little Spokane River can help us re-learn our rightful place within Nature’s web of relationships, and spur us back to our suburbs with a commitment to re-wild them.

“Some things are better left untouched” is how Inland Northwest Land Conservancy describes their ownership of Glen Tana’s 1060 acres. However, the challenge of rewilding the city’s suburbs, whose landscapes have been severely compromised by monocropped lawns and exotic plants, will need re orientation. Re-designed home environments are needed that are as resilient, as productive, and as stable as those in nature (Bill Mollison)* and preferably grow significant quantities of healthy food. Such garden designs would not only care for creation, but care for people too, producing Household Economies with the added benefit of empowering homeowners to be more in charge of their own nutrition, health and budgets rather than reliant on centralized systems that control our lives.

Understanding the word “collaborate” to mean “to commit to the possibility of producing an outcome greater than one that would be developed in a silo,” these organizations – and others – are teaming up as a loose New Story Collaborative to pilot home gardens in and around Spokane to model a comprehensive design that is both beautiful and functional.

Engaged in a revolution disguised as organic gardening, gardeners will “gently upend the status quo with regenerative systems that serve both the people and the planet” (David Holmgren).* And working with creative organizations like Inland Northwest Land Conservancy, perhaps they will contribute to what Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning, shifting the world from an industrial growth-economy towards a life-affirming economy.

The need is great. Time is short. Wild natural areas, and re-wilding suburban neighborhoods one garden at a time, promises to bring the reliable prosperity our city, and the world, is in such need of, and which is good to the Seventh Generation.