I just finished reading all but the epilogue of Cadillac Desert (by Marc Reisner) today, and I'm caught in a moment of reflection.
The problem presented by Reisner summed up desert reclamation (building dams and pipes to make otherwise "barren" land habitable ...or profitable) as being akin to a boy building a sand castle at low tide. Having built and beheld the fall of my own actual low-tide sand castle on the beach, the word picture is overwhelmingly looming and I don't feel capable of even beginning to wrap my arms around the challenge facing "reclaimed" land.
While less pressing in Portland than say, Klamath Falls, I feel sick at the cost, study, argumentation and innovation required to safely rebalance the ecology we live in- especially with such profit-driven elements behind what people consider "feasible design". I feel like I must let my career and profitability suffer in order to stand by the principles learned in this book-- and even still make little difference after a lifetime of that sorry work.
In a quest for context and the latest conversations, last year I had the chance to attend an ASCE/EWRG Sustainable Stormwater Symposium, where I met incredible advocates for watershed health in policy, design, and development. I also attended River Restoration Northwest's Annual Stream Restoration Symposium, where the opening presentation offered a hard-statistical-evaluation of the overwhelming doom of "wild salmon" driven by our population growth and lifestyle. The room had a hard look. Wild salmon recovery has been significantly influencing legal requirements for development that affects rivers. To hear it is all generally pointless was so generally disheartening. Still, the symposium went on to discuss new research and successful efforts, projects, successes, and stories. Continuing in the hopeful way of conservationism.
The angst from considering magnitude of rebalancing the earth as a professional makes me think of what someone at one of the conferences said- that they knew an ecologist who defected from scientific study and ran towards a career in design because in design there is inherent hope for the future, otherwise why design anything at all? I'm glad to be working in design, and to know what precious little I know about ecology. I'm glad for all the stories that were gathered in Cadillac Desert, and the perspective I get to carry with me in that work I do.
I am a [young] PROFESSIONAL whose first duty is to the health, welfare, and safety of the public.
To be a professional, I know I personally must be part of a peer group that TALKS ABOUT THE PROBLEMS I FACE INTO. I want to read. I want to practice. I want to discuss. To process. To present and critique and evolve in different contexts, from different audiences. Then take off another bite and do it again. Having graduated college, I learned that I affirm my knowledge by speaking about what I learn. So I need and will seek community.
I hope what little knowledge and learning and listening I encounter will help disperse some unique perspective that may affect an unwieldy, but life-giving decision somewhere down the line. (I'm also hoping to write a musical about the whole wicked dance one day. I've got an outline written already.)
