Center for Humans and Nature

Green Fire Blog by Curt Meine: Western Swing #3 – Davis, CA

November 22nd, 2011

I am now headed back to Wisconsin after a whirlwind couple days in central California.  The dynamic Green Fire duo of Steve (director) and Ann (editor) Dunsky live in Vallejo, in the northeast part of the San Francisco Bay area.  Steve Most, who took the lead in developing the script for Green Fire, also lives in the Bay Area.  And so we enjoyed a nice reunion, while showing the film twice.

But before we got down to business, Steve and I enjoyed a special opportunity for historical grounding.  The Amtrak line from Oregon has a stop not far from Steve and Ann, in Martinez, CA. Steve met me at the station, just a few short blocks away from the John Muir National Historic Site.  From 1890 until his death in 1914, Muir (when he was not off exploring the Sierra Nevada, Alaska, the desert Southwest, and far-off lands overseas) made his home in Martinez with his wife Louie and their two daughters.  I knew from others that the site was no longer bucolic and rural, having long since been engulfed by the spreading of development in the Bay Area.  And so it was not a surprise to find Muir’s home at a busy intersection next to the freeway.

The original 2600 acres of ranchland and orchard have indeed been whittled away, but the site does include 9 acres of fruit orchards and more than 300 acres of open space on Mount Wanda (named after one of the Muir daughters).

Historic photo of the Strenzel-Muir ranch

The site is now a popular destination for local students and residents as well as Muir admirers from around the world.  We were there early, before operating hours for the site, but were fortunate enough to cross paths with National Park Service employees Morgan Smith and Luther Bailey, who showed us around.  The National Park Service has been busy at work improving the visitor center, the house, and the grounds.  Once inside the site, it is remarkable how the sense of its urban setting diminishes.  Muir would appreciate the calming effect that the place still has!  One of my favorite spots on the tour was Muir’s office, suitably restored to the happy state of messiness that Muir apparently created while in the throes of writing.  The desk is Muir’s own!

John Muir in his "Scribble Den"

This fall, while traveling with Green Fire, we have visited sites associated with George Perkins Marsh, Theodore  Roosevelt, and Gifford Pinchot (among other early conservationists).  So it felt entirely appropriate to begin the California leg of this trip by touching place with “Johnnie Muir.”

Later on that day, Steve and Ann brought me over to their office/studio at the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region headquarters in Vallejo.  I’d not visited before, though I had spent countless hours on the phone and on studio-to-studio link-ups while Green Fire was in production.  So it was a treat to see the actual spot where Steve and Ann work their magic.  Here is where all the pieces of Green Fire came together:

We had a second special opportunity during my visit to the USFS office.  Through the week, the office’s Civil Rights and Tribal Relations programs were running a series of events as part of Native American Awareness month.  These included a screening of the film River of Renewal, which explores the recent history of conflict, community, and conservation in the Klamath River basin. Our colleague Steve Most served as writer and producer for the film.  Less than a decade ago, the Klamath was the focus of a bitter, headline-generating battle involving water, threatened salmon populations, Native communities, sport and commercial fishers, and agriculture.  More recently (as the film’s website explains):

…a remarkable conflict resolution and consensus building process gained influence among the communities of the Klamath Basin.  Eventually, they found common ground, recognizing that economic revival could occur only if ecological vitality were restored.  The Klamath River tribes’ ethos of world renewal, or pikiawish, “fixing the world,” now influences the entire Klamath Basin.  The film shows leaders of different communities coming together to seek a way beyond economic stagnation, environmental disaster, and polarized politics.

That description gives some sense of the common themes the film shares with Green Fire, which we showed immediately afterwards. If you enjoyed Green Fire, I highly recommend watching River of Renewal.  I am often asked about the connections between Leopold’s conception of the land ethic and the varied traditions of land ethics that Native American communities (and other communities as well) have evolved.  The afternoon’s films and discussion allowed us to explore those vital questions.  I hope that all of us in “the thinking community” will continue to explore those questions, and I am especially pleased that Green Fire may be helping to encourage the conversation.  Thank you to Steve and Ann and everyone in the USFS regional office for taking the time to meet and talk!

The next day, Friday, we had yet another special opportunity!  During our October visit to Yale University, our friends Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim had mentioned that they would be coming to San Francisco to attend the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. For more than a decade, Mary Evelyn and John and a growing group of colleagues have been gathering at the meeting to discuss their work in connecting the world’s diverse faith traditions and environmental science, ethics, and justice.  (Their work is now carried on through FORE, the Forum on Religion and Ecology.)  Mary Evelyn and John have also been very busy with their own film project, Journey of the Universe.  Throughout the year, our two films have been on a fortuitously braided path, crossing each other’s tracks in a variety of venues.  It was a pleasure, then, to actually cross paths in San Francisco, and to share a few words about Green Fire with our FORE friends.

On then to the main event.  On Friday evening we screened Green Fire at the University of California-Davis Conference Center.  Thanks, on behalf of the whole Green Fire team, to the organizers and sponsors of the screening:  Mark Schwartz and the UC-Davis John Muir Institute of the Environment, the USDA Forest Service Experimental Forest and Range Network, and Vance Russell of the California Program of the National Forest Foundation.  It was great to connect with all these organizations, and with Ruth Coleman, director of the California State Parks system.  Ruth in her introductory remarks discussed the important influence of Starker Leopold and Luna Leopold on the state park system in California — a fitting reminder of the many ways in which the Leopold family has informed conservation policies and programs in so many places.

I was especially pleased, on a personal level, to have Rich and Evelyne Rominger join us for the evening.  Well known in the Davis community, the Romingers have been leaders nationally in the sustainable agriculture arena for many years. We first met when Rich Rominger was serving as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  He and others in the USDA came to visit the Leopold Shack and Farm, and to discuss the significance of the land ethic for the future of agriculture.  Once again, one of the pleasures of touring with Green Fire has been reconnecting with many such friends and colleagues along the way.  (Along these lines, many thanks to Erica Fleishman at UC-Davis for helping to arrange our visit.)

Getting ready in Davis

We were very pleased to have more than 200 people attending the film at Davis.  At the same time, we knew that in fact many more than that had reserved tickets, so we were a little surprised with the turnout.  Only later did we learn that, shortly before the film was shown, events at UC-Davis had overshadowed our screening.  News and video of the pepper-spraying of seated UC-Davis student activists by police officers has now gone viral, and the campus has instantly become a flash point in the spreading Occupy movement.

I have since heard from friends in Davis, and know that the events there have been difficult to comprehend, even as they highlight the economic trends and political tensions that have precipitated them.  I find myself thinking over the many places we have visited with Green Fire over the last nine months, from Wisconsin and New York to New Haven and Pennsylvania, from Chicago and Colorado to Oregon and California.  In so many of the places we have shown the film, viewers have asked afterwards about the connections between Leopold’s thought, the evolving land ethic, and the concern and discontent that are now being voiced, in part, through the Occupy movement.

In his own time, Leopold was not one to avoid the difficult questions that economic turmoil and political conflict raised in terms of the aims and strategies — and even the very meaning — of conservation.  He had much to say on the topic.  To choose just one example from Leopold’s writing:  ”I suspect that the forces inherent in unguided economic evolution are not at all beneficent. Like the forces inside our own bodies, they may become malignant, pathogenic. I believe that many of the economic forces inside the modern body-politic are pathogenic in respect to harmony with land.”

We now find ourselves in a time when the co-evolution of our social, economic, ethical, end ecological systems is again at issue.  At the Center for Humans and Nature, we have often over the years explored the notion of an emerging “democratic ecological citizenship.”  There is, we recognize, a direct connection between the land ethic and the profound challenge of — and need to — build a just and restorative economy, one that enhances the “future continuity” of our interlinked human and natural communities.  As we witnessed at Davis, Green Fire, in its themes and its timing, intersects with this expanding conversation.  As it should.  As it inevitably will.

I took the train back to the Midwest from California.  One reason I appreciate traveling by train is that it gives me time — it forces time — to slow down and ponder such connections and confluences in our daily lives.  It has been an incredibly busy year with Green Fire, and the opportunities to reflect have been few and far between.  So I was grateful to have a little break to watch the better part of a continent pass by at eye level, and to think of all the people and places we have visited with the film, and all the conversations that it has provoked.  There are more adventures and conversation to come, no doubt.   But with Thanksgiving upon us, I would like to pass along from the whole Green Fire team a great big “Thank You!” to everyone who has connected with us so far along this trail.  Here, in thanks, is a bit of central Colorado, as seen from the train window….