I’ve been resisting Substack for about a year now.
It only seemed appropriate that a blog focused on regional food, history, ecology, and identities should have a server and URL of its own. But the little corner of the web I did set up has mostly languished as I figure out how to navigate the world of day-jobs+side-hustles (+parenting, +etc.). It’s been almost two years now since I left my contingent academic position and vowed not to start either a newsletter or a consultancy for frustrated/desperate academics. But I think it’s time I cave on at least the former resolution.
I’ve imported my handful of existing posts to this platform, with mostly satisfactory results, and will be attempting to formulate a hybrid relationship to this so-called “subscription network,” with its increasingly social media-ish features (but also - plaudits - growing customizability).
In other words, Substack will power the blog/newsletter portion of this project, while I continue to build out aspects of the separate blog/site for future culinary and printing enterprises. TO THAT END: if you are in dire need of a poem to hang on your wall, take a look at the letterpress broadsides that have been sitting in my closet for a decade, which could be yours for the low, low price of $20 (shipping included): https://laurentia.place/product/earth-song/
And now, a glimpse of the past:
Bioregional Longings, Part 1
I felt attached to the idea of the Laurentia bioregion from the first time I encountered it.
This was likely sometime around 2010, when I spent several hours each morning between my part-time AmeriCorps gigs perusing Wikipedia articles and Gradcafe forums in search of a vocation. The concept must have tapped into the antisocial desire for transcendence I inherited from (white) American evangelicalism, with its aversion to things like historical thinking and cultural self-awareness. Oh, to be free of my non-monetizable skillset—to inhabit a world of pure ecology!
But my attraction to bioregions wasn’t just a symptom of my religious upbringing and cultural position. I also had some personal, if not quite narcissistic, reasons. Carrying the idea of “Laurentia” in the back of my mind allowed me to integrate my regional identities, imagining that the places I had lived formed a single, identifiable place. That's something I wanted all the more after relocating to Massachusetts in 2011 and leaving behind my self-identified home of "the Great Lakes" (Mansfield, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Buffalo, NY--and kind of Chicago). Though not part of the same watershed, or even growing zone, perhaps (the thought went) these places shared some quality of ineffable interdependence, despite the fact that Boston seemed more foreign to me than London (cousins can be strange, right?).
Ten Twelve years later, I’ve decided that the cultural delusions and personal tendencies that first brought me to Laurentia are worth another look. I still want to consider my life against a different backdrop, to evaluate my choices on another basis. Bioregions provide that, even if I and the world are radically changed from a decade ago (and even though New England is not always considered a part of Laurentia). I’m not ready to settle for political withdrawal (or reformism), climate doom, technological euphoria, a salary, the nuclear family, an occasional trip to the farmer’s market, or the other potential sources of identity that have presented themselves as I approach my late 30s—though some of those things are great, don’t get me wrong.
It may all be a metaphor. It definitely still involves existential angst and settler-colonial assumptions (as noted by other white guys writing about the Laurentia bioregion). To consider one’s bioregional place and maybe even to develop a bioregional affiliation—there’s inevitably some escapism in that. But also, some hope.
Where The Water Goes
If there’s more than a metaphor at stake in this personal project, that’s thanks in part to watersheds. A parallel concept to the bioregion, and fundamental component of any local ecology, the watershed is a good place to begin to rethink one’s location. It’s where geology and biology meet, and one of the most tangible systems that skew from our built environment and social processes.
Encountering the humble Plaster Creek watershed during college is what my pulled me across the threshold into amateur ecological thinking. I followed that flow of freshwater and pesticides (from exurban farms) through suburban parks and urban industrial parks on several occasions, once with the guidance of a biologist friend, once with a group of friends I coordinated to collect riparian trash, and other times to walk or read or climb trees. More than the backdrop for a handful of pleasant memories, that small tributary clued me into an unfamiliar map of the world. It’s a perspective I can carry with me, and that remains just as inspiring and provocative for me today, despite now living in a drainage basin with more visible contours (thanks to cultural factors and social action, as well as geological features).
If there’s one way, dear reader, that I would encourage anyone anywhere to begin exploring their own relationship to place, it’s via watershed. Whether a mighty river you already know well, or an assuming ditch under the highway, find out where the water goes (and maybe how it’s faring, health-wise).