Body and Earth. Andrea Olsen

border were farmed by French Canadians who came in to tend the farms. The underground railroad once had way stations in Vermont and Maine en route to Canada, but only a few African Americans settled in this region after emancipation. Indeed, the end of the Civil War marked the beginning of the migration westward and the resulting displacement of native peoples.⁸

       Sculptor Isamu Noguchi reminds us, “We are nature too.”

      As communities of hill farmers headed out for the newly opened Midwest, they abandoned depleted farms, leaving cellar holes and stone fences as markers. This exodus marked the slow renewal of the Vermont bioregion. Hardwood forests grew again in abandoned fields, and in the early 1900s a second cutting occurred, followed again by reforestation. Today, Vermont is 80 percent forest and 20 percent cleared, with a mixed northern hardwood forest containing sugar maples, oak, spruce, fir, beech, red and white pine, butternut, hemlock, and white birch. The bioregion offers an example of recovery, along with the memory of land—plants, animals, soil, water, and people—desecrated by careless stewardship.

      Wildlife has returned. In fall and spring, migrations of hundreds of thousands of snow geese stop to feed and rest on their north-south journey. Although the passenger pigeon, once present in such large flocks, is now totally extinct, other birds have returned: wild turkeys, peregrine falcons, eagles, osprey. As you walk through the woods, you might encounter a moose, bobcat, whitetail deer, coyote, or fisher; it is even possible to imagine a catamount or wolf venturing down from Quebec. Stone fences, arrowheads, and glacial erratics evoke earlier stories of the land.

      Humans are part of the landscape, contributing to biological exchange. Within the narrow span of time that Europeans and immigrants from all over the earth have settled on this North American continent, each bioregion and the continent as a whole have been altered. Humans now inhabit the terrain on a large scale, as visitors or residents. It is time to understand ourselves as co-inhabitants with the land and learn to tell the bioregional stories of the places we call home.

      TO DO

Place scan20 minutes

      Seated or lying in a comfortable position, eyes open:

      • Bring your attention to soil and rock. Where is there soil in this room or place? Use what you can see and what you know, engaging extended proprioception. If you are indoors, take time to consider the possibilities within this place and nearby, considering metals, glass, sand, and rock. Be sure to include your own body and other humans.

      • Bring your attention to air. Where is there air in this room or place? What can you smell, taste, feel, hear, or see concerning air? Remember, the air is a medium of travel for birds, insects, the spores of plants, chemicals, sound waves, light waves, and humans. Consider what is happening with the seasons and with the sun and moon. Bring your attention to any aspect of air that you can perceive at this moment in time, in this unique place and season.

      • Bring your attention to water. Where is there water in this room or place? Consider what’s happening with the water cycle, the water table, in the watershed for your region. Remember your body is mostly water.

      • Bring your attention to animals, our relatives on this earth. Where are animals in the place? Notice the season, the effects on animals; the food you have eaten being digested in your stomach, insects and tiny microorganisms.

      • Shift your attention to plants. Where are plants visible in this room or place? Even if there are no plants in sight, the floors may be wood, plants are being digested in your stomach; we wear plant fibers. Notice or imagine trees, grass, and plants of the season, contributing to the oxygen sustaining your life.

      • Pause in open attention. Try scanning, eyes closed, with senses heightened.

      Harley. Photograph by Leight Johnson.

Telling your place story10–20 minutes

      Seated or standing in a comfortable position, eyes open (alone or with a partner):