No Place Like Home

04/06/2017

The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

"We live in a culture that dismisses the significance of an ecological identity, a culture that posits that we make home by the simple fact of habitation, rather than by intimate connection to the land, the sky, the air. Any place can become home, we're told. Which means, really that no place is home." So writes Ann Pelo in her book, The Goodness of Rain: Developing an Ecological Identity in Young Children.

"This is a dangerous view," she goes on to say. "When no place is home, a dammed river is regrettable, but not a devastating blow to the heart. When no place is home, eating food grown thousands of miles away is normal, and the cost to the planet of processing and shipping it is easy to ignore…

"An ecological identity offers an antidote to the displacement that makes possible the wounding and wrecking of the planet."

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