WSP05005

• File Number: 8021
• Description: Section D General Studies - Western States Water Council
• State: CO
• Basin: Statewide
• Date: 9/1/1990
• Author: Land Institute
• Title: The Land Report - The Land Report - Fall 1990
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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is on the board of New Alchemy and a retired scien-
tist formerly with the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute, and regaled us with tales of his ocean-going
days studying bioluminescent fishes of the Atlantic.
Soon after Dick immersed us in the deep blue
sea, author William Least Heat Moon came via blue
highways to spend a morning. Many of us have an
affinity for the tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills and
the human settlements there, but few have embarked
on a project the scale of Bill's latest: a 76-chapter
book on Chase County, Kansas. His book will take us
from a time when millions of bison roamed the Great
Plains to the 21st century, when perhaps only hun-
dreds will remain,
Next on our schedule was Wendell Berry's
Home Economics, a book of essays which attempts to
describe our responsibility to a pattern that we are
"wholly dependent on and only partly understand."
That pattern and our responsibilities frequently enter
into discussions here, and inspiration from the
cycling of Wendell's ideas flows like energy from the
revolutions of our wind generator propellers.
Operations manager John Craft seems to have
taken William Blake's dictum that "Energy is Eternal

Dana replaces full container with empty one to catch
honey filtered through nylon stocking from extractor.

Delight" as his motto, and led a week of classes on
energy basics with a passion that would delight the
old poet. John explained electricity and solar and
wind energy, and put the lessons in a context of living
sustainably.
John's classes were a fitting preamble to
hearing Hunter Lovins. Hunter is president and co-
founder with Amory Lovins of The Rocky Mountain
Institute (RMI), and followed Pavid Orr in the Lou
Douglas Lecture Series this fall. RMI is known
around the world for its work in energy efficiency and
national security. Hunter stopped at The Land on
her way back west to Colorado, and as geese flew
overhead we sat on the grass and talked about
efficiency vs. sufficiency and the unpredictable
behavior of complex systems - technological as well
as social.
Convinced we should all do more to conserve
energy, we then asked the question posed by Bryan
Norton's book, Why Preserve Natural Variety? Part of
David Ehrenfeld's Arrogance of Humanism enriched
the discussions, which were led by Dana Jackson and
staff ecologist Jon Piper.
Drive past the Konza Prairie like 1989 intern
Pamela Cubbage and her folks did when they came to
visit in October, and "it looks like grass." But
Pamela, who studied vegetative patterns on the
prairie last year, knows that a close look reveals
staggering natural variety. A usually-invisible
manifestation of such a diverse system can be appre-
ciated if one keeps bees. 1990 was a great year for
wildflower honey, and in early October Dana and
intern Doug Romig harvested over 200 pounds of it
from Dana's three hives.
Colonies of bees have long been used as meta-
phors for human behavior, and while not everyone
agrees with RO. Wilson's theories on sociobiology,
certainly we humans have much thinking to do in
areas the bees appear to have mastered, such as
social learning.
Social learning and transforming society are
concepts central to Lester Milbrath's comprehensive
book, Envisioning a Sustainable Society. Transform-
ing our dominator society to one based on partnership
is the message of Riane Eisler's Chalice and the
Blade. John McPhee's Encounters with the
Archdruid describes David Brower's efforts to pre-
vent human dominance over places of unique natural
beauty. We spent several classes discussing selec-
tions from these books and exploring how changes in
society come about. To warm Dana up for her talk at
the E.F. Schumacher Society (to be published in Land
Report # 40), we also discussed philosopher Jim Ch-
eney's essay, "Ecofeminism and Deep Ecology."
With her new photographs from the Water and
the West Project, Land Institute Arts Associate and
board member Terry Evans spent a morning explor-

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