Welcome to Hurricane Forest!

"I think it's important to think about what we need, which is food and shelter, sure, but there's plenty of other things we need, too. Community and a sense of belonging, support, and fulfillment. We need to be creative, connected, and we need wild nature. More than that, we need to be part of an ecosystem. People belong in nature. It's written in our DNA, which means that what we're doing isn't just ecologic restoration or conservation. What we're doing is growing our native habitat with hidden berries and fruit and cozy green corners and the vibrating sounds of bugs and birds. We can grow habitats that provide for everything we need. We just have to understand what we need and have a will to actually provide people with that. But to figure that out, we cannot keep going with the lifestyles we have now. Because I'd say that right now, we might know what people need, but nobody's acting like it. Very little of our lives are actually there to provide us with what we need. We've constructed the world in such a way that for most people, the majority of our days are spent doing things that don't make us happier, healthier, or more fulfilled. Social media mines our attention. Jobs extract us as a resource. We stress through chores we don't quite have time for. And we extend that treatment onto nature and grow food so impoverished it almost nourishes us. And landscapes so depleted they almost connect us to nature. The unfortunate truth is that the culture we're a part of doesn't have the skill set to grow the Amazon. And we could go deep into the flaws of the human world and why that's the case. But keeping it simple, the lifestyles most of us have been brought up to expect, to put it mildly, don't cater to the health of nature. What our culture has taught us is to use nature and use people to get what we want and to call it freedom of the individual. The qualities our culture searches for, comfort, convenience, and efficiency. They keep us separate and uninterested in nature as anything more than a vehicle to get what we want. And the qualities we need to foster are our weak points. A will to slow down, listen, ask permission, and then do more for less. So that needs to change. But I won't try and convince you that I know how that change needs to happen. I've got general ideas. But the solution to this, the one that sticks with me, if any solution is possible, is that I can't know because there isn't one way that it needs to happen. What works will be different for each one of us. Each valley will need something different. Each desert will ask us to be something different. And because of that, culture needs to become hyper local to really collaborate directly with what's around us, we'll need to find new ways of being. Instead of holding on to the way things were. And I think that's the trick to this whole process. Not only do I have to grow a temperate forest that fits this soil and exposition, I've got to evolve my lifestyle and the way that I relate to other people to be able to live within this forest. They've got to match. And the way that it matches for me will be different from the way that it does for you. And the sad part for me is that that challenge is too big. It's too big for any one person to figure out. And it's too big for any one community. These are problems that honestly will take generations to resolve, which means that the last thing we'll have to learn is how to do things for people who haven't even been born yet."