The Riverlands

Hello everyone!  I’m an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona, and this spring I’m taking a class called “Anthropology and Conservation.”  As part of that class I’m reading a couple of books, one called Ecocities and one named Urban Homesteading.   They’re both about the same thing, more or less, though with very different approaches–how to change the way we live in cities, the way we even build our cities, to be more eco-friendly.  These, combined with a few other books I’ve looked at, have given me a lot of ideas that I think I could implement, but the problem is that very few of these books are tailored for…life in Tucson, Arizona.  There are a lot of practical problems that the books don’t always address.  And of course, some things–like urban gardening–are always a process of trial and error, and I haven’t seen a lot of books on gardening in the desert that don’t completely ignore other eco-issues, like water shortages, and how to grow regional plants.  “Desert landscaping” is all very well, but can you eat it?  Eating regional foods, on the other hand, raises other issues, like the fact that, at least in this country, we’re usually genetically tailored to subsist off of foods from places other than where we’re living now.  Eco-friendly living also raises social justice issues.  For instance, how can I buy locally–to save energy–and still support community trade projects in Guatamala or Thailand?

These are a few of the issues I’d like to look at more closely, as I try to apply, one at a time, some of these principles to my life.  I decided to keep a blog mainly because, if I can work out any answers, I hope that they might be useful to other Tucsonans, or southwesterners.  I’ll be trying to address basic questions like, “How many food plants can I fit onto my apartment porch?  And what should they be?  What’s actually edible in a desert region like this?  What plants from elsewhere still grow well in this heat with minimal amounts of water and maintenance?  What are the problems you encounter most in gardening here?  And how do I cook with local foods, anyway?”  I’ll also look at navigating Tucson’s almost non-existant bus system, finding farmers markets (I get the feeling there’s more of them in town than people realize,) the cheapest places in Tucson to buy the greenest products, and in general, trying to find the most practical, locally-relevant ways to stay live conservationally while also staying sane.

Now, I should stress that I don’t have a specific program for all this.  I plan to write about whatever issues I find myself addressing in my daily life, as I encounter them.  Sometimes, if I have time, I’ll be doing research to find the answer, but mostly I’ll be writing from my own experience.  I’m not an eco-maniac.  I have a car.  I’m trying to use it less and less, but it’s a process: I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and say, from now on I will walk everywhere and wear only homespun hemp clothing.  In the book It’s Easy Being Green, Crissy Trask points out that many Americans think, “It’s hypocritical to advocate and practice environmentally friendly behaviors in some, but not all, areas of my life,” and so they don’t attempt to live environmentally at all.  Instead, she argues, “…changing habits and situations can occur a little at a time…making corrections manageable…  Greener living is a relative and evolving state…a journey entailing discovery, evaluation and adaptation automatically means that there will always be questions, more to do and things you could do better. …possessing the desire and intention to live greener, while having made only marginal progress to date, doesn’t make you a hypocrite, it makes you imperfect.  And aren’t we all?”

So there you have it.  I’m not going to use this blog to preach, (though I reserve the right to rant about pet peeves from time to time.)  I’m going to be sharing the experiences of a practical, super-busy, Tucsonan college student in hopes that they might be of some use to other practical, super-busy Tucsonans.  Along the way I’ll be reviewing any books I happen to read on the topic and I’ll try to post links to any relevant news stories that come my way.  I can’t say how often I’ll update the blog; while school’s in session, it honestly might not be that often.  I have a few projects in mind for the summer that should provide a lot of material, however.  For now, I hope I’ll be able to write something once every couple of weeks or so.  Wish me luck!