"S O WHERE ARE YOU PLANNING TO BUILD your house?" by Permaculture Designer and Teacher Ben Haggard,

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Hello Wesley,
Thanks for writing. OK to post the article, with this credit:
Reprinted with permission from Communities magazine, issue #95, Sustainable 
Building and Design in Community, Summer 1997. Communities is a quarterly 
magazine published by the Fellowship for Intentional Community, 
http://www.ic.org/, email: fic at ic.org. Please see 
http://fic.ic.org/cmag/subscribe.html if you're interested in subscribing.
In community,
Jillian
______________________________________________________
Jillian Downey www.ic.org ficweb at ic.org


Zuni Mountain Sanctuary

 From Habit to Habitat

by Ben Haggard

                                  "S O WHERE ARE YOU PLANNING TO BUILD your 
house?"

                                  "Over there." Owl points to a rocky 
knoll, covered in pinyon, overlooking a broad
                                  valley behind the community house at Zuni 
Mountain Sanctuary (ZMS). We walk
                                  toward the site, climbing out of the 
grassy bottomland onto treed slopes. I scan the
                                  spot Owl has chosen as he describes the 
building to me. I understand why he'd
                                  want to be here: good solar access, 
privacy, views of the black lava flows of the
                                  Malpais, and a strong sense of place. I 
immediately hunt for a tactful way to
                                  dissuade him.

                                  Owl walks purposefully through the golden 
October grass of central New Mexico.
                                  He has long legs, broad shoulders, 
reddish blond hair, beard turning grey, and
                                  wears a nondescript down vest and denim 
jeans. He's a radical faerie, member of
                                  the flamboyant anti-assimilationist 
fringe of gay liberation. Owl is also a trained
                                  scientist, a gardener, a native New 
Mexican, and a former range management
                                  specialist for the BLM. Owl is a man who 
knows the landscape and knows what he
wants.

I have been invited to ZMS, a radical faerie community, to help with a 
permaculture plan for its 300 acres. For several days I
have walked arroyos, flat grasslands, ponds, and rolling slopes that back 
onto National Forest land in the heart of New
Mexico's Indian country. I have interviewed residents, learning their 
aspirations and assessing their understanding of the land and
its limitations. Out of this research, some general insights have begun to 
form in my mind.

I practice permaculture, an ecological and ethical design system. 
Permaculture teaches that human communities, to be
sustainable, must adapt themselves to the needs of the ecosystems they 
inhabit. As a permaculture designer, I see the site as my
primary client. People belong on a site only if their presence supports 
regeneration of natural systems, creating more potential
for life rather than less. The radical faeries approached me because they 
have a strong environmental ethic, and because I have
personal experience working and living in intentional communities.

I ease into my conversation with Owl. I observe the strengths of his 
choice: it's above the cold air drainage, out of the flood
plain, and affords some protection from prevailing winds. I describe my 
feeling that this is a powerful place on the land. I
mention that some communities choose to set aside such places as sacred and 
avoid building on them.

I then point out that one of the charms of this spot, part of what makes it 
feel so secluded, is the grove of pinyon trees crowding
the proposed building site. These trees, especially those downslope and 
upwind, are volatile when dry and represent an extreme
fire hazard in this drought-prone landscape. They virtually ensure the 
eventual destruction of any structure placed here. We
search for evidence of fire and find plenty of burned out stumps from an 
event several decades ago. To cut the trees down
would destroy part of the reason for being here in the first place. By 
helping Owl clearly see the problem, I act both as advocate
for the prospective homebuilder and advocate for the site.

I go on to observe how far we are from the community center. He shrugs his 
shoulders - it won't be a problem for him. I sketch
the potential access issues. First he must build the house, necessitating 
delivery of materials and water (for concrete). A remote
location requires its own access road and, in this fragile ecosystem, even 
driving over the ground once leaves a permanent scar.
Second, all houses are degenerative investments - they require ongoing work 
and materials to maintain. They also require fuel.
Even a well-designed solar home will need firewood or propane for backup 
heat during Zuni's subzero winters. In my
experience, Owl's hope that his home be accessed only on foot is unrealistic.

Finally, having a home so far from the center makes life harder in an 
environment where life is already hard enough. Forgetting a
notebook or necessary tool requires a long trek home, sometimes in 
difficult weather. I've noticed that in spread out
communities, people simply adjust to not having what they need. The daily 
effort of getting from one place to another hampers
residents' ability to do their work. Individuals and community suffer as 
workloads become overwhelming and maintenance of
people and infrastructure is neglected. This is not a recipe for 
sustainability.

I call the tendency to spread out the "urban refugee syndrome." Urban and 
suburban people, afraid of the potential lack of
privacy in villages and close-knit communities, scatter across the 
landscape looking for a place to hide. This only repeats in
microcosm the worst mistakes of suburban development--destructive, 
repetitive sprawl. Networks of paths and roads
proliferate, requiring maintenance, creating erosion scars, and disrupting 
wildlife. The costs of distributing water, energy, or
wastes go up. Communication becomes more difficult. Often these siting 
decisions assume that residents will remain young and
healthy forever.

I think Owl is finally persuaded when I ask him to imagine the 20 or more 
proposed homes at ZMS placed as isolated dwellings
around the land. He sees that such a pattern would eliminate the most 
desirable open space of the community. Anywhere one
walked would be someone's backyard. He agrees that clustered housing would 
allow optimal use of the best areas for building
and maintain the integrity of the commons.

Since that conversation, ZMS has entered a community planning process. 
Residents have begun an in-depth study of
permaculture. They have assessed their site, studying wind patterns, 
erosion patterns, evidence of past fires and floods. They
know something about the history of the region, its soils, its plant and 
animal communities. From this base of information they
are generating a master plan.

Zuni Mountain residents have identified the most appropriate locations for 
buildings, gardens, agroforestry, sacred places,
wildlife corridors. They are listening to the land, allowing its potentials 
and liabilities to dictate the pattern of development. In this
way they are beginning to practice regeneration. The concentration of human 
energy and capital, intelligently applied, has the
potential to heal and revitalize an abused and degraded landscape. As the 
land heals, its capacity to support human community
increases.

In ZMS's current draft plan, a single, short, easy to maintain road offers 
access to a tightly clustered village center surrounding
agricultural fields and a spring-fed pond. This road gets good solar 
access, so it's less likely to be icy in winter and muddy in
summer. It's on contour, so it can prevent erosion. It's just above the 
orchard, so runoff from the road surface can be used for
irrigating trees. It's perpendicular to prevailing winds and the direction 
of greatest fire danger, so it's an ideal firebreak. And it
leaves the majority of the property free from incursion by automobiles, 
minimizing potential pollution and maximizing open space
and wildlife areas. This road is just one of many innovative design ideas 
that have come out of a group of thoughtful residents
working collaboratively on a process of integrative design.

People like Owl and the Zuni Mountain community give me hope. By joining 
efforts they are able to take on an ambitious and
complex project that few could afford or have the experience to build as 
individuals. Their efforts will leave the land healthier
than they found it. And they are generating a new culture, based on respect 
for and knowledge of the place they live and
informed by a willingness to work together--with each other and with the 
Earth that sustains them. The model they build, its
failures and successes, will teach everyone who comes in contact with it.

Permaculture designer and consultant Ben Haggard lives and works in Santa 
Fe, New Mexico. He teaches at the Permaculture Drylands Institute
and is author of Living Community - a Permaculture Case Study at Sol y Sombra.
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