Circular Patterns: People and Place ARE the Environment

The river was once a source of life, a clear, sustained note resounding in every inhabitant’s daily existence. Its current rhythmed vital domains of life and community. Today, however, the place of the river in the geo-mental schemata of inhabitants has undergone some profound re-channeling. Once an economic and cultural conduit connecting inhabitants of the High Bridge area to distant peoples and places, the river is no longer a vital component of the community’s infrastructure. Instead, the river serves mostly the recreational whims of anyone with a boat. Most people living in and around central Kentucky give very little thought to the fact that their daily lives depend on the river—and therefore, on its overall health—as it is the major source of water for most of the towns and cities located along its 259-mile course. With each turn of the faucet, we are indebted to the river. Likewise, with each flush of the toilet, we are indebted to the river. Each day, we consume millions and millions of gallons of its water, and each day millions and millions of gallons of treated (and, unfortunately, untreated) effluent returns to its flow. You need only travel a few miles upstream from Lock seven to experience the awe of what seems to be complete isolation from the workings of humankind. As one of the main arteries out of the mountains in Eastern Kentucky, the flora along the river’s corridor is representative of the incredible diversity of flora in Appalachia. Unfortunately, and without much effort, your sense of awe is despoiled by residue of human waste: plastic bags, deposited during high water, left hanging out to dry in tree limbs that overarch the bank; plastic motor oil containers—known locally as “Kentucky Ducks”—that raft along the banks; plastic and rubber balls of all sizes floating among the flotsam. In the winter, trash is visible everywhere. In the summer, thick foliage subsumes the litter but doesn’t make it go away. All of these things represent the rotten fruits of living a life predicated on consumption and creation of waste.
That people seem to give very little thought to their places and the relationship between their choices and actions and the relative health and appearance of the environment should come as little surprise, particularly in light of Berry’s notion about the impulse to keep moving that dominates contemporary American life. One’s place in the world is reduced significantly when one is in constant motion. Place becomes personal, private, isolated, disconnected. One’s responsibility, then, is truncated, too. The greatest deception of industrial and post-industrial civilization has been to divorce human consciousness from the natural world, a split that imperils every living organism. But, as Jack D. Forbes points out, our well-being and ultimate survival relies not on our functioning as autonomous creatures but on our behavior as symbiotic organisms:
I can lose my hands and still live. I can lost my legs and still live. I can lose my eyes and still live. I can lose my hair, eyebrows, nose, arms, and many other things and still live. But if I lose the air I die. If I lose the sun I die. If I lose the earth I die. If I lose the water I die. If I lose the plants and animals I die. All of these things are more a part of me, more essential to my every breath, than is my so-called body. What is my real body? (145)
For the residents of High Bridge and the surrounding region, if we lose the river, we die. Granted, the river is older than modern humans, and barring the complete destruction of the earth, it will survive in some form or fashion, long after humans have vanished from the earth. But it is a vital resource, and the quality of our lives depends directly on the quality of its water.