NWEI ~ Discovering a Sense of Place

DISCOVERING A SENSE OF PLACE

A seven-session course for the workplace, faith center, or home focusing on knowing and protecting our place.

Discussion Course Goals:

• To understand the meaning of a bioregional perspective, and what it would mean to develop one.

• To consider the benefits of consciously developing an intimate relationship with your place.

• To explore what it might mean to protect the place where you live.

Topics Covered:

1. A Sense of Place: Wendell Berry, America's best-known bioregionalist, says if you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are. With a sense of place, your identity is defined—to a significant extent—by the natural features of the place where you live. Without a sense of place, what will fill the void?

2. Responsibility to Place: There is a difference between living on the land and dwelling in it—understanding its rhythms, its potential, and its limits. Those who develop intimacy with a place over time tend to accept responsibility for it.

3. Knowing Your Bioregion: Your bioregion is a unique place with its own watershed, soils, climate, plants, animals, and history. How much do you know about it?

4. Living in Place: Living in place means consciously trying to satisfy your needs and find your pleasures in your local bioregion and working to assure the long-term health of the bioregion.

5. Mapping Your Place: Mapping can be learned by local groups and individuals to give a new sense of place. Whereas a typical map shows political subdivisions and transportation routes, a bioregionalist's map delineates regions based on watersheds, climate, and plant types, thereby helping people relate to their natural surroundings.

6. Building Local Community: A bioregionalist assumes responsibility for the health and continuity of a place, not only its natural features, but also the social bonds of its people.

7. Empowerment: Knowing a place can inspire and empower one to take action to preserve it or take part in its restoration. How important is individual and group action in modern society?