Making Space for a New View
Nature has a way of filling every nook and cranny with something living. As I wandered the north woods these past few days, it's clear that if something can get a root in place, it's there and growing. As new plants and trees and fungi work their way into establishing a home, they're also adjusting and adapting to older life around them and new life following them. Always hunting and reaching for a bit of sunlight, the deeper into the forests I travel, the more creative the methods for finding that sliver of life sunlight brings.
Sometimes it just means waiting. Lying dormant until a pocket of sunlight finds its way to the patch of soil you're settled into. Sometimes it means being an early riser and getting out ahead of all the rest. Sometimes it means putting on a burst of speed and winding around and through the underbrush to poke out ahead of the other slow growers. Sometimes the opportunity is given, with the rush of wind that topples an old giant and opens up a vast space in the canopy. Sometimes, water or fire rushes through wiping the whole landscape clean for a restart. Sometimes it means picking places to settle into that nothing else is interested or able to put to use.
Over the past few years, a bit of human help has begun the process of opening up and kickstarting a new forest habitat in the sections of the Superior National Forest that I roam when I'm not at the cafe. Known up here as Firewise, it makes an effort to mimic the smaller wildfires that used to be a natural occurrence before the logging era of clear cutting changed this conifer ecosystem radically. The Firewise aim is actually to try to preserve human-made structures that have also tried to find footholds in the wilderness. Summer homes (and year-round residences), resorts and lodges, camps and outfitters, have all been attempting to live alongside this living forest, some for 100 years or more. For those of us helping to care for the Superior National Forest by leasing small plots of forest, Firewise has been a set of management guidelines for tree and underbrush removal that will hopefully make any wildfire that does happen to spring up less likely to destroy structures, and also less likely to kill older, mature white and red pines that are the foundation of this conifer forest. With less fuel around them, these majestic trees, will have a better chance of withstanding a fire that races across its feet but cannot get up into its limbs. With their hundred-year-old bark fashioned to resist low temperature fires, these pines will actually benefit from less competition for water and minerals and sunlight with the numerous plants in the underbrush.
And out of those fires, new soil, new growth, and the story continues on.
Recently the attention here has also turned to the invasives. These non-native plants have been introduced to this biome from human activity over the past couple hundred years (only). Without natural predators to keep them in check, these plants and animals can quickly outcompete the native life that has been so well balanced over eons. Fires reset the game, with native plants better suited to handle the disruption and get ahead of their invasive guests. And human activity can also reduce invasive impacts, through education and irradicating, humans can participate in restoring natural space to the native populations, restoring the balance of nature, and reducing our negative impacts of living among our plant and animal neighbors.
I find this an apt model for the challenges that face the small business community these days. We can acknowledge a time when indigenous peoples managed to create whole societies with commerce and trade in balance with their living relatives both plant and animal. There followed a time where our industrial society was built around a myriad of independent, small, family run businesses. There were, of course, always the rich and powerful out there trying to find ways to invade this landscape. Yet, it seems there was also a sense of balance and fairness that attempted to rein in these destructive, extractive interests. Efforts to prevent monopolies, create laws to protect workers, to hold tycoons in check, and even the work of incentivizing philanthropy among the wealthiest, all spoke to our country's desire for equality and fairness amongst the growth. There have also been terrible scenes within our history in the name of growing commerce; slavery and indigenous genocide and wholesale demolition of our natural world, being a dark stain on our economic history that has never fully been addressed or cleaned up. And we continue to pay for our dependence on war-making to fuel economic growth, with only violence and destruction to really show as returns for this investment. An economy that doesn't include all of its participants fairly, will always struggle to find balance.
I grew up during what could be described as the ubiquitous suburban sprawl years, where the shopping mall became the landscaping model for business. Large corporate interests dropped in with their seeds and rhizomes scattering chains and franchises like the parachutes from dandelions. One mall began to look like another. The invasives choked out the natives who for years were attempting to grow into a balanced ecosystem. In a matter of years the power dynamic shifted. Bigger became better. Convenience and homogeny won out. The rich were celebrated and loaded up with more power and more wealth and more opportunity. All of us have suffered. We have witnessed a handing over of a diverse forest to the invasives.
If we are not wise about our choices in the coming years, we will not recognize the business landscape. As corporate giants move in and alter the conditions for survival, the small business community will surely be strangled and squashed and pushed into the remote corners of this landscape. It's time to get serious about clearing out the invasives, about replanting localized economies, and finding a balance that brings the beloved community we all deserve and long for.
On this little corner of 37th and Nicollet, I gather up hope from your presence with us, continue to pull the weeds, water the pollinators, and celebrate the harvest of family farms in the hopes of being the seed for a green path that leads to wholeness. Thank you for walking with me on this journey.