As a proud life-long Westerner, I hold that the common denominator among my fellow regionalists is a love for the land and a gentle respect for each other.
I have come to believe this demeanor is shaped by the particular places we inhabit: mountains, valleys, rivers, mesas and deserts. So it is both fitting and paradoxical that our county’s recent fissure line is over a land-use planning process intended to make neighborliness a little easier.
It saddens me that the divisions among us have gotten so ugly in recent weeks, as dissent for the land-use planning process has developed an emotional life of its own. I have been following both sides of the debate on social media, in an effort to escape my echo chamber, only to encounter polarizing words and behavior, toward any who disagree or even asks a question.
With all the posting about “locals” vs. “outsiders,” property rights vs. Gwen Lachelt, socialists vs. libertarians, city vs. county, Koch Brothers vs. Tom Steyer, it seems that we have forgotten we are neighbors (and that anyone can see our names and profile photos).
Have we lost our capacity for public life, our ability to resolve crucial issues, and our sense of what being in La Plata County and from the West means?
I find myself re-reading Community and the Politics of Place, essays by Daniel Kemmis, former mayor of Missoula, Montana.
He writes: “[W]hat ‘we’ do depends upon who ‘we’ are (or who we think we are). It depends ... upon how we choose to relate to each other, to the place we inhabit, and to the issues which that inhabiting raises for us. If in fact there is a connection between the places we inhabit and the political culture which our inhabiting of them produces, then perhaps it makes sense to begin with the place, with a sense of what it is, and then try to imagine a way of being public which would fit the place.”
In this spirit, I’d like to challenge us all to do the hard work of shaping a cooperative, face-to-face practice of public life that is rooted in our shared love of this place and respect for each other. Our local politics should be worthy of the landscape we inhabit, and should help us to be better people, a better community, and a better place. We may not agree on everything. We may have very different ways of relating to and inhabiting this place, but we can do better than this.
To quote Daniel Kemmis again:
“There are not many rivers, one for each of us, but only this one river, and if we all want to stay here, in some kind of relation to the river, then we have to learn, somehow, to live together.”
Emily Thorn is an environmental scientist and sociologist. She writes from Durango. Reach her at emily.e.thorn@gmail.com.
