A Thirst Drenched: Connecting Water, Ecology and Community to the Human Environment

7/31/2019 A Thirst Drenched: Connecting Water, Ecology and Community to the Human Environment

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A Thirst Drenched:

Designing Milwaukies Living Room

Connecting Water, Ecology and Community to the Human Environment


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A Thirst Drenched: Designing Milwaukies Living Room

Connecting Water, Ecology and Community to the Human Environment

by

Janna Justine Green

A Thesis

Presented to the Department of Environmental StudiesAnd the Honors College of the University of Oregon

In partial fullment of the requirementsFor the degree of

Bachelor of Science

June 2009


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Copyright 2009 Janna Green


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An Abstract of the Thesis of

Janna Justine Green for the degree of Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Architecture

Title: A THIRST DRENCHED: DESIGNING MILWAUKIES LIVING ROOM

CONNECTING WATER, ECOLOGY AND COMMUNITY TO THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT

Approved: _______________________________

Professor Brook Muller

The declining health of the natural world appears as a crisis demanding an inconvenient need for conservation. By

reconnecting with the natural world we reintroduce opportunities for joy, health and deep personal relationships. This thesis

offers a thoughtful consideration of an architectural design proposal for a 10-acre site along the Willamette River in Milwaukie,

Oregon. Water provides an excellent medium for resource connection, habitat creation, strengthened community and sensory

excitement in nature on this site and throughout the Pacic Northwest. Water is the fabric of life and is intertwined with our

survival. This basic resource can be celebrated during times of excess and respected as precious and rare in puried form. In this

project water will also be an educator of seasonal cycles, a clean supporter of biodiversity, and a generator of community and

celebratory human experiences. By reconnecting people with nature through water, the project expands physical, emotional and

spiritual health of those who visit it. Reconnection is becoming increasingly important as developed societies grow detached

from natural resources like water, which hinders societys ability to protect these vital resources. This design proposal entitled,

A Thirst Drenched should quench our thirst for resources by drenching us in community during times of scarcity and in

celebration during times of abundance. It attempts to show how a reconnected way of living awakens opportunities for wonder

and joy while strengthening the health of human and ecological communities.


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This thesis would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of my

design studio professor, Brook Muller. His positive attitude, enthusiasm and interest kept me

excited and motivated throughout the entirety of this design process. Thanks to ecologist and

landscape designer, Josh Cerra, for fundamentally changing the way I view the built environment,

and for broadening the scope of what restorative design makes possible. Additional thanks to

Corey Grifn and Helen Southworth, for their open doors and willingness to read, critique and

advise this work. Finally, Thank you Mom and Dad. Your hard work and generosity allowed me

the freedom and stability to discover my passions and pursue them with full force.

I am sincerely grateful to everyone listed above for blessing me with such a rewarding

thesis experience and an enjoyably challenging collegiate career.

Acknowledgments


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Table of Contents

Introduction................................................ 1

Proposing a New Way: A Project in Milwaukie ......................................... ....... 2

Designing on the River: Opportunity Flows ............................................. 5

Arriving on the Site: Water Guides the Journey ................................................ 8

From Fumes to Fruit: An Evolving Parking Lot........................................... 10

Canopy Connections: Habitat for Human and Ecological Communities.......................................................14

Celebrate the Storm: Receiving, Reusing and Renewing Stormwater ......................................................... 18

Collecting Water: Connecting to Seasons ................................................. 19

Embracing Waste: Rejuvenating Water, Habitat and Play..................................................... 23

Milwaukies Living Room: Looking to the Willamette ................................................ 25

Celebratory Overow: Embracing Oregons Winter Rain .................................................... 27

Living in a Neighborhood: Seasonal Community Celebrations.................................................... 29

Childhood Exploration: Connecting with Resources................................................. 31

Water Cores: Saving Resources, Generating Community.................................................................................. 33

Solar Stills: An Intimate Relationship with a Precious Resource.................................................. 37

Reconnecting to Resources: Water, Nature, Community and Joy.......................................... 40


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Introduction:

Growing environmental crises are symptoms of the increasing disconnect between people and nature. While many attempt

to address environmental problems through technology, one cannot expect environmental healing to begin without reconnecting

people to nature and natural resources. These connections can reduce the environmental impact of a population, improve its

social connections and increase the quality of life for residents. This thesis explores a possible design for one such community

in the Pacic Northwest where water reconnects residents with nature and resources, creating light footprints, deep experiences

and strong social bonds.


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Proposing a New Way: A Project in Milwaukie

In this ten-acre architectural design project on the Willamette River, water provides sustenance and

delight for human and ecological communities, drenching people in celebration during times of resource

abundance and in community during times of resource scarcity. The project provides resources like food,

shelter, energy and water to humans and other species, but it seeks to go beyond quenching the thirst for

water by drenching people in community harvests and neighborhood activity when water is scarce and

in overowing cascades of celebration during periods of heavy rainfall. In this project, attention to water

serves to connect visitors and residents to seasonal cycles, community, habitat, resource delivery, use and

disposal, and the historic cleansing use of the site. There is a direct relationship between human resource

consumption and the health of the surrounding ecology and the health of human communities. This project

aims to be regenerative, providing more habitat than it removed, providing energy and food needed by its

inhabitants, harvesting and cleaning its own water, and setting an example of people thriving by consuming

less. By thoughtfully limiting resource use and generating resources on site, this project proposal strengthens

ecology, community and natural resources, while providing diverse opportunities for connecting with each

other and with the natural world.


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Humans must reestablish connections with resources and the natural world to survive and to thrive. Water, food, energy

and natural beauty are dwindling resources whose future availability is endangered by consumers current disconnection and

resulting overexploitation. Reductions in human resource consumption will directly improve the health of the surrounding

ecology. Connections to nature improves peoples physical, emotional and spiritual health. Community centered living improves

the ability to conserve and connect to resources, while generating emotional resources for people. Though reduction sounds

inherently negative, mutual benets to human and ecological communities arise when conservation occurs in concert with a

wealth of natural experience and gains in community.

Americans today live in a time of conicting relationships with the natural world. On the one hand, industrialized society

emerged from the belief that progress depends upon the subjugation and distancing of nature. People however, continue to intuit

that their wellbeing directly relates to the health of the natural world (Kellert, 3), and yet human-caused resource shortages,

climate change and species extinctions continue to threaten the environment that grants humanitys wellbeing. Many share the

belief that this internal conict and simultaneous increase in natural destruction arose largely out of the industrial revolution

which mechanized and urbanized lives, erasing place-based knowledge and disconnecting people from the natural world.

The disconnection today is clear. Children and even some adults believe food comes from the grocery store, light from

ipping a switch, and water from turning a faucet. Still, it is a simple truth that humans live on a nite planet. All necessities of

life come from the earth and all waste is deposited back upon it. Due to increasing specialization, most industrialized citizens

no longer see any of the interaction between plants, animals, natural processes and people. Pre-industrial societies generally

gathered, grew and created resources directly from the wild and cultivated land immediately surrounding them. They saw every

input and every waste product, they knew every species and when to plant and harvest those they cultivated. Post-industrial

societies have grown increasingly mobile, specialized and detached, relying more heavily on imported, commoditized resources


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that are rarely encountered before their end use or location. Students learn calculus, biology and the history of the Roman Empire,

know less and less about the places in which they dwell, the natural systems that provide them life, and their own impact upon

the environment. As a consequence, society is becoming illiterate in the very things that grant human survival while it suffers

from declining physical, mental and spiritual health due to a decit of natural experience. Nature, natural experience and the

natural world are viewed in this thesis as those things that exist regardless of human control such as species, resources, processes,

movements and inherent qualities. Though we might plant the maple tree, we dont control the way a leaf forms and colors, or

understand why its seeds swirl as they fall to the ground. Nature is reected in the wonder that these things evoke and the sense

of something existing outside of human manipulation.

Without an understanding of the natural world that supports human life and the knowledge to make decisions that will

sustain it, it is inevitable that people will continue to deplete and destroy it. People must learn to live within the means of

their place, taking only what the place can give, and giving back only what the place can take. This might sound familiar. The

movement toward sustainability often focuses on what people must do without. However, reconnection to the natural world can

deepen and enrich our spirits as well as our physical and emotional health. This will not only enable our species to survive, but

allow us as reconnected individuals to thrive. Wes Jackson dedicated his book,Becoming Native to This Place, to the idea that

the majority of solutions to both global and local problems must take place at the level of the expanded tribe, what civilization

calls community (ii-iii). This project builds upon that sentiment. It will not be an easy task to reduce human consumption to a

level the land can sustainably handle, but by tackling this problem at the scale of the community and coupling reduced resource

use with strengthened personal and natural relationships, people might nd the deprivation outweighed by gains in community

and personal well being.


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A Project on the River: Opportunity Flows

This project strives to reduce resource use, improve habitat, strengthen

human relationships with the natural world, and provide opportunities for

community that outweigh the deprivation of resources. The program for this

project includes 140,000 sq. ft. of residential housing, additional ofce space

and retail, and two large habitat cores. It revives an out of date wastewater

treatment facility on behalf of Metro, Portlands elected regional planning

authority and the City of Milwaukies planning department. The site is within

close walking distance of Milwaukies small downtown and Portlands newest

light rail station. Approximately 75% of Milwaukians commute to work. This light

rail station will connect them to downtown Portland located six miles to the

north. The site is bordered by the Willamette River to the west, Highway 99 to

the east, an existing neighborhood to the south and Kellogg creek, a dammed

creek that is planned for restoration of salmon passage and habitat to the north.

The seasonally wet region, ecologically important waterways and historic water

cleansing nature of the site demand a focus on the resource of water.

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Water can be a powerful tool in reawakening the connection between humans, nature and natural resources. Not only is

water a prerequisite for life, it is dynamic as it ows, ripples and soaks. Water provides sanitation, food, hydration and sensory

delight for human and non-human communities. It can provide a seasonally responsive, beautiful and emotionally engaging way

to reconnect with nature. With water, as with all natural resources, a low-impact relationship is needed to ensure future generations

access to this needed resource. However, without a deep connection, one cannot expect future generations to understand the need

to continue the conservation measures introduced by designers. For these reasons, successful design must go even further to

show and teach the relationship, allowing a deeper understanding and sensory connection with resources and the natural world

that sustains ones body, mind and spirit.


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Arriving on the Site: Water Guides the Journey

As water circulates to, through and from the project, it guides people

to do the same. As a service to Milwaukie, and an acknowledgement of the

sites history, city storm water is brought to the site for natural remediation

and renewal. Our exploration through this design proposal begins here, as

water is guided from downtown on an existing rail trestle that will also serve

a light rail corridor, and per this project proposal also a pedestrian and

bike thoroughfare where we will cross Kellogg creek. Water is delivered

onto the site where we enter, and guides us through collection, cleansing,

dispersal, overow and celebration, as it is cleaned, used and released as

a renewed resource for wetland life and childhood play.

Leak displays excess

Water

People and Water

Circulate Together


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In the Pacic Northwest, there exist a number of problems in the way water is used and handled that deserve consideration.

Oregons plentiful rainfall should be received and handled as a gift, and as the recipients of this gift, designers in Oregon should

be leaders in respectfully honoring this resource.

Plentiful winter rain results in plentiful stormwater. The United States has paved an area larger than the state of Georgia.

This has resulted in major changes for the natural water cycle (Brown). Impermeable surfaces like roads, parking lots and roofs

increase the level of surface runoff resulting in eroded stream and river banks and increased vulnerability to ooding, while

concurrently robbing the ground of water inltration to saturate soils and recharge aquifers. Utilizing these surfaces to collect

water for use or redesigning them with permeable, pollutant intercepting surfaces and bioswales protects aquatic environments

from stormwater ows that bring pollution and erosion into fragile waterways. A characteristic approach to stormwater design

has been to direct it away from the building, off the property and out of the city as fast as possible, which multiplies the

quantity of water running into streams and rivers and thus multiplies the likelihood of damaging erosion and high water ows.

Gerould Wilhelm calls this the doctrine of collect, convey and discharge (Wilhelm). Unfortunately, in this process, high levels

of numerous pollutants also collect, convey and discharge off highways and overly fertilized yards into sensitive waterways

resulting in salmon and other species decline (Scholz). We receive the rain, make it lth and send it away all the while we

are cutting political deals for water (Wilhelm) to quench a growing thirst during increasing water shortages. The water that isshortsightedly being polluted is the same water being fought over, rerouted and eventually drank.


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From Fumes to Fruit: An Evolving Parking Lot

In a gift to the city our project reroutes stormwater that would harmfully affect Kellogg creek and

the Willamette River for remediation and celebration on the site. As it guides us onto the trestle path and

onto the site, it guides cars off McLoughlin Blvd. and into the evolving parking lot. Just as space for cars

is designed into the project, it is also being designed out. To have viable, healthy commercial space and

desirable housing today, parking is critical, but as the tolerance for expensive gas prices and devastating

emissions wanes, light rail, bike and pedestrian travel will eclipse car use in the future. Because this site is

well connected with the nearby light rail station, the residents, workers and customers will likely be many of

the rst to choose car-free travel. This design exploration plans for the parking lot to dissolve back into the

garden over time as cars become obsolete.

Train Car

Bike,

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Past Present Future Past Present Future

Transportation Parking


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These uses are well aligned as the

economic and ecologic price of food is just as

tied to oil as driving cars. If transportation must

evolve with waning tolerance for high prices

and devastating emissions, highly transported

and fertilized conventional agriculture must

too. When it makes sense to sell the car, for

many Americans it will become equally sensible

to start growing their own food. When residents

and shop owners transition their spaces, they

can cultivate previously endangered varieties

of tomatoes or peppers only a few feet from

where theyll sell or trade the excess in the

indoor/outdoor market.

Dragon Carrot Smoke SignalsCorn

ChioggiaBeet

True LemonCucumber

ChocolateBeauty Pepper

Cinnamon BasilTigger Melon


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Eating homegrown food can be as effective in reducing global warming and resource consumption as getting rid of cars.

To feed an average family of four in the developed world uses the equivalent of 930 gallons of gasoline a year -- just shy of the

1,070 gallons that same family would use up each year to power their cars (Oliver). Couple this with energy intensive fertilizers

used on most conventional farms and one might expect to see the price of food increase faster than the price of a barrel of oil.

Food should replenish energy, not drain natural resources. Seasonal food can rejuvenate people in many ways by providing an

experience of reconnection that immerses growers back into the natural world with seasonal sensory delights and back into a

community of fellow planters and harvesters.

Food production in dense human environments provides human connection to the land and resources and can add habitat

in places like orchards with contiguous canopy (Cerra). The health of agriculture and the surrounding ecosystem depends on

maintaining the biodiversity of both, with particular attention to protecting, nurturing and using the biodiversity they share

(Thomson). Localized food production can aid biodiversity in urban environments when diverse crop varieties are planted. It also

importantly relaxes the dependence upon monoculture farming that detrimentally affects surrounding ecosystems.

Local homegrown food can also preserve a unique kind of species diversity by saving endangered heirloom fruit and

vegetable varieties. A symbiotic relationship between the plant and the farmer enables unique varieties of many fruits and

vegetables to be developed by generations who save seeds from each years harvest. These seeds are chosen based on taste, size,

insect resistance, beauty or other uniquely valuable characteristics that result in evolutionary benets for the farmer, consumer

and plant. Over the years specic varieties of heirloom fruits and vegetables emerged. Chocolate Beauty peppers, Cinnamon

basil, Dragon carrots and True Lemon cucumbers are just a few of the endangered seed varieties being saved by groups like

the Seed Savers Exchange who alone store a bank of over 25,000 varieties. Since 1975, Seed Savers Exchange members have

passed on approximately one million samples of rare garden seeds to other gardeners (Seed). These rare varieties are shared


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because they must be grown to remain viable. They are among countless species that became endangered as factory farmed

monocultures eclipsed the diverse family farmer, and certain chosen fruit and vegetable varieties became commonplace. Varieties

were often picked for their ability to hold visual appeal during transportation to distant markets. This is why Roma tomatoes and

Red Delicious apples are easy to nd while Tigger melons and Smoke Signals corn are not.

Individuals and businesses are beginning to discover the benets of cultivating these species once more. Cucumber-

shaped white eggplant, Tromboncino squash, Paprika Supreme peppers and pineapple tomatillos are a few of the heirloom

varieties growing on the roof of the Burnside Rocket, a mixed use development in downtown Portland with a top oor restaurant

(Pokorny). Kevin Cavenaugh, the projects designer, developer and owner claims that dishes with rooftop ingredients always

sell out at dinner. The Tromboncino squash is a loved Italian zucchini, but one of many varieties not seen in the store because

it bruises within only a few hours of being picked (Cavenaugh). These rare delights require no transportation and bring unique

sensory experiences to the restaurant cooks and patrons while preserving heirloom vegetable varieties and providing unique

urban habitat.


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Canopy Connections: Habitat for Human and Ecological Communities

Walking from the morphing parking lot, we choose between the retail

market to one side and the garden with residential beyond on the other. If we

venture into the garden we will be guided to the garden path through contiguous

canopy that stretches from the Willamette River to Kellogg creek. These contiguous

canopy connections move between dense buildings that leave room for forests in

between. The native tree species incorporated include Big Leaf Maple, Western

Hemlock, Oregon White Oak, Alder and Cherry which provide valuable habitat

for threatened species like the western gray squirrel in our region (Cerra).

Habitat

Wetland, CanopyHeirlooms


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Increasing density in the built environment can leave space to reengage the natural world. Because of the associated

resource conservation with dense urban environments, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. writes,

one of our most critical environmental issues is the challenge of making our cities attractive, enriching and safe places

to live. The best cure for destructive sprawl is to build cities people dont want to abandon, places where they can livehealthy, fullling lives in densities that dont devour our landscapes, pave our wilderness and pollute our watersheds, air

and wildlife

The key here is not only to buildgood cities, but leave un-built space and opportunity for resource connection in cities as

well.Because of the compact building, tree canopy is able to cover over one fth of the site. This habitat is crucial for manyspecies including humans. Unfortunately, zoning codes, cost efciencies and other factors usually relegate dense design to urban

environments that are often deprived of natural experiences. In turn, natural experiences are often relegated to rural communities

or roped off in wilderness areas. This segregation not only deprives urban environments of natural experiences, it causes

people to view nature as only pristine landscapes empty of humans, and guides them to devalue nature existing in the built

environmentan attitude that invites exploitation and compromises human health.

A growing body of scholars, parents, naturalists and designers, backed up by a diverse body of research, have identied

a relationship between exposure to nature and capacities for wonder, joy and creativity as well as physical health. Individuals

without this connection to the natural world have been observed to be more physical, irritable and anti-social and have increased

risk for a variety of diseases both physical and psychological. Nature Decit Disorder the term coined by Richard Louv

to describe these symptoms (Louv, 99), coupled with a declining availability of natures life sustaining resources, demand a

reexamination of how people are meant to live on this earth. The environments people have constructed to live in are using

resources so fast they threaten human survival, while they concurrently cause physical, emotional and spiritual health to decline

by separating people from natural wonder.


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Children and adults alike exhibit increased physical and emotional health when in contact with the natural world. As

Rachel Carson writes, There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of birds, the ebb and ow of the tides, the

folded bud ready for the spring. There is something innitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature (quoted in Kellert,

73). Stephen Kellert, social ecologist and co-author and collaborator of The Biophillia Hypothesis, also says, Childhood is

considered as the time when experiencing nature is most essential to human physical and mental maturation, even for a species

capable of lifelong learning (3). Many studies defend these statements (Louv and Kellert) as well as those linking nature with

physical health, Many studies show increased recovery and decreased need for pain medicines when given contact with plants

or views of nature (Kellert, 21-22) and the results of these studies (on human-nature interaction) have been impressive and

consistent (13). However, children today are playing outside less than half the time their mothers did (Kellert, 83), and without

that connection, a dangerous deciency emerges. Dr. Richard Louv states,

In the world of child development, attachment theory posits that the creation of a deep bond between child and parent

is a complex psychological, biological, and spiritual process, and that without this attachment a child is lost, vulnerable

to all manner of later pathologies. I believe that a similar process can bind adults to a place and give them a sense of

belonging and meaning. Without a deep attachment to place, an adult can also feel lost (156).

Many urban children are growing up without any exposure to nature and unconsciously living less fullling lives as a result. Peter

Kahn, a University of Washington developmental psychologist, calls it one of the central psychological problems of our times

(quoted in Rojas-Burke). Rachel Severson, co-author to many of his studies adds, we dont recognize that we are adapting, and

that there is a diminishing of our experience in terms of human well-being and ourishing (quoted in Rojas-Burke). Childrenespecially cant recognize this shift away from the natural world, and are unaware of many ancient and basic joys of life they are

missing as a result. InLast Child in the Woods, Madhu Nayaran recounts a camping trip she led for urban children: One night,


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a nine-year-old woke me up. She had to go to the bathroom. We stepped outside the tent and she looked up. She gasped and

grabbed my leg. She had never seen stars before (Louv). By 2050 70% of people will live in cities (Young, 204). This presents a

growing imperative to reestablish connections between urban residentsespecially childrenwith nature and natural resources

by bringing larger natural habitat into human habitat and allowing visible and interactive collection, distribution, use and release

of natural resources to urban dwellers.

Experiencing nature during childhood engenders both curiosity and the passion to learn that reects a willingness to give

and receive information, facts and ideas. By interacting with the natural world, children encounter a matrix of diverse and

stimulating opportunities to engage such affective capacities as wonder, imagination, and joy (Kellert, 73).

Nayaran says of that night, I saw the power of nature on a child. She was a changed person. From that moment on, she saw everything,

the camoufaged lizard that everyone else skipped by. She used her senses. She wasawake

(Nayaran quoted in Louv, 154).There is beauty in this childs revelation, but sadness too, that she and many urban children could not discover the full

grasp of life until she left her home. This is the direct result of ecologically insensitive and over-developed urban environments.

Until recently, cities were thought to contain only unwanted cosmopolitan species and therefore to be unimportant as a focus for

ecological restoration and conservation (Wilson, 279). However, global climate change has brought what Bill McKibben calls,

the end of nature due to a universal human impact affecting every ecosystem around the world. The end of species sanctuaries

and pristine environments, coupled with expanding population and increased need for human-nature connections requires that

design begin welcoming nature into urban environments. Central Park incredible value for human and non-human residents of

New York City alike. This is some of the most expensive land in the world, but the inherent worth of the park is clear. When

cities increase habitat cores and corridors and welcome ecology into the built environment, they reawaken the urban connection

to the land and nature, plants and animals. Reintroducing nature into human environments is good for people, and targeted

ecological restoration can provide important improvements for threatened species in these environments.


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Celebrate the Storm: Recieving, Reusing and Renewing Stormwater

If we keep on the path, we will catch a glimpse of the river between large barrels of harvested

rainwater that spill one to the next as the cisterns ll, eventually spilling into wetland remediation ponds

when capacity is reached. These wetland ponds generate habitat and can clean nearly 200,000 gallons

of city stormwater each day as they move North with us toward the river. On an average rainy day, these

wetlands clean approximately 60 acres of stormwater runoff.

Kelloggs Sedge White Sweet Clover Long Stalk Clover Fringed Grass of Parnassas Seaside Buttercup

Native Wetland Remediation Species


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Collecting Water: Connecting to Seasons

In this project, approximately 1,020,000 gallons of water will be collected off of the residential roofs

annually. This water will be used as irrigation for agriculture to sustain the body and in times of plenty, excess

will ow through the site to delight the senses. This reduces stormwater runoff and demand on the puried

municipal water supply. Flowering remediation wetlands, cascading pools, and overowing remediation

channels will celebrate the periods of heavy rain seen frequently during Pacic Northwest winters. Periods

of empty water features will highlight times of scarcity.


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Water in the Pacic Northwest is both plentiful and scarce.

During the winter, impressive amounts of rain falls, and this should

be celebrated and harnessed. During the summer, drought occurs,

and water must be treated respectfully. At all times, puried water

must be cherished. Often, clean water is taken as a given, but this

water is a result of huge energy inputs, massive infrastructure, and

healthy Mountain snow pack to ll our rivers, lakes and streams

during rainless summers. In an age of increasing temperatures,

decreasing energy availability and raw resource shortages, puried

water must be treated as a precious resource.

Surplus Deficit

Point of Greatest

AbundancePoint of Greatest

Scarcity

Point of Greatest

Scarcity

O N D J F M A M J J A S

Harvest Time Harvest Time

Of the 70% of the earth that is covered in water, less than three percent is fresh water. Of this, most is trapped in glaciers

and ice caps leaving a scant .008% available as fresh accessible surface water (Gleick). Water in Oregon is growing scarce.

As Oregon State representative Rep. Mike Schauer, D-Happy Valley says, People think oil is something to ght about. Wait

until we start running out of water, (Zaitz, April 26, 2009) and State Senator Jackie Dingfelder, D-Portland agrees. Every

Oregonian must understand that demand will outstrip supply, she says, adding, with climate change and increasing demand,

its just a matter of time (quoted in Zaitz,April 27, 2009). Though Oregon has not yet resulted to the extreme scarcity facing

the Southwest, water rights in the state have already grown contentious and Oregon is not immune. In a state that boasts about

webbed feet, access to water is increasingly contested. The state estimates that in the coming years, demand will grow by 1.2

million acre-feet; we use about 9 million acre-feet now (Zaitz,April 27, 2009). Water availability in the Southwest is becoming

an increasingly useful example when planning for future Oregon summers which will likely face frequent and lasting periods of

Seasonal Water Availability and Use

Water

Use

Rainfall

Average

Month


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drought when water is needed most. Already in Tucson, Arizona Barbara Kingsolver writes Every ounce of the citys drinking,

washing, and goldsh-bowl-lling water is pumped from a nonrenewable sourcea fossil aquifer that is dropping so fast,

sometimes the ground crumbles (3). In 1992, a massive effort to bring additional water to the town was completed. This required

massive infrastructure and though it was claimed to be suitable for drinking water, it was not suitable for use in sh tanks. It

would kill the sh (4).

Though the Pacic Northwest is widely thought to have plentiful fresh water resources, increasing population, pollution

and climate change are threatening the availability of this resource. Half of the rainfall received in Oregon comes between

December and February, and almost no rain falls during the summer months (About). As the climate continues to warm, the

summer snowmelt this region depends upon will accumulate less and melt sooner in the season, causing summer and fall water

shortages (Climate). Already, in summer, every gallon of water in every stream is already claimed (Zaitz,April 27, 2009). In

Oregon, we use groundwater to supplement surface water supplies, but we are using it faster than nature can replace it. The

aggressive use of groundwater in recent years has caused the water table to drop drastically. Now people have to dig very deep

wells just to reach water that once was easily attainable (Oregons). In the 1960s, signs began to show that irrigation wells were

taking water out of the deep aquifers in the Umatilla Basin more quickly than nature could put it in. It took thirty years until

the state had a line around 63,500 acres of farmland and ordered immediate reductions in pumping (Zaitz, April 27, 2009).

Farmers, who represent the primary water users in Oregon were allowed only 30 percent of the 190,000 acre-feet they had a

right to pump (Zaitz,April 27, 2009). People in Oregon arent the only ones who need water. Salmon and other native species

are dependent upon healthy stream ow. Because of human water demand, most streams arent able to provide enough for

ecological communities. Between 1990 and 2000, many critically important Oregon rivers had so much water taken out that


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their ows fell below the legal minimum. This isnt a rare event. In 2000, one-third of our critical rivers failed to have sufcient

ow during every month of the year (Oregons). This prevents anadromous sh from returning to fresh water spawning grounds,

dangerously raises water temperatures, condenses pollutants, and changes the habitat for plants and animals along waterways.

Water use continues to grow and on-site water collection is becoming more important as availability declines, the climate warms

and population grows.

Water is of crucial importance in both mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change. Designs that use less

puried water both signicantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a smaller water supply. Emissions reductions

occur because energy and water are inextricably tied, especially in Oregon where river water is used to generate hydropower and

cool equipment in other energy-generating facilities. Electricity production is the biggest water user in the nation at 38%. We

use each drop of water 2.6 times from where it lands to where it meets the ocean (Saunders). By conserving water, we conserve

both energy and water. More available water means more hydropower production and emissions from fossil fuels. Less energy

produced from fossil fuels results in less water used for cooling plant equipment. This additional saved water can again be used

to generate hydropower thus offsetting another second batch of emissions generating fossil fueled energy and water use. This

compounding relationship illustrates the necessity of addressing energy and water use reductions in concert. Around 20% of

energy use in California is used to convey, pump, heat and treat water. (California, 8) Thus using less water means less energy is

used for pumping and treating, and less energy use means less water is used to generate that energy, et cetera. The inextricable

link between these two resources is often overlooked by traditional green design that focuses on energy only. It is crucial for

designers to create means for respectful water use in order to both mitigate the harmful effects of energy production on our

climate and water supply, and also allow users to quickly adapt to shrinking supplies of a vital resource.


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Embracing Waste: Rejuvenating Water, Habitat and Play

This glimpse of the river guides us to move into the residences if we are welcome, or sparks our

imaginations about what lies beyond if we are not. If we choose to continue along the garden path, passing

by the residential zone we will cross through additional raised bed gardens and orchards before reaching

the stair. The garden and garden path terminate in a huge celebratory stair that puried water from the

remediation wetlands and living machine is released down in a playful series of overowing pools.

Purifying water both before and after use is also important in low-impact buildings. Both mechanical

and living systems are used to treat grey and black water, but even living systems are typically treated

in utilitarian and uninspiring ways. The close proximity to the Willamette river begs us to reconnect with

0 50 100

Nthe waterway in a manner that celebrates the

reintroduction of clean, renewed water to it. For

the living machine, the project reuses a 100,000

gallon concrete water cleansing relic left from

the waste water treatment facility. The site of

re-entry begins at a constructed gathering

space and fountain-like stair and diffuses into

a regenerated wetland. This additional water

supports the wetland and many species,

including children, providing a muddy place

to investigate the life-water relationship.


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Wastewater should be treated as a responsibility and a resource. This water was borrowed from an ecosystem, and entered

human lives clean and healthy. Like any borrowed item, it should be returned to the ecosystem in as good or better shape than

when it was received. Living machines provide a low energy, high ecology method of locally treating wastewater through use of

bacteria, plants and sunlight. By treating the waste locally, people can reconnect to the necessary cleansing and disposal stage of

a used resource. There is no such thing as waste in nature. Everything is used to provide energy for something else in a repeated

cyclic pattern. Cleansed wastewater can be strategically designed to provide safe benet for wetland habitat restoration or reused.

Its release should be celebrated as a thankful gesture of renewal. Endangered species like salmon, red legged frogs, western pond

turtles and others rely on wetland habitat during stages or for the duration of their lives. Over one fth of the project is set aside

for wetland habitat.


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Milwaukies Living Room: Looking to the Willamette

On this stair, we receive an impressive view across the wetland and down the Willamette. There is

enough space on this stair and central landing for large community events, and the stair becomes seating

for performances or simply watching children play in the restored wetland. When we venture down the

stair, we will eventually be guided onto one of three narrow and private paths that curve over the wetland

out to the river or stream. The small nature of these paths provides an intimate setting with which to get up

close to the wetland, river and one day soon, the restored salmon run.


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Seasonal connection and sensory delight are found on this stair as water pours through descending pools on all but the

driest days of the year. This provides an especially rich learning opportunity for children. Water is a vital resource for plant,

animal and human communities. This can be fully grasped in the wetland habitat where children play with rushes and frogs.

Children exhibit an especially deep fascination and joy when playing with water. At one Montessori School, teachers observed

that children who could not focus on any other activity in the classroom for more than three minutes at a time would play quietly

and happily for 20 minutes or more at the water basin (Tai, 128). In controlled environments, water provides a movable mass,

which children can experiment with. Psychologists speculate that a high percentage of vandalism within cities is due to the

inexibility of the environment (128). In urban areas where water is absent, residents desperate for water play have opened re

hydrants to dance and play in the gushing water (127).People experience hydrophilia when relaxed by the sounds of a babbling

brook, excited by displays of fountains, or thrilled by the deep immersion in a pool of cool water. By embracing this resource,

designers can provide needed natural and sensory experiences for children and people of all ages, and provide necessary habitat

for other species. Water is not only a basic resource that sustains life, it can present people with moments of joy and delight.


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Celebratory Overfow: Embracing Oregons Winter Rain

Eventually we will want to go home, and venture back through the garden to the residences. The

residential entry is anked by rain cisterns and marked by a green roof overhead. We step down, and

onto the path. On both sides of our path are zones that buffer the public and private realms. To the north

simple bridges cross over a seasonal water remediation stream. This stream ows only during periods of

heavy rainfall when cisterns are full and releasing more water than the remediation wetlands can handle.

Overow from the wetlands is directed into these channels, bringing a celebration to endless days of rain.

Imagine if the rain yesterday, today, and tomorrow all of a sudden became a thing of beauty, of

pride and of appreciation. Designers can plan for times when cisterns are lled to capacity with water for

human and habitat use, and embrace overow in a celebration of water features that display the excess.

These sensory events not only help people enjoy consistent days of rain, they mark cycles and contribute

to place based seasonal knowledge. Numbers and inches arent easy to remember, but familiarity with the

incidence and seasonality of celebratory days might help people recognize typical and atypical periods

of drought and ood.

Walking Home in...

SummerWalking Home in...

Winter


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Conservation biologist and writer Robert Pyle says, It is through close and intimate contact with a particular patch of

ground that [children] learn to respond to the earth. We need to recognize the humble places where this alchemy occurs.

Everybody has a ditch, or ought to. For only the ditches- and the elds, the woods, the ravines-can teach us to care enough

(quoted in Kellert, 82). Ecologist and anthropologist Gary Nabhan agrees, stating about his children, Ive come to realize that a

few intimate places mean more tochildren than all the glorious panoramas (quoted in Kellert, 82). Designers can fuse the

small and intimate patches of ground with seasonal cycles or how resources are treated, giving children a deeper connection to

the natural world from an early age.


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Living in a Neighborhood: Seasonal Community Celebrations

To the south, gabion walls made from removed riprap along the river banks frame private gardens

in front of the units. Regardless of which side of the path our unit sits, well have south facing windows with

summer shade from decks or deciduous fruit trees to keep our units warm in the winter and cool in the

summer.

Every unit backs up to the woodland habitat connecting to natures seasons even from inside. By

keeping the units small, they are easily heated by the sun and excess heat from appliances during the

winter, or cross ventilated and cooled by opening windows in the summer. When water is most scarce

and overow remediation streambeds are dry, community harvest enriches the base of resources. Each

neighborhood is dened by four trees of a unique species that line the path: plum, pear, cherry, loquat,

hazelnut, apple, g, persimmon or apricot. These varieties are chosen for the sites specic climate, ensuring

that nine neighborhoods can individually gather each year in the late summer for harvest season. During

this time, the site is parched for water. Wetlands are dry and pools are empty, but residents are drenched

in picking, preserving and devouring fruit with their community.

Pear Apple Cherry Persimmon Fig Plum Apricot Hazelnut Loquat


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For children historically and today, resource forays often drive the rst and most meaningful encounters with place.

In studying place, Gary Snyder looks at native as well as contemporary cultures, and says of people of all times, ones sense

of the scale of a place expands as one learns the region. The young hear further stories and go for explorations which are also

subsistence forays-rewood gathering, shing, to fairs or to market. (27) These subsistence forays are explorations that

connect place and the resources it provides back to human existence and the need for food, water and warmth. Traditionally,

children would explore the world outward from the re pit (which is the center of the universe) in little trips. (Snyder, 26) Today,

the relationship to the re pit is echoed in the relationship to the home, a place of safety from which children can independently

explore the world around them. This is where their place originates from and is where their needs are met and resources are

gathered. Safe landscapes to explore independently need to be reintroduced into urban environments and designed into new

projects. Additionally, subsistence forays will become more and more possible when local resource collection and generation is

brought into more project designs.


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Childhood Exploration: Connecting with Resources

In this design exploration, children can expand outward from the home through subsistence forays

by rst gathering fruit in the apple tree outside the home, then venturing to trade applesauce for apricot

preserves in another neighborhood and eventually gathering leafy greens in the family garden plot or

communal garden just outside the residences. Gardens can be excellent places for subsistence forays.

Growing food connects homegrown meals to the local climate and season as the look, smell, touch and

taste of regional fruits and vegetables are rediscovered each season.


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Everyday most Americans gather water in a glass from a faucet, knowing not where that water came from or how it got

there. As population grows and the climate warms, it will be important to reduce use of this shrinking resource. Though people

use 80-100 gallons a day in the U.S. currently (USGS) and Portlanders use an average of 136 gallons a day (Zaitz, April 26,

2009), this number is easily reduced by design. Fresh, clean water is needed for drinking, cooking and bathing, but many of

the largest household water uses can use captured rainwater or second use grey water. Designers should eliminate the need for

municipal water for ushing toilets, watering the garden or doing laundry by harvesting rain and reusing grey water collected

from bathing and cooking. In addition, designers should provide deeper connection to this resource than the simple turn of a

faucet handle.

Historically, and still in many places around the world, communities gather water from a central place. Roman fountains

were the communitys source of fresh water, and because of the central importance of each fountain to the surrounding peoples

lives they dened neighborhoods. These wells, fountains, water holes and streams serve as community centers worldwide. They

not only connect people with a resource, they are places of vitality, trade, rest, community, interaction, and celebration for entire

neighborhoods. By bringing people together around water, it is easy to conserve a vital physical resource while regenerating an

equally vital emotional resource.


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Water Cores: Saving Resources, Generating Community

This project experiments with using the logic of the

community fountain to reduce consumption and empower

community by dening small neighborhoods around shared

kitchens and baths where residents gather their drinking water.

In this design, there is no need to plumb potable water to units.

Only grey water suitable for toilets will be brought into each

unit. Though this idea sounds radical to Americans, a large

percentage of the worlds population still lacks easily accessible

clean water. Even in the United States it is common to venture

across town for drinking water, in order to purchase a jug from

the store. In this design, water gathering provides additional

subsistence forays, and the residents in this project are able to

connect with both resources and neighbors through water. The

design of a water core where fresh water is available provides

opportunity for meeting neighbors, reducing construction

costs, and informing respect for water as an increasingly

precious resource. For these reasons, the project replaces the

convenience of endlessly available water with a community

gathering center.0 50 100


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water remediation streams.

Cooking and eating together is historically a very communal activity that still permeates western

culture. Communal bathhouses are commonplace in both western and eastern cultures.

The term spa originally referred to the sites of curative mineral springs where the water was used

for bathing and drinking in an effort to heal and detoxify the body. Nowadays, spa culture is still

founded on these ideals but has expanded to include ways of releasing stress, with the focus on both

physical and mental wellbeing (Lee, 72).

The Japanese also have an expression for the power of communal bathing to melt barriers between people:

hadaka no tsukiai, or naked companionship (Curry). In addition to strengthening social connections,

the design strengthens resource connections. By plumbing only grey water for non-potable uses through

the residential units the project conserves water

and energy from water diversion, transportation,

infrastructure and purication. By educating people

about the different uses for each grade of water,

and making non-potable water the easier option, the

project encourages conscientious use. These relaxed

community centers serve to replace convenience

with community, and quench the need for fresh

water during an age of growing scarcity, but drench

a growing thirst for deep personal relationships.


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As Americans put at risk the environment that sustains them, they are severing emotional ties, resulting in less fullling lives.

What used to be community-provided resources like childcare, open space and rides to the airport, are becoming commoditized

as our social circles shrink. This additional monetary cost requires more time at work and allows less time to form community

(Leonard). Therefore, many members of society are involved in a downward cycle as they must continue to rely more and more

on things they buy, while becoming more stressed and detached as they spend money to pay for these needs. American happiness

levels have plateaued or even declined in recent decades (State, Leonard) while psychological disorders and the incidence of

depression have increased (Klerman). Progress indicators like the Happy Planet Index rank the U.S. as 150th of 178 countries on

factors that include consumption, life expectancy and self-reported happiness, instead of economic wealth measurements such as

GDP (Happiness). As Annie Leonard points out, were trashing the planet, and not even having fun while doing it. As a result,

emotional and social health is declining along with the very ability to survive. This demands a reexamination of the way people

connect with place and requires designers who enable connections with nature, natural resources and community.

Traditional green design often looks toward new technology to minimize resource use, rather than rethinking the deeper

problem. Consumption is a growing symptom of a increasingly disconnected and commoditized lifestyles. Environmental trade-

offs arise with this technological strategy as people become reliant on new products, requiring new raw materials, energy and

transportation to create and install them. Sometimes these trade-offs include very important details that go overlooked and end

up creating more negative impacts than they eliminate. For example, blown-in insulation is used to insulate old houses, reducing

heating and cooling requirements and the associated emissions from energy use. However, its growing popularity must be

questioned if mitigating global warming is the true goal, as the traditional halocarbon blowing agents used to spray the insulation

have a greenhouse gas payback of over 100 years. This means it will take over 100 years of heating and cooling savings to offset

the installation process alone (Harvey, 2860).


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Solar Stills: An Intimate Relationship with a Precious Resource

Just outside each unit exists a solar still. Stills are simple structures with no mechanical parts that use

the power of the sun to mimic the water cycle and create distilled water from grey water. A still with fteen

square feet of glass surface area in New Mexico can generate up to three gallons of fresh water a day

during the summer (Solar). These slightly smaller stills with less solar access will likely generate about one

gallon a day, and exist to provide convenient puried water for drinking and washing hands out of the

plumbed grey water, while illuminating the preciousness of pure, clean water.


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Understanding where resources come from is crucial in trying to protect them, but often a lter of large scale technology

separates people in dense urban environments from vital information about the resources they depend upon. As discussed earlier,

dense urban areas offer opportunities to live with less impact, but a need to bring in resources to these places can sharpen the

disconnect between people and their dependence upon the land and what sustains them. Once, all the needs of a community were

metsustainably, or not by the land under ones feet and gathered and shaped by the hands of friends and relatives. Today,

distant designers bring water, power, materials, and even plants to urban environments, often from hundreds, even thousands

of miles away, and do so for every individual dwelling. The story of how resources arrive and are disposed of are hidden from

understanding by hiding plumbing, structure, and wiring in walls, distancing power plants in another state, diverting drinking

water from rivers in another bioregion and planting species from another hemisphere. Though an incredibly complex process

is required to get water and energy, people only need to ip a light switch or turn a faucet handle to instantly have their need

met. The current system of creating, distributing and consuming resources creates extreme complexities and then provides only

distance and aesthetic solutions to simplify it, making it all but impossible to understand the larger systems involved. By not

understanding how resource use affects resource availability or surrounding ecosystems, people will not be motivated to reduce

use, and relying on technology to x over-consumption can perpetuate the disconnect.

People cannot expect to live truly sustainable lives without changing any of the lifestyle, aesthetic or patterns of use that

led to this detached and irresponsible way of living. By relying on technology to reduce consumption, society is continuing the

patterns that detach people from resources, putting survival at risk while hindering emotional well being. Farmer and prolic

author Wendell Berry posits that, without a complex knowledge of ones place, and without the faithfulness to ones place

on which such knowledge depends, it is inevitable that the place will be used carelessly and eventually destroyed (quoted in

Kellert, 60). Dr. Richard Louv agrees,


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Passion does not arrive on videotape or on a CD; passion is personal. Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy

hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the

environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature (Louv, 158).

Instead of focusing on solely technological solutions, designers should focus on social, cultural and ecological solutions. College

dorms provide a culturally accepted example of dense and community rich housing. This is one place where Americans commonly

live happily and with great rewards in tiny rooms with shared bathrooms and courtyards. In these structures, resource use is

small, community is strong, and opportunities for engaging, fun and stimulating conversation or activity are many. Students who

do not live in these dorms often note that they didnt have enough opportunities to create social networks while at school because

of this decision. Most students opt for the conned quarters because of the ease of meeting people and the strong communities

that the dense housing creates. These are the social benets of density, but of course, density has important resource conservation

implications as well. By reducing heating and cooling loads from shared walls, wiring and piping requirements from condensed

footprints, material use from smaller, shared units and buildings, and reducing sprawl across natural landscapes, density can slash

resource requirements.

Why does this logic only apply to college bound 18 year olds? What if this system was applied to a mixed group of people?

If single parent households, seniors, families, singles and couples lived close together, and were able to form equally strong bonds,

what benets or drawbacks would be created? Drawbacks include smaller quarters and less privacy, though communal spaces

and especially private residences could be designed into these communities. Benets might include the creation of community

provided services like childcare, handy work, cooking and cleaning, as well as community assets like gardens, fruit trees and

refrigerators whose practical benet is reaped by all, but whose cost and maintenance can be shared.

While working parents are being stretched too thin, seniors are often left feeling alone and bored. In a multigenerational

community, seniors could enjoy company and receive help with tasks theyve grown unable to do, and in exchange they could

watch children or prepare communal meals, relieving some of the stress on parents and working adults.


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Reconnecting to Resources: Water, Nature, Community and Joy

Water is an emotional resource for people at many scales in this project. The wetland that is enhanced

by cleansed wastewater, the overowing remediation channels, and the shared bathhouse, provide many

emotional responses, connections to resources and opportunities to explore nature through water.

In all human environments, people hold water, gather it, purify it, consume it and release it providing

many chances to embrace it. In this project water is both held for human use and for use by other plants

and animals. Not only does this provide a springing point for connections with other species, but in return for

providing habitat and resources, plants and animals can actually help purify the water, lessening peoples

need to do so. Birdbaths, shponds, and wetland habitat are all examples of stacking opportunities with

the need to store, use and clean water. These small moves resemble a scale humble enough and intimate

enough to form a bond with a child, inspiring in them the desire to also locally collect, cherish and share

resources with other species.

Starting with humble patches of ground and resource interactions the environmental stigma of urban

habitat can evolve, creating vibrant life-lled places for a variety of species, including humans. When one

sees a child transxed by an animal drinking from a puddle, or a caterpillar munching on a leaf, it reminds

them of the beauty people take for granted everyday. These humble relationships are what dene one

as a human being, and as a living being in a natural system. People need water, energy and connection.

Perhaps by showing the most simple and humble relationships to children, the brand new eyes of children

will help re-introduce adults to the things they have forgotten to notice. Perhaps the key to a reconnected

society is enabling brand new eyes of adults as they bear witness to the joy of a childs discovery.


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There is room for a far wider response to the environmental crisis than the traditional energy saving and technology

reliant projects typically seen. Designers can draw from historical and cultural examples, as native ways of living on the land

can embrace far more than just thoughtful resource consumption and encourage deeper connections with the resources and with

each other. In a time of booming population, the earth will struggle to sustain tens of billions of people spread throughout its

landscapes, and people must embrace denser ways of living. A new way of living within the means of the place should couple

denser footprints and sustainable resource consumption with strengthened social networks and increased connection with the

natural world. Without the connection, resource conservation measures will only postpone the day human use becomes too much.

Designers are responsible for forging new relationships that go beyond providing places that help residents live sustainably, and

should provide deeper attachments to place through meaningful connection with nature and natural resources.

Historical examples highlight this tie and show that even the most ecologically damaged cities can be remade as healthy

habitat for children, adults and other species, and into an environment that fosters the human understanding of resources and

basic needs for all species. After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, everyone believed nothing would grow for 75 years,

but the phoenix trees sprouted leaves the following autumn. As the natural world recovered, the victims of the bomb believed

they too had a second chance to live. A quote found when walking through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum read, In

the green that came back to life from the charred ruins, people recovered their living hopes and courage. For the native River

Pima and Tohono Oodham of the American Southwest, the words for health, wildness and wholeness are etymologically related

(Nabhan, 32). It seems this attachment to nature is so fundamental, it spans oceans, generations and cultures. Its beauty lies

beyond aesthetics, and must be considered by even the most aesthetically driven designers. Regardless of where one lives, by

providing a place for nature, life, plants and animals in traditionally human habitat designers provide possibilities for physical,

emotional and spiritual healing while fostering richer environments for children and ourselves.


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Deepening connections with resources and the natural world is necessary to survive and to thrive. People need a connection

with life-sustaining resources like water, food, energy and natural beauty, or else risk allowing the current disconnect to result

in exploitation that will endanger the existence of these resources in the future. Without a connection to nature, the likelihood of

an unhealthy physical, emotional and spiritual life grows. Though an absence of nature has far reaching negative consequences,

exposure to nature has equally deep restorative power. Nature provides a landscape of loose parts for the imagination to

compile or take apart and it presents the young with something so much greater than they are (Louv, 97). Without exposure

to it, we forget our place; we forget that larger fabric on which our lives depend (Louise Chawla quoted in Louv, 2005; 97). If

designers are driven to positively change environmental behavior, this last quote explains nicely why this change cannot occur

without exposing children to nature.

Without really immersing oneself fully in the larger system, the vast and powerful and fragile natural world, one cannot

fully know it, love it, grasp it with all of the senses, or hope to care for it. The response to these fundamental needs and life-

sustaining resources in increasingly disconnected societies will likely determine the future of the human race. This design project

demonstrates how responses to environmental issues that reconnect people with nature can expand the physical, emotional and

spiritual vitality of individuals and communities. The declining health of the natural world may appear as a crisis demanding an

inconvenient need for conservation, however by reconnecting with the natural world we reintroduce opportunities for wonder,

joy and deep personal relationships as conservation occurs. Deep down, we dont thirst to consume, we thirst for joy, we thirst

for love, and we thirst for community. Though we must reduce our impact upon natural resources to survive, in doing so we can

reconnect to the natural world that quenches our thirst for resources, soaks us in natural experiences and drenches our desire for

deep, lasting community.


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Documents

A Thirst Drenched: Connecting Water, Ecology and Community to the Human Environment