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Published on 10/20/1997 All articles from this issue

Responsibly knowing home

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By Jeffrey Cole

Other Voices

"You can't know who you are until you know where you are."

- Wendell Berry

Taking this statement to heart, as a challenge, I began simply by walking downtown from my parents' home in Los Altos. Having been born and raised in Los Altos, I am aware of changes taking place in my neighborhood - remodeled homes, condominiums, an expanded library, restaurants, coffee shops and the town plaza. From the corner of San Antonio and Edith, Black Mountain appears to frame the city's horizon. If Black Mountain could speak, what changes would it describe throughout Los Altos' history?

At the Los Altos History House, I learned that the "Silicon Valley" used to be an agricultural giant, "the prune capitol of the world." During spring, fruit tree blossoms used to infuse the air with their aroma. The soil was fertile. I viewed photographs and videos that confirmed stories my parents and grandparents told about how the city used to look. My family's yard, our entire neighborhood was an apricot orchard, and San Antonio was a one-lane road. I was in awe.

The land used to support Mexican rancheros and cattle ranges. Before that, the Spanish founded missions and brought European agriculture. Descendants of the earliest human inhabitants, local Costanoean Indians, speak of miles of sloughs and marsh land along the bay (estuary) and rolling oak woodland foothills that led to the giant firs and redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains. They report of sharing the land with otters, elk, salmon, bald eagles, grizzly bears and wolves, all within the last 200 years. Contrasting what I can see in Los Altos today to what I have learned existed here 200 years ago, I'm struck by our disconnection from the natural world.

On numerous hikes I have found the valley oak, bobcat, maidenhair fern, crayfish, and mayfly. When I stopped to listen, I heard screeching red-tailed hawks and owls, trickling Adobe Creek, and howling coyotes. Two years of graduate field studies in environmental education enhanced my ability to include Los Altos in as a part of a slightly larger community, the Black Mountain watershed.

Alert for wildlife, I discovered, literally, the common ground we share being neighbors. For example, I learned, from a neighbor I'd never met before, that camphor trees were lining our block. While sharing our neighborhood history, such as our difficulties with squirrels raiding our persimmon trees, I was surprised to hear she had been living here for 54 years. For over 20 years I had lived less than 100 yards away without even knowing her name. This seemingly insignificant conversation opened me to all we do share: earthquakes, storms, droughts, spring birds' nests, opossums, raccoons, skunks, cats and dogs. We walk the same streets, housesit for each other and our children make friends. Walking home, I began to appreciate Los Altos and the stories of people's lives contained within it.

"Local history may be the best history because it is the record of human living in all its many complexities: personal, political, economic and religious. The sense of place is very strong," wrote Wallace Stegner. It is essential we connect our young to our past. Yet, I believe Stegner's statement fails to mention a key context to our local lives, the natural world. If we forget the billions of other beings we cohabit this area with, our stories - our lives - will be woefully out of balance. We won't know who we are. Josephine Duveneck reminds us, "Becoming aware of the relationship of all living things to other living things is the key to knowing ourselves." We must create meaningful relationships with the people and land closest to us. It will allow us to take our responsibility to the common good to a deeper level.

How could each of us take responsibility for Los Altos? Each of us, in our own way, could become a living example of someone who has discovered who we are by knowing where we are. We could share local natural and human history with our children, invite a neighbor to dinner, support local agriculture - business - environmental organizations, regularly spend alone time in local wilderness, hold a block party, adopt a section of Adobe Creek to clean up, grow a vegetable garden, organize a community garden, support local arts, celebrate cultural traditions, close off roads to decrease traffic, plant trees, carpool, write to local papers, and participate in city government.

We need to decide how we would like our sense of place to grow, and we need to be willing to take the first step. Are you ready to know who you are?

Jeffrey Cole, who still lives in Los Altos, received his master's degree in environmental education from Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass., and the Audubon Expedition Institute in Belfast, Maine. He worked for three summers at Hidden Villa wilderness preserve as a counselor.