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How the Restore a Jungle (or, an Ode to VerdEnergia)
We’re living in an age of mass extinction. The world’s biodiversity has been sapped by centuries of extractive capitalism, colonialism, and cultural genocide, so we live with only a fraction of the living things, indigenous knowledge, and imagination we once did. When one begins to learn about this legacy, it’s easy to despair over how much has been lost, despite all the technological conveniences gained.
While this despair is certainly necessary, there’s still reason for hope. Not only because we’re still alive and human, with an inherent capacity for hope in the darkest times, but because there are places and people out there making real impacts to regenerate the Earth and our relationships to all its beings, including other humans.
Since I discovered these community and land-based projects through studying permaculture, the eco-despair I once had has been lifted immensely. I don’t feel the same need I once did to avoid world news, social interactions, or even my own feelings and bodily sensations. There’s a lot more that’s gone into this transformation, but an essential element has been connecting to permaculture and permaculture-adjacent projects that direct my focus back toward the more beautiful, natural, embodied world I want to live in, rather than the disconnected one I’ve felt killing my spirit as it’s killed so much else.
That’s why, for at least the next six months, I’m dedicating myself to exploring and volunteering for these projects throughout Central and South America. In short, because it feels good. In the larger sense, because rebuilding soils is our best way out of this dark night of the soul that’s led humanity to the brink of self annihilation for nearly a century now. Not only that, but if we really listen to the land’s feedback, regenerating the Earth leads us back to regenerating ourselves, in ways we might not even have realized we’d been degraded. Because ultimately, we and the Earth are not separate. That’s just another genocidal fallacy of colonialism we get to dismantle.
While work-trading my way across the continent, I also plan to write poetry in honor of the…
