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An interview with Terril Shorb
Sustainable Ways: What is the source of your interest in sustainability?
Terril Shorb: I don’t want to see this beautiful world further damaged through our ignorance or our apathy. I grew up, in part, on ranches and farms in Wyoming and Montana. I learned early on that if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you. It seems so obvious, and yet too many people in these times have little or no experience in the natural world, so they simply have not internalized the understanding that the health of the natural world is directly relational to our human health and well-being.
Sustainable Ways: You advocate bringing nature back into people’s daily lives as a significant move toward sustainability. How possible is that?
Terril Shorb: I think it’s entirely possible if we do it in phases. Just as we disconnected from nature bit by bit, so can we reconnect incrementally. I learned this long ago in my environmental activism in Montana: it’s much more productive to invite people to change in their lives in small ways and then celebrate with them the cumulative—and large—effects. Nature often reasserts itself if you give it a chance. I am letting native grasses and woody plants reestablish themselves in my back yard and the effect is beautiful.
Sustainable Ways: Most urbanites may not live in neighborhoods where they can let grass grow wild because of city ordinances and the like.
Terril Shorb: True. There are, however, ways to manage growth of native plants so that they have a superficially groomed look and yet preserve much of their essential character. Also, if we’re talking native vegetation and landscaping, there are many species of low-profile, drought-resistant desert wildflowers that blossom at various times of the year and which require little maintenance. I wish we could invite every resident of the Western U.S. to a series of workshops in which they would learn the natural history of their adopted home range.
Sustainable Ways: You are known for your love of less-than-charismatic wildlife. How did that happen?
Terril Shorb: Maybe it is rooted in being a little guy in grade and high school and often getting picked on by bullies. Call it my way of pulling for the underdog—except in this case it would be the undercoyote. I’ve always been fascinated by the undesirable creatures like rattlesnakes, scorpions, magpies, spiders, rats, and centipedes. Those creatures are intricately beautiful in appearance, go quietly (well, except for magpies!) about their business of foraging and raising families, and complete the great web of being in a given ecosystem.
Sustainable Ways: Yes, but some bite, or sting, or even inject you with poison!
Terril Shorb: Right. Just like some humans bite, hit, or shoot at you. I don’t hate or fear all humans just because they are a few rogues in the crowd. Beside, on four occasions, I have come within inches of a rattlesnake and never once had one strike. I’ve lived alongside Black Widow spiders, played as a kid with scorpions (we played “rancher” and put them in stick corrals, pretending they were our cattle), shared a sandwich with a hornet. So much of it is intention. If I am sending fear-based or threatening thoughts, it is likely to be read as a threat by the other creature. I talk to these critters in a soothing voice and almost always they either move away or perhaps show some curiosity and then go on about their business.
Sustainable Ways: You believe that people’s misguided fears or even hatred of some species contributes to their distancing from nature?
Terril Shorb: I think this can be one more barrier to people enjoying direct and daily experience with local nature. Stephen R. Kellert, my favorite social ecologist, has created a typology of responses (values) to the natural world, based on E.O. Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis regarding our innate tendency to affiliate with nature’s life forms and lifelike processes. Kellert’s nine related values include a negativistic response which was functionally adaptive for our ancestors. There were creatures in those days that could chase you down and eat you! So it was good to be vigilant and, on occasion, fight or flee. Among the most dangerous creatures to us moderns—at least in the U.S.—is the domestic dog. So I try to help people to ease out from under their fear of other wild creatures and replace it with wonderment. That may help them to want to venture out more into local nature.
Sustainable Ways: What else is it about our relationship with nature that is important to know?
Terril Shorb: There are so many aspects! There is an increasing body of research to support what many of us feel intuitively—that our association with nature is beneficial. There are the obvious and immediate benefits of food, fiber, water, and oxygen. It takes the equivalent of two mature trees to furnish breathable oxygen for each adult human. So if you can breathe, thank a tree! Also, our cognitive abilities, including problem-solving and other forms of creativity, grew up in our long, human apprenticeship in nature. Studies by the Kaplans have demonstrated that adolescents who have had recent contact with nature perform better in scholastic activities than do those who have no such contact. Similarly, a study by Kuo and her associates showed that people who live in a high-rise apartment complex with grass, trees, and flowers experience less crime and violence than people who live in a nearby and identical complex. This is all a way of saying that we have a very long human relationship with nature and it makes sense that the path to our well-being is well-worn—right down to our genome, as Paul Shepard might say. |
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