#9 The First Quest: Forming Eyes of Place

#9 The First Quest: Forming Eyes of Place

What if the next great adventure is not in faraway lands, but waiting for you in the place you already live? In this first quest of the Returning Home Adventure Series, we explore Forming Eyes of Place: learning to see in a way that helps us reenter a vibrant, connected, living world. Drop into the sounds, insects, cottonwoods, traffic, and web of life beside Bear Creek where we sit and remember why it's a good thing to do. See why our adventure starts with a great paradox, how addressing the big-scale problems of the world can start by slowing down where we are, and how attention to place can help us get our footing again.   First Quest Instructions: Forming Eyes of Place Go sit in a spot near where you live. It doesn’t have to be wild. It doesn’t have to be pristine. It just has to be somewhere you can get to easily and often, and where you can sit safely for a while. Start for five minutes. See if you want to stay longer or return for more. Notice what’s moving around you. Notice the sounds. Notice what’s moving. Notice what notices you. Then ask yourself: What did I notice that most people miss? Side quest: Interview somebody who has a different way of seeing place - maybe a bird watcher, or a community organizer, or a park ranger. Then ask them: What do you notice about our place that most people miss? See if you can discover a new set of eyes to somehow see place anew. Please share this with anyone who might want to join the adventure.

#8 Flying into the Future

What are the conditions we have to get into to learn how to make our community feel more like home?  Over the last six episodes of Returning Home, I’ve been exploring six simple ways communities can learn about exactly that:  Noticing Place Finding Belonging Listening for Local Story Sensing What's Changing Opening to Possibility Acting and Becoming   This episode is a pause to look back, but mostly to look ahead, toward turning these practices into small, welcoming adventures people can try where they live. I share a surprising lesson from a story I stumbled upon recently. It helped me see Returning Home from a new angle. It’s easy to think the future of our places is mostly in the hands of institutions, organizations, and folks with official titles. But a place is a living field of changing conditions, and too much of our response is divided across separate organizations, categories, and responsibilities. Maybe that means more of us need small ways to get out there, notice what is happening, find each other, connect things up, and practice moving into the future together. Visit awakeninglands.com to learn more or get in touch.

#7 If You Eat, You’re In: The Adventure of Incredible Edible

In Todmorden, an old textile town in northern England, Pam Warhurst and a few friends found something everyone can do, right outside their doors, and paired that with an infectious can-do attitude. For a bit of British English and a quote from Pam: “Why don’t we just start doing stuff for ourselves instead of having a whinge about everybody else not doing stuff.” They got the whole town “unstuck.” And in fact, they really got moving! This is the awesome story of Incredible Edible, which demonstrates how local food became a path for ordinary people to grow food, grow self-belief, strengthen community, support local farmers, and begin responding to planetary problems starting right outside their doors. If you eat, you’re in. In the Returning Home Podcast, we are exploring things small groups and whole communities can do together to deepen their sense of home. That means growing our connection to the places we live, the people around us, and the wider living world, starting right outside our doors. And it means growing a sense of home within ourselves, so we feel more rooted, more connected.  This episode explores: how do we move from caring about the places we call home, and learning more about them, into real action? But the actions we can participate in that actually improve the world can feel out of reach and overwhelming when our focus is on the big, far away stuff. This leads to a lot of people feeling stuck. It’s absolutely essential to know that changing ourselves for the better is very often easiest by removing what holds us back, instead of pushing ourselves harder. Bit of useful psychology there… Please visit awakeninglands.com to learn how we’re exploring things everyone can do to grow the sense of home, wherever you live. Just like Pam and Incredible Edible. Featured Sources Incredible Edible https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/ [https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Incredible Edible Todmorden https://incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/ [https://incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Pam Warhurst TED Talk: How We Can Eat Our Landscapes https://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes [https://www.ted.com/talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Do Good Podcast #50: Pam Warhurst on the Power of Small Actions https://www.dogoodpodcast.co.uk/ep-50-pam-warhurst [https://www.dogoodpodcast.co.uk/ep-50-pam-warhurst?utm_source=chatgpt.com] The Guardian: Incredible Edible Yorkshire town’s food growing scheme takes root worldwide https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/09/incredible-edible-yorkshire-towns-food-growing-scheme-takes-root-worldwide [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/09/incredible-edible-yorkshire-towns-food-growing-scheme-takes-root-worldwide?utm_source=chatgpt.com]

#6 Letting Go and Letting Come

How a Food System Can Learn to See Itself.   If we want to live in a healthy relationship with the places we call home, with each other and the rest of life, we have to learn how to sense a better way forward together. To sense what’s possible, we have to get out into the world together. We have to journey out and learn what is actually happening. But to truly change… We have to have a quality of presence to know what we may need to let go of… If we are able to do so, what better future might then be able to come through? In South Africa, the Southern Africa Food Lab brought together people from across the food system to explore creative responses to hunger and malnutrition. Farmers, researchers, civil leaders, funders, and other representatives of the food system entered learning journeys, dialogue, and co-creative spaces to better understand how to fully transform. This episode begins with Norah Mlondobozi, a former teacher and smallholder farmer from Mopani, who once said: “You cannot teach a hungry child.” Through the Southern Africa Food Lab, we explore the practice of Presencing, described by Theory U, which asks the question: What might we need to go out and sense clearly, so we can know what to let go of, and what to let come? This is also one of the community practices we’re learning to host within Returning Home. Visit awakeninglands.com [http://awakeninglands.com] to learn more.   Featured Sources: Southern Africa Food Lab https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/ [https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/] Creating Transformative Spaces for Dialogue and Action: Reflecting on the Experience of the Southern Africa Food Lab https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss3/art2/ [https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss3/art2/] Researchers Convening Dialogue to Address Grand Challenges: Affordances, Tensions, and the Shift to Deep Dialogue https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14761270241279132 [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14761270241279132?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Mopani Learning Journey Reflections https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Mopani-Learning-Journey-Reflections.pdf [https://www.southernafricafoodlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Mopani-Learning-Journey-Reflections.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com] Theory U https://www.presencing.org [https://www.presencing.org/aboutus/theory-u]/

#5 Becoming the Eyes, Ears, and Noses of the River

If we want to live in a healthy relationship with the places we call home, with each other and the rest of life, we have to understand what’s actually happening around us. No one person can ever see the whole picture. But what becomes visible when we weave our experiences and perspectives together?   What might be happening around you that you simply can’t see on your own? In the 1960s, the Governor of New York called the Hudson River “one great septic tank.” The living system was completely overwhelmed.  Everyone could see it. Everyone could smell it. Those who allowed themselves, could feel it. But the situation was complex and those who wanted to understand it were up against a culture that saw industrial grime as a necessary byproduct of progress and strength. As awareness of environmental issues were growing, a small group of mostly college students and fishermen set out to understand the river for themselves. This group soon became known as the People’s Pipewatch Program.  They formed a distributed network, each person observing a different patch of the river. This episode tells the story of how a group of people, coming together, were able to understand a complex system in a way no individual could alone, and in doing so, offer a much needed fuller picture. It’s also an exploration of an essential practice we’re learning to host within Returning Home, which asks the question: What becomes visible when we start weaving our experiences and perspectives together? Visit awakeninglands.com to start your own Returning Home Practice. Featured Sources: * Hudson River Sloop Clearwater https://www.clearwater.org/ [https://www.clearwater.org/] * Hudson River Maritime Museum https://www.hrmm.org/history-blog/the-hudson-river-then-and-now-a-brief-history-of-water-quality [https://www.hrmm.org/history-blog/the-hudson-river-then-and-now-a-brief-history-of-water-quality] * Hudson River Valley Heritage https://omeka.hrvh.org/exhibits/show/rescuing-the-river/bagging-polluters/people-s-pipewatch [https://omeka.hrvh.org/exhibits/show/rescuing-the-river/bagging-polluters/people-s-pipewatch]   Updated Information: After publishing this episode, I sent it to the only student from the People's Pipewatch Program who's name was listed in one of the sources. I heard back from her and she shared that the effort was actually a small investigative team rather than a larger distributed group. Their monitoring began with what were called “permits to pollute.” Then they visited sites to see whether what companies reported matched what was actually entering the river. In doing so, they uncovered many additional, often unreported discharges. Her message left me even more impressed with what they were able to accomplish.  A clear lesson for me: rely as much as possible on primary sources.