I grew up in a time and place where ecological consciousness was seemingly really important. Truth had become inconvenient, recycling numbers became important to notice, and my school had an earth-shaped mascot visit us to tell us how important turning off the light when leaving a room was to the future of the planet.
Hello reader, Kenny here with some thoughts about plate licking and saving the planet!
I remember hearing the advice, “be the change you want to see in the world,” being used to briefly sum up what I ought to do to take care of our earthly home. What was the change I wanted to see? Reels of environmentalist b-roll begin to play in my mind. I’m planting a bunch of trees with volunteers, sorting my recycling, choosing eco-conscious packaging, picking trash off a beach, using Dawn dish soap to help oil-slicked ducklings, and actually remembering my reusable bags.
As the years have gone on, my capacity to engage with the implications and scope of the global environmental situation we currently find ourselves in has grown. My willingness to engage has grown as well, but where to start?
Before I left suburbia for Dancing Rabbit, using renewables was tied to the willingness and ability of my local utility companies, recycling wasn’t a free service in dollars or time, and purchasing from eco-conscious brands was more than just a hassle, and was dependent on local stocking.
It all felt like so much extra for me to do. “There’s so much trash in the dump already, and my metal straw is at home in the drying rack, and I don’t want to spill my drink all over this car and yeah please just give me the plastic one (just have to take off the plastic packaging first).”
It didn’t seem like anything I ever did would ever be enough, I am just one person, and I certainly didn’t have much time or space to plant very many new trees.
I still felt that way when I arrived at Dancing Rabbit, and then I saw all the plate licking. For my entire life, having “licked my plate clean” was a high compliment to the chef, but was rarely preceded by anybody eschewing utensils in lieu of a tongue actually contacting a plate. For Rabbits, it is the obvious conclusion to any meal. Literally polishing off your self-portioned plate of kitchen co-op food is commonplace, to help decrease waste, streamline the proceeding cleanup, and to conserve water (and sure, a lot of the food is just that good).
Certainly not every Rabbit engages in this practice. I myself have not mastered the art of pre-dishwashing without making a total mess of myself. And although my desire to keep my beard lentil-free is often greater than my eco-consciousness for saving the extra spritz of water from the sink, it only took one time for the water to sputter out in the middle of a cleanup for me to realize that water is actually not an unlimited resource, and maybe I ought to start licking my plate better.
Now my ideas of “the change I want to see in the world” involve a lot more than just me choosing my individual actions. One of the things I realized very quickly after spending time at DR, is that “eco-consciousness” isn’t just about what you are doing, it’s about what we are doing.
The first controlled burn of the season happened earlier this week.
I wish I was the person that could tell you all about the specifics about it. I know it was well planned and executed by Javi, DR community member and local fire chief, I know that many experienced and enthusiastic Rabbits took part in the monitoring and controlling of it, and I know the prairie will be healthier and more robust for the good work that was done.
I know all that, but I wasn’t there, because I was in a committee meeting, contributing my little bit to the whole. We were meeting in a nearly-perpetually available community third-place, the local Milkweed Mercantile. All these individual people doing their individual things for the common goal of Dancing Rabbit, a place that is just as much the land as it is the committees that plan for its maintenance.
I always tell my kids when we are on our way back from town, driving through the meticulously cultivated farmlands, that they can tell we’re coming up on DR because it’s where the trees start on the horizon.
There are people who live here still that can tell you stories of how, when they got here, there were hardly any trees in sight, and because those people did their little bit, just a little bit ago, I get to walk with my kids in a little slice of the almost otherworldly beauty of recovering, uncultivated prairie lands.
I still haven’t planted that many trees, I still forget my reusable bags when I go to town, but here I get to be some of the change I want to see in the world. I get to take care of this place like it is my home. So when the cistern runs dry, or someone needs their cook shift covered so they can help with the burn, I know the path through this ordeal will take more than just me, it will take us, and when we are done, we can share a dinner that’s worth licking your plate over.
Kenny Dane is our newest newsletter writer, lending their fresh perspective to our DR updates. They co-parent three young children, and recently moved to DR from Alaska. They are a regular fixture of the morning coffee group.