Approaching the Shire

Before moving from Walnut Creek to Berkeley to be closer to where I work, I dreamed about tipping brews in a pub filled with hobbits. Out the windows I could see the Berkeley Hills glowing in the sun.

If certain places call out to us--and my work has convinced me that they do--then I seem to have missed. As I eventually learned, the dream pub pointed me toward Albany, but when a small cottage became available in west Berkeley, I took it.

I soon saw that I had moved into one of the largest trash mounds on the West Coast. It had been used as such since long before the conquering Spanish missionaries arrived, long before American settlers threw so much trash toward the Bay that the entire Marina is built on it. You see, that is the nature of this place: to turn trash into growth, into new soil. That's what estuaries do. West Berkeley could change its name to Coastal Compost and be none the worse for it.

Unfortunately, living in a place while unconscious of its significance--its history, its ecology, its rhythms--tends to mean acting out its patterns without realizing it. The amount of trash in the streets here, dumped by unknowing citizens of the estuary, is phenomenal. Every street corner and stop sign has been defaced with graffiti; on a windy day every fence traps burger wrappers, plastic cups, cigarette butts, candy bar wrappers.

Dingy places get more so over time because people won't protect what they do not love. Esthetics isn't just a study in college or an arcane set of artistic theories: it has to do with being able to care for what beauty remains around us. An esthetics of place is the heart's refusal to let things be trashed, even in an estuary.

Back in the mid-1800s or so, a wagonload of trash tried to enter Albany, only to be stopped by some esthetically inclined women armed with shotguns. Sorry, boys, no dumping here today!

As rich as my time has been in west Berkeley, I look forward to living in a cleaner place. And if you see a dark-haired middle-aged professor picking up trash in Albany, that could well be me, out doing my small part to identify with another aspect of the estuary--namely, the filter--and keep the Shire tidy.