A Narrow Path to Greenbelt

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through.  For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

-- Matthew 7:13

watercolor by James Gallagher

watercolor by James Gallagher

Don't Fence Me In

Fences on Oklahoma panhandle region

Don't Fence Me In

Writer(s): Cole Porter

Copyright: WB Music Corp

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above

Don't fence me in

Let me ride through the wide open country that I love

Don't fence me in

Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze

And listen to the murmur of cottonwood trees

Send me off forever but I ask you please

Don't fence me in

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle

underneath the western skies

On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder

Till I see the mountains rise

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences

And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses

And I can't look at hobbles and i can't stand fences

Don't fence me in

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies

Don't fence me in

Let me ride through the wide country that I love

Don't fence me in

Just turn me loose, let me straddle my old saddle

underneath the western skies

On my cayuse, let me wander over yonder

Till I see the mountains rise

I want to ride to the ridge where the West commences

And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses

And I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences

Don't fence me in, no

Pop. oh don't you fence me in

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Rabbit-proof, Emu fence, Dingo fence...more fences in Australia

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The Fence Cutting Wars occurred near end of the 19th century in the American Old West, and were a series of disputes between farmers and cattlemen with large land holdings. As newcomers came to the American West to farm, established cattlemen began to fence off their large tracts of land with barbed wire in order to protect them from the farmers' claims. The settlers viewed this as a closing of open range, and began to cut fences to attempt to reclaim lands in the public domain. The ensuing, widespread series of conflicts was known as the fence Cutting Wars. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Half and Half

"In a last-ditch hope to stave off mass extinction, renowned naturalist E.O. Wilson argues for setting aside half of  the land  just for wildlife..."
The Wildest Idea on Earth by Tony Hiss

http://imoverthehill.com/2014/09/

The Desperate Man (self-portrait) by Gustave Courbet

Tale of Three Shelterbelts

In response to "Dust Bowl" conditions in the great Plains, from Texas and North Dakota, during the early 1930's, the cooperative Prairie States Forestry (Shelterbelt) Project was begun. this unique windbreak project, an idea of President Franklin Roosevelt, began in 1934. In March 1935, the first trees were planted
on a farm in Mangum, Oklahoma.  The project involved extensive cooperation between the USDA Soil Conservation Service (now Natural Resources Conservation Service); various State, county, local agencies, and hundreds of farmers.legions of Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief workers, many of whom were unemployed farmers, accomplished the work. In the spring of 1938, they planted approximately 52,000 cottonwood trees in one severely sand-blown area south of Neligh, Nebraska. (www.foresthistory.org)

In the north-west, north and north-east of China, starting in 1978, row of trees designed to protect Beijing from sandstorms with a goal to last for 73 years, cover an area of 4.069 million square kilometers (42.4% of China’s total territory) to surpass Roosevelt’s Great Plains Shelterbelt and Stalin’s Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature. The ambitious “Three North Shelterbelt Project" is by far the world's largest tree-plant project. This was to be China’s “Green Great Wall”.

From Oklahoma to China West

A windmill, electric poles, and wind turbines, Western Oklahoma

Oklahoma Panhandle region near the Black Mesa

Tourists enjoy a camel ride in Singing Sand Dunes of Dunhuang

In the summer 2013 Yiren had traveled through No Man’s Land with the Oklahoma Alliance for Geographic Education in the OK Panhandle Region and Xinjiang in Western China where the great wall disappears and the Silk Road rises up from the sands.The experience of traversing these two Wests boundaries has profoundly influenced the artist's view on water and land use.

A day we feel very small

along the highway 

in the Garden of Adam

under a dark riverside path

in between dark, forgotten spaces

a corridor of trees

What is a greenbelt?  The first greenbelt  reference we found was to the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya, started by Wangari Maathai, and involved the efforts and labor of Kenyan women replacing cash crop trees with native species to combat serious changes in the climate. As we continued to explore the Greenbelt concept, it continued to grow.

We wondered what kind of greenbelt would best sustain life. A real greenbelt shouldn't be artificially limited. It would have to be continuous, reach around the world.  With only a meager understanding of the relevance of connectivity to nature, stories of national parks, private organizations, and The Nature Conservancy, created programs focused on connecting pockets of nature was news to us. Organizations around the world were creating ranges with the purpose in mind of extending nature areas to accommodate migration routes and restore ecosystems.  

We could imagine a Greenbelt Meridian extending completely around the Earth in a great circle. Were we to build such a corridor where should it be located? Anywhere? We learned about the Oklahoma Dust bowl. One of the solutions that was implemented in the 1930's to keep the blowing dirt from being swept off  the dry land was to plant lines of trees called Shelter-belts, as windbreaks, between farmlands. In the 20th century, China is building a great wall of trees to attempt to control desertification of areas adjacent to the Gobi dessert. Reading the warnings spelled out in The Limits to Growth and other philosophical and scientific materials from the past three hundred years, we knew the Greenbelt Meridian concept needed to create a zone free of human influence or contact.

What would a thin strip of land grow into?  What type of animal life would become assimilated into an untended place?  How long could beneficial human indifference be sustained? Would animals enter and learn to sense the environment as home like they do in Chernobyl? After a much greater length of time how would adaptation allow for natural evolution? Will humanity respect this natural land-no-mark, boundaries that not only circles the Earth but also continues in perpetuity?

At the Hardesty Art Center, we imagine the Greenbelt Meridian with a prophetic narrative in the main gallery leading to a present land of being in creative studios, and the future is outside.

woods or dissolving into the scenery

large animal are weaving through.

(artwork by James Gallagher)

Pluie, a magnificent female wolf

Stretch some 2,000 miles in length, the Yellowstone to Yukon region
is one of the last intact mountain ecosystems left on Earth.

In the early 1990s, radio collars, satellite transmitters and GPS technology revealed a pattern of long distance animal movements previously unknown to biologists. 

Between 1991 and 1993, Pluie, a wolf radio-collared in southern Alberta, covered an area 10 times the size of Yellowstone National park and 15 times that of Banff National Park. Other animals such as lynx, cougars, golden eagles and bull trout have also been recovered traveling distances of more than 1000 miles. Wildlife show us that the Yellowstone to Yukon region is the right scale to support their need to roam.

See more at: Wandering Wolf Inspired Project

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The day I discovered Lobo, I found my West

The day I discovered Pluie, I found a Greenbelt

The animals lead the way, to find

There is no place for a hungry tiger in Eden, watercolor by James Gallagher