I’m writing this post from Oakland, Ca at the “Adamah West” house. Here live 3 Adamah alumni doing their best to live the ideals that they developed at Adamah. Having spent a few days here, I can tell you that they’re doing a pretty solid job. First of all, the house is both dark and cold, which as I’ve learned is the first step in being an environmental household: no heat, no lights. Seriously though, they pick oranges from the tree in the backyard (and give them away as party favors), the cabinet in the living room contains at least 3 different strands of bacteria fermenting various types of vegetables and other goodies, and I just enjoyed a slice of fresh bread hot out of the oven….

Today I saw my first redwood trees while hiking in the Muir Woods with two friends. I wanted to see a redwood tree up close, and Ian wanted to forage for chanterelle mushrooms. At about one o’clock we pulled off the trail into a patch of “dappled sunlight” to sit down for our bagged lunch. Before we took our first bites, Adam asked for a communal blessing over our food so I said the “Hamotzi” and Ian offered some words of thanks to the Source of food, life, fresh air, and all growing things. Since we’re Jews, we didn’t just eat; we ate and discussed, and played variations of one of my favorite games, Amateur Geologist!

Today, we scientists (not all technically amateurs) were discussing the evolution of fruits. While it turns out that anything containing the seed of a plant is considered a fruit, we were concerned with large and tasty fruits, like the ones that we like to eat everyday. Fruits, like all other organisms, have evolved over millions of years (or 7 really long days) in tandem with other organisms. The tree develops a bright red, sugary fruit so that the bird who loves red things will eat said fruit, and spread the seed of the plant far and wide; perhaps to a location favorable enough for a new tree to grow, thereby spreading the species and ensuring its further reproductive success. In fact, some seeds remain dormant (unable to sprout) until they have passed through the digestive tract of certain animals, ensuring that they germinate far away from the parent plant.

So, plants don’t evolve on their own, but in partnership and connection with other living being that interact with them in complicated ecosystems. This got me thinking about humans, and the plants that we cultivate. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan explores the idea that perhaps the species that we so proudly select and develop in our quest to feed ourselves have really selected us. When I walk into the supermarket and see a beautifully ripe tomato, so succulent that I buy it on sight, I’m playing an important role in our food system. When enough consumers decide to buy this tomato, growers, suppliers, and producers will read the signals and eventually plant more tomatoes of this variety. How different am I from the fox who eats a berry and spreads the seed of his food far and wide? Certain plants have developed characteristics that we human beings find attractive. Wheat is easily ground into flour for bread, corn is full of nourishing sugar, yellow tomatoes are low in acid… so we eat these fruits and spread their seed. Maybe not through our digestive tracts, but through the much less complex system of supply, demand, and pricing. Economics is concerned with the flow of dollars between producers and consumers while ecology is concerned with the flow of energy between, you guessed it, producers and consumers. I’m going to get back to the present now, but in my future posts I’ll start fleshing out more ideas about the relationship between economics and ecology (please let me know if this strikes your fancy)…

After lunch, again it was time to bless, and again, the fashion was slightly less than traditional. I said in English, “gentlemen, may we bless?” and Ian responded with the traditional Hebrew response to the communal Birkat Hamazon (grace after meals). As I quietly mumbled the entire Hebrew prayer, Adam sat in silent contemplation and Ian said part of the traditional text and concluded by singing a melody plucked from the liturgy: a hodge-podge mix of thanks, straight from the heart.

We hopped back on the trail (by now I’d seen at least a hundred redwoods, all magnificent) and resumed our hiking and foraging with our minds busy and our mouths silent. After a short while, Adam gave a holler and pointed. Up above our heads and nestled in the hollowed out root of a dying tree were about a dozen reddish-orange mushrooms. Ian and I took turns cutting the soft heads off of the rotting wood and bagging them for later identification (seemingly chanterelle-like, but you can’t be too careful with fungus). After filling our bag, we continued to hike for a few hours through the spectacular redwoods and Douglas firs before heading back to the city.

What does it mean to hike, eat, bless, forage, then get back into the car and drive to a chaat place for some Indian cuisine? I’m not completely sure, but my mind keeps returning to the fruits discussion. We’re all bound together through the great systems that sustain our lives, whether we admit it or not. Economists like to think that everything can be broken down into dollars and cents. Environmentalists like to claim that putting a price on natural things is wrong. But economists still have to eat, and most environmentalists still have to buy food. I’d rather see myself as both a consumer in the marketplace and a consumer in an ecosystem; we like to think our dollar ends when it leaves our wallet and enters the cash register, but that’s just too simple. Though the fox doesn’t understand the importance of eating a berry and dropping its seed off on the next hill, I do, and that understanding is what sets us apart. It’s time for me to take the next step by ensuring that my food choices are conscious decisions to not only satiate my hunger but to ensure the continuation of my own species and all the other species I depend on.