Why Eat Your Sidewalk?

Why Eat Your Sidewalk?

As we at SPURSE have been going around doing workshops and readings with the launch of the Eat Your Sidewalk Cookbook we get asked this quite a bit.

For us it is in those three simple words: EAT    YOUR    SIDEWALK    !

EAT: eating is what links us to all life -- when we eat a dandelion growing on our street what has happened to it now happens to us. Our health and its health are linked. Its concerns and ours meet. We can no longer separate our fates. Our big goal with this project is to foster a real interdependence between us and our environments. This all begins with eating what is underfoot. 

YOUR: You are not alone as you pick this plant -- others want it (both human and non-human), you have to negotiate and work together -- this means forming a community based on shared concerns (health, sustainability, pleasure...). Not a top down community, or a community in name only, but a co-evolving community of partners. This is our second big goal: the making of a commons. This is a new form of self regulating and self organizing multi-species community. 

SIDEWALK: So often we talk about "the environment" or "nature" or even "the local" but we skip over our actual place to get to the parts of our environment we more easily recognize. Our sidewalks, and streets don't look like nature or any environment worth protecting so we skip over them. When we begin in this manner there is a divide at the heart of our ecological thinking between what is worth preserving and what is not. This means we are not addressing our actual environment. What kind of ecology is it to only think in terms of elsewheres?

How do we do this?

Begin with where you are -- your sidewalks, yards, neighborhoods, and the systems that they are part of -- and pay attention to everything. When this really happens a place comes alive.

!: Lets not forget the thin bit of punctuation! The exclamation mark is there because it has to be as urgent and as it is fun. (It can’t be all doom and gloom). Eat Your Sidewalk! celebrates the excesses that just might come with a less dependent way of life. Beautiful recipes, beautiful engagements and beautiful relations.

This is a brief and condensed overview. Our Eat Your Sidewalk Cookbook goes into this in great detail. Take a look. If you have any thoughts or questions, email us: spurse01@gmail.com. We would love to be in touch.