Soon after moving to this small town on the Potomac River, I noticed a door along the main street that bore the words “Eel Town Folk School.” I had no idea what it was, and the otherwise nondescript door offered no clues. But it sounded nature-loving and vaguely rebellious. I was intrigued. “Eel Town,” it…

How gift economies can help us come home again Perhaps I was an anxious kid. I remember watching television shows and movies like Conan the Barbarian and The Princess Bride, set in a far-off time vaguely evocative of the Middle Ages, and worrying when the itinerant protagonists said they had no money. How would they…

As I move into relationship with the river outside my window, I’m more motivated to help it thrive. But that doesn’t mean I know how to help. So I wonder: What does the river need? In this post I want to explore one possible answer to that question: connectivity. Ecology teaches that the health of an ecosystem depends on…

Building a gift economy that roots us in land and community In this shorter post, I want to share one concrete way we can step into a different relationship with each other and our non-human kin in the Potomac River watershed. It’s called the Hickory Rooted Project. On my recent outings to the C&O canal…

“Mercenaries . . . are at once useless and dangerous . . . disunited, ambitious, insubordinate, treacherous . . . . And this because they have no tie or motive to keep them in the field beyond their paltry pay, in return for which it would be too much to expect them to give their…

Doug Howe, a self-described “river rat,” grew up in Brunswick, a small town on the Potomac River. He’s old enough to remember when the river would freeze solid in the winter and families would go ice skating. Just 15 years ago, Doug tells me, the stretch of river below Brunswick boasted world class fishing. Now,…