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Can Imagination Remake The World?

In her book “A Field Guide To Climate Anxiety,” Sarah Jacquette Ray laments an exercise she did with her environmental studies students. As is common for many folks who love and care about the earth, her students feel incredibly worried about climate change and its impacts on what they hold dear. They are pissed off at the older generations who have not done enough to stave off the crisis, and they are feeling powerless and hopeless about the possibility of turning the tide to avert the worst of its impacts.

So she asked them, as Ayana Elizabeth Johnson queries, “What if we get it right?” What does it look like if all your activism pays off and we humans are successful at reversing climate change? What does it feel like, smell like, sound like? What are you and your loved ones doing inside this changed reality?

The idea here was, if she could get them imagining the world they want to be living in, they could then create a roadmap of how we get there from where we are now. The next action steps become clear when we have a visceral picture of where we want to end up. And a side benefit, she thought, was they would realize that some of what they want in their idyllic future already exists in their lives now. Many of them already enjoy yummy food with loved ones, for example, and play music together, and spend time outside in places they love.

But there was a problem—the students could not imagine the world they want to live in. The exercise totally fell flat, and it actually made them more anxious and more upset.

We are living in a crisis of imagination. Or, as adrienne maree brown says, we are living inside of the imaginations of others who did not want some of us to exist. She reminds us that “what we pay attention to grows.” So, if we want to live in a better world, we first have to imagine it.

I had the pleasure of traveling to Salmon, Idaho (population 3,295; closest town over 50,000 people is over 100 miles away) earlier this month for the first stop on our epic 2025 traveling summer Seed Circus. This stop featured a field day at Swift River Farm, followed by a plant-themed Open Mic hosted by Brandon Follett.

Immediately upon arriving at Swift River Farm, it was obvious that I was entering a place brimming with active and enacted imagination.  Jessica McAleese and Jeremy Shreve built their solar-powered strawbale home over many years, with the same love and care with which they have built Swift River Farm, their certified organic diversified vegetable and seed operation. A curvy driveway slows your pace as soon as you leave the highway, winding through riotous tangles of flowers and shrubs that provide food and habitat for a huge cadre of critters, including over one hundred different species of birds. Rows of well-tended organic vegetables and seed crops stretch out from the house in all directions. Homemade stained-glass panels and clear windows of dried strawflowers and rainbow corn seeds over the round-edged doorways greet visitors as they enter the home.  

On the farm tour, Jessica reminds us that the large trees which now buffer the north and west winds and give shade on hot days were tiny whips when they planted them. Planting tiny saplings is one of the easiest ways to stretch our imaginations toward a future we want to live in. They are small—it does not cost a lot of money to buy them, and you don’t even need to dig a big hole to plant them. But the promise for something mighty and nourishing and life-sustaining lives inside them.

The future I want to live in involves a lot more collaboration and a lot less consumerism masquerading as rugged individualism. On the tour, we talk about the Salmon tool library that Jessica & Jeremy helped start. It’s a place where anyone can come and borrow tools. Many of the tools they highlighted as being useful on their farm tour are available in the library.

I’ve often thought it was silly that I own a lawnmower that I use a few times a month, as does my neighbor, and the neighbor next to them. We are never using them at the same time. And yet, each of us has contributed to the environmental degradation involved the manufacturing of the one we personally own, and each one takes up space in each of our yards, and each of us bears the sole responsibility for maintaining ours, not to mention that we each had to shell out money to buy it. A tool library is such a sensible solution that can address many interlocking issues at once.

Once you imagine a future with a tool library in it, the next steps become clearer—is there a place in my community where the tools could be housed? Are there people who currently own tools as individuals that they would instead like to put into the library for collective use? Are there people who are skilled at maintaining tools, or at organizing a check-in/check out process, who would like to volunteer or work for the library? These are not unattainable, pie-in-the-sky resources. These things (and people) already exist in nearly every community. It’s just a matter of pulling them together.

Jessica and Jeremy are working with Sidney Fellows, A Shoshone-Bannock member and scientist who is helping to facilitate a seed rematriation project with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. Colonization separated many seeds from their original stewards as the US government and settlers forced those original stewards from their homelands. In the future we want to live in, all Native people can live in and care for their ancestral homelands. These lands are returned to their governance and stewardship. This requires a massive shift in our current systems and policies, and it can seem out of reach. But every seed that is returned to indigenous stewardship, and every garden grown to facilitate that transition, is a tiny step closer to this bigger goal. The Mandan Black corn seeds planted in this rematriation garden had been in storage for more than 25 years, and they germinated! The bean and sunflower seeds planted alongside the corn are also very old, and they are sprouting and growing vigorously.

This small planting doesn’t facilitate a large transfer of land, or equip the next generation with every one of the resources necessary to grow these seeds in perpetuity. But it is something that can be done, today, to move us closer to that goal. For each of the individual seeds planted, seeds who have been waiting for decades, this small step is everything. And as we take each step, the next one on the path becomes clearer.

After our lovely lunch of farm-grown greens, we all left equipped not only with a brighter vision of what is possible, but also many practical ideas that we can put immediately into practice in our own gardens or farms. We can also share these things with others in a network of possibility that continues to grow.

That evening, my imagination was stretched further at the plant-themed open mic hosted by the inimitable Brandon Follett in his Salmon backyard. His abode reflects his desire to live on the margins of mainstream culture, a commitment I believe is part of the secret sauce for his bottomless well of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. Brandon and his “Mental Foreplay” performances are something that must be experienced in person, not explained, but here is a small taste. Brandon writes poetry, short stories, and songs. He makes greeting cards that feature his dog in odd settings and sells them at a local health food store. And he’s committed to living an interesting life whether traveling the world or exploring the wilderness near his home in Salmon.

The open mic was yet another enactment of the kind of creative, non-judgmental, unplugged world I want to live in. We shared original songs, stories, poems, accordion melodramas, jokes. Brandon pulled up YouTube karaoke on his laptop and we sang along to everything from Weird Al’s “Addicted to Spuds” to the Presidents of the United Sates of America’s “Peaches.” One guy performed a parody of the Bee Gees “More than a Woman” (“More than an Onion”) written by his wife, who wasn’t able to attend but wanted to make sure her contribution was included. And Swift River Farm’s Jessica blew us all away with her rendition of Shady Grove (“Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall…”). It was spontaneous, and weird, and tender, and fun. People danced and sang along. There wasn’t a 24-hour news feed or a canned laugh track to be found. We made our own entertainment, together—no need to binge a new show or endlessly doom scroll the awful news.

And at the end, Brandon skillfully reminded us that this type of diversity and creativity is crucial for our health and well-being, both individually and collectively. He encouraged us to stand up to safeguard and advocate for diversity in all its forms, whenever we get the chance. It’s hard to describe how full this experience made my heart feel. We NEED this type of collective imagination with our friends and neighbors right now. It strengthens our bonds with each other, and makes us better able to support each other and stand up together for what is right. And it allows us to truly enjoy our precious time here on earth, which is also so incredibly important.

Thanks to everyone in Salmon who is dreaming the future into existence. We’re so grateful to be on this journey with all of you! And we’re looking forward bringing more imagination into existence as we continue forward with the Seed Circus this summer!

 

Grow What You Like to Eat!

Can Imagination Remake The World?

In her book “A Field Guide To Climate Anxiety,” Sarah Jacquette Ray laments an exercise she did with her environmental studies students. As is common for many folks who love and care about the earth, her students feel incredibly worried about climate change and its impacts on what they hold dear. They are pissed off at the older generations who have not done enough to stave off the crisis, and they are feeling powerless and hopeless about the possibility of turning the tide to avert the worst of its impacts.

So she asked them, as Ayana Elizabeth Johnson queries, “What if we get it right?” What does it look like if all your activism pays off and we humans are successful at reversing climate change? What does it feel like, smell like, sound like? What are you and your loved ones doing inside this changed reality?

The idea here was, if she could get them imagining the world they want to be living in, they could then create a roadmap of how we get there from where we are now. The next action steps become clear when we have a visceral picture of where we want to end up. And a side benefit, she thought, was they would realize that some of what they want in their idyllic future already exists in their lives now. Many of them already enjoy yummy food with loved ones, for example, and play music together, and spend time outside in places they love.

But there was a problem—the students could not imagine the world they want to live in. The exercise totally fell flat, and it actually made them more anxious and more upset.

We are living in a crisis of imagination. Or, as adrienne maree brown says, we are living inside of the imaginations of others who did not want some of us to exist. She reminds us that “what we pay attention to grows.” So, if we want to live in a better world, we first have to imagine it.

I had the pleasure of traveling to Salmon, Idaho (population 3,295; closest town over 50,000 people is over 100 miles away) earlier this month for the first stop on our epic 2025 traveling summer Seed Circus. This stop featured a field day at Swift River Farm, followed by a plant-themed Open Mic hosted by Brandon Follett.

Immediately upon arriving at Swift River Farm, it was obvious that I was entering a place brimming with active and enacted imagination.  Jessica McAleese and Jeremy Shreve built their solar-powered strawbale home over many years, with the same love and care with which they have built Swift River Farm, their certified organic diversified vegetable and seed operation. A curvy driveway slows your pace as soon as you leave the highway, winding through riotous tangles of flowers and shrubs that provide food and habitat for a huge cadre of critters, including over one hundred different species of birds. Rows of well-tended organic vegetables and seed crops stretch out from the house in all directions. Homemade stained-glass panels and clear windows of dried strawflowers and rainbow corn seeds over the round-edged doorways greet visitors as they enter the home.  

On the farm tour, Jessica reminds us that the large trees which now buffer the north and west winds and give shade on hot days were tiny whips when they planted them. Planting tiny saplings is one of the easiest ways to stretch our imaginations toward a future we want to live in. They are small—it does not cost a lot of money to buy them, and you don’t even need to dig a big hole to plant them. But the promise for something mighty and nourishing and life-sustaining lives inside them.

The future I want to live in involves a lot more collaboration and a lot less consumerism masquerading as rugged individualism. On the tour, we talk about the Salmon tool library that Jessica & Jeremy helped start. It’s a place where anyone can come and borrow tools. Many of the tools they highlighted as being useful on their farm tour are available in the library.

I’ve often thought it was silly that I own a lawnmower that I use a few times a month, as does my neighbor, and the neighbor next to them. We are never using them at the same time. And yet, each of us has contributed to the environmental degradation involved the manufacturing of the one we personally own, and each one takes up space in each of our yards, and each of us bears the sole responsibility for maintaining ours, not to mention that we each had to shell out money to buy it. A tool library is such a sensible solution that can address many interlocking issues at once.

Once you imagine a future with a tool library in it, the next steps become clearer—is there a place in my community where the tools could be housed? Are there people who currently own tools as individuals that they would instead like to put into the library for collective use? Are there people who are skilled at maintaining tools, or at organizing a check-in/check out process, who would like to volunteer or work for the library? These are not unattainable, pie-in-the-sky resources. These things (and people) already exist in nearly every community. It’s just a matter of pulling them together.

Jessica and Jeremy are working with Sidney Fellows, A Shoshone-Bannock member and scientist who is helping to facilitate a seed rematriation project with the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. Colonization separated many seeds from their original stewards as the US government and settlers forced those original stewards from their homelands. In the future we want to live in, all Native people can live in and care for their ancestral homelands. These lands are returned to their governance and stewardship. This requires a massive shift in our current systems and policies, and it can seem out of reach. But every seed that is returned to indigenous stewardship, and every garden grown to facilitate that transition, is a tiny step closer to this bigger goal. The Mandan Black corn seeds planted in this rematriation garden had been in storage for more than 25 years, and they germinated! The bean and sunflower seeds planted alongside the corn are also very old, and they are sprouting and growing vigorously.

This small planting doesn’t facilitate a large transfer of land, or equip the next generation with every one of the resources necessary to grow these seeds in perpetuity. But it is something that can be done, today, to move us closer to that goal. For each of the individual seeds planted, seeds who have been waiting for decades, this small step is everything. And as we take each step, the next one on the path becomes clearer.

After our lovely lunch of farm-grown greens, we all left equipped not only with a brighter vision of what is possible, but also many practical ideas that we can put immediately into practice in our own gardens or farms. We can also share these things with others in a network of possibility that continues to grow.

That evening, my imagination was stretched further at the plant-themed open mic hosted by the inimitable Brandon Follett in his Salmon backyard. His abode reflects his desire to live on the margins of mainstream culture, a commitment I believe is part of the secret sauce for his bottomless well of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. Brandon and his “Mental Foreplay” performances are something that must be experienced in person, not explained, but here is a small taste. Brandon writes poetry, short stories, and songs. He makes greeting cards that feature his dog in odd settings and sells them at a local health food store. And he’s committed to living an interesting life whether traveling the world or exploring the wilderness near his home in Salmon.

The open mic was yet another enactment of the kind of creative, non-judgmental, unplugged world I want to live in. We shared original songs, stories, poems, accordion melodramas, jokes. Brandon pulled up YouTube karaoke on his laptop and we sang along to everything from Weird Al’s “Addicted to Spuds” to the Presidents of the United Sates of America’s “Peaches.” One guy performed a parody of the Bee Gees “More than a Woman” (“More than an Onion”) written by his wife, who wasn’t able to attend but wanted to make sure her contribution was included. And Swift River Farm’s Jessica blew us all away with her rendition of Shady Grove (“Peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall…”). It was spontaneous, and weird, and tender, and fun. People danced and sang along. There wasn’t a 24-hour news feed or a canned laugh track to be found. We made our own entertainment, together—no need to binge a new show or endlessly doom scroll the awful news.

And at the end, Brandon skillfully reminded us that this type of diversity and creativity is crucial for our health and well-being, both individually and collectively. He encouraged us to stand up to safeguard and advocate for diversity in all its forms, whenever we get the chance. It’s hard to describe how full this experience made my heart feel. We NEED this type of collective imagination with our friends and neighbors right now. It strengthens our bonds with each other, and makes us better able to support each other and stand up together for what is right. And it allows us to truly enjoy our precious time here on earth, which is also so incredibly important.

Thanks to everyone in Salmon who is dreaming the future into existence. We’re so grateful to be on this journey with all of you! And we’re looking forward bringing more imagination into existence as we continue forward with the Seed Circus this summer!

 

Grow What You Like to Eat!