The mornings are beginning to cool again as we edge towards that Goldilocks period in Fall where it is not oppressively hot during the day and it hasn't started freezing at night. It usually only lasts a few weeks. A moderate monsoon beginning in the middle of July and continuing through September has brought much needed rain and the land has undergone its second greening with late summer/fall flowers and butterflies providing even more color. Maybe I'm just getting used to it, but it did not seem that the monsoon brought out the overwhelming amount of life we experienced in our first summers here. So, we welcome every wildlife sighting, even if it includes troublemakers.
The river ran off-and-on from the middle of July and would occasionally attract life that we don't normally see here. A great blue heron, a cattle egret, violet-green swallows drinking from the surface, a belted kingfisher, and even a pair of American avocets in mid September resting on the river bank during their journey down to the shores of the Sea of Cortez.
The purple martins are still calling in the morning, but they will leave soon. I still occasionally see and hear gray hawks and summer tanagers even though the nights are getting quite cool. Luckily, the rock wrens have returned with their energetic family chatter. Looks like there will be lots of seed for the fall and winter. I’m looking forward to seeing who decides to show up.
I have read speculative fiction for most of my life. No doubt this was inspired by my father's love of The Lord of the Rings books and the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, though I didn't fully appreciate those works until later in life. Adventure and escape were the likely draw initially, but the exploration of "what if" is its real value.
I have recently been going back to books I read in the past or a series I didn't finish. I went back to a book that I read a decade ago around the time we left Seattle: Cory Doctorow's Walkaway. It has been interesting to revisit after all that I have learned in the past decade.
Walkaway explores a futuristic bohemian-style culture that has walked away from "Default Society". It is based upon a gift economy and draws much of its function from concepts currently found in Open Source Software and the Creative Commons initiative. None of this should be surprising, since Doctorow is heavily involved in both. Many of the concepts can also be found in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.
It also has a relationship to the Abundance Movement, which I wasn't familiar with at the time. There are a lot of references to "post-scarcity" and "abundance", and I have the same issues with the book’s assumptions as I do with the current incarnation.
What intrigued me on my second reading is how Walkaway explores a concept that I was introduced to through Jim Corbett's Goatwalking: going cimarron. According to Corbett, "A cimarron — sometime [sic] anglicised to “maroon” — is a domesticated animal or slave that goes free."1 The iconic example he uses of going cimarron is the Exodus of the Israelites.
In contrast, nomads take life sabbatically, as a gift from “God’s land.” Rejecting Cain’s way, the prophetic faith recalls its nomadic origins when making its offering of first fruits, beginning with the words, “My father was a cimarron Aramean” (Dt 26:5). From Tibet to Morocco, Kazakhstan to Baja, nomads identify with the cimarron, the domesticated animal that goes feral, the escaped slave who knows how to be at home in God’s land.2
Corbett’s goatwalking gave him knowledge about the desert lands of the American Southwest down through Mexico and Central America in ways only a true nomad could have. It is what he relied on during the Sanctuary Movement he helped found in the 1980s, promoting the rights of “freedom of movement” and social justice for those affected by the US Government's foreign policies.
Corbett's concepts continued to evolve into "symbiotic pastoralism" in his Sanctuary for All Life book. His final “walkaway” was to try to build a cimarron community here in Cascabel after the government cut off his ability to help refugees. He applied the rights he defended for refugees to the land itself and all of its human and non-human residents.
When Katie and I left Seattle a decade ago in a truck and small trailer, we didn't realize we were experimenting with the concepts of "walking away" or "going cimarron." All we knew was that change was inevitable and it was time to embrace it. We didn't realize we were attempting to leave "Default Society" in order to shed many of its abstractions, allowing us to explore our place in the wider world.
But it is also the case that we barely stuck our toes in the stream of walkaway as we skirted the outer realms of Default Society for the four years we actively travelled. It was our goal to look for a new place to settle, and that is what happened when the gravity of Cascabel finally pulled us in. And while we are still living in our trailer and keep to a fairly minimalist lifestyle, we are in relatively close proximity to Default Society and benefit directly from that.
The movie Nomadland is another “walkaway” story that captured my attention in the past, but it is closer to a documentary even though it follows a fictional character who is forced out of Default Society for various reasons. The story appears to be taken from Bob Wells' personal story (who appears as himself in the movie) of navigating job loss and other difficulties by buying a van and learning how to live out of it. He eventually wrote How to Live in a Car, Van or RV--And Get Out of Debt, Travel and Find True Freedom, a book I read before leaving Seattle and is the basis of Nomadland's story. That story eventually arrives at the nomadic community that gathers in Quartzite, AZ every winter. A massive collection of RVs, trailers, and vans housing people who have walked away from Default Society out of necessity or by choice. The movie only has a couple of actors and the rest are actual "residents" of the “walkaway” community, a real community that forms and re-forms every winter. Ultimately, the story of Nomadland is of someone forced out of Default Society and presented with the opportunity to return. It documents a real world “walkaway” (or cimarron) community that currently is able to maintain itself, at least until the government decides a better use for that land is a solar farm.
In the time since we settled in Cascabel, we have met numerous folk who make pilgrimages here because they have been exposed to Jim Corbett’s Goatwalking in various ways. It inspired episodes in the Future Ecologies podcast that have exposed even more folk to Corbett’s vision. Some of these folk have gone all in and acquired their own goat herd and travel around the country, staying places where they can wander wildlands and live off the land. A couple doing that now will be staying in the valley this winter, sharing what they have learned and the skills they have acquired. Through this process we have gotten to know Trevor Warmedahl, who travels around the world learning about traditional cheese making, as well as others who have shed many of the trappings of Default Society. Meeting these folk can make our humble abode feel like a luxurious resort in the middle of Default. But they are exploring the edges of society and challenging the stories that Default works really hard to maintain, even to its own detriment.
The stories of ownership and private property are directly challenged by the concepts of "going cimarron" and "walking away". Because these stories are so embedded in Default's psyche, the reaction to these challenges can become violent. Many nomadic communities have been demonized over the history of humanity in order to justify violence. But the stories of ownership and private property are fantasies, even within Default. Owning property does not protect that property from the destructive acts of other parties that aren't even necessarily the government. At least in Arizona, you don't own mining rights on your property. You can also be forced to give up your private land to a corporation's pipeline because the state will benefit financially. We no longer own many of the things we pay for anymore. We are granted a “license” to use something until the real “owner”, usually a corporation, decides you can’t use it anymore. The stories of private property and ownership create a system where you are less of a person if you do not own property, but the stories are just as constructed as fiat currency. Unfortunately, these stories are the underlying source of many acts causing death and destruction.
Being able to leave Default Society, the basic right of “freedom of movement”, underlies most attempts to create a better existence. It was exercised during the Exodus and when the Pilgrims left England. Many cultures have stories of leaving oppression. It is a right that is constantly curtailed by those in power, either coming to or leaving the land they pretend to rule, because it is a direct challenge to their power either way. Unfortunately, most land is now "owned" and there are few places for anyone to walk away to, usually because those who initially walked away believed that they now own the new land. One of the ways to keep power from becoming overly centralized and remaining in the hands of the people is to guarantee the human right of the freedom of movement. Allowing people to abandon those who oppress them is the surest way to balance power. The argument against this is always about safety. But that is an appeal to fear and ultimately serves those in power and not citizens.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.3
One of the shared concepts between walking away and going cimarron is being willing to do it again. In Walkaway's gift economy, there is no ownership or claim to personal property. If someone claims possession of a thing, building, or land and attempts to enforce property rights or restrictions on use, instead of fighting and trying to claim ownership, the community walks away, starts over, and builds something new for everyone. Corbett also says that being a cimarron community requires the ability to walk away when Default Society takes away the ability to live in symbiosis with the land. This is a core tenant of nomadic life that is hard for me to embrace as one who is a product of Default Society.
Change is inevitable. A mere 30 years ago, the San Pedro River had beavers on it and flowed 11 months out of the year in this part of the valley. Now, if it flows intermittently for a couple of months we are lucky. And then it is just runoff flow. The real river is now underground and appears to be sinking as the pools left over by the runoffs disappear faster than they did a few years ago. The average age of the population of the valley continues to increase. Concepts like goatwalking and “going cimarron” attract young folks’ imaginations and they explore the valley, but unless you are truly willing to disengage with the default economy, it is hard to make things work here as a young person. The land here has also re-caught the attention of industrial developers and those who are charged with making decisions about its use only see the money being flashed in front of them.
The latest challenge to the valley is the Phillips 66 pipeline, known as the Western Gateway Pipeline, one of two pipelines proposed for the area. This latest one is currently targeting the very habitat that our community has helped restore over the past decades. It would slice through the migration corridor that has been so diligently preserved, and it plans to go right through private property of those who have participated in that effort as well as through the grazing leases of the conservation ranch that has helped maintain that corridor. At the very least, it would add another maintenance road through the area and possibly even security measures that would impede migration. Survey planes are already circling the valley. One of my biggest fears is that both of the pipeline projects will bring up the idea of “improving” Cascabel Road. Such improvements could entail paving the currently 30 miles of dirt road. If this happened, it would recharge the effort for an I-10 bypass to enable those headed to or from Phoenix to skip Tucson. This would then lead to no end of semi-truck travel through the valley. Even without the full bypass, traffic speeds would increase, increasing the likelihood of roadkill every single day, effectively cutting off the migration corridor.
The book Walkaway was extremely engaging for the first quarter. Its discussions between Default Society and Walkaway Society are very thought provoking. But it became very hard for me to read this second time. About halfway through, it was clear to me how much I had changed and how much the world had changed from when it was written. The atrocities described felt all too possible given where the world is at now, and the mounting “what-ifs” began to make it hard to maintain a suspension of disbelief. There were too many magical technologies based on techno-optimists fantasies firmly based within the various stories of separateness, mind-body dualism, and the fear of death that are the drivers of Default Society. It worships rationality and reductivism, even though we are learning more and more that, on their own, they are what create the stories that allow us to destroy our own home. As a contrast, Corbett directly challenges the story of separateness, the story that we are somehow not a part of nature and that we can reductively abstract ourselves out of it without detrimental effects, and sees the reintegration of nature into society as essential to having a future. This is what the goatwalkers, and others inspired by his work, embrace.
Walkaway does forcefully demonstrate how hard it is to walk away anymore, though. The essential liberty of “freedom of movement” is continually being taken away under the guise of “temporary safety”. Mass surveillance is virtually a given now, just a few years later than Orwell’s predictions in 1984. How much longer will communities like Quartzite be allowed to exist? Challenging Default will never be easy. To counter this, Walkaway’s solution is to create the techno-optimist version of Heaven: the ability to digitize a human consciousness, or living essence, and then run it as a simulation in perpetuity, free from their original body. Even run copies of it. This is portrayed as the ultimate “walkaway” scenario. The techno-optimist solution to saving the planet is to abandon it, even though the resources required to do that will likely destroy it in the process. It mirrors the issues with Elon Musk’s visions. To me, it is an adolescent solution that doesn’t understand the true nature of reality.
Predicting the future is mostly impossible, otherwise we would have a huge ferris wheel in orbit dancing with shuttles from Earth to the Blue Danube. But playing out “what if” scenarios isn't futile. In fact, it is a uniquely human ability. The “what if” may be absurd, but what is being explored is the human response to it. The “what if” could be cautionary or hopeful. Either way, it is an opportunity to explore our own response to it. I do wonder what it says about us, though, that so many stories are obsessed with the idea of being able to copy the essence of a human being digitally and then simulating them as if this was some sort of heaven.
I am a product of Default Society and have barely explored walking away from it and definitely am not cimarron. The cimarron community that Corbett wrote about never really manifested, and you can see it in the eyes of those who visit after being exposed to his works. Yet, we continue to foster the ideas of “land ethic”, “symbiotic pastoralism”, and “giving the land back to the land”. Unfortunately, the challenges that face this valley have the potential to tear apart the community. The question that keeps arising for me, and one of the reasons I revisited Walkaway, is at what point do you have to walk away again and help create a new cimarron community? I have rejected many of the stories that Default Society requires you to accept in order to fully participate in it, and have no desire to return. If it takes over this valley, then I will want to look elsewhere. I don’t own this land, but I can make a case for why it is better to allow it to function as it has for eons than sacrifice it for short term corporate or state trust gains. If that case can’t be made here, then maybe it can be made in another place, in another life. But is this just abandoning the valley, the planet? If I am no longer able to live out my values, if Default takes over, then I eventually will need to move or die, either spiritually or physically. If that time comes, and it will be different for each person, then I will need to make that choice. Until then, I will continue to explore how to build a better future than where Default Society is leading us.
1 Corbett, Jim, GoatWalking: A Guide to Wildland Living, A Quest for the Peaceable Kingdom, Kindle ed., Cabreros Andantes, 2021, Ch. 1, Footnote 1.
2 Corbett, Jim, GoatWalking: A Guide to Wildland Living, A Quest for the Peaceable Kingdom, Kindle ed., Cabreros Andantes, 2021, Ch. 5, Pg 74.
3 Benjamin Franklin, 1755 letter to the Pennsylvania Assembly. The Google AI Overview is incorrect (another demotion for AI) when it states, "Today, people use it to argue against government surveillance or security measures, meaning the exact opposite of Franklin's original intent to defend community taxation for war." (Which was stolen from an incorrect NPR interviewee). It is actually arguing to the Governor (in England) that the frontier does not wish to be taken over by the British Army for temporary safety, because that would be ceding essential liberty, but does wish to be provided armaments to defend itself (which the proposed tax would pay for). See top comment on this Reddit post for a detailed analysis.