When a house sinks it reminds me of what came before it: marsh, wetland, sand, riverbed. Perhaps this house was not meant to be here.

These days we’re accustomed to tripping on remnants of rebar and shards of concrete when we walk through a cleared field, but the remains of Turtle Island houses didn’t leave such intrusive traces for us to now observe. Perhaps the houses that were built here for thousands of years were intended to be gracious guests: to help the processes of decomposition when they had run their course. Instead of rich soil and well-tended wildness, empty houses and houseless people are what I encounter these days. I see humble encampments ripped apart by police dogs in the night. I watch big, shoddy construction pop up in once bucolic places, not meant to last, but not built to die peacefully either. 

There is a hideousness to all the plastic and concrete churned out each day--but there is beauty in the shards, too: found, free, and re-formed. There is something both disgusting and optimistic to me about shelters made from trash in the most beautiful wildernesses. We did not create this trash: capitalism did. We are guilty of over-consumption, of needing worthless things. Our ancestors poisoned the soil but we can learn about the plants that can repair that damage. We can grow vegetables and give them away. We’re drowning in trash that won’t biodegrade for a million years, might as well build something from it. Might as well integrate all our shadows. We didn’t choose to live in a wasteland but we’ve made it our home.

Nowadays when the structure of my life starts to creak and crack, it’s an opportunity to remember where I’m standing and how I got here. As when anything breaks, I’m prone to feel defeated, to ask Job-like questions. My softening comes from remembering. Remembering that I found half my construction materials in the trash and pasted them together with mud, slathering the wet and gritty stuff sloppily with friends, cackling all the while. Maybe my house wasn’t made to survive the frightening weather patterns we’ve seen. And maybe one day in the spring it’ll be warm enough that I’ll want to sleep outside.