FOLK ECOLOGY

As with indigenous cultures, ideas persist about the particular abilities of folk cultures to sustainably manage the environment. Although the attention to conservation varies from culture to culture, folk cultures’ close ties to the land often produce detailed local ecological knowledge within folk groups. This becomes particularly evident when they migrate. Typically, they seek new lands similar to the one left behind. A good example can be seen in the migrations of Upland Southerners from the mountains of Appalachia between 1830 and 1930. As the Appalachians became increasingly populous, many Upland Southerners began looking elsewhere for similar areas to settle. Initially, they found an environmental twin of the Appalachians in the Ozark-Ouachita Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas. Somewhat later, others sought out the hollows, coves, and gaps of the central Texas Hill Country. The final migration of Appalachian hill people brought some 15,000 members of this folk culture to the Cascade and Coast mountain ranges of Washington State between 1880 and 1930 (Figure 2.43).

Figure 2.43 The relocation diffusion of Upland Southern hill folk from Appalachia to western Washington. Each dot represents the former home of an individual or family that migrated to the Upper Cowlitz River basin in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State between 1884 and 1937. Some 3000 descendants of these migrants lived in the Cowlitz area by 1940. What does the high degree of clustering of the sources of the migrants and subsequent clustering in Washington suggest about the processes of folk migrations? How should we interpret their choices of familiar terrain and vegetation for a new home? Why might members of a folk society who migrate choose a new land similar to the old one? (After Clevinger, 1938, p. 120; Clevinger, 1942, p. 4.)

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Although folk cultures have largely disappeared, the human inventiveness, curiosity, and need related to local ecologies remain, as we noted. Thus, there are many examples where local people derive what we might call folk solutions when confronted with a challenge of physical geography. The history of mountain bikes provides an example. Mountain bikes were invented when young men in the mountain regions of the Western United States attempted to figure out how to adopt existing technology to a new enterprise. Bikes were cannibalized for parts and reassembled into something new and local. Enthusiasts rode these single-speed “clunkers” with big balloon tires, careening down mountain trails and dirt roads in a sport that did not yet have a name. Eventually, these locally imagined, hand-assembled clunkers became the rough prototypes of today’s mass-produced mountain bikes. Another good example is the swamp buggy, a folk solution to the problem of navigating in and around the Everglades and associated wetlands of southern Florida (Figure 2.44). Local hunters in southwest Florida needed a way to access wildlife. In the 1940s they came up with a solution that involved installing huge balloon tires, oversized suspension, and other modifications on pickup trucks. Jacked up high, these vehicles are able to move through standing water and over rough terrain in a way that no mass-produced vehicle can. They remain the best solution to the challenge of local geography and are a common sight in the south Florida wetlands landscape.

Figure 2.44 A folk solution to navigating Florida’s swamplands. In the 1940s, local residents of the greater Everglades region began modifying truck chassis to better navigate the swampy landscape. The oversized tires and suspensions allowed hunters to drive through inundated land. The solution was widely adopted and is used today by hunters and tour operators. (Time & Life Pictures/ Getty Images.)