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Chapter 8PLACELooking at your place with new eyes. Whether you are looking for a new propertyon which to build or at renovating your existing place some of the easiest and longlasting opportunities exist for reducing your impact. See where natural resourcescome for f ree. The sun, rain, wind, woods, flowers, and garden. How can you mimicnature in order to satisfy your requirements for home, food, work andtransportation? These are the fundamentals of Natural Living. Many of them derivefrom a very careful look at plac e, site, area, landscape, environment, climate andcommunity.Place is a something we may take for granted. And yet, as in nature, we see thatevery little nook and cranny offers different opportunities and challenges.Sometimes finding and seeing these takes a new way of thinking. How would aBeaver construct things if this area was suitable habitat for them? What do theplants do to survive? Can we learn and work with the natural elements to find thebest way to blend with each space.When we look to buil d for our home or dig the land to grow food there are manyways we can retain the local dynamics of the area. First of all we can try to minimizeany impact at all by leaving as much as possible as is. When trees and land aretransformed it may be possible to restore or reuse these material. Green roofing andpassive solar provide opportunities for this type of restoration of the locallandscape. Using the material for parts of the construction or returning them totheir natural state can help significantly towards helping the site return to a state ofhealth. When we build we must realize that we are wounding the space and mayneed to help return it to health.Natural site features to look for:R Southern exposure127