{"id":31449,"date":"2023-02-28T18:34:47","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T02:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=31449"},"modified":"2023-02-28T18:35:11","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T02:35:11","slug":"31449-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/31449-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Floods and Fires – How Geography Shapes Our Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

I do not often have the best sense of direction. I grew up in a part of Southern California where the North\/South bound 101 freeway travels East to West. I went to college in Santa Barbara where the ocean was to the South messed with my sense of direction. I am eternally grateful for Apple Maps and Car Play. My husband, on the other hand, has an internal GPS and can find his way just about anywhere. He loves looking at maps. Anytime we are driving somewhere, he will invariably give me some random detail about the geography of where we are. Geography played an important role in where we chose to settle after our children moved out. We knew we wanted to live in a cooler climate amidst the redwoods. My husband did his research and found the perfect location for us. We often joke that with our ten acres on the side of a mountain in a remote location, we have the perfect habitat to survive the zombie apocalypse.<\/p>\n

Geography plays a huge role in the political landscape of our world, as Tim Marshall details in his book Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World<\/em>. Marshall writes, \u201cThe land on which we live has always shaped us. It has shaped the wars, the powers, politics, and social development of the peoples that now inhabit every part of the earth.\u201d[1]<\/a> He goes on in this book to describe the world from Russia to the Arctic, detailing how the geography of each continent or area dictates the development of national borders, politics, and resources.<\/p>\n

The storms in early January gave us some insight into this. We ended up evacuating from our property, not because we thought Austin Creek on our property would flood, but because of expectation that the Russian River would flood, and we would have no means of getting out of our area. We lost power and our remote location and minimal population meant that it took a week before our property had power once again.<\/p>\n

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Looking further, I can see the impact of geography on my home state, California. Many political battles are fought here over resources, specifically water. Northern California complains about how much water gets sent to Southern California. Central California complains about the water limitations for their crops. The severe drought we have experienced in recent years only adds fuel to the fire \u2013 both figuratively and literally.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

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The geography of our small part of the world makes a huge impact on our lives. When you wash your hands or brush your teeth, do you leave the water running? I do not because I have lived for so long under drought conditions. I have learned to conserve water in different ways. However, living in California, I have always had easy access to fresh produce. My friend lived in Michigan for a few years and the cost and quality of winter produce was shocking to her. I am not sure I want to live somewhere where avocados are not available year-round!<\/p>\n

Understanding the geography of where I live impacts the way I do ministry. When our community was flooding, I was so encouraged to see the number of people who reached out to help those in need. The way I meet the needs of my community on the Russian River is not the same way I ministered when living in Thousand Oaks. Here, there are fewer people, and we are more spread out. It is a slower pace of life. Getting to know my community is my priority for ministry right now. How does the geography of your location impact the way you minister and love your community?<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Tim Marshall, Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World<\/em>. (New York, Scribner, 2015), pg. 1.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation\/2023\/01\/12\/california-rain-flooding-and-storms-havent-ended-drought-report\/11026793002\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I do not often have the best sense of direction. I grew up in a part of Southern California where the North\/South bound 101 freeway travels East to West. I went to college in Santa Barbara where the ocean was to the South messed with my sense of direction. I am eternally grateful for Apple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2633,2652],"class_list":["post-31449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp01-winchester-marshall","tag-tim-marshall","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31449"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31453,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31449\/revisions\/31453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}