Bioregioning in Public

You may have heard of Building in Public — founders sharing the messy, unfiltered reality of building a company.

I want to spark something different.

Bioregioning in Public — the practice of 1) walking the talk, and 2) talking the walk towards a bioregional earth.

The old maps are dissolving.

Not just the paper ones. The ones we carried inside — the stories that told us where we belonged, what we owned, who we were. Nation-states are failing. Institutions are struggling. And beneath the noise of collapse, something ancient is remembering itself.

Not a new idea. A memory. A bioregion doesn’t need to be invented. It already exists — in the watershed above your head, the soil beneath your feet, the web of species that has been creating the conditions for your life long before you arrived. It is the oldest architecture of belonging we have. And it is waiting to be remembered.

In 1982, systems thinker Donella Meadows dreamed of a global network of bioregional learning centres — not walled off from ordinary life, but deeply woven into it. Places that would collect, make sense of, and share what each bioregion knows about itself. Centres that could help a system “see and sense itself” clearly enough to heal. That dream is forty years old. And it is more urgent now than when she wrote it.

We are not inventing something new. We are remembering the bioregional dream. And it’s time to live it in public.

Somewhere along the way, the word “amateur” became an insult. A sign of not being good enough. Not professional enough. Not expert enough. But the word amateur originates from the Latin amare — to love. An amateur is simply one who loves.

So my invitation: become a bioregional amateur — someone who loves their place enough to 1) walk the talk and 2) talk the walk.

The bioregional dream has been alive for decades. Written about, mapped, theorised, convened. And still the watershed doesn’t know your name. Still the soil has never felt your hands. Still the song of the more-than-human life has not reached your heart. It’s time to step outside — literally. To leave our comfortable air-conditioned rooms. To enter the real. And choose embodiment over abstraction. Presence over performance. The bioregional dream has been patiently waiting for our bodies. People willing to live the story of “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible”. Realizing we are on an eternal pilgrimage of coming home to place — and that the pilgrimage begins the moment you step out the door.

A system that cannot see itself cannot heal itself. When you share the real story — the learnings and the failures, the breakthroughs and the confusions, the beauty and the grief — you become a warm signal in an ocean of cold noise. You widen the field of what others believed possible. Somewhere, someone is waiting for your signal. Not the polished version. The true one. You have a responsibility to share it — because the gift you withhold from fear is a gift the world goes without. So face the fears that keep you silent. Cross the threshold anyway — imperfectly, honestly, generously — so that others find the courage to cross their own. Share the imperfect journey. Do it publically. Name what you are learning. Invite for resonance. Because the bioregional dream is enlivend through people finding the courage to say: I am doing this too. Let’s come home together. Your unique expression — whether it's writing, art, film, poetry, or simply your presence — is not incidental to the work. It is the work.

Talking without walking keeps it abstract. Walking without talking keeps wisdom private. But when you do both — when you live the story and share it honestly — you become a warm signal in an ocean of cold noise. You widen the field of what others believed possible. And you invite more to walk the path of life.

So let’s walk the talk. And talk the walk. So that we can all come home together.

Bioregioning in Public is greatly inspired by Joe Brewer from the Design School for Regenerating Earth. He is one of the most honest and embodied examples of someone truly walking the talk and talking the walk towards a bioregional earth. Please give him a follow on LinkedIn or Substack.

I have been learning, slowly and imperfectly, what it means to come home to a place. It is not a simple story. The forest fires are visible from where I sit. The land is being cleared for cattle. The indigenous peoples who have been stewards of these mountains for thousands of years are facing violence, displacement, erasure. And I — a European male from the Netherlands — am still struggling with my Spanish.

I do not have the words yet for much of what I am experiencing. The initiations have been too deep. The reality too complex. The responsibility too sacred. But this is me, beginning anyway. Bioregioning in public. Imperfectly. Honestly. With love.

I am asking you to hold me accountable to keep sharing — the highs and the lows, the clarity and the confusion, the beauty and the grief. And I am asking you to do the same.

This is not a finished story. It is the first step on a bioregional path that appears only as we walk it. And talk it.

Let’s all become bioregional amateurs. For the love of life.

Let’s start #BioregioningInPublic