Years ago, I read a book that probed deeper than any I had read up until that time. I was just reminded of the book and it’s author Chellis Glendenning when I came upon an interview with her from 2004. I’m going to try and meet with Chellis next month when I visit friends in Santa Fe.

For now, here is the interview I discovered. I t reflects thinking that is beginning to awaken something in me that is another step toward my deepening feeling about my place in the world and connection with nature.

The interview was conducted by Aric McBay of In the Wake.

Chellis Glendinning is writer and a psychologist specializing in recovery from post-traumatic stress. She is the author of Waking Up in the Nuclear Age (1987); When Technology Wounds (1990); My Name Is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization (1994); Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy (1999, 2002); and Chiva: A Village Takes on the Global Heroin Trade (2005). Off the Map won the National Federation of Press Women 2000 Book Award. I interviewed her by telephone in January, 2005.

Aric McBay: Can you tell us about the community where you are living now?

Chellis Glendinning: I live in the village of Chimayó, New Mexico. It is one of a number of villages, a village system, that was established in the 1700′s and the 1800′s. It was Spanish culture meeting an indigenous situation. But the people themselves were only partly Spanish. A lot of them were Mexican natives, and a number of Moors and Jews. Also there was intermarrying with Native people here in the Rio Grande Valley. And then there were also various people who were fleeing Europe, so there were Greeks, Irish, and other kinds of folk. What we call the result is Chicano, but it’s a in fact a big mixture.

Each village has its own common lands that usually extend out from the village into the forest. So the setup is fairly archetypal the world around, and it’s a setup of sustainable living with hunting, fishing, and small agriculture. I’ve been living here for more than twelve years.

AM: Can you tell us a little bit about the changes that have been happening recently in your village in terms of encroachments by the dominant culture?

CG: There’s been a huge change. Such that the place is unrecognizable in a way because, in I’d say the last four years, around the turn of the millennium, the changes really started. And they all happened at once so it’s hard to point to one thing. Before this, the old way was very much being lived and assumed. The old philosophy was part and parcel of every breath.

Then all of a sudden, we get the big freeway coming up from Sante Fe, we get the WalMart, we get the cell phones, we get the satellite dish. For the longest time it seemed like just one person in the village had a computer, and all of a sudden, computers became common. Right now we’re just getting the Home Improvement, so when that thing opens it is going to be the end of traditional adobe architecture.

And also a lot of money that came in. So that there was new clothes, new cars, and everything changed.

To continue reading the Chellis Glendenning interview, click here.

And a 2008 video on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which is something most of uu have whether we want to admit it or not.