The Divides That Unite Us
One of the things that I have never gotten used to living in the Appalachians is driving past signs that tell me I have crossed the Eastern Continental Divide. Having worked all over Southern Appalachia this happens to me often and every time I do I am reminded of a legendary church in the mountains that straddles this line running North and South. The water that supposedly runs off of either side of the roof either flows into the French Broad to Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico, or toward Charleston and to the Atlantic Ocean. Legend has it that before running water the women’s outhouse was on the Atlantic side and the men’s was on the Mississippi side. Supposedly it was to be cordial and let the ladies have the shorter journey. Regardless, the stories of the divide somehow manage to bring people together and no matter where you go along the divide people seem to have their stories and want to hear yours.
As I point out often I am from the Midwest and grew up around the Missouri River. We lived in Missouri, but the rest of our family lived in Illinois so the closest thing we had to a divide was the Mississippi River. The thing about rivers is they are also about bringing things together. As all the water flows down steam and they keep coming together and getting larger and larger, they seem to bring everyone together. Rivers can be great dividers with only a few bridges to cross them, but when it comes to the life of the communities around and on either side of them, rivers seem to bring people and places together. Even though they are physically divided, the people on both sides have a desire to cross them and a shared dependency on the rivers as a source of life and livelihood. Just like water is the source of all life, it is also the source of shared life and community. On the other hand the Continental divides and the violent upheavals that created the mountains are definitely barriers that water just can’t cross, and all of the water that flows from them may eventually come together, but the ever building momentum of the rivers make those divides seem even farther apart.
I have been dealing with these divides everyday lately. When we created Botany Buddy our initial plant database was from Oregon State University. While the creator of the library is well traveled and captured most of the major species in the United States, the few that are missing are all East of the Rockies. I knew of this divide from my years working in nurseries and my experience with nursery stock dying in the trucks at higher elevations if you tried ship it from Oregon to the Midwest through the Rockies. What never dawned on me was just how prevalent this divide was in native species. It isn’t as obvious here on the East Coast. The highest point is only about 6500 feet, and there are lots of natural crossings in the 3-4,00 foot range. However this divide has become prevalent in my life even though it is a couple thousand miles away.
This divide runs through plants, animals, insects diseases and even weather that just can’t make it over the mountains. Everything that is found in an ecosystem on this continent is effected by the Western Continental Divide. Since Botany Buddy has launched we have found even more divides. Having users in 25 countries and 5 continents we have become obsessed with these divides and how to cross them. As we have been developing our web app we are finding partners throughout the states as well as these other continents, and in many cases those people have come to us. With all these divides in our lives, somehow in less than two months I am finding myself closer connected to people all around this world than I am many of the people in my own valley. My local stream hasn’t brought me to these people, and our rivers don’t even run together, but our divides have brought us together. On either side of every divide are people with similar desires, passions, and needs to bridge those barriers and open the free flow of people, trade, and most importantly ideas and information.
We have found the new rivers to bring us together right here on the Internet. Some people use technology and the web as a divide to hide from others and work in seclusion, but there is a ground swell of people out there using the new mediums to get connected and let their ideas run downstream to the waters that feed all life. When we started this project we were obsessed with the data, what data we had, and that it could be carried in your pocket. We were also concerned with making sure that information could be shared and that we could bring people together so they could bring people to us. However, before the original design of our first app was ever complete Botany Buddy as a whole was all ready moving into broader, deeper and faster moving waters. By not focusing on solely the iPhone, we have been able to create a product that isn’t based on divvying up our information for you to put in your pocket but rather connect you to even more. While a device can help you get connected, the app platform is designed to isolate information, and encourages keeping you isolated with native, unadulterated information contained solely on the app.
Like a flood upon launching this app it became clear to us that the rivers that would bring these divides together actually flew over those mountains, not between them, and they were the channels of the Internet. At first this really scared me. I have seen areas completely devastated by invasive species, and some of the first on-line garden businesses I noticed were people shipping plants internationally. When it comes to exotic invasive species somethings need to be divided for a reason, and need to stay that way. What was even crazier was I saw people shipping plants from England to California even though they were native to where they already were. They were also paying five times the local price for these plants. At first this notion of crossing the great divide was scaring me. The last thing I wanted to be was a conveyor of ecological disaster.
Thankfully, more often we are approached by people who understand that what we are trying to create is an every changing and evolving reference source, not a sales floor. We want to bring people the tools they need to do their jobs better and more efficiently, but most importantly we really want to make sure they have the information to do it responsibly. We also want to make sure they can do it no matter what phone they are on, or even if they are just sitting at their desk. I moved to this field from private design because as much as I loved the one on one interaction I had with my clients, I felt I could do more good if we all could interact and have access to equal, objective, accurate, and complete information whenever we needed it.
The very physical divides that have affected our environments continue to effect our travels, but they don’t have to interfere with the travel of our thoughts. Just like the story of the old men and the church have brought together all stripes of people who have crossed the Eastern Continental Divide, your stories of your endeavors are helping bring us together with people all over the world. The shared desire to have the information we need to make responsible decisions that benefit us all is what drives us everyday, and late into the night. These connections that we are making are real, and that is why the results will be too. Without these divides we wouldn’t have made these connections, and we wouldn’t be a hundredth the resource we will eventually become. In the end, we couldn’t do this without you and the stories and information that you share, and for that we are thankful for the divides that have brought us all together.
