Community law is not the legal system; it is a way of behaving that is unspoken and unwritten, but mostly realized among people who share a place. Of course there are many terms in psychological, social and cultural studies to describe how people act with each other, but in a small rural place community law is not a detached examination of applied concepts, it is a certain tilt of will.
Here are some examples of community law in action: Telling the house sitter to call a neighbour to help with an alarmingly low tire; asking the guy with tools in his truck if he knows how to get into your locked car; creating a spontaneous phone tree among people who have farm animals to find who is missing the sheep that has turned up in your yard; lifting off branches that have fallen on young trees and ferns as you walk through an adjoining property to the beach.
So what are the community laws embedded in each of these four examples?
Flat tire: There is an expectation of receiving and offering help to people one does not know.
Locked car: There is trust in the honesty of others.
Lost sheep: Animals as well as people deserve to be safe and well cared for.
Fallen branches: Property is neither wholly private nor openly public but held in a kind regard by those who use and care for it.
Each of these examples also has a deeper thread in common: that of “we" instead of “I.” In a remote location such as Cortes Island, there is no, or only very expensive, access to services from strangers: BCAA, a locksmith, the SPCA. What we have is each other and so we cannot afford to isolate ourselves behind gates and surveillance cameras—figuratively or literally.
Why is this blog illustrated with images of cloud-swept mountains? Because community law is like this: ways of behaving that are both solid and enduring, and are also a shifting flow that depends on the nuance of intention and intuition. And why pay attention to these laws ? For those of us who have been here awhile they don't enter consciousness so much as they just are the way we are. For those of you who have recently come here, I think they do bear thinking about, because this is how you live now.
