How Bali’s Sharma Springs Inspired My Eco-Fiction Novel

At some point between its release date of April 17, 2020, and the following September, I watched Bali: Sharma Springs, an episode from Apple TV’s documentary series Home. I know this, because it inspired the setting of a series of novel chapters I wrote over the Labour Day long weekend of the same year.

During that first viewing, though, my book manuscript was not on my mind. Like many of us at the time, I was just trying to survive the pandemic. And the post-apocalyptic dread that came with it.

What better way than watching a thirty-minute feel good program about a house made of bamboo?

How Sharma Springs Inspired My Writing

Maybe it was the serenity of the opening scene that got me, the camera gliding over a misty rainforest. Or the words of Elora Hardy, the designer of Sharma Springs, as she said: “You can grow a house in four years. And in order to get there, in order to grow it, you need sunlight, rainwater, and not much else.”

Maybe it was that the 6-story, 4-bedroom luxury home was the tallest bamboo structure built in Bali. Or that every part of it—right down to light switches and door knobs—was fashioned out of a plant that is, in fact, a grass.

It could also have been that, only a few years before the house was completed, none of the bamboo used in its construction even existed. This fact would have challenged everything I’d thought possible about sustainable home building until then.

As Elora Hardy put it, “In terms of a material resource there isn’t anything that compares.”

Certainly, this idea of bamboo being a truly renewable building material would have resonated with the climate writer in me. At the time, I was drafting a speculative fiction novel (currently on hiatus but still in the works) about a young space assassin who returns to Earth to join a group of eco-heroines meant to save the planet.

Most certainly, the sheer majesty of the place would have impressed itself on my mind. The curving walls. The rounded staircase. The way the building’s levels looked like ships floating amidst the tree tops of its surrounding forest.

I would have been—without a doubt—deeply in awe that something so ethereal had materialized into reality.

And so, it’s not surprising that during that fateful September 2020 long weekend, a soaring city of bamboo homes bobbing about in the canopy of a misty rainforest made its way into the novel’s manuscript.

This place, called The Elora Sky Sanctuary, appeared near what were once Alberta’s Oil Sands. With the Filthy Rich having fled to space and abandoned our dying planet, Earth was regenerating. Vast bamboo forests had grown up in response to extreme climate shifts. They seemed drawn to the edges of the ecological devastation left by the defunct oil industry.

And my young space assassin? She was on her way back home to Earth.

Why Am I Talking About This Now?

While others rang in the new year last December, I debated renewing Apple TV+ for a month just to rewatch the episode. After five years, I wanted to know if it still resonated with me in the same way.

Since writing that chapter in 2020, new information about healthy ecosystems has informed my writing. I’ve come to understand the importance of preserving and protecting what remains of our native forests if we want to survive the current climate crises. Since these bio-diverse systems have already endured thousands of years of climate extremes, they’re naturally resilient. Survival is literally imprinted on their DNA.

As well, I’ve become aware of the danger of invasive, non-native species of plants in the fight to keep our current forests alive. In this case, I wondered, before I watched the episode again, if I wanted a bamboo forest growing in the middle of where the Boreal Forest should be.

What Did I Decide?

After watching the episode and reflecting on how plants travel through dispersal, I’ve decided my imaginary bamboo forest still has a place in the novel. Since I’m exploring how the planet might rebound if left to its own devices, I want to stay open to all possibilities.

Certainly, the fact that bamboo grows quickly is helpful in the face of extreme weather shifts. These forests could create precipitation in an increasingly dry environment and produce high levels of oxygen while capturing excess CO2. Furthermore, bamboo, which is known to remediate contaminated soils, is a plausible plant to have suddenly grown up around the oil fields.

And let’s face it. We still don’t know how trees and plants do what they do, much less understand how to fix areas we have razed completely. So maybe bamboo will be the stop gap Canada needs to give our natural forests a chance. Or maybe it’s just a crazy idea.

Either way, I’m deeply grateful for the inspiration I received from the Bali: Sharma Springs episode of Home. My novel is much more interesting for it.

And, ultimately, rewatching it reaffirmed my commitment to exploring themes of regeneration in my writing. As well, it reminded me that anything is possible when we release limiting thoughts about what could be.

Thank you for reading. ❤️

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