Abandon Any Hope of Fruit

The inspiration behind this weeks' post comes not from any of my garden books, but actually from a little buddhist nun named Pema Chodron, who changed my life with her simple and light hearted teachings on compassion.
In her book, “Start Where You Are,” Pema addresses the buddhist teaching slogan: “Abandon any hope of fruition.” The gist of the slogan is if you have hope that you will master your bad habits and overcome your insecurities, you never will reach goals. For in looking to the future, you are no longer accepting the preset, and as long as you don't accept yourself as you are in this moment you will never gain the compassion to truly grow. I'm a very goal oriented person and so this is a radical concept for me. If everything is alright in this moment, than what do I have to work for? What do I do with myself?
She goes on to say that one can learn to see our buddha nature, our awakened nature, in everything that we do even the negative stuff. When you are moody you are “moody buddha,” when you are on top of the world you are “on the top of the world buddha, or when you are berating yourself for making that mistake for the 6000th time you are “making that mistake for the 6000th time buddha.”

So what does this have to do with gardening? Gardening with a sacred intention is accepting your garden exactly how it is in this moment. Much of the destructive behaviour we enact on the earth is because we refuse to accept her and her gifts as they are in this moment. We always want something more and something better, and we just create more problems.
Just as we could identify our own buddhas, we could do the same for the garden. When a squirrel keeps eating your strawberries and leaving you none, it's “feeding the squirrels and not me buddha.” When aphids will not leave alone my cabbage no matter what I do, it's “aphids going to town on my cabbage buddha.” Or when a fungus kills off all my tomatoes, it's “tomato fungus is alive and well buddha.”

For people who are waiting for their next meal from their farm or garden, this must sound like elitist and idealistic bull. If a fungus just killed off the crop that was going to feed your family or community, seeing the buddha in that situation is near impossible. I'm not going to pretend that I know an answer to that situation. Only that if as a community, local or global, we were able to practice this level of acceptance, perhaps there would be less people in the world faced with such devastation. Perhaps, we could attend to the present needs of our community, than be distracted by our constant thriving for the future. Is this idealistic bull? I don't know. What do you think?


(Orginally posted on growfoodfeedspirit.blogspot.com)

Wandering Reflections

Slowing down to explore the abundance, connectivity and wonder of the more than human world reorganizes and checks the ego's assumptions, images and the like that are so pervasive in every second of our lives. Within seconds of letting go it becomes easier to sense the wonder and mystery of place. This letting go also opens us up toGaia's natural cycles and systems that so gracefully support the abundance of life found all around us. These are the very cycles, systems and forms of life that we've mechanistically disconnected and removed ourselves from over the past 8 - 12,ooo years. Even in death and decay Gaia has a creative cycle in place, rejuvenating and revitalizing herself and all of life. She is open and transparent about this process. Death, to all life, is inevitable and Gaia is atop of the food chain. I am moved by the honesty, process, color and vibrancy of her creation.

The Second Cocoon

“To relinquish your former identity is to sacrifice the story you have been living, the one that defined you, empowered you socially - and limited you. This sacrifice captures the essence of leaving home.”
Bill Plotkin

Leaving home (both literally and figuratively) is perhaps the most pivotal and yet horrifying phase on the transcendental journey from adolescence into adulthood, or in Bill Plotkins’ words, “... into the fully embodied life of your soul.” Bill refers to this process as the second cocoon, “the time between death and rebirth.” He further illustrates the meaning of this time in one’s life and the gentleness, mentality, perseverance and creativity needed to wander through this arduous phase through a poem by T.S. Elliot:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be to love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of the running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

As a wanderer in the second cocoon, “Two essential tasks must be addressed: saying good-bye to the old and making yourself ready for the new.” He adds, “There are two subtasks involved in truly leaving home: honing your skills of self-reliance, and relinquishing attachment to your former identity.” Bill provides us with the examples of seven commonly used practices to assist us, the wanderers, through this process: completing unfinished business from earlier life stages, giving up addictions, welcoming home the loyal solider, healing work with the sacred wound, learning to chose authenticity over social acceptance, making peace with the past: the death lodge and learning the art of disidentification through meditation.

The example of learning how to chose authenticity over social acceptance spoke to me the most. “Now in the second cocoon, you must take up the practice of reversing the priority between acceptance and authenticity. Authenticity and integrity become your foundations for asking the deeper questions of soul.” I think I’m a pretty authentic person but there’s something that stirs from within when I think of, read or hear the word authentic. I’ve given this a considerable amount of thought and I think the source of it all is that I’m ready to move on in my wandering. I’ve realized that my soul’s journey is still in adolescence and that I continue to live and guide my life according to ideas, ethics, morals and systems that were formulated when I was both physically and mentally in adolescence. It’s something to realize, truly realize, that the only hinderance in becoming the person you want to be is yourself, or rather your adolescent self. The identity that I’ve so carefully constructed and protected up to this point has served it’s purpose but it’s not who I want to be anymore. It doesn’t reflect the world I see. I sometimes feel like I’m multiple people throughout the day. I have the version of myself that goes to work, the social version, this version of me typing behind the computer, the version of me that... well, you name it. It’s exhausting to even think about, and for what? Social acceptance? Because I’m a Libra and want everyone to like me? It doesn’t make any sense. Bill, in his seemingly infinite wisdom, has this to say about authenticity:

“Distinguishing authenticity from deception - at any stage of life - requires the ability to access and understand your emotions, desires, and values. But the more advanced practice of choosing authenticity over social acceptance requires something more: you must tell yourself and your intimate others the truth, all of it, as deep as you can, especially when it’s difficult. What you express is from the heart and intended to serve both yourself and others. You must adopt the practice of making all your actions align with what you know to be emotionally and spiritually true.”

I believe that authenticity emanating from the souls purpose is key to creating sustainable and effective communities. These are the communities we want to reestablish, right? Communities made-up of people who want to be there, who need to be there. I also understand that communities can be a source of authenticity. Perhaps the reason we lack fully authentic people (and therefore, soulful adults) is because our culture subscribes to or is even based on inauthenticity, secrecy and the like?

I end this post with an announcement... I have decided to join a men’s group called, Making Soup from the Bones: Grief, Initiation and the Healing of the Masculine Soul. Our purpose will be to mythically and creatively redefine and heal our souls through community. I also plan to begin taking art classes sometime after the new year, working with music in someway shape or form and I will take part in my first week long vision quest (hopefully via Bill Plotkin’s organization or Rights of Passage here in Washington) shortly after graduating at the end of next spring / summer. I can feel my soul reaching out, wanting to change. It’s been doing this for some time now and I’ve managed to ignore it but I can’t any longer...

--------------------------------

Suddenly the outline of his life shimmered like a mirage and twisted itself into an entirely new shape in his mind, and he nearly laughed out loud.

“Of course,” he whispered triumphantly. “Of course!” And he meant by this: Of course I’ve betrayed myself. I was sure I wouldn’t, but of course I have. For comforts, for pleasant companionship, for acceptance, for respectability, for security. For the sake of appearing to be a sensible, mature fellow. I thought I could get away with it, but of course I didn’t. No one can.

It didn’t matter now. The betrayal was over. By night fall he would be behind the wheel of his Volvo with all he would ever need from this life in a single suitcase. It was going to be a nightmarish day, an agonizing day. There were other lives to be shattered along with his own, because other lives had been molded against his. Three others would share in the common disaster, but he would defer all guilt until later. This was the way it had to be.

Because it was time to resume the abandoned search. The search for a road. A certain road.

- Daniel Quinn, The Holy.

Prior to the start of Summer Quarter, 2009

I have been living near Meadowbrook Pond for seven years now and up until the spring of 2009 I think I have only visited the area twice and on both occasions I only stayed very briefly.
My first visit to Meadowbrook with the intention of surveying the area for my study in the Kamana Naturalist Course was in the beginning my Spring Quarter of 2009 at Antioch. I was to choose a personal practice for my Transformative Leadership course and after a few different attempts I chose to make Meadowbrook Pond the spot for my personal practice and place of daily reflection.
I returned the next day to photograph the area for my Transformative Leadership reports and to send to Dan Corcoran, my future advisor at the Wilderness Awareness School. Above are the photographs that I took that day.






Below is my Personal Practice report from Transformative Leadership back in my spring quarter.


Assignment 2: Personal Practice
Intention: To increase insight and self-awareness: to develop reliance on intuition: and to increase the ability to stay grounded in who you are.
Background: Our intentions are often sabotaged when a lack of awareness of our own assumptions, beliefs and patterns of thinking distort our perception. Likewise, in the hustle of every-day living, and external pressures to conform, we may find it difficult to discern our own inner wisdom. We often become mechanistic, relying on our mental, conceptual ability and excluding other sources of knowing. Adopting a personal practice for the duration of the course will provide an opportunity to experiment with one way to stay grounded and aware, and to access more of your personal resources.
Strategy: Select one practice that you can commit to, on a daily, or at least several-days-a-week basis, for the duration of the course. A practice may be meditation, a daily walk, exercise, inspirational reading, journaling, gardening, etc. On the day of your team’s completion of the assignment below, please be prepared to discuss your journey with the class.


Kamana is:
The Kamana Naturalist Training Program is a four level home study course that covers the naturalist background needed to engage in the wilderness arts, including tracking, bird language, survival and native living skills, traditional herbalism, and naturalist mentoring.
It is the ultimate blueprint for a student's time spent in the field and in conducting nature-related research. Students become confident naturalists, melding modern field ecology with the skills of a native scout. Naturalist and tracker Jon Young, who uniquely designed it to model the process in which Tom Brown, Jr. mentored him as a boy, wrote it.
Kamana is completed "at your own pace and at your own place." It may take one to four years total to complete all four levels of the program.

Since I already have had previous experience with courses like this, Dan at WAS is starting me out at Level II
A two large parts of all the Kamana levels are

Field Exercise One: Finding a Secret Spot
This is an area you visit on a regular basis where you will practice exercises that expand your awareness of nature and knowledge of place. You'll discover it's much more that just picking a spot to sit in the woods. All future exercises will stem from this searching and mapping experience
My "secret" spot (no longer a secret, is the Thorton Creek Greenspace located in Meadowbrook Park.
http://www.seattleurbannature.org/Resources/NEmaps/ne-7.html
You are supposed to pick a space you can easily get to on a daily basis. Meadowbrook is a 5-minute bike ride from my house.

Field Exercise Two: The Sense Meditation
Learning to overcome that little "voice" that prevents us all from really tuning into the language of nature. In other words, "Lose your mind and come to your senses!"
This is really the Personal Practice for Transformative Leadership. I know I will be continuing this after this quarter, I thought I would utilize this assignment to get in the habit.
Deliverables for this assignment and the Kamana course will be journaling, personal and field notes.

There is a lot more to Kamana II, which I will get to in my summer course.

This is also a personal practice that serves my assignment from my monthly men's group. I have been assigned to take better care of myself.
I had a physical exam shortly after my daughter was born and right before I started grad school here at Antioch. It was an extremely thorough. I even had an Echo Cardio test done by a cardiologist. The results of my exam concluded that I was healthy as a horse. My blood pressure was just below 120 over 80, which is a normal blood pressure for my age and condition,
Two weeks ago my doctor told me my blood pressure is now 139 over 89. 140 over 90 is considered high blood pressure. She said that the second I get onto a crowded I-5 my blood pressure will elevate to well over 140 over 90.
I haven’t checked it since then, but I am hoping that my personal practice will help bring it back down.

My Secret Spot:
Thornton Creek Greenspace located in Meadowbrook Park
* The “Secret Spot” is not necessarily a place where no one else can find out about, but more so a place that is special to me, or a place that “feels” like home. It means “special to me alone”. Jon Young has recommended a book by Forest Carter called The Education of Little Tree. In the book you will find the meaning of the Secret Spot that Young is referring to.

Monday , August 17, 2009

Monday, August 17

Response to The Resource Trail, A required reading in the Kamana II Naturalist Course- Introduction by Jon Young

Jon Young has an excellent way of communicating to potential or new students. Although is an expert in his field as a naturalist, has studied under Tom Brown Jr. and has founded the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, Washington, he still has the sensitivity to not intimidate those who have little to no experience with the natural world.
The majority of Western society these days has had little exposure to the natural world. Individuals cannot be blamed for their lack of exposure. It is simply the conditions in which they have been raised. Our entire Western infrastructure is designed to go against nature, not to be apart of it. One can go from a well insulated, airtight and air-conditioned house to their air-conditioned car in the garage of their suburban home to the parking garage in their office building, which is also sealed and air-conditioned. Then they can reverse the whole process at the end of the day. Exposure time to the natural world for the day: zero.
Chances are they will have a meal or two of packaged food from a grocery store that was processed at an unknown location (maybe not even in the same hemisphere). Ask where their chlorinated, fluoridated water comes from and chances are they will tell you that it comes from either the sink, the pipes or the city.

How can we remove the blinders from the people around us? According to Young, the first step in approaching an individual is to help them realize how unaware they are. An excellent tool that was developed by Young and is used by the WAS is what is called the “Alien Test”. I took the Alien Test when I began Kamana 2. It is a one hundred thirteen question test, followed by a written reflection on the experience of taking the test. The one hundred thirteen questions test your knowledge of native plants in your bioregion, what type of ticks is in your area, hydrology, local wildlife etc. I failed the test miserably, which only tells me that there is a lot I need to learn.

“Why do we despise the planet which gives us life?”
-The Last Winter (2006)

The planet we live on is sick and in danger. Why do we not treat it with the same empathy as if one of our family members were sick? Instead we have created a society that separates us from what provides us with life. And we treat that provider as a “natural resource” and we have done are best to consume as much of it as we can, as fast as we can for the sake of economic growth and progress.

How is progress measured? What are the indicators?

From Monday, July 27

I have allot of work ahead of me. Tonight, I came down to my secret spot with very little agenda, aside from trying to feel the place out and decide where my anchor point will be. The first place that seemed to feel right was on the side of the brook and underneath the footbridge. The bridge would provide me with a cover for when the weather was not so nice. I thought that being creek side would give me a chance to view more wildlife and the bridge would give me a little privacy without seeming creepy.
After spending twenty minutes there I explored more of the park and settled down in the sculpture area by the main pond. The is a covered bridge here, a view of the pond and overall a wider, more open space. Here I opened up my backpack and got out all my feild guides.
My attempts to identify the two different types of grasses ( or are they rushes?) right in front of me failed miserably.
There is a bit more human traffic over in this section, but overall it is really peaceful.
There is so many different types of trees , flowers, grasses and rushes that I can probably spend all week sitting here trying to identify them all. But right now if I look up I don't think I can define a single one of them with certainty. This is humbling and exciting. This is my new classroom.

From Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
I rode my bike down to Meadowbrook a little later tonight. It was sunset when I arrived. I changed my anchor point from last night to a spot on the edge of the pond, which was only about 20 feet from where I was previously.
The temperature hit 95 today, and at sunset it was still sweltering hot. I really wanted to jump intot he pond to cool off, but that would be a sure fire way to scare off any wildlife that I was hoping to see.
I sat down on the edge of the pond and poured my self a cup of tea from my thermos. I unloaded my backpack and began paging through some of my field guides in hopes of being able to identify at least one plant or tree. I am pretty sure that I've successfully identified Poison Ivy (pictured). There are a couple other plants and trees that I have photographed but not identified yet.
There was a bit of noise coming from the other end of the pond. I took a walk down there to see what I could see. Fish were jumping out of the water all over the pond. Dragonflies buzzed around everywhere. And then, all of a sudden an animals heads pops up out of the water and starts swimming right toward me. It was a beaver bigger than my dog (I have a 50 lb Staffordshire Bull Terrier). I video taped the beaver swimming around in the pond.


Sorry< i had not realized that my blog wasn't link to the class blog. This is an old post on http://klaatubaradaniktotheblog.blogspot.com/

An Interview at Mount Rainier

I recently took a little day trip up to Mount Rainier National Park to see what I could find out about what research they are doing and if any of it was spurred by climate change. I had planned on interviewing some people in the park but I did not arrange them in advance. Judging from my experiences in other parks I felt it was best to have the element of surprise working for me as the responses I get are usually a little more candid and open than any I have gotten from scheduled-in-advance interviews. Here is my story.

The trip itself was fabulous. There was an unprecedented heat wave in Seattle and I was excited to get into the mountains where the temperatures were cooler and the air smelled sweet with fir. I made it in record time from my home in Ballard and pulled into the park in less than two hours armed with my annual pass.

As the ranger at the entrance station checked my I.D. I questioned him as to the whereabouts of their resource management department. He seemed a little stunned and dumbfounded and confessed to me that he did not know where it was but he would call his boss and ask. As the cars began stacking up behind me, I waited patiently while he obtained the requested information from the other end of a telephone line. While I waited I wondered to myself why a park employee did not know where one of the most important departments in the park was located. I wondered if he even knew that the park had a resource department. I also wondered if he might be a new employee that had only been there for a few weeks and was still getting acquainted with everything. The sound of him returning to the window pulled me out of my contemplation whereupon he relayed, without conviction, the whereabouts of the department and bid me good day. I pondered this encounter while thankfully pulling out of the entrance station just in time to be ahead of a rental motor home the size of an ocean liner.

The road quickly narrowed as it wound through massive old growth Douglas-fir (pseudotsuga menziesii) dwarfing even the gigantic rented motor home behind me. I quickly forgot about my encounter at the entrance station as I became mesmerized by my surroundings and rolling all the windows down, I breathed in the sweet fir essence I had been longing for. A mile or so into my journey I passed a couple of people in orange safety vests, clipboards in hand, bent over looking at plants along the roadside. As I wondered what they were doing I came to my first of many construction zones. Road repairs were being made to the stretch of road from the Ashford entrance to Longmire. As I sat in line waiting my turn through the construction area I thought to myself “So far, so good! Research and much needed road repairs and I have only gotten 4 miles into the park.” After a few more delays for road repairs, I rolled into the parking lot at Longmire to search for the resource management department. The landmarks and instructions the entrance station ranger had given me were proving to be hard to follow and after searching for 45 minutes I decided to bag it and head on up to Paradise and surprise some unsuspecting personnel there.

As I came around the last turn before arriving at Paradise I was stunned to see a large area of scarred land on my left. It is always strange to see any construction in a national park and I felt myself beginning to recoil from such a blemish on the pristine scenery. It is like taking a sharpie to the Mona Lisa to adorn her with a mustache. Since it was a weekday and I am an early riser the parking lot at Paradise was only about half way full. Normally one has to make a few laps scavenging like a turkey vulture watching to spot a family walking to their car to leave, then wait while they pack everyone in, all the while ignoring the growing line of irritated and jealous people behind you, just to score your much coveted place in the lot. I got a prime parking spot, gathered my notebook and camera and made my way over to the Paradise Lodge to see if I could find an unsuspecting soul to engage in conversation. No luck. But I did pause for a moment to snap some shots of the inside of the lodge.


My next stop was the Jackson Visitor’s center, a short walk from the Lodge. On my way along the path I took note of the areas that were roped off for vegetation recovery. Many visitors to Paradise often trample the alpine meadows trying to get those perfect shot of the flowers in bloom with the mountain standing majestic in the background. This is not a new addition to the scenery at Paradise. I have never made a visit to this place without seeing these areas roped off from foot traffic with signage stating the purpose of their partitions. What I did find both slightly amusing and more irritating was a family of five completely ignoring the ropes and signage to hastily make a short-cut to their car, all the while trampling sensitive vegetation. I wondered what they thought as they climbed over the ropes and skidded down the hillside to their car. For a brief moment, I even considered pointing out to them the signage and giving a little speech about fragile ecosystems. I decided that my intentions would most likely be ill received and decided to continue on to the visitor’s center.

Once again I was compelled to stop and take in the grandeur of Mount Rainier and noticed a new addition to the scenery. Some trail repairs had been made and the new addition of a stair case was placed along the Skyline trail. The stairs were nothing remarkable however inscribed in them was the words of John Muir expressing his feelings about the park from a visit long ago.

After pausing for more pictures I finally made it to the visitor’s center. I could hardly contain my excitement at discovering it was a new facility that had only recently opened to the public. This explained the rubble pile I had noticed on my way in, which was the remnants of the old visitor’s center, something for which I had scolded myself a little in not realizing sooner. As I walked into the visitor’s center I was greeted by a whiteboard giving me the weather forecast and informing me of the ranger led programs scheduled for the day. I was ecstatic to see “3:15-Climate Change”. I reigned in my excitement, barely containing the urge to sprint over to the desk to talk to the rangers and continued my exploration of the new visitor’s center, dropping a few dollars into the donation bucket along the way. After watching a short movie about the park in their little theater, which I am pleased to report, was at capacity, I finally made my way to the desk to begin my inquiry. This is what I learned.

There were two rangers working the information desk that day and I was quickly befriended by one of them, a gentleman I will call Mr. Ranger out of respect for his privacy. After introductions, Mr. Ranger and I began by talking a little about the new visitor’s center. He informed me that the new steep A frame center was much more energy efficient and climate friendly than the old circular one had been using hundreds of gallons less fuel than the old design. He also told me that by taking down the old visitor’s center they were afforded the opportunity to study artifacts found under the old site, there was even a display to show some of the things they had unearthed during the construction process. Sadly, I did not get a picture of the display but it is something worth checking out on your next visit. Next I asked Mr. Ranger to tell me all he knew about any research or programs being conducted in the park regarding climate change and resources. He informed me that the park does studies on light pollution, noise pollution, and air pollution and that the air quality is monitored and can be seen in a display in the visitors center. Mr. Ranger also informed me that at 3:15 every day, as the white board located in the entrance explained, there was a film about climate change and national parks with two people from Mount Rainier making appearances in the video. He confided to me that the film was sometimes difficult to introduce to the public because a lot of the public does not believe that climate change is happening. He also gave me the names of the two resource personnel from the video and suggested I contact them for further information regarding their studies, very helpful indeed. He stated that he was not aware of much of the research being conducted within the park but did say that those two orange safety vest clad people I spotted on the way in were most likely studying the vegetation near waterways to determine soil qualities and characteristics as well as plant migration statistics. We ended our conversation by reminiscing about all the parks we have had the privilege of visiting and working in and I filled my notebook with his recommendations for future visits to parks I had yet to discover. I headed upstairs to check out more displays and sat for an hour watching climbers make their way up and down from Camp Muir as a thunder storm rolled in.

What did I learn? From my previous impromptu interviews at other parks and from Mr. Ranger I have confirmed my suspicions that information is not shared among park personnel, either within the park or among other park units. This lack of information sharing is troublesome to me. Perhaps my mental model suggests that park rangers at an information desk should have all the answers to the questions the general public may ask regarding the park and its resources. Maybe I am expecting too much. In defense of all the rangers I spoke with regarding these topics I must say that I do understand that the NPS probably does not have appropriate funds to train all of their employees to respond to public inquiry about climate change. What everyone I spoke with was able to give to me is a brochure entitled Climate Change in National Parks published by the National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior. This small, yet informative brochure explains that some of the parks are involved in “Climate Friendly Parks” workshops to do what they can to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by using solar and wind energy, fuel cells, electric and hybrid cars, and in areas of high visitation using mass public transit. The brochure also gives links to places where the public can learn more about climate change, but ironically fails to provide the link for the Climate Friendly Parks website. The link can be found here: http://www.nps.gov/climatefriendlyparks/index.html.

At this link one can peruse various presentations (mostly PPT) that were held in various “Climate Friendly” parks. In my exploration of this site I found a publication entitled Climate Change Response also published by the National Park Service and U.S. Department of the Interior which on page 7 states: “While efforts to date are significant –the NPS is not yet positioned to assess the affects of climate change and prescribe management actions that are suitable for parks.”
What does this mean? Are they not yet in a position due to insufficient funding, lack of personnel, lack of understanding, is it because their resource and research system is fragmented and no one can agree on its direction, or could it be that some of the personnel within the parks are those who do not believe climate change is happening. Diving deeper into the website I found a list of parks that are on the Climate Friendly Parks (CFP) roster. Of the 391 National Parks only 49 are listed as members on the CFP page. 22 of these parks have yet to apply to become “Climate Friendly” and 15 are members, meaning that they have filed an application, developed a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventory in their park, and completed a GHG action plan. The remaining 12 parks are still in this process.

It is clear that there are personnel within the National Park Service that are aware of climate change and its impacts on the park system. There are also those who are devoted and determined to do what they can to help reduce GHG emissions in the parks and educate park personnel, enabling them to engage with the public about such issues. It warms my heart to know that these people are out there, however more must be done, much more. Ultimately what I learned from this interview is that I have many more questions than answers, that I need to continue my research and efforts to track down sometimes hidden information, and that support and funding for the National Park Service is very much needed in order to understand the impacts of climate change and find ways to prepare for and respond to it.

DRCC River festival and farmers' market

I attended the DRCC River Festival last Saturday, and learned a lot from putting the survey and display board into use with folks who attended. The survey questions were designed to help us connect to participants, learn more about them and see if they are interested in becoming involved with the cleanup efforts in some way. So we had three questions:

1. Please tell us - are you a resident, business owner, or otherwise use the river in some fashion (whether that's fishing or otherwise)?

2. What are your hopes for the future of the Duwamish river?

3. Would you like to be involved in helping to protect/save the river?

Each time I design surveys like this one I'm reminded to really keep questions short and simple. I could usually get people to answer question #1 easily. For the second and third questions I noticed that most people didn't go into lots of detail other than responding "a clean river", and I had to let go of my tendencies to pressure folks to sign up to help DRCC. I tried paraphrasing question #3 to explain that we are planning to have further conversations with people who live and own businesses in the area about implementing the Vision plan, and that this is also a way that they could be involved, if they didn't show interest in helping with the cleanup. I also think some attendees may have thought we are asking them to actually help clean up the pollution in the river itself. Overall I talked with two young teens, a couple of residents, one former landlord who resides on Beacon Hill, a woman who works at a social service agency in the area, an indigenous woman who lives in Auburn and several political candidates for office.

I also had a less than successful conversation with a guy staffing the "People for Puget Sound" booth regarding the information they have about what kinds of fish and other sealife animals it is risky to eat. I tried asking him two questions: what can we say to people to whom fish and seafood is central to their diets, and are they offering any information about alternatives such as the nearest safe places that people can go fishing in? His responses were short and limited to saying that it's dangerous to consume any fish and seafood caught from the river, and shrugging his shoulders at the notion of offering alternatives. I am guessing that the way I phrased my questions made him feel defensive and/or just didn't connect to his perspective at all. A bit later when I talked to an indigenous woman, I noticed my internalized feelings of trying to get her to "sign up" to be involved with DRCC in some way (such as with the Vision plan implementation conversations) coming up again. This conversation was great practice for me to learn to just listen more genuinely and let go of my tendencies to nudge people to "take action". At the end of our conversation, although she refused to sign up for any DRCC activities she thanked me for listening to her stories of her late husband who was a fisherman in the area.

Yesterday I attended the new South Park Farmers' Market in the morning and helped do outreach for DRCC. We shared booth/table space with SeaMar and I connected with three people: Steve Gisel, co-manager of the farmers' market; Ninfa Quiroz, staff person at SeaMar; and Amaranta Sandys, a local multimedia artist who makes art thru use of clay. Steve stated that the farmers' market has several objectives including bringing together people who haven't had much experience with U.S. business practices, encouraging people to support local businesses and learn to eat more healthy foods. He said that they are trying to obtain funding to hold the market more often than once a month, and they have a business co-op for the vendors who participate. Also he added that although the vendors' earnings might not be very "high" currently they see the participation of the vendors as successful because they're learning how to do business.

Ninfa Quiroz and I talked about her concerns regarding the diet of the Latino community. She expressed a lot of worry about the tendencies of Latinos to eat a lot of carbohydrates, fats, salt and processed foods including in tortillas and tamales. She added that there's ways that people can still enjoy their traditional foods but reduce the amount of fat and carbohydrates in preparing tortillas and tamales. She emphasized that addressing health issues such as diabetes isn't just a matter of getting people to change their diets, they have to change other habits such as increasing their level of activity and exercising regularly. She asked if I could help SeaMar do some health education, and is also interested in the information that DRCC has about the dangers of eating fish and seafood caught from the Duwamish river. She looked at a coloring book for children that is printed in English and Spanish, that teaches children about animals in the local area and said that she would like to see another one regarding the dangers of eating fish and seafood from the Duwamish river. I told Ninfa that if DRCC, SeaMar and the South Park Farmers' market could partner somehow to have conversations about food and healthy alternatives that would be great. I plan to talk further with Cari about the possibilities of doing my Change project around these areas. Although Cari and I talked briefly about what my Change project could be before she left, this was before I had conversed with Ninfa in detail.

I also enjoyed talking with Amaranth, she makes pottery, clay magnets, pendants, beads and earrings with her own cultural style. For instance she has some magnets and earrings that are brightly colored skulls in honor of "Dia de los Muertos", the Mexican "Day of the Dead" celebration. Amaranth stated that she helped emcee at the River Festival last week. She is also connected to local artists' groups.

Joyce

First Small Group Discussion

I've posted a summary of a small group discussion on the topic of environment and spirituality I led at a Neo-Pagan gathering at the end of July over on my environment & spirit blog. Here's most of it:

I chose the small group discussion model out of what I learned in my Reflective Practicum coursework, that social change comes from people talking, looking at their lives, finding frustrations, and noticing gaps – and then people will want to change. I was hoping to plant some seeds that might lead to noticing gaps and help a movements towards social change in this area of environment and spirituality – but I was also really curious as to what a group of people attending a Pagan conference might have to say about their sense of connection to, or being part of, nature.

In addition to my understanding that Paganism is a nature religion, I know that Pagans also tend to believe that the Divine is immanent – i.e., right here, in us, in rocks and trees and rivers, in critters and clouds, here – as opposed to transcendent, or far away, distant, in heaven, in the sky, beyond the boundaries of the earth. In transcendence, the Divine is not part of the Earth; in immanence, the Divine is the Earth, and all that is on the Earth. I was curious to see if the current of immanence would mean that practicing Pagans had an understanding of humans and nature as being one and the same.

My first question to the group was whether they felt like they were part of nature or separate from it, and why. Now, in a group of 15 Pagans, you have at least 20 perspectives, so I certainly did not get the same response from everyone. I did hear some people describe nature as something they looked for but did not find in their urban setting – that a dandelion growing through a crack in the sidewalk was a small glimmer of nature in an otherwise natureless-setting. This reflects an American cultural pattern of a clear separation between humans and nature (Stewart and Bennett, 1991, p. 115).

On the other hand, I also heard people who described themselves as “a wave, not a particle” and “absolutely part of nature – my life is part of the web of life.” One person relayed that a feeling of separateness from nature was a motivation for them to strive for something different. We spent some time musing on a plastic bottle – how it was made from parts of the earth, how it was a feat of human intelligence and design, how it was part of our cycle now. How, we wondered, did the “sacredness of crappy plastic” fit in to everything?

My second question was how they defined themselves spiritually and how that influenced their sense of connection to nature. Some felt it was their experience of nature, or being in nature (note: use of the word “in,” not “part of”), that drives their spirituality. One person commented that it was an eye-opener for them when they learned that the word “religion” in other parts of the world means how you live every day of your life, because that hadn’t been her experience of religion up to that point. Many agreed that a sense of awareness, seeing little details or “Goddess moments,” recognizing that in nature you never see function without beauty or beauty without function, fed their spirituality.

At the end of our hour together, I felt that we had had a very good discussion and raised some good points with areas to explore further, but I’m not sure (yet) that I planted seeds that will lead to social change. I hope the conversation will continue – perhaps on this blog?

Stewart, E. & M. Bennett (1991). American cultural patterns: A cross-cultural perspective. Boston: Intercultural Press.