The Tourist Test

Looking back through all of my Kamana II course materials from his quarter and the work that I have done, I thought it might be a good idea to share the initial evaluation, which tested my knowledge of my local ecology. If you would like to participate and have about an hour to spare, then follow the link below. The Tourist Test is in a PDF half way down the page. Jon Young, who is the founder of the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, Washington, developed the test. I would love to hear your experience with the test and engage with you in discussion online or during the next residency.

http://www.wildernessawareness.org/home_study/kamana_samples.html

My Tourist Test Reflection from back in July.

I really have a lot to learn. I can’t believe how much I don’t know about common plants and animals the surround me everyday. I have a BA in Social Ecology but I know very little about ecology. I think that I am ignorant to the natural world around me because I am not forced to rely on it for my survival in the short term. Tomorrow and the next day I can go about my daily business and not interact with the natural world at all. However, I know full well that in the long term, if I continue to ignore the natural world, I am actually jeopardizing the longevity of my own survival.

What You Can Do To Help

Since I first began blogging about national parks and climate change I have had a number of concerned people ask me “What can I do to help?” This blog is dedicated to helping those people find the information they need in order to help both our country’s beloved national parks and our planet.

Let me begin by saying that climate change is not only a problem within the national parks, it is first and foremost a global problem that requires global action to overcome. This means that even if you are thinking “I am only one person, what can I do?” just remember that real, lasting social change often starts out small, on an individual level. Just think what could happen if everyone who felt that way were to actually do something about it and make that one small change in their lives. We could change the world! Being a citizen on this planet means that you are a part of that global whole, and the one small change you do make actually does make a difference to both our national parks and our planet. Ok, I think you get the picture…enough preaching to the choir, here are some very simple things you can do to make a difference in our world and help preserve our national parks, unimpaired for future generations.

First off on a larger scale, the U.S. EPA has a wonderful link listing 25 things you can do to help cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here are some examples:
*replace conventional bulbs with energy saver bulbs
*look for energy star qualified products
*seal and insulate your home
*use a push mower instead of a gas powered mower
*compost your food and yard waste
*keep your car tuned
*keep adequate pressure in your car tires
*walk, bike, or use public transportation
*use the power management features on your office equipment to save energy
*REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE
*educate your children about how they can reduce their impact
*teach children about climate change and ecosystems

TheEPA site also has a GHG emissions calculator that can estimate your household’s annual emissions and offer ways to reduce them.


Next you can support the National Parks Conservation Association, a non-profit organization created in 1919 to support our national parks. The NPCA is constantly conducting studies within the parks with regard to climate change and even has a publication entitled Unnatural Disaster: Global Warming & Our National Parks which is full of information about how climate change is affecting our parks. I highly recommend reading this. While you are there you can find out more about the NPCA, what studies are being done in various parks and pledge your support.

Next you can visit the Climate Friendly Parks website which is a partnership between the NPS, EPA, and the NPCA to help the national parks become carbon neutral and educate their employees and the public about how they can help reduce the impacts of climate change. Here you will be able to see which parks are participating in the CFP program and monitor their progress through the process of becoming carbon neutral. While you are at it you can also find out what you can do to Do Your Part to support the Climate Friendly Parks program.

For those of you who live in the state of Washington you may find this link about what you can do to Help Mount Rainier Become Carbon Neutral informative. You can also learn more about sustainability and how to become a Steward of the Environment at this link also from Mount Rainier National Park.

You can also support your national parks by purchasing an annual pass called the America the Beautiful pass. You can either purchase an annual pass for an individual park or a pass for every national park and federal recreational land in the country. This is the one I choose to get, I believe it cost $80 and it is a bargain for people like me who love to visit our parks and forest service lands. In just a few trips it has paid for itself. The best part of purchasing either pass is if you purchase them actually in the park rather than online, the money goes directly to the park that your pass was purchased in, making it even easier to support the park you love.

Lastly please, please, please (pretty please) vote to increase funding for our national parks. It has been a very common story among everyone in every park I have spoken with that there needs to be more funding for research, repairs, upgrades to greener facilities, maintenance, public education, etc. These places that harbor such unique and pristine environments, rich cultural heritage, endangered and threatened species, spiritual and inspirational landscapes, recreational opportunities galore, and embody the spirit of our nation need your help. They are your treasures, please help to keep them unimpaired for future generations.

An Interview at Pinnacles National Monument

I recently had an opportunity to interview someone at the Pinnacles National Monument in California where I used to work as a park ranger. It seems that a lot has been happening there since my employment in 2002 and it is all very exciting. The year after I left was the first year that the California condor was reintroduced into the park, something that I wished I had the opportunity to get to see for myself. Many of the buildings that were there when I was are now gone and all of the portable trailers for employee housing have since been replaced with dormitories. The park has acquired some land just outside of the east entrance and now has a campground where they offer ranger led interpretive talks about the park along with night hikes to star gaze and stroll along the trails by moonlight, something that I think is absolutely awesome! The park is also home to talus caves which were created by large boulders lodging themselves into the narrow canyons. These caves are home to the Townsend’s big-eared Bats which are listed as a sensitive species. The rock formations in the park are made of rhyolitic breccia which is composed of lava, sand, ash, and angular chunks of rock that ejected from a volcano many years ago. These crags and cliffs are home to over 20 different species of raptors with some species nesting on a yearly basis. Altogether Pinnacles is home to over 140 species of birds. Pinnacles National Monument was established in 1908 to preserve the stunning rock formations for which is was named and originally only protected 2,060 acres. Today the park encompasses 26,000 acres and now protects a rich cultural heritage as well as a unique ecosystem.

Since I knew someone that still worked within the park I was able to have a very candid and openhearted conversation about what was going on in the park with regards to climate change. My correspondent, who I will call NPS employee to protect their privacy, informed me that the park has partnerships with North County High, Salinas High School, Hartnell Community College, and a non-profit organization called Pinnacles Partnership. The schools get to come explore the park and learn about the cultural and environmental resources found there, which is a great step in my opinion to create a community of caring, aware, nature loving park advocates. Pinnacles Partnership provides funding for many programs at the park including education and youth programs, habitat restoration, and recovery of the California condor. I next asked NPS employee if there was much talk within the park about climate change and they informed me that there was actually a lot of talk about it. The downfall to all this talk was that everyone talking about it was going in a million different directions and not getting anything done. I next asked about the parks status in the Climate Friendly Parks program mentioning that I had noticed that the Pinnacles had completed the workshop and had applied but had not yet completed their greenhouse gas inventory. NPS employee said that they already knew this and sadly stated that it had not yet been completed because everyone in the park was too buried in other projects to collect the information and that it was low on the list of priorities. NPS employee did inform me that there was an exhibit at the public information center entitled “Climate Change, What Can We Do?” which informs the public about steps they can take to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. NPS employee expressed that they would feel so happy if only one person every day saw this and practiced these habits to reduce their GHG emissions.
Finally I asked NPS employee this question, “What is/are the most frustrating thing/s going on with regard to research and public education about climate change within the parks?” to which I got this reply:
“I don’t really see what other parks are doing, what studies are going on in the parks. How can we affect people at home? How do we make it matter to them? What kind of research is going on in other parks and how are they relating to their visitors? Is the information they relate to the public based on speculation or fact? I would really like to see how climate change is directly affecting plants and animals within this park and how that is affecting the park as a whole. I feel that the parks must work together on this issue in order to make things happen.”
This has really had me thinking a lot about what I can do as a passionate advocate of our country’s national parks. There are a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head about this right now. Once again it has been proven to me that there needs to be some sort of communication and information sharing happening here that is currently absent from present procedure. Once again I am coming away from an information gathering session with more questions than answers. Perhaps it is here that I will find my answer. Maybe the answer I seek is indeed in the form of a question.

Second Interview

Originally posted at http://environmentspirituality.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/second-interview:

My second interview for this research project was with a theologian and academic from a local university’s Divinity School. Sue, as I’ll call her, is now retired, but worked to bring some programs and classes looking at ecology and theology together during her duration at the university. She also does volunteer work in the religious environmental arena.

When I asked her about her personal connection to the world of environment and spirituality, she responded,* “All creation is sacramental, a revelation of the God. The here and the now… The universe is alive. There is no such thing as ‘secular.’ I believe in one divine spirit which gives life and spirit to everything. To trees, to rocks, to us… We are all embodied spirits. It is sacrilegious, sinful, to act otherwise. We are part of one integrated divine revelation.”

It is this conviction in myself, that everything is sacred, that everything is part of the divine (however you may define that, even if the definition is strictly non-religious and much more scientific or ecological), that started me on this research project. Sue and I have different religious backgrounds, but we certainly agree on this point. And it is a point that I am seeing again and again in my reading as well.

I asked Sue what role she saw for the religious environmental movement in helping bring about transformation or social change that would move the world in a more sustainable direction. She replied, “The role of any church is to facilitate and enhance our relationship with the divine. It is to create the environment for this to happen. Each age, each era has its call or purpose. The Great Work of our generation, as Thomas Berry said, is to turn this around, to move from a era of domination to an ecological age. The Great Work of the church is the same – to teach the ecological age, to model it. Our well-being and our souls are connected to this work.”

Further, she went on, “Religion does not provide the answers about what needs to be done; it grounds us to be able to make the changes we need to make. It provides incentive, reason, and command to do the hard work of making the world a better place.”

I remarked that during this quarter, as I read about environmental degradation, pollution, climate change, the terrible challenges that face us – and yes, possible ways to address these issues – in my Environmental Science class, I found myself deflated and sliding into hopelessness. But when I turned to my reading for this course of study, I found my hope and my faith in our ability to create change returning. My reading on eco-spirituality made me feel better, and hopeful, every time. I have been reflecting that this grounding and foundation may be one of the real values of incorporating spirituality into environmental work.

Sue agreed. “Jesus taught us that resurrection, newness, and change is always possible. That is one of his core teachings. Losing hope is losing faith.” Additionally, “God works through us. We have to do the work for God’s work to be able to come through.”

Like my first interview, I went away inspired, and with several more books for my reading list.

* My quotations are not word-for-word what Sue said, but do capture the direction and main points of our conversation.

Discovering the Sweet Green Ball

The Luiseño diet is the one closest to me, physically. The Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians owns the property where I live and work. They have inhabited Pauma Valley and the surrounding areas forever. Of the three cultural groups that I am studying, co-evolution should be most prominent within their diet. Just a few miles from the farm are two other Luiseño reservations, Pala and Rincon. The annual Rincon Fiesta was held recently and I visited to see what types of food were being offered. In many cultures, festivals and holidays elicit traditional foods being prepared en masse that may have lost their place in the every day diet. At the Fiesta I found chicken, popcorn, watermelon and Mexican food; tamales, tacos, burritos. Nowhere did I see wiiwish, the sweetened acorn mash that had been a staple for California Indians nor wood rat that had been considered a delicacy.

Many of the reservations in the area are home to Mexican immigrants, so the introduction of Mexican food into the Luiseño diet is not unexpected. The Luiseño are an agricultural people, maintaining large swaths of citrus and avocado orchards to this day. Maize was one of the earliest South and Central American foods that spread north into present-day USA. Native peoples were the original bio-technicians, of course, cultivating teosinte and selecting to produce something far more reminiscent of today’s maize. In just 2,000 years, teosinte the size of a fingernail evolved into present-day maize. For that reason, popcorn does not strike me as being an odd food either.

Whites introduced watermelon when they settled in California. The story of acceptance into the Luiseño diet asserts that an old Indian woman with a keen sense of smell had went out in search of an unfamiliar sweet scent that floated in on a breeze. She returned with a large green ball and volunteered to eat it first. If it was poisonous and she was to die, it would not matter because of her old age. She broke it open with a nearby stone and scooped the soft pink flesh into her mouth. She fell to ground, shaking and the others assumed she had died. But she opened her eyes and exclaimed it to be delicious and they all ate. The Indians saved the seeds and began to cultivate their own watermelons in Southern CA. The original “green ball” was believed to have grown from a seed that floated downstream from a field that a white man had planted.

Popcorn and watermelon are not foods that I think about in reference to traditional Indian diets, but they are part of the Luiseño past and Mexican food is prominently part of their present, as it is for most Southern Californians. These three foods were all introduced in distinct ways; popcorn through domestication of a wild plant and subsequent trade, watermelon, literally by chance, floated in on a stream and Mexican food was introduced through mass migration. Of these, watermelon represents the only food that was introduced by a single event.

Perhaps, time was the only limiting factor before whites, in need of supplemental protein, traded watermelon for wood rat. I will never know, but I do know that watermelon has persevered where wood rat has not. And likely, time remains the only barrier before watermelon is phased out in favor of another exotic food that thrives in the sandy soil of Pauma Valley. Evolution is a traditional aspect of all diets, be it through domestication (teosinte into maize), introduction (tamales and tacos) or chance (watermelon). The day will come when people long for the past when watermelon was the stereotypical summer food, before turning their attention back to whatever has taken its place.

Map Making

I have been to Meadowbrook everyday for the past couple weeks. Upon walking there this afternoon I began to notice how familiar I am starting to feel with the 9- acre park. My focus has been on creating maps of the study area. I have created six maps in total. Each map focuses on a different element of the landscape. The first map is the Master Map, which served as the basis for the creation of the other five maps. On the center of each map at the crosshairs is my anchor point. From the anchor point there is a radius of 100 paces (500 ft.) in four directions; Magnetic North, South East and West. From those four points I determined the circumference of my study area.
The second map I created highlights all of the roads and trails in the study area. Most of the trails are cement and are carefully maintained by the city.
The third map, Vegetation, is only scratches the surface of the numerous plants and trees in the study area. Research for this map alone could have taken up the entire quarter. But for the sake of time, I chose only the highlights one may observe when they visit Meadowbrook for the first time. Identifying all of the plants and trees has been one of my biggest challenges in this course thus far. Plant identification has also been one of the most interesting aspects of this course as well.
The fourth map is a topographical map and it was created from the data I had gathered in the field and the USGS topo maps of the area that I found online.
Meadowbrook Pond is part of the Thornton Creek Watershed. The fifth map illustrates the hydrology of the study area. I have also done a significant amount of research on the entire watershed, which will be in another post and not shown on the hydro map.
The Soil and Rocks map illustrates the variation of the ground structure. Meadowbrook contains rocky areas, grassy meadows, and wetlands.
None of the six maps resembles a professional map, but they all serve their purpose for this course and for my future experiences at Meadowbrook.

No More Maize and Tomatoes!

As I approached this study, I expected to learn about co-evolution between plants and people and why specific diets have become prominent in certain areas. Maize is consumed nearly globally, but an entire diet, it does not make. If maize is not supplemented with other crops, the health of the consumer will quickly deteriorate. Rice and beans, peanut butter and jelly on wheat, these simple foods provide all the essential amino acids needed for a human to thrive. I wanted to learn what the Jewish and Somali Bantu versions of PB&J were.

I retain that co-evolution is important. It tells a story, but maybe it’s no longer the most significant aspect of traditional diets. The tradition itself, the tying of the present to the past is the most significant aspect. Our past has shaped who we are. Globalization has encouraged us to expand our dietary repertoire. Food, knowledge and people rapidly move around the globe, affecting all that they come in contact with. While I know not what the equivalent of a Somali PB&J is, I will continue to look until I achieve the satisfaction of tasting it.

In regards to promoting re-adoption of ones traditional diet, doing so may be irrelevant. A diet fit the needs of a specific set of circumstances, be it availability of goods or trade partners. The tomato was not widely accepted into Southern Italian cuisine until the 19th century. What would become of their traditional diet if I advocated for a reversion to pre-tomato days? That would surely be seen as a loss of tradition. The changing of diets is not evil; it is natural, not just among cultures but individuals as well. I retain concern when the change is so rapid that the physiology of a people is not able to evolve with the prominent foodstuffs in their diet. This is when diet-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity run rampant. We must look to the past as we move forward, in life and in our food choices to avoid exposing ourselves to unintentional consequences that certain food choices elicit.