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Hello Becca!

I found your post very interesting because you took a confident step in outlining where your opinions are and how they may differ from others. I also connected with the constant theme of trust discussed throughout your blog post. When you mentioned your teacher providing you with your spark, and your family friend helping you climb that mountain, I thought back to my first post and my spark. I got mine though my parents and the trust I had in them to keep me safe in a dangerous situation that proved awe inspiring, so i do agree that trust can play a massive role in allowing an individual to feel comfortable enough to open themselves up to a new or challenging experience. 

This ties in well to the way you personally described your style of nature interpretation as the “friend.” A friend is naturally someone you can trust, and through you displaying this level of openness, confidence, and acceptance of your audience I am sure you were able to create trust with those you were working with. This is especially important in programs like learn to camp where a decent percentage of the participants are new to the activity and well outside their comfort zines, having someone friendly they can trust will allow them to feel much more comfortable and secure learning from you. The role of a friend in garnering comfort could also prevent emotionally risky situations like the one you unfortunately experienced at the Woodlawn cemetery. Although as you mentioned true trust is not easy to develop in a 45 minute session, a feeling of security and understanding with the person leading you could facilitate the communication of discomfort without feeling too uncomfortable or out of place doing so.

Thank you for a great post this week, and a series of interesting posts over the course of the semester, it’s been a pleasure to follow along!

Best regards,

Matt. 

The Last Blog

          While taking ENVS 3000 (Nature Interpretation) I’ve realized that this is the first and only course I have ever truly participated in lectures in. Maybe I had more confidence because it’s a small class or felt more able to because I’ve already worked in the “nature interpretation” sector but in this course I was able to speak out. After speaking out, one thing became very clear to me. I think almost all of us in this course have similar values that lead to the same goals, but I felt as though I had very different opinions very often in this class. Or, I was just one of the only ones who spoke out on those opinions.

Learn to Camp training May 2017

           I believe most morals for nature interpreters lies in the goal of bringing people to find a greater relationship with the outdoors. How we all get there is where everyone’s ethics lie differently. The first one being the gift of provocation. In class we were asked to recall someone who pushed us or opened our minds to new things, basically a role model in our lives. Most peoples seemed to be people they knew for a short amount of time, mine was my dance teacher I have been coached by since I was seven. This difference I believe leads to my different views on challenging people. It seemed as though majority of the class shared the opinion that is important to push the people you are working with to their limits to bring them to a point of revelation that leads to provocation. I personally didn’t think that was our place to be that person. For me provocation can only come from someone who you have known from a long time and trust. I believe everyone trusts differently and at different times but perhaps our jobs as interpreters is to help people come to trust us.

As someone very scared of heights i pushed myself to climb to this peak with the help of close trusted family (my cool green glasses definitely helped), June 2012

    Trust is so important, if your participants don’t trust you they may not want to participate. People won’t take any information in because how can they trust its correct. People wont want to stay and ask questions because they don’t believe they can answered. And people may not feel safe during physical aspects of a program. Trust is something I think all interpreters believe is one of the most important skills to have. I personally believe it takes time and is difficult to gain in one program.

           Trust may be one of the most important responsibilities a nature interpreters takes. Trust can only be created and maintained with emotional and physical safety. To create this safety we must risk assess before any programs can ever take place. The only type of risk assessment I’ve ever prepared during my summer as a naturalist interpreter was physical risk assessment. I would run trail inspections to find overhanging branches, broken bridges, poison ivy, flooding sites, rusty nails and more. But emotional risk assessment is something that interpreters should put equal weight and emphasis on.

Situations where more risk assessment was necessary July 2014

           Situations where this is necessary come up more often than not. The hardest thing about acknowledging emotional risk is that it can be difficult to foresee if you don’t have prior experience with certain topics. This really comes back to privilege and the invisible backpack, our own ignorance and sheltered lives can sometimes create insensitive or potentially risky mental situations because “how could we know”? I think this happens more than we are aware of. For example, on the lab trip the cemetery this year I had my own invisible backpack that made it a mentally challenging trip. Having dealt with a friends family member passing that same morning, the emotional risk going there was much higher for me than perhaps another member of the class. But, the risk was still there even though the presenters are unaware. I think the best way to avoid any emotional harm is through our language.

           The words we use and tone the in which we speak with has such a power in the world we live in. Having worked in a museum that’s stories are centered mostly about war and immigration and frankly a history of colonization. The words myself and the other volunteers used while telling these stories can manipulate how others feel and react to the information. As an interpreter I believe the best and most responsible way to avoid emotional injury is not to avoid any difficult, provocative or controversial topics. But for us to speak with well thought out respectful words and being wary of the tone we use with every different audience.

  Myself and other interpreters August 2017

          Each interpreter has their own style and personality, I think I have started to fall into my own after 2 years of experience interpretation. If I have to give it a title I think I would label myself “the friend”. I used to be very shy and not confident in my public speaking skills until one day I decided to start presenting like it was just to a friend, that decision has shaped my public speaking skills. I like to be “the friend” because I think it quickly lets people feel comfortable in often uncomfortable situations. As the friend I get to be humorous and silly while still knowledgeable. If  people are comfortable with me they will be more willing to ask questions or stay to discuss in greater detail. Being the friend brings me back to creating a safe setting for people emotionally.

           Through this semester I didn’t know what I wanted out of the course. I learned many valuable lessons but the one take away for me was how to target audiences and the amount of thought that goes into doing so. An audience isn’t just an age group, it’s an accumulation of shared or different experiences that can bring everyone together. For maybe even 45 minutes a group can all be on the same page on how magnificent and wild nature truly is, hopefully creating new stewards for the environment.

Magnificent nature, Loch Lomond August 2010

Wonderful nature close to home too June 2018

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Hey Noah!

I wanted to respond to your blog because I connected with it on quite a few of the points you made and things you discussed. Firstly, as the course progressed I also found myself making connections between nature interpretation and scientific communication, especially in comparing some of the ideas we learned in Communications in Environmental Science about how to convey hard science to a non-scientific audience. To me learning the skills associated with nature interpretation cracked open that concept and really showed me an incredibly variety of strategies and tools to teach science and appreciation of nature to anyone regardless of their background personally or academically. 

I also really liked how you mentioned your preferred style of writing. I grew up reading my dad’s Tolkien books and fell in love with dense fantasty and fiction novels at a young age as well. Like you mentioned, I have also found that it affects the way in which i like to write and share my ideas. It took me quite a while to force myself to write academically for research papers and other technical forms of writing. Through reading your blogs over the course of the semester I strongly agree that you have a serious strength in your writing. You can and should use that as your form of interpretation if you choose to do so, I am sure that people will listen.

Best regards, 

Matt. 

Getting People Involved

From the beginning of the semester, when I first enrolled in the ENVS 3000 course, I must say my view on the interpretation of nature has drastically changed, as well as my view of the goals of the course.

In the beginning I must say I wasn’t particularly enthused with the prospect of having to conduct a tour with strangers, and write essentially an essay per week for 9 weeks. Personally, I am not an especially outgoing person, and having these extra burdens did not sit well with me on top of all the extra work from other courses I would have to do.

But alas, I remained in the course, and here I am at its conclusion. So what have I taken away from what I learned, and how have I developed as an interpreter?

Over the course of the semester, one theme kept becoming apparent to me over and over, and that was what is this course really preparing me for? The answer to that question did not really come from the course itself, but rather from attempting to explain to people what the course is all about when they ask “what the heck kind of class is that?”

Eventually I figured it out. Originally I would tell people that they are trying to teach us how to be a tour guide. But as the course progressed, I realized that this course is much more than that, IT IS A SCIENCE COMMUNICATION COURSE.

So why did this resonate with me so much?

I kept thinking about this theme of science communication, and why it is so important not only for me to pass this course, but for the world of science as a whole. Over the course of the semester, I wrote a few pieces that reflected this idea, generally touching on various issues in the world of science communication.

I thought a great deal about what kind of challenges we are experiencing currently in the world, and how so many scientific ideas such as *cough* climate change *cough* are so vastly thought of as myths, or for whatever reason an unimportant matter.

To me, the most important problem with science communication is bridging the gap between fact and fiction, and relating science to those with less educational background than perhaps we as science students.

As a child, I had a great affinity for creative writing, which I developed from my love of reading fiction novels, particularly very dense and wordy fantasy novels. Thus, I naturally find it much easier to write in a non-scientific, descriptive fashion. I believe this has translated very well for me with regards to science communication. Translating a scientific thought and putting it into a context more attractive to the average reader for me is quite easy. What the “Planet Earth” series does with ten thousand dollar cameras and unlimited resources, I can do with the pen and paper (extreme hyperbole I know).

Every year, it is becoming more and more apparent to me that there are very few people in a position of power or personal fame that use their platform to raise awareness. I remember being online during the time when Leonardo DiCaprio won his first Oscar for ‘Best Actor’.

During his acceptance speech, Leo took the opportunity to make a shout out to the goings on in the world with regards to climate change and global warming, in an attempt to raise awareness. In response, many people commended him for his actions, but to my surprise, many also criticized him for it.

This was bewildering to me. I suppose some saw it as an attention grab or something to make him look like a good person. And it wasn’t only those on the right side of the political spectrum, who are the typical conservative climate change deniers, but it was also those on the left, who are generally accepting of the premise of climate change.

This infuriated me. Now I am not even some sort of Leo ‘stan’ that would follow him to the end of the earth or what not. But he is one of the most famous, if not the most famous actors in the world. What validation could he possibly need?

The point of that story is that I think there is a huge issue with the translation of scientific information regardless of any sort of personal life choices people make. The fact of the matter is people do not care about an issue unless it is directly affecting them in a very personal manner, and some people will go out of their way to reject and dismiss ideas they haven’t even began to think about or study for that matter.

I believe this course has opened my eyes to what my responsibility and calling as a nature interpreter. And that is to attempt to erase the muddled water that is the knowledge gap between scientists and the ‘average joe’ or anyone unfamiliar with scientific themes.

In the very near future, it has become very apparent that we are going to reach our carrying capacity on this earth, and bad things are inevitably going to occur. In order to slow the roll, we as nature interpreters need to figure out ways to get average people involved in our designs to save the world, and raise awareness without scaring people away.

My way of doing this could possibly be to write. What I bring the table is a skill set that could be very useful in igniting the passion for the natural world for those love to read, whether it be online or even in news articles. I really think if I can develop some sort of platform, I can really get people engaged so that we can all contribute more to saving our planet.

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Personal growth

At the beginning of this class I had no idea what to expect, or what sort of skills I was going to develop through whatever the course presented me with. I had some experience with interpretation, but primarily just with friends and family in regard to nature when I would “nerd out” talking about things I had learned in school such as geology and ecology when hiking. My only professional application of interpretation was historical interpretation when I have public and management tours of my former job site. I worked at a Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) property called Bolton Camp. It was a summer camp for low-income single mothers from Toronto to get away with their children, and later a classic summer camp for kids all over the greater Toronto area. It opened in 1922 and closed in 1999 where it lay abandoned until the team I was a part of began restoration in 2014. Growing up just a 20-minute hike from the property I already knew a decent amount about the layout and function of the site itself, but through working on and researching the history of the site I developed a deep understanding of the history and significance of Bolton Camp. Because of this, I was chosen as the staff responsible for leading historical tours of the property for the public, as well as tours with senior TRCA staff to inform them of the ongoing restoration and significance of the work for continued funding purposes. The reason I’ve explained all of this background for you is for one particular weakness of mine I want to highlight regarding my interpretive ability. I may have been very effective at converting interest and engaging an audience in the role I was in, but upon reflection it was only because I was presenting information that I had a detailed knowledge of.

(Brief video about Bolton Camp from the TRCA)

To my benefit, I realized this as a weakness in my first year of university instead of more recently. Throughout high school I gave many presentations that I did reasonably well on, however they were all on content I was very comfortable with. In a first year environmental economics, law, and policy lab, I was in a situation where I was being cross examined on a policy recommendation presentation my group had given. Although I was able to answer some of the questions through research I had conducted, I found myself silent and frantically searching my stalled brain for answers when asked something I was unfamiliar with. I sat there with my group, and the other two groups looking at me and I had no idea what to say. I didn’t want to say I don’t know because I had been a part of the presentation so I really should have, and I didn’t want to give a false answer. Luckily, I was saved when another team member chimed in and answered the question for me. Although a small experience I remember the impact it had on me. Since then, I haven’t wanted to find myself stuck, even if I don’t know something in explicit detail, I have to know something of substance to talk about right? The problem was that I didn’t know how to navigate that change for myself.

That was the challenge I found laid out for myself, over the next couple of years I tried to put myself out there more. I finally saw an opportunity for myself when I was looking into courses to take for this current semester and stumbled across ENVS 3000, which you are all quite familiar with by now I hope. I saw this course as a way to hopefully get out of my comfort zone and develop my presentation skills, especially in the context of working with content that I was not extremely well versed in. I figured it would be a fun and engaging challenge so I signed up. As I began the course, I brought with me the powerful personal belief that nature is inexplicably tied with wellbeing, and that through understanding people can learn to appreciate it. My hope, although at the time I was less confident in its reality, was that there is the potential to create a world where we spend less time exploiting out planet and more time living with it. I realize that sounds like a very eco-warrior granola thing to say, but then again I am a resource management student studying at Guelph so its definably a personal bias that I recognize and embrace.

Learning to understand my own personal biases and other items in my invisible backpack at the beginning of the course was not something I expected to do, nor had I though too much about the concept itself before. I found that understanding why I view the world through the lens I do could help me try and understand how different people may struggle to engage with nature the way I do. This to me was the first “aha” moment I experienced through course content. The next profound lesson that stood out to me came with our first lab to the arboretum. We were made to present something we had no previous knowledge of on the spot, and were taught methods to engage an audience and train yourself to describe unfamiliar things effectively. Because this was the challenge I found myself struggling with, working through that exercise and hearing the Interpreters personal stories about how they often present on the fly was very memorable and made an impact on me. I knew that I was ready to learn more. The course itself helped me develop as an interpreter in a number of ways. Through watching and participating in the labs I learned things that do work and resonated with me like the concept of group involvement in the music workshop and the power of enthusiasm from Chris Earley. I also learned and observed things I didn’t like such as not pausing and passing on an individual detailed opinion at the art gallery, and not paying attention to the emotional reaction of your audience such as I witnessed at the Woodlawn cemetery. In addition, I was able to practice my presentation skills in ways that challenged me like the ignite presentation and through taking part in the Janes walk, presenting information I was incredibly interested in, but didn’t originally have a considerable knowledge on the subject.

(A bird of paradise I found particularly beautiful in the Bovey tropical greenhouse during the greenhouse Jane’s walk)

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Hello! It is nice to see to see that the feelings that I experienced during this walk were not a unique experience. The group did a great job and I am happy to hear that more people were excited about it too! Like you, I also thought back to BIOL1070  when we were out in the Dairy Bush Saturday. I found myself thinking about the tree identification and tried my hand at it while walking from stop to stop, making sure that my full attention was on the presenters when they were speaking, which wasn’t hard as they were the first of the day.

It was also interesting to me to learn that one half of the woodlot was old growth and the other was mostly regrown and planted. That was where I personally found the gift of beauty, being able to see both the resilience and age of the old growth stand and the successful growth of the planted stand into a healthy forest. Although similar in appearance, when the guides pointed out the differences my eyes were opened and the contrast was visible as it had nit been before on my many trips through the dairy bush over the past couple years. 

I lived near the dairy bush last year, but have moved further towards the city this year. When I was close by, I frequented the woodlot as a study break because it was convenient and very relaxing, as nature tends to be. However, now that I’m further away I have rarely visited this school year. Going back into the dairy bush reminded me how wonderful it is, especially facing the threat of development the university has proposed in their master plan. I was most definitely provided with the gift of a spark, albeit reignited, that has given me the intent to go back. 

Thank you for sharing your opinion on the walk! It was great to see that it was appreciated so much, the group who presented it deserves the praise. 

A Beautiful History

The Jane’s walk that stood out and was very entertaining to be apart of for me was the first walk describing the importance of the Dairy Bush to the University of Guelph school. Many students such as myself, walk by the Dairy Bush everyday walking to campus without acknowledging its purpose to the school. Learning about the past, present and future of the dairy bush allowed me to fully understand how important it is to the school.

The gift of a spark: this walk gave inspired me to visit the dairy bush again. Learning all about the Dairy Bush made me feel very unaware of how exactly it is used but sparked an interest in learning more about the Dairy Bush. In one University of Guelph class I took, biology 1070, we entered the Dairy Bush and used it to identify trees. This had always been one of my favourite classes I took so far throughout university and I enjoyed our labs out in the Dairy Bush, so I held onto the book “woodlot Biodiversity”to identify trees. After this Janes walk, my interest in doing this again came back. Since I had taken the class in the fall and we has our labs while leaves were still on trees I never got the opportunity to identify the trees by their stems, twigs, bark, so I had the opportunity to do this now.

The gift of Beauty: this walk showed me that forest could still be beautiful covered in snow! I love snow but being out in the cold is not my favourite! It was nice that once we got deeper into the forest we actually got warmer as the trees were able to block some of the wind and allowed me to get being cold off my mind. This helped me to really take in the beautiful atmosphere of being surrounded by all the trees and leaves on the ground.

The gift of Personalizing the Past: this walk taught me plenty about the history of the forest. Learning about how there was old growth forest on one side and plantation was new to me and learning that there were A LOT of different species of trees living there. The history taught, also reminded me of how much could have been learnt from studies going on in the forest. Since we were taught that there are constantly studies going on, on both sides of the forest, it was nice to think that people could have learnt a lot from this specific forest that is located on the University of Guelph property.

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At home in the greenhouses

All of the interpretative walks presented by my peers resonated with me in different and interesting ways. Each had a unique take on the idea of the assignment and the groups delivered some incredible and informative content. The variety of the programs kept the day lively and exciting and proved more than enough to motivate the class, and myself, through the unfortunate weather that Saturday. One walk in particular stood out to me. I thoroughly enjoyed the greenhouse walk, not just because of the warmth it provided, and I will attempt to use some principles of interpretation to try and figure out why this walk in particular stands out still in memory.

I think I’ll start with the obvious for me, the gift of beauty. In my experience, there has always been a feeling of beauty associated with plants, so you can see how a greenhouse might reinforce this idea in my eyes. Of the greenhouses we visited, the most beautiful to me was the Bovey greenhouse. This building contained a collection of tropical plants, a stark contrast from the leafless trees barren in the snow outside the protected walls of the Bovey greenhouse. Among these tropical plants was a bougainvillea, a woody climbing vine with deep green leaves and purple, paper-lantern like flowers. I had no idea there were any growing in the greenhouse and it was a very pleasant surprise, as the bougainvillea is a common garden flower all over Queensland where I spent my early years. Seeing the bright purple flowers connected me not just to the immediate beauty in front of me, but the memory of beauty previously experienced. The Bovey greenhouse was also the site of my first university lab experiment, which in itself holds very fond memories. This reflection proved beautiful in itself, fitting with the surroundings.

(Bougainvillea walkway in Southbank, Brisbane, QLD. Photo sourced from https://www.eatsouthbank.com.au/dining-guide/precincts/parklands/)

The next interpretive tool this group used effectively was the gift of wholeness. As mentioned in Beck and Gables “The Gifts of Interpretation,” it is impossible to present the whole of something, and all of the information pertaining to it. It would simply take far too long and it would be very difficult to keep the audience engaged for all of it. Despite the immense amount of information, history, uses, and various styles of greenhouses located across the University of Guelph campus, the group did an incredible job of proving a comprehensive overview of the different facilities and what made them all unique from one another. When presented with so many possible pieces of information to convey, they narrowed it down into a comprehensive and entertaining overview.

Another principle of interpretation used to this groups advantage was the gift of story. Buildings themselves can seem disconnected from us because they can be viewed as just structures without the proper context. To some, a greenhouse may just be another building with plants. Whether it be for research or recreation, what difference is there between greenhouses that makes them unique? The group was able to use both history and personal anecdotes to tell the stories of the greenhouses we visited. This transformed the spaces from just buildings into the scenes of personal memory and historical importance. Even the stories of former structures emphasized the historic and important role that greenhouses have played in the university’s story.

Due to my positive recollection of the greenhouse Jane’s walk, identifying a principle of interpretation that could have been strengthened was not easy. However, if there were one I think it may be the gift of targeted programs. I say this because upon reflection of the walk, I can’t deduce what the target audience was. The activity we partook in could be presented to a younger audience, but some of the information and context provided about research and history would be of limited interest to a younger group, but captivating to the university students. My inability to put a finger on the target group is the only area of improvement that I can identify. That in itself though proves the high caliber of the greenhouse walk, as there was nothing else I could identify as a weakness in the program.

To the group that presented this, great job. I had a lot of fun and learned way more about our campus greenhouses than I ever thought I would!

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Hello, first off thank you for the abundance of facts there it was actually really eye opening. I had heard before, mind you only this year and it came as a shock to me, that honeybees are an invasive species in Canada, but I had no idea that were was such an incredible amount of native bee species in Ontario alone. I have seen some native bees before but I really doubt I have seen anything even close to 400 different kinds, more like 4. Also, I can see how the different overwintering practices can be detrimental to the sustained survival of the native bee species. How is one supposed to compete against an entire colony??? As soon as I read that my mind actually went right to the bee hotels so its neat that you mentioned them as well.

I actually built a number of them as a project for a camp i was working at to showcase the importance of protecting bees, but I had no idea of the difference in native versus non native bees at the time. I personally think they are an awesome thing to both make and own because not only are they incredibly functional, but the look great as well! Thank you for attaching instructions on how to build one if people are curious, theres so many methods so I’ll read that one and see how it differs or is similar to the designs I followed.

One more thing, I am also a big fan of pollinator gardens so I am really happy that you mentioned that. So many gardens are filled with invasive ornamental plants for aesthetic when Ontario already has so many native plants that are both beautiful AND functional. They are so easy to plant and can really make a difference. The only thing I would add to your list for myself is milkweed for the monarchs! Because who doesn't love monarchs. 

Thanks for a really informative post I enjoyed it a lot!

Best regards, 

Matt. 

The Buzz about Bees

    You’ve surely heard some slogan along the lines of ‘save the bees’ in the past several years. There are lots of issues causing colony collapse in the European honeybee (Apis mellifera), and scientists are still trying to pinpoint the exact factor causing this issue and how to best address it.     Something you don’t hear too often is that Colony Collapse Discorder (CCD) is a problem for the European honeybee, but technically it they are an invasive species here in North America. They were brought here only several centuries ago, as they are one of the most popular bees to farm. There are over 800 native bee species in Canada, and 400 in Ontario, which are also really struggling, but don’t have too much awareness since they don’t produce products (eg. Honey, wax, propolis, etc).      Did you know that a single colony of the invasive honey bee can outcompete up to a thousand native bee colonies for habitats? Most native bees die off in late fall, and only the queen bee survives the winter. She must find a suitable habitat all alone and begin laying eggs for her colony. However, the invasive honeybee overwinters as a colony, and is able to establish itself faster in the spring. It then gets first pick for the best habitats. All of this happens when an inexperienced beekeeper accidentally allows their colony to split and move out of the bee box and into surrounding trees! But hey, I’m not just here to give you the bad news. There are things you can do to help!

1. Set out a shallow plate of water with rocks in it as landing zones; bees get thirsty too! 2. Don’t use pesticides on your lawn; embrace the natural beauty of native species like clover and dandelions which are great for pollinators, and don’t have to be mowed/pulled out/chemically removed. Not to mention pesticides kill important organisms in the soil and end up in our water – yuck.

3. If you have a green thumb, try creating a pollination garden in your yard. You can plant pollen rich plants (but make sure they’re native species, like Asters, buttercups, marigolds, violets, etc). All types of pollinators, like hummingbirds and butterflies, have been suffering in recent years. Here’s a link to a guide on trees and shrubs that will attract pollinators throughout the year

4. Buy/build nesting boxes: unlike the bee boxes or honeycombs you may have in mind when you think of bees, you can create boxes that look like this:

(Insect hotel, 2015) Here are some instructions on making a bee-utiful nesting box of your own! It’s a pretty fun project, and the native bees will be super thankful!

Are you familiar with our native Ontario bees/do you see them often? Do you have any other ideas on aiding native pollinators?

I shall leave you with a joke: What do you call a wasp? A wanna-bee!

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Combatting change through remembrance

One of the things I find the most challenging yet exciting about nature interpretation is the role of change. Nature is by definition one of the least static things in existence. This can be impacted by anything from seasons, to weather, to disaster, to life cycles. Nothing will be the same as it has been so one object can be interpreted in different ways to adapt to these shifts. It can definitely be a challenge but it can also sharpen the interpreter’s ability and understanding of their content.

This week I want to focus on the interpretation of history though, not nature. History itself may not change, it happened the way it happened. However, the people, places, and retellings of history can change. As most of you know, today marks the 100th anniversary of armistice, the end to the first global conflict that left millions of lives and lands in ruin. I want to place particular emphasis on the ruin of the landscape for a moment. From all known accounts, the first world war left the land it consumed scarred and barren, void of any visible life. The trees were burned or destroyed, the ground just mud and water with no grass. Endless fields pocked with craters carved by the constant bombardment of artillery. It sounds like a sight a lot less like the Earth than part of it, but it was a reality. Today, these scars can still be seen, but only as a shadow of what once remained. Grasses and trees have come back to slowly occupy the land they were extirpated from. Soil shifts and some craters fill. There are of course still visible trenches and blowouts left from the fighting, at that scale how could there not be? But as I mentioned before, nature will always change regardless of what happens to it.

(Outside of Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium following the battle of Passchendaele. Sourced from flandersfieldsmusic.com).

This means we have to be careful. As the land slowly heals itself, we as a society cannot afford to ever let the memory fade as the physical scars do. That is why days like today are so important. The idea of remembrance is to reflect on what sacrifices had to be made to live the way we are able to today. We have to be able to understand our ability to enjoy peace and never take that for granted. This is where the importance of historical interpretation is most evident. War is not a very palatable thing, it is the most savage thing that we are a species are a capable of. So how do those responsible for teaching about it convey the immense gravity of the truth, while still engaging recipients without scaring them away from learning?

(Forest regrowth around artillery craters near Vimy Ridge, France. Source: Timsimages / Shutterstock).

I think the answer lies in respect, evident in today’s traditions. One could just teach the hard facts behind war. The innumerable casualties, the monetary damages, the political ramifications, the pain. The danger is if we look too analytically at something as raw as war we run the risk of disconnecting ourselves from it, especially as time passes. Instead, we are taught respect through remembrance. From a young age we are taught to understand the sacrifices that people just like us made to protect what they believed in. We make the connection clear between the peace we live in and the contrasting horrors faced to achieve it. We look at it through a human lens, allowing us to understand the significance of the scale of the lives lost. We remember them not as numbers but as people, and that creates a connection that time is unable to erase. I believe that as long as we can continue to teach history in this way, we can combat change and time and keep the memory alive for hundreds more years to come.

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Hello Becca!

Ignore the previous comments I left, I seemingly forgot how to use this website for a moment. I went looking for your blog this week after you brought up to me your story about the squirrel and how you came to learn about it. I have to say, after reading it again in your blog it was just as interesting as the first retelling. First off, good for you for taking the time to listen to what the Jehovah’s witness had to say, it takes dedication to go door to door knowing most people wont give you their time to listen, so that was very kind of you. 

It is also wonderful to see that that kindness was rewarded with a lasting memory, some interesting information, and a seemingly profound lesson to top it all off. Aside from the how you got this information, I want to say that I was wilded out reading the details of this amazing critters abilities!

I had no idea that mammals were so capable of becoming subject to their environment regardless of how harsh it may be. We are always taught stories and facts about how mammals have to fight to survive and struggle through winter. It is a struggle that we as humans can relate to, maybe thats what makes it easy to grasp. But then you learn about something like this little squirrel and all that information you thought you understood is flipped around. I find it incredible that something as simple as a shiver can regenerate heat and ward off the damages of the cold. Not only that, but the fact that it only takes two hours to recover from this state and that their brain function could be even higher than pre-hibernation? That is just incredible. 

Thank you to both you and the Individual who taught you this, because you have made it evident that sometimes learning can come from places we least expect it. For you it was a stranger at the door, and in this case for me it was a friends blog about squirrels. Who knew mammals could be so hardcore? 

Thanks for a great post!

“The Resilient Brain...”

In the summer of 2013 I was 15 years old and home alone when the doorbell rang. I answered the door to the cutest old lady I had ever seen. She was really nice so I decided to listen to her. Now I realize I was approached by a missionary for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I took a pamphlet from the woman, and proceeded to skim the article tittles. One stood out, “The Resilient Brain of the Arctic Ground Squirrel”. Although the purpose of the woman’s visit was considerably unsuccessful, I still remember what I learnt about that cool animal. So I would like to tell you about the article I have remembered for over five years.

           The artic ground squirrel is a small mammal we have here in Canada. For living in the arctic it has to survive very harsh winters. To combat these tough winters the squirrels have to hibernate. To hibernate they burrow into the soil that reaches up to -23.4 degrees Celsius, some ground squirrels body temperatures have even hit negative degrees (Celsius) during these hibernation periods. If humans even drop a few degrees below our average temperature we go into hypothermia and most likely die. The arctic ground squirrel does not. During this cold, brain activity is at an all-time low.

           Every few weeks the squirrel needs to warm its body up. To do so the squirrel will shiver (kinetic energy making warmth) to increase its temperature back to it’s a normal temperature. It will stay at the temperature for 12-15 hours.

           When it’s time for the arctic ground squirrel to emerge from its hibernation it reaches full brain function in two hours. There is even some debate that it could be preforming at a higher function than pre hibernation.

This brain survived under dangerously harsh conditions, regulates itself, and bounces back rapidly and better than ever. As humans we cannot even compare to this mammal.

             If there’s one take away from this story I can give it’s to listen to more people with an open mind. If I didn’t engage in conversation that day I still wouldn’t of known of the impressive arctic ground squirrel that still sits in my memory 5 years later. And for the squirrel it’s a reminder of how many seemly tiny vulnerable creatures there are in the world that harbor much strength and tenacity that we didn’t existed inside of them. For me learning came right to my door and left me with a pamphlet with references, but hopefully more people can hear about these cool little creatures and go out and start learning on their own. This way we can make our own brains a little more resilient.

Some links https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201307/arctic-ground-squirrel-resilient-brain/

https://academic-oup-com.subzero.lib.uoguelph.ca/jmammal/article/97/1/135/2459622

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Trees from Antarctica???

Ok everyone, I am incredibly excited to share with you all something ancient and mystical living amongst us today. It comes from a world that we will never know, but is still our own. This living memory may be one of the loneliest beings on earth as its species slowly dwindles and fails, but as the last survive, they provide testament to the resilience of life, the desire to survive, and evidence that the world around us will never be the same as it is in the moment we experience it. Today I share with you my favorite tree, Nothofagus moorei, the Antarctic beech.

The Antarctic beech is one of the only remaining species (I was told the only remaining but I question the reliability of the sign I read as it is my only source) native to Antarctica living today. Now, I know what you must be thinking. Yes, that Antarctica. The one with the lightless winter, miles thick ice sheets, and not a single tree to be found; let alone a deciduous tree that can grow to 50 metres in height. However, the southern extreme we know today wasn’t always that way.

(Photo by Neil Ross, 2013). 

Tens of millions of years ago after the dissolution of the supercontinent Pangea, a new landmass was forming in the southern hemisphere. This continent, named Gondwana, was comprised of what is modern day Africa, South America, India, the Arabian Peninsula, Australia, and you guessed it, Antarctica. The dominant ecosystem across much of Gondwana was cool, subtropical and temperate rainforests. It was in this environment that the Antarctic beech came into being. Over the following millions of years, Gondwana started to break and the last to pieces drifted south together, what would become Australia and Antarctica. The tree is believed to have originated in the Antarctic portion, with small populations extending into cooler alpine regions of Australia. As the two landmasses finally split, the trees living on their native Antarctica slowly dwindled to extirpation as ice devoured their ancestral range. Today only a handful survive in elevated peaks scattered along eastern Australia.

Unfortunately, the trees are currently believed to be on their last legs in their final stronghold today. Evolving in a cooler climate, the increasingly warm Australian temperatures have robbed the trees almost entirely of their ability to reproduce sexually. In addition, their alpine homes were traditionally out of the reach of the bulk of the fires that regularly reset life in Australia’s lowland bush. In the past decades though, drier weather has promoted the spread of fires into the mountains. Unlike the majority of Australian flora, the beech is not resilient in the wake of fire. The final figurative “nail in the coffin” is the slow but steady erosion of the mountains that host them as time rolls along. With large root systems that favour deep soil, the thin mountain topsoil exposes the roots to mosses and parasitic plant and insect species. With some trees alive estimated to be up to 12,000 years old, the age of this ancient beauty is coming to an apparent end. Fortunately, its timeless message of consistent beauty in the face of constant change will long outlive it, and possibly even us who learn this lesson. 

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Hello! 

Wow, ok. That was a good blog, after the first paragraph I knew that I had to write a response. Firstly, since coming to University I have noticed that so many people seem more than capable to read and write while listening to music which is wild to me. I have tried, but despite my efforts I am incapable of reading or writing more than a sentence while listening to anything such as music, or even people talking around me. My brain needs silence or white noise of some kind to allow me to properly comprehend what I am reading. So that is awesome that you have that skill.

I also really wanted to touch on what you mentioned about music being a time capsule. That is the comment that made me want to comment. I relate to this very personally, I only have one major playlist on my phone but i know where every song is because i know “when” that song is in the playlist as I added them over the past few years. Each section allows me to recall what was happening in my life then and takes me immediately back to that moment. An example that came to mind is Young Glass by Hey Rosetta! I first listened to that song in February of this year when there was a lot of exciting things going on in my life and i was in the middle of driving to NYC and back in a day and a half. Whenever I hear that song I go right back to then and feel the same excitement which is magical. 

Finally, I have heard about forest bathing before but I haven’t attempted it myself yet. Thank you for including the image and your own personal experience because I needed a push like that to reconsider trying it, it sounds very peaceful.

Thanks for a great post this week, I enjoyed it and it really got me thinking a lot!

Music and Nature

I’m one of those people who will usually have headphones in wherever they go. I’m listening to music as I write this now! I like looking through albums on my phone and recalling what I was doing and how I felt when I was listening to them. What usually happens is I listen to an album on repeat for about a week or two before I move onto a new one. This way, albums and songs work as sort of time capsules for me. 

In this week’s seminar, we worked with James Gordon. The result was a song about the beauty of nature, which would make a great camping song! Our assignment for the beginning of the exercise was to think about a song that makes us think of a location. Some ideas were “The Black Fly Song” by Wade Hemsworth, a song that I’ve only heard once but immediately transported me into June in the peak of black fly season. Scrolling through my music, I realized a lot of songs reminded me of either a general mood I was in when I listened, or a certain place. For example, I was driving around Hobart, Tasmania for a week with my friend Mei in April, and we had rented a car and played “Over Everything” by Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett every single day. I hadn’t reminisced on this trip in months, and playing the song brought back a lot of great feelings. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KNsBCf34fQ ; here’s the link if you want to give it a listen!). I recalled our hikes on Mount Wellington, the platypus and albino wallaby we spotted, and looking out on the vast southern Ocean between Australia and Antarctica. Through memories like this, nature is in music.

    But there is music in nature as well. In Japan, there is a form of meditation called ‘Forest Bathing’. There’s a great book on it, “Forest Bathing: How Trees Can Help You Find Health and Happiness” by Dr. Qing Li. The idea is to immerse yourself into a single spot. This isn’t about hiking, you just get comfortable in a spot in the forest and sit there for 20 minutes or so. It takes a long time to truly absorb everything in the forest; the lighting, the plants, animals, bugs, sounds, smells. I borrowed this book from my cousin who does research for the National University of Singapore on Neurolandscaping and decided to try it out myself. There were lots of things I noticed both in myself and my surroundings, but I was surprised by some of the things I noticed that I wouldn’t notice on a hike. The wind through trees, the trickle of water through the lignin of the canopy to the forest floor, the beetles crawling through the forest litter. It was like a meditation soundtrack! If meditation and forests are two things you enjoy, I would definitely recommend trying forest bathing. I took a picture of simplified instructions the book provides, if you aren’t able to read it.

All in all, you can find nature in music in ways you wouldn’t expect, but furthermore, music is everywhere in nature! I’m curious if others listen to music like I do, using it as a time capsule that has a memory attached to it. Also, what’s your favourite hiking/camping/roadtripping song?

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A bit of a rant, interpretation and citizen action

*Note that all underlined text is hyperlinked to supporting articles and content!

You may have noticed a bit of a spike in environmental news recently. More articles being shared on Facebook, between the plastic straw debate posts, about the last call to save our planet. If you chanced a click on one of those links you may have read about how the UN IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has recently released a special report how we are currently absolutely hooped. Instead of keeping on track to limit warming to 1.5°C, we’re going full steam ahead to 3°C.

The other day I was in my GEOG 3210 lecture, Management of the Biophysical Environment, listening to the instructor (Dr. Faisal Moola, an interesting prof who used to work with the David Suzuki Foundation - DSF) discuss the failures of British Columbia on following it’s commitments to protecting species at risk. One of my classmates, understandably a bit frustrated put up their hand and said (roughly) “what can you even do when your government blatantly doesn’t follow through on their commitments or do what they’re supposed to?” to which Dr. Moola simply replied, “oh well you can sue them”. We all had bit of a chuckle at how nonchalantly he had suggested suing the government, but he was serious. He talked about how he had done just that before with the DSF, and how we have the ability to hold our government responsible if we so choose.

The IPCC report and the news surrounding it gave me flashbacks of a post I read last year, and needed to search the internet in order to include in this post. It was circulated around the time of the solar eclipse last summer, in which millions of North Americans got to witness an incredible scientific event, feeling connected to nature whether they knew it or not.

So this leaves me with questions. Where is the disconnect?

Is this a failure on the part of interpretation? Is it just all political, about who’s cutting the biggest paycheck? The eclipse was a miracle of nature that was accessible to a huge portion of the population. What about other miracles of nature, every landscape you can find across our world, from the deserts to the mountains to the trees that expel oxygen to fill our lungs and keep our hearts beating? Are they not all worth the changing of our routines?

What do we need to do to get people to ask our policy makers to make decisions for the environment, and hold them accountable when they don’t?

If you feel overwhelmed, you can (as I have) spend endless time scrolling the internet, finding listicles of the top 10 ways you can reduce your ecological footprint. From that, I’ll share the two things that I am focussed on doing:

Changing my diet. As much as people do not want to hear it, animal agriculture has an absolutely insane impact on our environment. From limiting the amount you consume meat and eating local to becoming a full-on vegan, it is the direction we need to head in (I’m also *attempting* to eat less food with palm oil in it (because this), but that stuff is in freaking everything).

Voting and participating in the democratic process. This summer Ontario elected a majority government that has worked to remove policy that was moving us in the right direction, from the cancelling of rebates on electric vehicles (for which Tesla sued, and won), to removing Ontario’s carbon tax. It is a big commitment to stay on top of political news, write in to policy makers, and make sure that your voice is heard, but for myself as a privileged Canadian, it’s an obligation I need to keep.

Let’s chat! I’d love to hear your thoughts with the IPCC report, interpretation and climate change, plant-based diets, and voting/environmental policy.

Here are some more sources that support what I’ve included in this post/helpful links!

Palm oil’s affect on biodiversity

Animal husbandry and GHGs

Environmental Impacts of Plant Based Diets

The Case for Plant Based 

Videos by Vox on climate change (can’t recommend these enough, an interesting form of interpretation)

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The nature of music

If you look for music in nature, you will not have to search for long. If you have spent any time outdoors in silence you know what I am talking about. When out there, you are the closest thing there is to silence. I liked to play a game with myself at work over the summer when I was on a piece of land I considered remote. I would stop and listen to see if I could hear any trace of “people noise” around me. This could be hikers, planes, roads, anything that you would expect to hear in the background most places in southern Ontario. Normally there was some hum of a roadway or a plane overhead, but every once in a while I found what I was looking for. The only thing I could use as comparison is an orchestra. At first it appears as one harmonious yet at times chaotic and cluttered noise, but after a moment you can hear the instruments making the melody. The birds singing, the animals running through the trees and along the ground, frogs chirping beside a pond, water rolling over stones in the river, and my favouite, the wind in the leaves overhead.

The comparison to music is imperfect though. Whereas music differs by genre and preference, I personally haven’t met anyone who has gone out into nature and come back with complaints of the serenity or the songs around them. Maybe that’s one of the reasons people seek out solitude in the outdoors to heal themselves. As a personal anecdote for this, I remember one night when I was in high school on a weekend camping trip with a group of people, I was having a tough time dealing with something. I remember laying down in a hammock and just looking up above me. It was a windy night, and being by the water reinforced that. I remember the leaves above me rattling and sighing in the wind and I just lay there listening to it and watching them dance away. I still can’t put a finger on why but I felt at peace, and realized my problems weren’t so important. I still feel this way every time I watch the wind stir a tree, but when thinking about music in nature it was the first thing that sprang to mind.

(A personal favourite spot for watching the wind. University of Guelph Arboretum, October 2017)

Sometimes people try to capture this feeling in music as well, though there can be challenges. As I said before, we are limited because music has no universal genre like nature does. It can be just as beautiful though. What I have found the closest comparison is how some music can make you feel or think the ways that nature can. Again, art is subjective so I am speaking from personal experience only. A song that reinforces this idea to me, and I know it may be cliché, is Rocky Mountain High by John Denver. Not necessarily the music itself, although the continuous and soft nature of the guitar throughout the song can be reminiscent of wind and water, but one particular set of lyrics. In the second verse Denver sings,

“Now he walks in quiet solitude, the forests and the streams,

Seeking grace in every step he takes,

His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand,

The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake.”

My grandmother played this song to me a lot as a child, and this one quote always stuck with me and resonated above the others. To me it mirrors the appreciation, awe, and personal contemplation I feel when alone in nature. Then again, it could mean something entirely different to you, and you could have a totally different experience outdoors. Where do you find music in nature, or nature in music? I would be happy to hear!

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Hello!

I found your blog really interesting so I wanted to comment, especially on your comments regarding social media. I think what you highlighted is really important, social media has made people think about sharing what they see instead of just keeping that moment while it exists. You are right that we see so many “wow” images and I feel like when people see something like that in their lives their first instinct is to capture it, which could disconnect them from the experience at hand.

As an example, I was on a canoe trip in the spring with some friends, one of which is a long-time photographer. One night after we had set up camp we were all watching the sunset, there had been a storm so the clouds were really beautiful. I noticed that my friend had gotten up and walked away, he came back shortly and walked around with his camera trying to capture the sight. Now to me as someone who is not personally invested in photography, I thought he was missing out on seeing the beauty in front of us while he was behind the camera. After talking to him though I realized I was wrong. He was just appreciating it in his own way, looking at the light, the colours, analyzing all the individual components as I looked at the whole.

So in a way yes social media disconnects us, but it also shares other people’s take of what beauty is to them and the process in which they engage with it. I just didn’t think of it until then, it was a neat paradigm shift.

Thanks for a great blog post! As you can see it really got me thinking.

The Gift of Beauty

     I think the thirteenth principle of the Nature Interpretation textbook does a great job of explaining how to interpret the gift of beauty through pointing out that beauty is personal. What is beautiful to one person may not be beautiful to the other, hence the purpose of art is to make people see what is familiar as new. Furthermore, all nature is beautiful, and we don’t have to travel to see the natural wonders of the world since the flora and fauna found in your backyard is beautiful too. 

     I don’t consider myself an artist, though I do think I can be quite creative. My trouble is taking what I picture in my head and translating it into physical art. The most frustrating thing for me is being humbled by the immensity of a natural landscape, but not being able to capture it (whether that be through drawing, painting or photography). I feel that social media has much to do with this feeling. We are used to seeing edited photos of extreme landscapes and colourful birds and butterflies. It feels weird to share a picture of an improperly framed sparrow; something that people see all the time wont ‘wow’ them. Therefore, as an interpreter it is your job to “make people aware of the beauty of subtle landscapes, unusual organisms, or complex objects” (Gifts of Interpretation, Ch. 13).     I wanted to talk about one of my favourite paintings by Claude Monet, The Water Lily Pond (1899). I had a book about Monet’s works growing up and had this piece dog eared. But as I began googling for an image to insert into my post, I noticed there were tons of variations of this same piece. So, I’ve decided to make a different point. This same piece with the same elements can be made to look so many different ways, and each is beautiful. Every member of your audience as an interpreter sees things a little bit differently, but they can all be made to see the same thing as beautiful. 

     Since my artistic talents still require honing, the ability to use words to interpret nature is incredible to me. Similar to the way physical art can be interpreted by the beholder in different ways and they can take different conclusions out of it, the information presented to an audience has different takeaways. Chapter 5 of the nature interpretation textbook touches on this in a sense, by explaining the way the human brain remembers information. George Miller found that people can only hold 7 (give or take 2) chunks of information in their short-term memory at a time (Gifts of Interpretation, Ch. 5). What each person will remember and take away from the program is different. Designing a program that has a clear theme and presents new information in a way that the human brain will best absorb is almost like a work of art, don’t you think?

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The eye of the beholder

The concept of art is fascinating. The idea of expression through a creative medium that serves no purpose other than to convey the creator’s perception of the world is something that has been called uniquely human. The opportunities are vast and no two works of art are alike, because no two people view the world the same way. That to me is the beauty of it, that’s why we are so intoxicated by the idea of art. Whether it be poetry, painting, music, drawing, sculpting, dancing, there are endless individual ways to express yourself through art. Regardless of if you have extensive education in the subject or none at all, we can all create and appreciate art in our own ways.

So who am I to interpret art? I am a human, and I believe that is the only qualification I need. I have my own subjective understanding of the world, and you reading this have one that is unique to you, and that’s where the beauty of art comes from. However, this concept can be both a blessing and a challenge in the context of a nature interpreter.

(Moon River, June 2018) 

What do you see in this photo that strikes you as beautiful? The water, trees, rocks, sky, etc? To me it is the stillness of the water and the reflections. The tranquility of the scene was especially beautiful after a not-so-calm day of paddling.

The interpreter sees beauty in what they present, otherwise there would be no passion to have driven them down that career path. The problem arises when you realize that what you may connect to could be completely missed by someone you are trying to share it with. In some cases, no matter how hard you try, that person will not understand the connection the same way you do. They could however see something that you do not. This is where the subjective nature of beauty can be used as a tool for the interpreter. As an example, on the class trip to the Art Gallery of Guelph I experienced something that I was slightly frustrated with. As we were viewing scenes from the film 1745, our guide spoke through the duration of the viewing about what she believed the aspects of the film to represent. I agree that background was needed so we could understand it, but I found myself wishing for the opportunity to take what she had said and use it as a foundation for my own subjective take on the film through watching it undisturbed with time to think.

To put what I am saying into a different context, imagine you are on a guided walk in the forest. As you go along, your guide is consistently talking about what they find fascinating. Of course, this is their job and they are passionate about it so it is perfectly understandable. But what if you aren’t as interested in the details they are? What if the interpreter is unable to connect with what you are interested in? Would you want the opportunity for a pause, to stand there in silence for a moment and observe what is happening around you? To make your own connections? It is impossible to connect with everyone, but if you explain where you draw beauty, whether it be art or nature, and challenge your audience to find beauty themselves, then you have used the subjectivity of beauty as a tool to connect the unconnected.

You may not be able to fully understand your audience every time, but if you can get them to find beauty themselves then you may ignite a spark that wasn’t lit before, and that’s beautiful.

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Hello Justine!

First off I just have to say that your photo of the lupins is ridiculously beautiful. It really captures their place in the landscape to put the regrowth into context.

I like how you took the opportunity of the free blog to talk about something personal like learning something that profound first hand. I can imagine how crazy it must have been actually seeing the extent of the burns effect as well as the resurgence of life following a significant natural event like a forest fire. I also like that you mentioned the realization of how common they are. In Ontario it feels so distant hearing the stories of the fires burning annually across large stretches of Alberta and British Columbia. Even this summer with the substantial amount of fire activity closer to home near the French river felt disconnected because I wasn’t personally affected. Thinking about the human aspect of it and how it can affect individuals and communities really creates a profound paradigm shift. We see the devastation in nature, and that it is only temporary as the diverse regrowth breaks through the burnt ground in the following months. From what I have seen coming from out west, especially in Fort McMurray following their fire, I think that communities can be just as resilient and rebuild stronger after events like that.

Thank you for sharing your personal experience and take on the subject, it was really eye opening!

Fires in the West

So since this week is a free write for the blog I decided that I wanted to reflect on my summer. This summer I had the opportunity to work in Waterton Lakes National Park in the south western area of Alberta. In 2016 I road tripped out west with my family for a month and got to see the Canadian Rockies for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the mountains and all the wildlife that surrounds those areas. So the following year I applied to national parks out west. I got to see some pretty amazing things while I was out there such as bears, herds of elk, mule deer and many many wildflowers.

Black bear cub (pc. me)

One thing that I knew prior to driving out to Waterton before the summer was that the previous year there was a massive forest fire which devastated the town and park. Fortunately the many firefighters and the parks Canada staff was able to come together to protect all the buildings and historic sites and evacuate all the people before the fire came into the town.

This past summer another fire hit the town and it shocked me how much fires effect an area. This fire specifically was started by a lightning strike that hit the southern edge of the park in Glacier National Park, Montana. The fire spread very fast into our park and ended up only 5 kilometers away from the townsite.

Burnt forest floor in Waterton (pc. me)

I realized this was the norm for people who live out west. Being from Ontario I did not realize that extreme forest fires occur in British Columbia every year. That doesn’t make them any less devastating but it was surreal going to areas that just have to deal with that on a regular occurrence in certain areas of Canada and the world. Immediately when I realized this I became more aware of looking into how many forest fires were going on in certain areas around me. It was crazy finding out that at certain points in the summer that there was around 600 fires in British Columbia alone, with only a portion of those being under control.

Lupins growing in Waterton after the fire (pc. me)

One thing that I learned about fires from being out west is that it can be really beneficial to the land to get that extreme treatment. I always learned in conservation classes and forest classes in school that forest fires and controlled burns are really good for an area’s biodiversity. I did not have a good concept of this until I saw it for the first time. The parks Canada staff who have lived in the area for some time explained to me how devastating the Kenow (2017) fire was and seeing all the burned areas was a shock. But as the seasons changed I participated in a wildflower count in the park and the botanists that were there were surprised and super pleased about how many more wildflowers were growing in the area because of the fire and the ash fertilizing the ground. It’s absolutely amazing to me that with so much destruction comes great beauty in following years.

Crocus flowers growing after the grass fire  (pc. me)

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The choices we make

This week there have been many things on my mind, but if there is one thing in particular I could discuss it would probably be the topic of us. I realize “us” is a strange idea for one person and whoever is reading this blog to refine without context, so bear with me. Earlier this week I read a very strange paper that was written from a point of view I hadn’t heard voiced extensively in regards to what we know today as human history and culture. It was Jared Diamond’s 1987 paper, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.” In the article, Diamond proposes that the single largest error humankind has made was the adoption of agriculture and the departure from a nomadic, hunter gatherer lifestyle. When I first read the paper I thought what Diamond was suggesting was crazy, how could this massive shift, regarded as the beginning of true human civilization, be a mistake? However, as the week churned along the ideas stayed ever present in the back of my mind as I mulled them over, and after thinking about it and discussing the ideas with friends, arguments for both sides began to form.

The first and most common side is pro agricultural reformation. It’s a process most of us have heard at some point, agriculture allowed us to gather geographically, this in turn resulted in the creation of cities, which allowed for the diversification of society, which allowed for the development of art, technology, and the collective advances in human civilization we are living in the spoils of today. Agriculture allowed us to feed growing populations and gave the majority of the population in cities who weren’t primary producers the spare time to create, something we regard as fundamentally human. Over the millennia, this time allowed for the rise of science and the discovery of medicine to keep us alive, and the use of previously unknown and unusable materials to shape the world we live in, in short, that fateful shift 10,000 years ago provided the foundation for human civilization to survive and flourish into what it is today. Without it, none of our progress would have been possible. That progress however, may have come at a cost.

(Manhattan Before and After, an artistic recreation, Mike Gibson, 2012)

This is where the second argument comes in, and it has some pretty strong backing. Before humans congregated in towns and cities, we lived in small nomadic bands and didn’t have a lot of contact with other groups. The amount of land needed for resources was much larger as well and it took more work to raise fewer children. These factors were some of many that limited the population density of our pre-agricultural societies. Once agriculture was introduced and cities formed, it was easier to feed more people with less land and human input, so the population exploded. More people coupled with a denser and stationary population, as well as contact with livestock, became a breeding ground for disease. Of course, sickness existed before people began to accumulate in close urban quarters, but this new lifestyle made transmission almost unavoidable. As these societies developed, so did the roles within them. The ideas of class and status played a minor role in a hunter gatherer lifestyle, there may have been a leader, but everyone had a valued role to play in the groups survival. Now divisions of class evolved with the changing society and the rich profited while the poor suffered. Almost parallel to this was the evolution of divisions of sex. As societies developed the role of women changed too, with history showing for the worse. Traditionally, women living a nomadic lifestyle would have few children, or one young child for a few years because it was difficult to move around with any more. Now that humans were stationary though, this restriction was lifted and there was incentive to create as many working hands for the farm as possible. This went as far as early settlers in Quebec being taxed if their daughters were not married and having children by 13 to 14 years of age. These divisions may not have evolved without the introduction of agriculture.

The final and potentially most devastating impact of our evolving society is the level to which we exploit our planet. We have shifted from coexistence to a mindset of domination, where nature exists to meet our needs and we as a society have ignored the needs of nature. This process is recent in the past few hundred years, but it is interesting to think about the state of the planet had we let things be as they were. Of course, we can’t say because we chose our path and have to live with the choices our species has made. Were these choices for the better, or the worse. I personally don’t have a definitive answer yet, but I will continue to think about it and welcome anyone to join in the discussion sparked by this paper. You can read it here. 

Image sourced from: https://athousandnations.com/2012/10/26/manhattan-before-after/

[mpenvs3000-2018-blog]

Hey!

Great blog post I really enjoyed reading it! In particular, I was a big fan of how you chose to describe the importance of interpreting something as a whole through the complexity and connectivity of its individual facets. The example of the downed log really connected with me because I have had very similar trains of thought looking at the exact same thing, especially regarding the hole in the canopy a fallen tree creates. It’s just such a beautiful part of the cycle of life how there really is no present, because every second becomes the past as soon as it happens and the future fills the void as the cycle continues. Like the dead log, history is alive as the foundation of everything we experience today, because it gives us a foundation of context. This fits in really well with, “everything happens for a reason.” I also live by this because even in the chaos that is the world, there are some patterns that are just too incredible to dismiss. Every fallen tree is just the chance for a new tree to grow, and every moment in history allows another to build upon it, hopefully for the better! 

Sorry for the rant but the blog was great snd really got me thinking, so thank you! 

Stories in our backyard

A saying that I like to reference, and one that’s has kept me up through tough times in life is “everything happens for a reason”.  I not sure whether this thought has come across any of your minds, but I always think about the way things are and how they came to be, particularly in nature. The way a tree can wrap around a metal fence, or the way a singular pine grows on a deserted mountainside. Such thoughts are the reason I got into this program and why I love science so much.

Through my years of exploring the outdoors I’ve learned that it is important to look at things as if they telling a story and question the past for the sake of knowledge. In reference to the past and the being of ancient things, I find it appropriate to mention this quote by Edward Hyams:

“There is no peculiar merit in ancient things, but there is merit in integrity, and integrity entails the keeping together of the parts of any whole, and if these parts are scattered throughout time, then the maintenance of integrity entails a knowledge, a memory, of ancient things. …. To think, feel or act as though the past is done with, is equivalent to believing that a railway station through which our train has just passed, only existed for as long as our train was in it”

  This quote details the importance behind connection and realizing how little pieces fit into a big picture. For example, you look at a dead log and admire the fungi attached to the log. You also notice insects such as snails and beetles using the wood as their home. You also notice the birds that come down for a snack, once the insects’ guards are down. You follow those birds up to the standing trees and watch how they feed the insects to their young. You look back down at the ground and notice all the understory plant life that thrive with the decomposed wood and extra light when the tree fell down. After observing all this, you step back and picture the future where the understory plants become standing trees and shelter young birds, which thrive from from insects within dead wood and then live on for thousands of generations, just because of that one dead log on the ground. The present is only here because of the past, and this quote is stating how the past continuously influences the maintenance of today and so on, and how we should be constantly referencing it to better understand the world around us.

It is important to view the world with integrity, and find truthfulness and meaning in everything around us. Integrity, in my opinion, means reliability and moral purpose on something that has the power to influence future events, such as that dead log. Once knowledge is collected through memories and books, we are able to find integrity, honor the past and maintain its teachings. This quote gives us reason to protect ecosystems and care for our environment since its been around a lot longer than the train, being us, was in it.

I apologize if this explanation is a bit vague, but for more clarification I will turn over to the woodpecker as short example. The woodpeckers only use their cavities thus abandoning them after one use. These cavities do not go to waste however since black-capped chickadees and titmice are known to use them to their advantage when raising their young. If you think about how many of these abandoned cavities are available for other species to use and thrive for years to come, you can come to understanding about how things in the past continuously influence the future and realize how everything within nature is interconnected as well as reliable.

(Chickadee in an abandoned woodpecker home. Photo by Natural Crooks. )