Connections :: Link with Nature

Oahu landscape © L. Peat O'Neil 2020

Content of this blog Writing Wild::Nature Writing
was  moved  on April 5, 2020 to
http://AdventureTravelWriting.org




Check out this interesting theme about meeting ourselves, knowing our links with the natural world.  After all, we are part of nature.

Discussion with Tina Welling, author of Writing Wild.  

Tasmania © 2020 L. Peat O'Neil

Quebec Winter © 2020 L. Peat O'Neil

© 2020 L. Peat O'Neil

©2020 L. Peat O'Neil

Rabbit Island © 2012 L. Peat O'Neil

Lava Disaster On the Island of Hawai'i

The Kilauea Lava Disaster of 2018 brought devastation to many residents of Puna, the region south of Hilo, Hawai'i that includes the East Rift Zone of Kilauea Volcano. This is not the first time the region was graced with lava.  USGS topographical maps tell the story of the Puna lava outbreaks of 1955 and 1960.  Kilauea sent a steady stream of lava at various intervals to Kalapana and other areas on the eastern and southern regions of the volcano.  In 2014, a slow moving lava flow passed through a cemetery and stopped at the Pahoa recycling center.  There were eruptions that ran into the ocean between 2015 and 2017.  Then on May 4, 2018 a massive earthquake fostered a major eruption that continued until August, 2018.  The lava is still hot in some areas.

Residents were forced to evacuate under pressure of advancing lava by the end of May.  Many lost everything.  While County of Hawai'i Civil Defense monitoring was robust when the volcanic eruption captured worldwide media attention, County action on rebuilding and recovery could now be characterized as listless.

The county representatives began with a presentation about how they wanted the meeting to proceed. But the group would have none of that and in unison boomed out, "We want to know when will Route 132 be rebuilt! "

Many called out,  "What's the county doing to work with the geothermal plant contractors already pushing through lava to their facility?" Again and again, people spoke out,  "When will we be able to get to our homes and farms?"

I had arrived early for the meeting and spoke with a representative of the County, learning that one of the goals for the evening was to "get people's stories about the disaster." This is part of an effort to reanimate news coverage and tourism after the lava flow that made countless people homeless and consumed acres of productive agricultural land, pastures and public recreational areas.

Individual stories, heartfelt examples of what the disaster has wrought on the community, families, individuals and institutions could be presented to state legislators, the county council or even the U.S. Congress to explain the extent of loss and begin to quantify needs to restore economic viability and human stability.

The greatest need from the perspective of people whose farms and homes were cut off from road access by the lava was repeated often: "We need the public roads repaired and replaced for access to our land and homes!"

The County participated in the talk story meeting with those profoundly disadvantaged by the lava inundation to ask affected residents about how visitors -- tourists -- could better understand the impact of the lava and show respect for local culture and Hawai'ian traditions of respect. The county is gathering thoughts from school-age youth and local residents to create a Pono ethics code for the Hawaii Tourism Authority to convey to tourism industry stake-holders and their customers.

By communicating to visitors the challenges faced by locals during and after the lava flow, officials anticipate that tourists will have a better understanding of local people's priorities and possibly reduce potential conflicts due to lava viewing or lava tours for visitors that stray onto local family land. The County of Hawai'i website now provides facts for potential tourists to the island of Hawai'i (aka Big Island).

I was reminded by a Kama'aina friend today that Pono is not an elastic term or concept, but a specific Hawaiian word meaning 'righteous.' Is this righteous advice to tourists or an expression of the righteous behavior that Hawaiians expect of tourists?

How to finance repairs of the roads and how to best manage the influx of tourists in search of lava viewing thrills are the thorny questions for which no answers were offered during the meeting.

Cacao to Chocolate - Agricultural Commodity Chain

What is Eco Criticism?

Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology

What we read influences how we interact with the natural world. Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment,  an earth-focused view of literary scholarship.

The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment  (ASLE) is dedicated to environmental literature and culture.  The organization offers grants, conferences and advocacy opportunities for advancing the protection of the environment, the planet and its creatures through literature and writing.

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWWP) is a advocacy union of thousands of independent writers, teachers and college and university based writing programs.

Where the Wild Creatures Roam :: Is It Sustainable?

Wildlife Tourism 

What can we do to prevent the massacre of wild animals?  Do humans actually still get a thrill from shooting wild animals?  What streak of evil condones and continues that practice?
Does wildlife tourism help stamp out the killing of animals in the wild for sport or promote and encourage it by creating tourism infrastructure in remote areas?

Here are a few articles reporting the repulsive human tendency to shoot, poison or terrorize animals and a couple of articles examining the reasons why the polar bear population is in grave decline and whales are beaching regularly.


Elephants Everywhere

Animals Slaughtered in a U.S. Zoo

Tigers in India

Salmon in Kamchatka

Wolves in Alaska

Giraffe Massacre in a Czech Zoo

Polar Bear Population Decline

Whales Dying on Beaches

Goddess of Travel

Western Hemisphere 

Trivia, a Roman diety, is said to be the goddess of commerce and travel.  She is an aspect of Artemis/Diana with three heads to represent the place where three roads meet or the triune goddess of  earth, heaven and the underworld. During a life cycle, we travel through those worlds.  Her Latin name is  Taurian Artemis.  Another form of the name is Termemina which protects the life and death cycle.

Ayizan, in the Haitian symbolic tradition, is the first ‘mat’ laid on original water represented by a palm leaf.  She takes the form of serpent, protects the marketplace, roads, doorways and gates.  Her alternate name is Ayizan Velequete.

Eastern Hemisphere

Inari of Japan is a Shinto goddess described as a vixen associated with commerce and travel, life and death cycle, sexuality, wealth, hunting and wild animals.  These are also attributes of Artemis/Diana in the Greco-Roman tradition.  And like Artemis, this icon protects prosperity bringing long life.  She is affiliated with rice and fertility.  

Poi-Soya-Un-Mat, from the Ainu province of Japan, is the woman of Poi Soya who raised herself above the gods, dressed like a man to go hunting and sailing like a trader.

Tian-Fei  is the sailor’s goddess of navigation and safe passage.  The Celestial Spouse originates in Chinese tradition to protect travel and commerce.

Doumou, or Toumo is the goddess of the Northstar, and she also originates in China. Buddhists and Daoists invoke her while traveling and for protection from disease and war. It’s possible that she is affiliated with Marichi from India and also Buddhist goddesses Guan yin and Maritchi the Queen of heaven, a Buddhist dawn goddess of three faces, who is not known to offer travel protection. 

Sacred Sites

So you believe there are places that shelter spiritual energy.  Are these locations protected?



Executive Order concerning Sacred Sites, May 24 1996

Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights, Journal of Material Culture, V.9: N. 3, 237-261 (2004)

Residencies for Nature and Outdoors Writers

Spring Creek - University of Oregon - writer in residence program

Mesa Refuge, Point Reyes Station, California - writer's residency

Taos Summer Writer's Conference - fiction and non-fiction writing conference

Voices of the Wilderness  - artist's residency

Island Institute, Sitka, Alaska - resident fellowships

Sitka Center - residency programs for artists, writers, natural science scholars, musicians


National Park Service Residency Programs on Cape Cod - for artists and writers

Cowboy Poets

Mythmakers of the west and cowboy poets still roll their own and tie a shake a mean lariat.
Join the Arizona Cowboy Poets Gathering in August, 2012.

Keep in mind the next cowboy poets festival in Arizona February 2013.

And what about those cowgirl poets? Don't forget them!  Cowgirl poets wowed the crowd at the Alpine, Texas show reports the  live.work.dream blog.   Go get 'em Billy Jean.

Study Resources :: The Environmental Movement

Evolution of Conservation Movement in the United States of America

Significant Authors:

Edward Abbey

Rachel Carson

John Muir

Gary Snyder

Add your suggestions  -- other authors whose writings have shaped the conservation movement in the United States.  Use  the comments area on this posting to share information.

Places to Publish Your Nature Writing

Isle

Outdoors

Outpost

Terrain.org

Trail Runner

The Deerstalker

The Deerstalker

© L. Peat O’Neil 2009

Flipping through a hook and bullet magazine while collecting articles for my nature writing students, I learned that hunters should wear bright pink.  Shocking pink is invisible to deer, yet easily distinguished by humans forging through winter woods. Will he-men with guns wear hot pink?  

I’ve shadowed deer in genuine wilderness and protected pseudo-wilderness,   “Quasi” because if a human can get there easily, it’s not true wilderness.   

Mostly, the deer I stalk live in and around their own gated communities  -- semi-suburban enclaves, parks, state controlled nature areas.  The deer are my neighbors, live closer to me than some of my siblings.  I know where the deer hide in regional parks and preserves, but that’s not saying much, since they parade with ease along highways, across lawns for gourmet ornamental shrubbery, and into town for brief celebrity in local news rags.  You’ve seen the photos when a deer leaps through a store-front window, spooked by its own reflection.

When I am in their territory, I follow the paths graven by their hoof marks or marked with scat.  Deer paths emerge as a distinct line of scuttled leaves in the ground cover of fall and winter, a muddy track in spring, or flattened grass in summer.  Nearly every walk along their byways, I’ll see the twitching white plume of a tail. I’ve seen leaping solitary bucks, herds of doe that nuzzle their young and lie close. Near an erratic outcropping of rock at the end of a shuffled leaf trail, the moss is upturned. I wonder do they have enough to eat?

As the skeins of forest thin and break at the hands of developers, the deer hew to tightly plaited paths where they can no longer roam widely.  The deer paths demonstrate an intelligence and instinct.  Within hailing distance of convenience stores, ramblers, schools and skating rinks, the deer-ways curve with the land using topography or fallen trees for cover. 

When deer are wild in the woods, they retain the shroud of mystery; when they are common as pigeons or rats, they lose their immunity lodged in beauty. 

Is there an answer for the crowded suburban deer who live along your backyard fence?  More state sponsored deer-kill seasons with volunteer hunters dressed in pink?  

White-tailed deer, Odocoileus virginianus, with their vulnerable Audrey Hepburn eyes, turn your heart when you see them shadowed on a lawn or poised to leap a roadside barrier.  But to a homeowner or driver, they signal disaster, even death. Deer darting across country byways cause crashes.  My mother’s Hosta collection were midnight snacking grounds for the deer until she moved all the plants to a fenced garden.

The deer have a four million year history, got along just fine with the indigenous residents and our immigrant forebears. When did enough room to roam become nowhere at all?

I know deer are losing their fear of humans. I don’t need to wear pink to be invisible.  They’re used to my scent.  The foals are complacent, stand and stare back, their only display of authority to strut in place with their white tails at half-mast.  

With deer living in parks, fool-‘em strips of trees along the highways and suburban vest-pockets woods, they’ve become semi-domestic fixtures, like goats or dogs.  They live with squirrels and ground hogs and opossum.  And die like them too, as road-kill.  A neighbor butchers fresh deer killed by motorists and gives it to the food bank for poor folks.

Is it heretical to think we need more deer hunters? Somebody needs to thin the herds that have resulted from rapacious outer suburban development. I’ve never hunted, but lately, I’ve been thinking of learning how to shoot.  I’d look great in hot pink hunting cammis.

~~~

Portions of this blog post were published in a longer essay on the subject in Potomac Review, Summer 2001, Number 31.

                                                                                      

Nature and Spiritual Practice

Spirituality in nature is implied, but not directly addressed. Nature has replaced the craving for a spirit presence greater than the self. Nature envelops and includes, while a named almighty being (God, Jesus, Zeus, Allah) is defined and apart from humans.

Nature is personal yet all inclusive. Could the perception of a god be valid? Because of the centuries of oppressive definition and lack of sensual participation, that god entity lacks impact. Nature, though, is always, everywhere and constantly tangible. In Nature we trust.

Find god in the details.  Write from the heart and soul-mind.

Websites on Nature

Selected Opportunities and Resources for Nature Writers

Nature in Legend and Story (NILAS) is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, devoted to exploration of relationships between human beings and the natural world, reflected in folklore, literature and other cultural activities with spiritual focus.

The Nature Web from Nature Magazine.

EPA Grants - public environmental education.


Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) 
promotes the exchange of ideas and information about literature that considers human relationships with the natural world.


Forums on nature and birdwatching topics

For freelance writers:  Links to writer’s guidelines for nature related periodicals.

Environmental Issues and Nature Writing :: Self Directed Study

Web resources on Nature Writing  -- study on your own with a syllabus and course materials compiled by top universities.

MIT -- Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- offers a free online course Writing About Nature and Environmental Issues. 

The University of Indiana, Bloomington offers a study guide and resources on nature writing.

We are Not Weeds

New York Times book review  reminds us that weeds are necessary.  Some offer excellent nutrition  -- elderberry, dandelion, young polk leaves.

Snowmageddon Maryland February 2010

Environmental Movement in China

Photos from China--

Gulangyu Island

where cars are not permitted ......

and Shanghai, where cars rule.

China's Emerging Environmental Movement - Environment 360

Nature Writing Exercise

A few thoughts to start your thoughts about your relationship with nature and the natural world:

What is your first memory of nature or the outdoors?

What is the role of the writer in observing and reporting about the natural world?

Do you think a nature or outdoors writer has a role as a spiritual caretaker for the earth and the universe?

Does the writer or artist have a responsibility for nature beyond that of the scientist?

Describe the intersection of creativity and responsibility.

Does a nature writer need to maintain the same exacting standards of truth as a scientist?

To Read :: Nature Writing

The Literature of Nature -- Reading List

This list is a highly personal selection of some of the books about nature and related subjects that I use for inspiration, information and development. Not a comprehensive list!

Add to it through the comments function.

Many of the authors listed here have written other works with an environmental focus.

And dozens of superb nature writers who write in languages other than English are not on this list.

The Serpents of Paradise, Edward Abbey, Henry Holt and Co. 1995

A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman, Vintage Books, 1991

The Beauty of the Beastly, Natalie Angier, Houghton Mifflin, 1995

The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press, 1976

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard, Harper & Row Perennial Library, 1985, originally published 1974

A Match to the Heart, Gretel Ehrlich, Penguin Books, 1995

Woman and Nature, Susan Griffin, Harper, 1978

Spring in Washington, Louis J. Halle, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988

The Experience of Place, Tony Hiss, Vintage Books, 1991

Women on Hunting, edited by Pam Houston, Ecco Press, 1995

Broadsides from the Other Orders, A Books of Bugs, Sue Hubbell, Random House, 1993

The Mind of the Dolphin, John Cunningham Lilly, Avon Books, 1969

Indian Country, Peter Matthiessen, Penguin Books, 1992

The Way of the Earth, T. C. McLuhan, Simon & Schuster, 1994

Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971

One Man’s Garden, Henry Mitchell, Houghton Mifflin, 1992

The Cuiise of the Corwin, John Muir, Sierra Club Books 1993, originally published 1917

Soungbirds, Truffles, and Wolves, Gary Paul Nabhan, Penguin, 1993

Spiritual Ecology, A Guide to Reconnecting with Nature, Jim Nollman, Bantam Books, 1990

Why We Garden, Jim Nollman, Henry Hold and Co. 1994

Who Speaks for Earth, edited by Maurice F. Strong, W. W. Norton & Co. 1973

Earthly Pleasures, Roger B. Swain, Charles Scribners, 1981

Life and Death of the Salt Marsh, John and Mildred Teal, Ballantine Books, 1971

Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas,

Walden and Other Writings, Henry David Thoreau, Bantam, 1961, originally self-published, 1853

Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)Fawcett, 1962, originally published 1938

Beautiful Swimmers, William W. Warner, Penguin, 1976

Onward and Upward in the Garden, Katharine S. White, Farar, Straus, Giroux, 1979, originally pub. 1958

Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, Island Press, 1994