Seeds for Thought: an Ecopsychology Blog

moving on

Sadly posting here has finally slowed down to a stop :-(
There are some great articles still archived here and they will stay :-)
Most of us are still actively blogging, ranting, organising and reposting out there somewhere though :-)

you can find me here  Ramblings of an old ecofeminist

Amy Lenzo here  The Beauty Dialogues

Bob Worcester here Greening Spirit

Linda Buzzell-Saltzman here (with Craig Chalquist) Ecotherapy

 

Wild Swimming

When I wrote about Roger Deakin's book Waterlog in 2000 I used the phrase Wild Swimming, and for some time if you typed it into google you got my review. Lots has happened since then, including sadly the death of Roger Deakin at the age of 63.

I'm delighted to say that the phrase has now entered the language.

This post started when Daniel Start saw my review and kindly sent advance notice of his book Wild Swimming in 2008. Somehow I didn't finish it (the review, not the book). I want to apologise to Daniel because it's a wonderful book, the best places to swim, paddle or plunge outdoors in Britain. Beautiful photos, lots of detail including safety and water quality and the nearest train station.

He concentrates on rivers and lakes, and I was happy to see many of my favourite river Wharfe swims strung like a little necklace on the Yorkshire Dales swims map. And all accessible by the Dales Bus no 74.

And I'm indebted to him for the little known gem of Gormire lake at the base of Sutton bank.

I was prompted to look up my post when I found that he has produced a companion volume, Wild Swimming Coast. I have just bought it and look forward to discovering new delights. Good stuff on tide and current safety  too.

Kate Rew's Wild Swim is another beautiful book but geared more for the serious fit swimmer. In Daniel's books you will find something for everyone of all ages and competence.

Driving us Wild

Remember how nature programs used to be? A  cloud forest, gorillas appear from the mist to a hushed a reverent voice over, maybe a small solitary Attenborough giving the awesome exotic landscape a human scale.

Remember the first time you switched on the TV to beautiful scenery, no people, mountains reach down to a sparkling clear lake - what's that SUV doing? Oh no it's a car advert. Find beautiful virgin landscape and be the first to wreck it.

And now in a curious clarksonification all nature / science programs include long sequences of the presenter fourwheeling, flying, helicoptering his way to the remote spot he's going to describe for you. Even a series on the solar system, while mercifully not demanding personal space flights, had him jetting round the world to show us an interesting rock formation that reminds him of Ganymede.

It's too ubiquitous to be a coincidence. Part of the fantasy is that you too could get there if you were rich enough. Most cruelly ironic was the closing scene of Tropic of Cancer, a deserted beach that had just been cleaned up but was still strewn with plastic rubbish from the pacific gyres. Closer examination showed that the sand was actually mostly small plastic particles. He made a heartfelt plea for us to stop trashing our world. Shame we'd just seen him flown there specially by helicopter.

Where is nature? wildness? Out There in the old programs, now it must also be accessible, clearly a paradox.

The Wild Places, The wilderness within, by Robert Macfarlane  takes us firmly back. To Britain, where he finds wildness in Essex marshes, the top of a tree, or "looking down into a gryke in the limestone pavement, filled "with a tiny grove of ferns, mosses and flowers. This, Roger (Deakin) suddenly said... is a wild place. It is as beautiful and complex, perhaps more so than any glen or bay or peak"

Under Roger Deakin's example, Macfarlane leaves behind the initial conception of the utter, outer form of wildness. "I thought about how the vision of wildness with which I had begun my journeys – inhuman, northern, remote – was starting to crumble from contact with the ground itself... The human and the wild cannot be partitioned. Everywhere that day I had encountered blendings and mixings."

I wrote this by a tiny stream in our garden, surrounded by weeds and overgrown trees.  Wildness is still in us and all around us, in all the abandoned in between places no one has managed to grind up into money yet.  Waiting to be let back in.

Water Falls

Brooklyn Bridge, Photo: Julienne Schaer

I just saw a fascinating video interview with Olafur Eliasson, the Copenhagen-born artist who created a series of waterfalls in NYC constructed from scaffolding & East River water. You can see one of them in the night-shot above.

Here's an excerpt from his artist's statement on his incredibly educational & useful website:

"They are as real as any waterfalls; it's real water falling... My point is not to re-initiate the discussion of nature vs culture or the natural vs the artificial, but both to open up the possibility of a nature-based experience within an urban setting and allow us to reconsider our experiences of nature."

Read his whole statement here.

a chilling solstice

A happy solstice the earth turns again and moves slowly towards the sun. We are having a cold spell, coincidentally as I try to keep warm without daytime heating by huddling in bed I've been reading 
Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson. It was written back in 1997 but "much emphasis is placed on the importance of living sustainably and the issues of existing in a hostile environment" Not to mention incredible cold. 
And Strange Things the malevolent north in Canadian literature, a series of lectures by Margaret Atwood.
More ice and struggle, and how many european "explorers" were helped and saved by the native americans, Franklin being chiefly distinguished as one of the few too stupid to listen to them, he's now a famous hero.

Much less well known is the story of the nine white men and nine Inuit men, women and children stranded on an ice floe by the wreck of the Polaris. Although the europeans binged on the supplies and burnt one of the boats for firewood, the Inuit kept them alive for an amazing 6.5 months.

But more chilling is the failure of Copenhagen to deliver an agreement that is strong enough, enforceable and fair to the poor nations bearing the brunt of climate change. And the indigenous Canadians are still trying to save us.

Apparently they will meet again next year. Perhaps they would think better if they met in the northern summer. In the Maldives perhaps. Or the Sundarban islands in the monsoon season.

home

I've been trying to write this since I came back from Vancouver two months ago. 
Where is home? At the Islands folk festival with good once virtual and now real friends, listening to Todd Butler sing about leaving Vancouver to go home to the prairies and then finding that he was drawn back to his new home by the ocean?

I read an interesting article on Love Miles by a Pakistani woman living in Britain, moved here by her family as a child. I'm trying hard to be eco-friendly. But please don't ask me to give up flying to visit my family, she says, and I echo.

And here's another talking about the helplessness of not being able to support in family crises.

Meanwhile in my "home" country

Climate change activist stopped from travelling to Copenhagen
 Chris Kitchen held under anti-terrorist legislation (he's really dangerous, glued himself to a statue apparently)

BBC to vet BNP Question Time audience for anti-fascists (but not for BNP supporters, it seems) Although the BNP leadership include convicted violent criminals.

Really stupid award  and as we agonise the guardian ran a competition to describe your eco holiday The winner got  three nights' B&B at Kasbah du Toubkal in Morocco and flights with Royal Air Maroc Eco holidays: Pass me that machete it's titled. Apt?

age of really stupid

Newsnight (BBC) had a good program last week about Copenhagen climate change generally, with positive coverage of Climate camp and Age of Stupid, with some good clips.

It talks about the need for the rich countries to contribute much more than they seem willing to at present, but there's a bit in the middle (about 7 minutes in if you want to find it) that stopped me in my tracks.

The presenter says:
"... and it may take an effort on the same scale as that used to rescue the financial system to rescue the planet.
"

what???
At first this made me despair than anyone can say this with a straight face.

But I hear a lot about how the "electorate" will not stand for money spent on the environment. Did they like bailing out the banks? The car industry? Did anyone ask them?

I thought I was part of the electorate and certainly no one asked me, just like when they went to war with Iraq.

Could "the electorate" just be code for the rich and powerful military industrial oligarchy?