An Ecosophy Unfolding

In Search of an Ecological Philosophy — Reflecting with a Ghost.

We are on the Bedford-Sackville Connector Greenway Trail, Nova Scotia, Canada; a sliver of Nature sandwiched between the 101 Highway and the intimidating galvanised chain link fence of the Bedford Rifle Range. The range is owned by the Department of National Defence and is also the location where the army conducts their battle exercises. The crusher dust path of the connector trail follows the Sackville River for much of its length and while her waters play a symphony of torrents after the rains, her music must always compete with the blare of rubber on the road as the cars rush by just 100 feet away.

Bedford-Sackville Connector Greenway Trail (Google Earth, 2020)

The real name of this place is Mi’kma’ki, the territory of the indigenous Mi’kmaq people who have lived in the province for over 3000 years (Hornborg, 2016). Their traditional form of subsistence was hunting and fishing. It was in this river, and rivers like it where they gathered to catch an abundance of salmon year after year; but as European settlers arrived in Nova Scotia, the Mi’kmaq people were pushed off their land and forced into reserves. They negotiated rights to hunt and fish through a series of treaties, but even today these rights are threatened (Calabrese, 2020).

I could have chosen somewhere typically peaceful without the incessant whoosh of cars and the oppressiveness of humanity, its history and its present. It would have been lovely to join Henri somewhere peaceful, I know he would have appreciated that. However, I truly couldn’t shake the sense that a full expression of my ecosophy was to be found here, in this place.

Walking the path, I pause on the bridge and look out over the thriving floodplain of the river and the maple and birch trees in firy autumn colours waving in the soft breeze of the morning. I am sensing the disconnection and separation of being just another human person. I don’t want that, I want to dissolve into Gaia, but my thoughts are drowned by the sound of rubber on the wet highway nearby. Crossing the bridge, I leave the path and make my way down to the river’s edge. I sit with as much humility as I can find close to the water and gaze into its busy-ness.

Teased, battered, haunted with ‘why here?’, ‘why now?’. I am falling into the tumbling rhythm of the thrashing current in front of me and as I regale the Autumn display with my seemingly endless confusion, I reach the faint recollection, that I am ‘Dreamer’; that’s where I started.

My name is Dreamer, I am the powerful naive. And here on this alien world, my innate song has no place.
My song sung is the unremembered, and I the fool, and I the discounted… And I, the ridiculed, the unloved, the lost.

And so I have worn the mask that they gave me.

And instead I have been the Destroyer, With the force of the present and the past; My kin, my ancestry, my human-people ignorance.

And I have forgotten the dreamer, the singer, the innate.

Now years, now generations of …

Power over, Power stolen, Power conjured, Power rotting, Power dying.

And I am here now,
Where the wisdom of your soils tells the story of my offences

Through a time much longer than my life. I am here now to witness the little I have spared you, the innocence I have stolen from you.

Exhale … the Destroyer’s last breath. Settling the dust, revealing the naked painful truth.

I see you rocks that form — spin the eddies
I see you frolicking current — nourish the land
I see you wise old earth — whisper to the leaves

Do you see me? Dreamer of Dreams?

My name is ‘Dreamer’
My Innate Grace, my reflection of Gaian intention, The whole in my part.
My name is ‘Dreamer’

A white-haired, wisened, elderly man shuffled seemingly out of nowhere and placed a hand softly on my shoulder. I turned to greet a friendly face.

Christopher:

Hey Henri.

Henri:

Hello Christopher, is that what you want me to call you? Or do you go by Chris? He paused. Let’s not worry about that now. Since I know you have limited words, I will get straight to the point and enquire what’s going on with you.

Christopher:

I am here to find my ecosophy.

Henri:

It’s not like finding a penny, you know. Intrinsic in the process is the idea of developing ‘a philosophy’. That takes thought, understanding and wisdom … it takes time, dear boy. But you are in the right place.

Christopher:

Am I? I am not so sure. I have been told to go into Nature and sit with her. I have been told to ‘embody her’; to ‘find my voice’ with her. I am starting to think I should be deep in a forest somewhere. I can hardly hear myself think over the sound of the highway.

Henri:

No, this place has chosen you. You’ll see.

Do you know what’s brought you here?

Christopher:

Henri, I can’t not be here. It’s hard to explain. I’ve been shaken. I’ve been made lost, and it is in this work where I am finding myself, but not the ‘self’ I knew; it’s a ‘self’ much older. There’s a ‘pulling’.

We sat in silence for a few moments while Henri conjured a response.

Henri:

Stephan told you about Gaia didn’t he? He told you about his work with James Lovelock on the Gaia Theory.

Christopher:

Yeah, it’s actually the Gaia Theory that has helped me understand what happened; it helped me form a narrative anyway. I understand that all of life is nested within life, regulating the climate of the planet. Gaia is not dead, Gaia is alive; she is the super-organism whose systems manage and maintain the process of life. It is a beautiful theory and it resonates deeply with me … it sounds awfully religious though.

Henri smiled.

Christopher:

I can feel her, Henri.

Feeling her is not new, but it is a sense that now has meaning. It is connected to my consciousness now, it is no longer a sense that is muted and banished from realisation. I can see it in Stephan when he talks. She takes his gaze and his voice far away, deep inside herself. For a scientist to have found this connection is like … magic. I’m not as practiced as Stephan or Arne for that matter, but it feels like something that is deeply subjective; experiences that cannot be compared, just confessed, shared. It is deeply personal. It feels deeply reverent; religious almost, but again ‘religious’ is not the word I like.

Henri:

So, you are seeking to unfold your ecosophy, and I am here to help you do that, so expand for me a little on why you feel the concept of Gaia is such an important part of it.

Christopher:

Remember Joanna Macy?

Henri:

Yes I remember her.

Christopher:

In 2009, Joanna came out with an idea called ‘The Great Turning’ to describe the three dimensions of “a shift from the ‘Industrial Growth Society’ to a life-sustaining civilisation” (Macy, 2009). While this idea aligns deeply with my beliefs, it was the phrase that helped bring words to my experience. I borrowed the linguistic mechanics. I called it, “The Great Pulling”. After hearing from Stephan it occurred to me that if we are truly a part of Mother Gaia; if we are intrinsically woven into the process of life, then it would seem reasonable to think that the deeper the insults inflicted on her, the more we would feel it too. For many, as with me, it seems we witness this abuse as a feeling of deep discomfort, and then disconnection from what our offensive paradigm calls, ‘purpose’. Therapists and coaches are having a great time, because we’re all so lost … anyway.

This ‘pulling’, started in my heart and pulled me chest first, heart-first out of the madness I was living, the imposter I had become, The Destroyer.

I believe that this shaking of conscience, of consciousness goes out to all life, but because we are so disconnected from Gaia, when she roars we wonder what the hell is going on. We don’t recognise it. We don’t recognise her. She leaves us stunned, confused and, well, lost.

I wandered around for four years … Christ, it took so much time … but slowly my frenetic searching led me here. I suppose the resonance with this work found a home in my consciousness and I began to change from ‘Chris’ to ‘Christopher’; from Destroyer to … well, I am different now.

I am now returned to my innate-grace name, ‘Dreamer’.

Both of us fell silent for a long while, watching the rolling waters tumble playfully over the rocks of the river in front of us. The breeze picked up and the brightly coloured leaves all around us whispered amongst themselves while the arms of the ‘Standing People’ (Kimmerer, 2013) waved us on from our perch.

We strolled our way along the crusher dust path squeezed between the highway and the river. We were silent together.

As we walked, I became aware ‘of noticing’ the intense intricacy of the Autumnal process.

Christopher:

I hate to break the silence, but I have more to ask you Henri.

He lowered his head and smiled at me with a kind and knowing smile that reminded me of Santa Claus.

Christopher:

As part of my ecosophy, I am seeing the work of design as ‘coming to the table of Gaia’. However, since I have spent much of my life disconnected from her, I feel that I have to prepare myself somehow. It feels that I must understand the history and the purpose of what I bring, the good and the bad, the productive and the dangerous. Does this resonate? How do I prepare for my seat at the table so that I can work with a gentle touch and develop the wisdom to know where she needs us to intervene?

Henri:

I might be able to help you. You have to see yourself from within yourself, Chris. You cannot start with who you are. You can not start from the finish. You must catch yourself in the act of becoming. In doing so you will find yourself becoming aware of how you are connected to everything around you, everything that has created you.

I couldn’t help but laugh in my desperate attempt to keep up with him.

Christopher:

Huh?

Henri:

Come closer to the river.

We stood up and moved respectfully past those who we had sat with and arrived at the river’s edge.

Henri:

Picture that you are standing in the middle, facing downstream. Can you sense the ice cold water surging past your legs, hugging them well above the waterline and splashing against your thighs? Do you feel the current of the water dancing with your ankles? How strange, the way it winds between your legs as it flows downstream. Do you feel that? This is the extent of your knowledge of this relationship. The water is here and then gone. But turn around, shift your consciousness upstream and bear witness to the winding contortions of water between the rocks, the eddies and how they direct the pulsing motion of the river.

Notice the turbulence of the water as it moves towards you and its playful relationship with everything around it; everything that makes it what it is. Now your understanding makes you part of what is experienced. “When we see upstream, we see that the world is intrinsically holistic”. (Bortoft, 2012)

Henri:

Ahhh, I feel a paradox coming on. You come together for the work, but the work is not the reason for coming together.

Christopher:

If we come from a deep ecological perspective, the soul of design work is less the achievement of the goal, and more about the opportunity to develop a deep understanding about the biocultural uniqueness of the place (Wahl, 2016) in which we live: about those who live here, the natural systems that support us and the biodiversity of life that belongs with us.

Daniel often quotes Janine Benyus by saying that “life creates conditions conducive to life” (Benyus, 2002) and suggests that design outcomes be cradled in this intention: that we work to create conditions conducive to life.

Henri:

You suggest that conditions ‘conducive to life’ emerge through learning and relationship rather than intention towards a specific goal. It reminds me of our phenomenological discussion, “… meaning emerges in the happening of understanding, instead of being present already as a finished object before it is understood” (Bortoft, 2012). In this case, the complexity of life and community requires lifelong learning and relationship building and it is in this context that meaning unfolds.

Christopher:

Exactly! Knowing who we are through the knowledge of where we come from feels central to the context of healthy design work. As Wahl states, “co-creating the future without knowledge of your history and lineage is like planting cut flowers” (Wahl, 2017). Of course, we do need to define the thing we are looking to achieve, and take steps towards achieving it, but I sense that this is not the primary intention.

When we co-create as community, we have the opportunity to immerse ourselves in the process of listening with humility and learning with deep curiosity; in doing, we begin to develop a rich understanding of our culture, not only as it is today, but where it comes from. This process embraces the opportunity to see not just with human eyes, but with ‘other than human’ eyes and in this way we learn more about who we have been. We learn that all perspective is precious and necessary and instead of narrowing our input we engage our practiced curiosity to see more. Knowing who we are helps us uncover our humility, and finally we are in a suitable place from which we can contribute to the design process, holding our perspectives lightly by our fingertips in careful contribution.

Taken this way, I believe that design is not just an agent of transformation, it is, in its essence, fundamentally salutogenic in nature. It is intrinsically steeped in the concepts of relationship and reverence. It sits within the arms of pedagogy and focuses on outcomes that are health-generating for the place within which we live.

Henri’s face was beaming. I had so much more to share with him, but I could feel my words were coming to an end.

Christopher:

I am so grateful to have spent this time with you Henri. Thank you for being with me in this place; this place that chose me. Thank you for helping me see.

Henri:

You’re welcome Chris. It has been a pleasure to share this with you. I wish you all the very best … Dreamer.

He smiled his squinty smile, and walked by me resting his hand on my shoulder as he passed. When I turned to see him leave, he was gone.

Ecosophy Unfolding:

This video attempts to capture my unfolding ecosophy.

Bibliography:

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