Ecology: Knowing home

​EMBODIED ECOLOGY: "...imagining porous and receptive bodies...intimately influenced by their surroundings..." (Andrea Ford,2019)

My daily walk is a way of noticing, is​ knowing home, a daily euphoric practice, a mapping by foot, slotting into my footmarks, meeting my ‘oddkin’ (Harroway, 2016) all old friends, as I 'go on'  amongst the 'ongoingness!' 
​(Manguso,2019)

The way we walk in the world is an interplay between the shape of our bodies and how we touch the world-all-around. Desire lines manifest this interrelation.

​​​We become who we are in relation to places and to each other.

Like a spider and her web, we need the living moving world to "think sense" with. (Umwelt)

'Science polishes the gift of seeing…'(Kimmerer,Onbeing.org, Sept 2019)

The study of ecology is noticing 'entangled life,' (Sheldrake,2021)like noticing shimmer, things that move, catching our attention in a landscape, animated by wind, light, life and our locomotion. As I move, the world spools past.

Do biodiverse landscapes give off more of a shimmer?

Are we instinctively drawn to biodiverse landscapes because they look nourishing? Are we losing this instinct?

​"By restoring  aesthetics we restore ecological balance." (Kumar, 2019)
​
​When we notice our pain points and our pleasure points, 'that's information' as Jassy said.

We "...create a space where the individual sensibility of one's own body, breath and voice could connect to larger concerns." (O'Gorman, 2018) drawing on Bainbridge Cohen’s BMC.

DESIRE LINES

An informal path that allows a direct journey, the most energy efficient route, giving clues to our desires as a species and as individuals. 

This tree fell across the river (to get to the other side?!) A path for human and non human? The river flows its desire line.

Exercise

I walked an unnatural line, direct on the map, from Higher Close to under the redwoods to mark a desire line where I would not trample anyone. What is that treelike marking in the field?

I intrude on badger-and rabbit-lines. The fallen tree provides a way out of the wood for us all.

Do I cut across the fields or follow hedgerows? I have an instinct not to stand out, a desire to do no harm.

References

Wall Kimmerer, Robin, Interview with,Onbeing.org, Sept 2019

Kumar, Satish, Elegant Simplicity, The Art of Living Well, New Society Publishers, 2019

​O’Gorman, Róisín . “Can Your Jellyfish Sing? ‘Tentacular’ Moves From Individual Embodiment to the Planetary.” Global Performance Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2018

Harroway, Donna "Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene" Duke University Press, 2016

Manguso, Sarah "Ongoingness: The End of a Diary" Picador, 2019
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Sheldrake, Merlin Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures, Vintage, 2021