#eeco500

In less than a week, I will be teaching a group of university students who are learning to become outdoor leaders. I look forward to these opportunities for many reasons, and this year I’m happy to have a captive audience to apply some of my environmental learning theory techniques! 

This trip is special in that the focus is on building a strong foundation of personal wilderness travel skills, including a big emphasis on alpine navigation. My approach to framing navigation skill is to zoom way out and look at the very idea of staying oriented, and what mindset is required for this to occur more naturally. This is in contrast to approaching navigation through various tools and technology, which I have found doesn’t work as well.

Avoiding disorientation means staying attentive and perceptive to your immediate environment. Even subtle perceptions become cues to locate your position in space, and not just when you stop for a “navigation check” but rather all throughout the day. The most important and powerful tool in wilderness navigation is the brain of the traveller. And if its sensory power is to be used, it needs to be employed! An attentive mindset, willing to perceive its environment isn’t just important for the outdoor leader, it is a key element in fostering a sense of wonder.

Often, before I teach a navigation course, I ask students to “fly” our area of travel with Google Earth (GE) in order to start “seeing” terrain features and potential travel routes. If the student is not familiar with interpreting topographic maps, GE is the best way to start, and I will often drape a 2-dimensional topo map onto the digital elevation model in the 3D GE environment. Students can explore on their laptop screen, and the visceral, real mountains are reduced to pixels, and kilometres are traversed with keystrokes. The scale is completely transformed, and it is a lot of fun.

However, the real fun begins as students begin the planned route in the real world. Scale is transformed again, and it usually hits a few students by surprise. As we work between our topo maps and visible terrain, the navigator’s mind struggles to make connections, but when they do, it is exciting and rewarding. Pointing at wrinkles in contour lines on the map with a spruce needle, then up to a cliff band, students exclaim, “This here, is that, THERE?!”

So big deal, Mattias. This is that, there. 

I love these moments because students end up locating themselves in space by being attentive and interpreting clues, by using new skills that are difficult to learn. I see them begin to wonder, sometimes aloud, how big the planet is. Therefore, in keeping with cultivating a sense of wonder in my students, I am planning to blow their minds. With a golf ball, and a 15-foot diameter rock once carried by a glacier in the South Chilcotin mountains.

Going from Google Earth to real-life is one thing. I’m going to blow them into outer space. If earth were the size of a golf ball, then the sun would be a sphere measuring 15 feet in diameter! The scale is mind-numbing. But wait, there’s more. That evening, with a look into the stars and the universe beyond, I hope to point out Orion. One of its stars, Betelgeuse, is even bigger than the sun. In fact, if earth were the size of a golf ball, Betelgeuse’s diameter would be the height of six empire state buildings stacked. --source wikipedia

Cue dumbstruck wonder. Hopefully we will be able to speak in the morning. 

Something that’s come up in both of our classes is the concept of reciprocity, that if we feel a sense of wonder, engagement and gratitude to the world around us, we may be compelled to respond in kind.

One way for those living in BC to give something back is to review and provide input on the BC Climate Leadership Plan. As Rick said, you need to push on the system for it to reveal itself to you.

Here’s a chance to push a little:

http://novosolar.com/bc-climate-leadership-plan-voice-your-opinion/

While exploring environmental communications, we’ve been talking a lot about urbanization and the growing importance of cities. 

My personal affection for rural landscapes has made it difficult for me to appreciate this importance. However, these images (on one of my favourite website which I strongly recommend, Maptia) really floored me, and helped me put Canada’s population in perspective. 

Moving forward, I need to remember that most people in the future will live in cities. 

It was a convergence of flavours that felt, If I’m honest, too good to be real. We chewed slowly, smiling, wide eyes fixed on our sandwiches. It was the day in September 2010 when I accepted a (previous) challenge from food author Michael Ruhlman to make a home-grown BLT. 

We made crusty sourdough from wild yeasts blowing through our neighbourhood. I made mayonnaise from our hen’s eggs and the lettuce and tomatoes came from our new garden. I took the challenge a step further by raising a pig and used it’s belly for bacon. This involved a salt cure and using alder and maple wood from our property to hot smoke the bacon. And, oh, the TIME to do it!

Why did I bother with all of that? Why also, have I endeavoured to make a ball of mozzarella cheese when I easily buy it? Why have I spent hours tending to my planted “heritage” barley, then malting the grain, growing hops and crafting an estate beer? Why did I wander through Victoria’s Chinatown last week looking for an authentic plate of noodles?

(I found them... I think.) And I know that I require a little strolling through space to synthesize and metabolize new ideas and understanding, so I pondered and walked, and found this plate. 

Elin Kelsey, one of our MAEEC professors at Royal Roads, introduced me to the idea of autoethnography. It’s a qualitative research method and “a form of self-reflection and writing that explores the researcher's personal experience and connects this autobiographical story to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings.” --wiki

I’m interested in exploring why certain people, including myself, have a deep desire to experience “the real thing” and why we do seemingly crazy things like hand-building furniture or roasting coffee beans. I feel more deeply rooted and connected when I can connect my activity’s trajectory to some original source, and I think this evokes a sense of wonder, which creates the capacity for gratitude and connection beyond the self. Even worship: “Thank you, Creator! You are GOOD!”

As if we were high on ecstasy, we chewed and moaned and tomato water dripped from our elbows, then the sandwiches were gone. Like a perfect dream that can’t be chased after waking.

This story underscores the fact that homo sapiens has a penchant for moving land and sea in the Anthropocene. Or, as Thomashow succinctly put it, “we like to move shit around.” 

Last week saw us end a long day with a creative writing exercise which was to describe a particular place that held significance. Here’s what I wrote:

Right brain, oh no. like slow honey from a tipped teddy bear it’s there. 

I know.

Three days in I’m struck by the gift of time and space to observe and listen. Space to breathe and hear. And even feel awake.

Much like this tree, I lean. I have always leaned towards an understanding of environmental education within a context in the natural environment. Does the wilderness experience model make sense in light of the reality of a quickly urbanizing population? 

I was challenged last week as my small group set about the task of looking at environmental education and communication for city folk. The discussion uncovered how much value I assign to “the real thing” and the importance I place on natural environment experiences. 

If homo sapiens is in fact blurring and blending the margins of natural and built environment, then I need start valuing in-city experiences for environmental ed. For instance, this pine tree in Victoria’s Chinatown isn’t an ornamental oddity (seemingly driven into the sidewalk like a pile-driven post) but an opportunity. It’s the real thing as an organism, and it is an opportunity for a real experience.