Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

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2 Mapping Meaning, the Journal

Who were these women? 

What were their stories? 

Why the hearts? 

Issue N o 1 

3

Content 

6 

Introduction 

14 

Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

18 

Idaho Triptych 

Lynn Kilpatrick 

22 

On This Site 

Jeremy Dennis 

30 

The Breath Camera: a prototype for 

anticapitalist photography 

Trudi Lynn Smith 

40 

David Foster Wallace, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 

and the vapidity of the bottomless, 

postmodern machine. 

Clark Nielson 

50 

Survival Series 

Gretchen Schermerhorn 

56 

Identity, Narrative, and Miseducation 

in a More-Than-Human World 

Toni Wynn and Rae Wynn-Grant 


64 

Notes on an archive 

Nat Castañeda 

74 

In Conversation with Consciousness: 

A Reflection On My Use of Metalogue 

to Make Sense of the Ecological 

Context of Mental Health 

Weston G. W. Wood 

86 

Marker 

Andrea Sherrill Evans 

94 

The Energy & Information 

Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau: 

An Arts/Sciences Field Study 

Richard Lowenberg 

108 

Field Play 

Magdalena S. Donahue 

116 

Layers Exposed 

Brooke Larsen 

126 

bombus love 

Erin Halcomb 


5

Introduction to 

Mapping Meaning, the Journal 

Above, front cover, and back cover Minidoka Project Idaho 1918, 

Photo from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, of the U.S. Department of the Interior 


Mapping Meaning, The Journal 

Introduction 

"824 Min Surveying 

party of girls on 

the Minidoka project." 

Original caption, 

National Archives 

The History 

In 1918, an all-female survey crew posed for 

a photograph while working on the Minidoka 

Dam Project in Idaho, U.S.A. Almost a century 

later, Krista Caballero, founder of Mapping 

Meaning, came across the photo while 

researching her masters of fine art. The image 

was accompanied by little archival information, 

but the close bounds of the composed 

frame contrasted sharply with other survey 

photographs of the time depicting men within 

vast, epic landscapes. The women’s smiles 

and the painted hearts on their leveling rods 

further piqued Caballero’s interest. Who were 

these women? What were their stories? Why 

the hearts? 


7


Introduction 

While poignant, the photograph also raises 

a number of complex issues. All the women 

appear to be white and all are participating in 

mapping resources for extractive purposes. 

These tensions pose critical questions. 

Who gets to “map” the landscape and why? 

If land is the “text”, how do we read our 

surroundings and create meaning around 

a place that is multidimensional? What 

histories are erased in the mapping of the 

Americas? How can we assert our right to 

record the diversity of our lives personally 

and collectively? 

The photograph quickly became a motivating 

metaphor that inspired Mapping Meaning, a 

multi-generational collective that considers 

the broad transitions occurring in ecology, 

technology and culture. In a deeply 

fragmented and discipline-based world, 

Caballero urgently felt the need to create a 

space to encounter divergent approaches 

toward “surveying” human, ecological and 

technological landscapes. 

With the support and encouragement of 

artist, activist, and mentor S.A. Bachman, 

Caballero proceeded with her “uncharted” 

idea to convene a free, interdisciplinary, fiveday 

workshop for women. To her surprise, 

the “call,” accompanied by the Minidoka 

photo, generated an overwhelming number 

of applicants. 

The first workshop in 2010, brought together 

sixteen women representing a wide range of 

perspectives, ages and disciplines to discuss 

diverse knowledge practices. Disciplines 

included visual art, American Indian Studies, 

entomology, film, ecology, architecture, 

American Studies, creative writing, 

ethnobotany, business, civil & environmental 

engineering, and folklore. 

“This intervention was crucial – it brought 

women together to discuss seemingly 

at odds, yet organically knit ideas. Who 

knew climate change policies, activist art, 

a documentary about Swaziland, lifecycle 

assessments, business ethics, violent 

social protests and a single image of 

four women on top of a mountain with 

surveying equipment could have such a 

strong theme of change and flow running 

through them?” 

Jennifer Richter (contributor to the 2010, 

2012, 2014, and 2016 workshops) 

After 2010, Caballero invited Sylvia Torti, an 

ecologist and creative writer who participated 

in the 2010 workshop, to join her as codirector 

in evolving the workshop themes. 

Together they developed the mission to 

support the creative work and scholarship 

of women working at edges and ecotones, 

those pushing against traditional disciplinary 

boundaries. 

Mapping Meaning is now a multi-generational 

collective rooted in five-day, experimental 

workshops that take place biennially at field 

stations in the US American West. Workshops 

integrate ecological and cultural themes, 

and ardently resist oversimplification. 

Women are supported at all stages of their 

work and Mapping Meaning is particularly 

committed to mentoring young thinkers and 

creators. Women respond by bringing their 

creative energy, critical minds and personal 



Introduction 

projects to the discussion. Mapping Meaning 

workshops have taken place in 2010, 2012, 

2014, 2016 and will be held again in 2018. 

“This initiative, Mapping Meaning, provides 

ground — productive, deconstructive 

ground — to argue for the inclusion of 

diversity, of liminal spaces, of the uncanny, 

and for new forms of sense and value. I 

think a challenge is to maintain a focus on 

impermanence in art, research, science, 

and women coming together, to maintain 

the productive friction of disturbance, as a 

way to work outside of neoliberal market 

economies, outside of colonial inscriptions 

of a site. 

Mapping meaning’s ecotone is not just a 

site of transition, but to inhabit an ecotone 

is to bring together competing forces: The 

energy of resistance.” 


from the Mapping Meaning symposium 

held at Lafayette College, 2014 

But the workshops proved to be only the 

beginning. Participants began to collaborate 

to create additional encounters through 

exhibitions, symposia, and educational 

exchanges. By the time of the 2016 workshop 

on Santa Cruz Island, California, the energy 

and interest in Mapping Meaning had grown 

considerably and participants decided to 

further broaden the scope to include more 

voices and venues for discussion beyond 

what could be accommodated at the biennial 

workshops. Hence the creation of Mapping 

Meaning, the Journal. 

Mapping Meaning, the Journal, promotes 

conversations that encourage radical 

reconsiderations of the role that humanity 

plays in a more-than-human world. The 

Journal is a space for unheard voices where 

we can explore complexity, creativity, and 

connections. 

The Journal will be published two times per 

year. Each issue will be curated and edited 

by members of the founding editorial board, 

at times with outside collaborators, and will 

focus on a theme or question of interest 

to the editors. Solicitations are open to 

everyone. 

We look forward to broadening the 

conversation. Diversity of perspectives 

through disciplinary knowledge and lived 

experience is part of the core values of this 

collaborative enterprise/project. We want 

to include the many people who are deeply 

committed to staying present, questioning 

and resisting the erasure which threatens 

us through the simplification of our physical, 

social and spiritual worlds. We want to resituate 

humans in a more-than-human world 

governed by ecological processes and finite 

limits. 

Our journal launch coincides with the 100- 

year anniversary of the 1918 all-female 

survey photo. It is sometimes surprising what 

one image can inspire. 

Sincerely, 

Krista, Sylvia and the editorial board 


9


Introduction 

Mapping Meaning 

Video Archive 

vimeo.com/131539743 



Introduction 

Founding 

Editorial Board 

Melanie Armstrong 

Krista Caballero 


Sarah Kanouse 

Vasia Markides 

Jennifer Richter 

Carmina Sánchez-del-Valle 

Karina Aguilera Skvirsky 

Sree Sinha 


Sylvia Torti 

Linda Wiener 

Toni Wynn 

The Honors College at the 

University of Utah serves as 

Mapping Meaning Journal’s 

partner and initial fiscal sponsor. 

Consistent with Mapping 

Meaning’s mentorship mission, 

the Journal is committed to 

publishing at least one University 

of Utah Honors student per issue. 

Managing Editor: Sylvia Torti 

Artistic Director: Krista Caballero 

Visual Designer: Aliza Jensen 

Issue’s Editors: Krista Caballero and Sylvia Torti 


11

Introduction to 


Krista Caballero and Sylvia Torti 

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Mapping 

Meaning, the Journal. In this first issue, we have 

mirrored the first Mapping Meaning workshop 

(2010), which was wildly experimental, multigenerational, 

and free formed. 

Similar to the pilot workshop, this first issue, is 

grounded in the conceptual and philosophical 

work of Felix Guattari (1930-1992). In The 

Three Ecologies, Guattari discussed the need 

to integrate social and mental ecology into 

conversations and conceptions of our physical, 

ecological world. He wrote, “What I am arguing 

is simply that we should use our expanded 

understanding of the whole range of 

ecological components to set in place new 

systems of value.” 

Essentially, Guattari was arguing that we 

must address all “three ecological registers” 

and consider them equal partners in the 

conversation, in order to adequately address 

the many ecological, social or psychological 

issues that face us as individuals and as a 

society. At the core Guattari was linking the 

crisis of the environment with the crisis 

present in social relationships and what he 

saw as a passive, infantile human subjectivity. 



Introduction 

Guattari argues that what is needed is an 

ethico-aesthetic approach. He writes, 

“For its part, mental ecosophy will lead us 

to reinvent the relation of the subject to 

the body, to phantasm, to the passage of 

time, to the ‘myseteries’ of life and death. 

It will lead us to search for antidotes to 

mass-media and telematics standardization, 

the conformism of fashion, the manipulation 

of opinion by advertising, surveys, etc. Its 

ways of operating will be more like those of 

an artist.” 

In this spirit, our first issue encompasses a 

wide-range of perspectives on mental, social 

and environmental ecology from the arts, 

humanities, and sciences. Look closely and 

you’ll find tension between the gorgeous 

renderings of European honey bees by 

Rebecca Clark and the piece bombus love by 

Erin Halcomb. There are historical erasures 

made apparent in both Lynn Kilpatrick’s 

piece and that of Jeremy Dennis. Notice 

the collaborative piece by mother and 

daughter, Toni Wynn and Rae Wynn-Grant, 

that discusses the complexities of navigating 

through environments in terms of identity, 

social justice, species-centricity and “sea 

change.” And, exciting are the pieces written 

by young scholars—Brooke Larsen, Weston 

Wood and Clark Nielsen on the interactions 

between their internal ecological selves and 

that of the world in which they are becoming 

adults. We hope this issue introduces you 

to new practitioners and allows you to rethink 

the values, privileges, and positions 

we inhabit while celebrating the aesthetic 

beauty of visual art and lyrical writing. 

Future issues of Mapping Meaning, the Journal 

will be more specific, taking up particular 

issues or themes and will be edited by 

different teams of women curating each 

issue. All issues will include the broadest 

possible calls for submission; taking 

divergent approaches in order to examine 

the complexities of how we engage our 

environments and the resulting social, 

political and ecological implications of how 

one constructs meaning. 

Reference 

Social 

Guattari, F. (2008). The three ecologies (Continuum impacts). 

London: Continuum. 

Ecology 

Issue N o 1 13

Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Left | Rebecca Clark 

Bee 20 (The Real Work) Detail 

Graphite on paper 

30” x 22”, 2011 

Rebecca Clark is an American artist who works 

primarily in pencil on paper. She received her 

BA in Art History from Swarthmore College and 

studied painting and drawing at the Maryland 

Institute College of Art and at the Corcoran 

College of Art + Design. 

She has exhibited in numerous venues, 

including: Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; 

Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC; Arlington Arts 

Center, VA; The Arsenal, New York, NY; Academy 

Art Museum, Easton, MD; Gertrude Herbert 

Institute of Art, Augusta, GA; and The Old Sorting 

Office, London, UK. 

Her work has been featured in publications 

such as: Alterity Journal (Centre for Alterity 

Studies), Zoomorphic, Elementum Journal, 

Works and Conversations, Dark Mountain, 

EarthLines, Orion Magazine, and The Learned 

Pig and was selected for the award-winning 

INDA 8, Manifest Gallery’s 2014 International 

Drawing Annual. Her drawings have also served 

as illustrations for poetry chapbooks published 

by Corbel Stone Press (Cumbria, UK) and Tavern 

Books (Portland, OR). 

rebeccaclarkart.com 


15

Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Statement 

I make drawings of the natural world, 

transient moments of grace and beauty 

in an age of disappearance. Inspired by 

plant and animal studies of the Northern 

Renaissance, Netherlandish devotional 

panel paintings, and nature mysticism 

as expressed through various forms 

of art, music, poetry and prose, my art 

acknowledges interconnectedness in 

nature and our loss of connection with 

the sacred. 

Our planet is broken because we’ve lost 

relationship with the earth, with our soul. 

My drawings serve as more than intimate 

portraits; they are testaments to lives 

lived. They are memento mori, reminders 

in this age of ecocide that humans cannot 

live detached from nature. May these 

quiet drawings remind us of our place on 

this planet and awaken our consciousness 

to the cosmos of which we are a part. 

Rebecca Clark’s work can be seen 

throughout this issue. 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Rebecca Clark Bee 7 (Sway) Detail, graphite on paper, 30” x 22” 


17



Lynn Kilpatrick grew up in Iowa and Idaho, then 

moved to the Pacific Northwest. She earned her 

MA in English from Western Washington University 

and her PhD in Fiction from the University of 

Utah. Her collection of stories, In the House, 

was published by FC2 (U of Alabama Press) in 

2010. Her essays have appeared in Creative 

Nonfiction, Ninth Letter, and Brevity. She has lived 

in Salt Lake City for almost twenty years, with her 

husband. She teaches at Salt Lake Community 

College. She has one son, and a dog named Gus. 

Mental 

Ecology 




Fort Hall 

“Much confusion arises as to the exact 

site of Fort Hall...a number of places in 

the vicinity of the original old 1834 Fort 

Hall were designated by the same name. 

There have been at least four spots called 

‘Fort Hall’.” 

Thomas Payne West, 1924 

The nearby town is also known as Fort Hall. 

Today, Fort Hall includes a casino and hotel. 

The replica of Fort Hall is not in the same 

location as the original Fort Hall. The 

location of the original Fort Hall is lost to 

history, and is believed at this time to be 

under water. 

Fort Hall was the name given to the original 

trading post built by Nathaniel Wyeth 

in 1834. The area in which it is believed 

that the original Fort Hall was built had 

been known as “The Bottoms,” a popular 

gathering place for Native Americans in the 

region. Fort Hall was located in a bend of 

the Snake River near the junctions of the 

Blackfoot and Portneuf Rivers. 

Fort Hall was the name given to a stage 

station built near the original site in 1864. 

This replica, built in Pocatello, is based on 

the plan of the original trading post. 

For a time, the Fort Hall replica contained 

a multi-paneled illustration explaining the 

Christian elements of the Sun Dance. 

The dance takes place around a tree meant 

to represent the Sun or an absent God with 

twelve poles radiating out from this center 

that have been said to represent the Twelve 

Apostles. 

Fort Hall was the name given to a 

reservation established in 1867. The 

Shoshoni and Bannock tribes were forced 

onto this reservation through a series of 

massacres, attacks, and treaties. 

This exhibit no longer exists. 


19



Invasive Species: Russian Olive 

The Russian Olive Tree, Elaeagnus angustifolia, 

is native to Western Asia. The exact date of 

introduction to Idaho is not known, but is 

estimated to be in the 1800s. Their bark is 

silvery, but can be thorny. Leaves are light 

green and oblong. In May and June, yellow 

flowers are seen. Russian Olives were planted 

by farmers as windbreaks along roads and 

streams. This tree is resistant to harsh 

conditions. It is able to thrive on little water 

and in sandy soil. The seeds, distributed 

by birds, are resilient. The Russian Olive 

is said to have “escaped cultivation” and 

become naturalized. It dominates streamside 

ecology and has facilitated the rise of 

other non-native species. It is considered a 

noxious weed. Many believe the dominance 

of the Russian Olive has contributed to the 

disappearance of native species. 




Something about Idaho 

Something about driving into the brown, 

back in, the winding blacktop, fields, the sky 

like a gaping mouth. 

Something about driving, driving, driving, the 

road is narrow, and so few cars. Something 

about the alfalfa fields, the green, the blue. 

The word home isn’t quite right. 

You step to the right, to the left, to the 

center. Turn your back on the others. Yes, 

this is familiar. This is where it starts, in a 

gym, your back turned to everyone else. 

Facing out. 

Something about streets, pavement, leading 

out, and then the brown which goes further, 

further than you can walk, your legs are 

tired, you have to stop for a drink. The hills 

keep going. 

He takes your hand and you hop in unison 

and this is a dance too, but everyone is 

connected, snaking in a line and the music 

tells you what to do, and you turn in toward 

the circle, everyone is looking at you, and 

they smile. 

Something about how the landscape 

embraces you, tightens your heart like a 

sorrow, an idea, constricting, a cloud swept 

into view. No rain, only the idea of rain, only 

the memories like an outstretched hand, a 

song, beckoning, a man’s voice, calling you 

from across a great, dark plain. 

Something about the river and the quiet 

and the echo of a now dead scream and the 

green, the green and you can see why, yes. 

Something about the houses, stacked like 

blocks up the side of the hillside. Another 

house, another house. 

Something about the way space used to be 

open and the brown everywhere and now 

you cannot see the top of the hill. 


21

On This Site 

Jeremy Dennis 


On This Site 

Jeremy Dennis 

Left | Manitou Hill, Plainsview NY 

Manitou Hill is a sacred hill located 

on what is now known as Manetto 

Hill in Plainview, New York. An oral 

story, recorded by historian Gabriel 

Furman in 1874, describes a legend 

during a great drought. The Manitou 

instructs a sachem through a dream 

to stand at the top of Manetto Hill 

and fire an arrow into the air, and 

on the spot where the arrow lands, 

people should dig until they find 

water. The water spring that was 

found, called Mascopas, is now 

beneath a local high school athletic 

field. Manitou is known in traditional 

systems as the powerful and unseen 

power throughout the universe, 

being present during moments of 

the miraculous and mysterious. 

On This Site is an art-based research project 

by Shinnecock Nation tribe member and 

artist Jeremy Dennis intended to preserve 

and create awareness of sacred, culturally 

significant, and historical Native American 

landscapes on Long Island, New York. Native 

people existed throughout Long Island for 

more than ten thousand years. We are still 

present here today, and we will continue to 

be here. While historical sites remain, they 

have been made invisible by colonial forces. 

Photography, as an entry point to history, 

invites curiosity. Both indigenous and nonindigenous 

viewers will likely be unfamiliar 

with both the landscapes and histories 

associated with each site documented in 

On This Site. 

Through curiosity about my own origin and 

ancestral history, I gathered and combined 

archaeological, anthropological, historical, 

and oral stories to answer essential culturaldefining 

questions: Where did my ancestors 

live? Why did they choose these places? 

What happened to them over time? Do these 

places still exist? 


23

On This Site 

Jeremy Dennis 

The work seeks to make the invisible, visible. 

To provide a way to reconnect memory 

and place, creating a new opportunity for 

self and communal reflection upon our 

assumptions and stereotypes regarding 

indigenous and colonial shared history on 

Long Island. I hope the project promotes 

communal awareness and cultural 

enlightenment and will lead to cultural 

critique, historical inquiry, and educational 

development. 

Tribe Communities Today 

Out of the thirteen original tribes on Long 

Island that occupied distinct territories, only 

two nations now hold reservation land; the 

Unkechaug and the Shinnecock. According 

to the 2010 census, 22% of Native Americans 

live on reservation land nationwide. 

Besides Unkechaug and Shinnecock, 

descendants of other tribe groups also live 

in scattered communities throughout Long 

Island. They work locally and around the 

world. For example, in Little Neck, there is a 

community of Matinecock; throughout Long 

Island are Montaukett descendants. And in 

the Setauket area, there is a community of 

Setalcott tribal descendants. 

Descendants of these tribal groups on 

Long Island maintain a link to the past 

through family lineage and the practice of 

their traditional culture with unique social 

gatherings and historical preservation. In 

addition to sharing place-based indigenous 

culture and history, the protection of the 

sites in this project is an important priority 

from a spiritual, environmental, and 

archaeological perspective. 


On This Site 

Jeremy Dennis 

Kitchaminchok Mastic NY 

Kitchaminchok is a sacred 

place to the Unkechaug 

people, known for its 

drift whaling. Historically, 

it is part of a boundary 

marker mentioned in a 

17th century agreement 

between Sachem 

Wyandanch and Lion 

Gardiner that permitted 

Gardiner to pay five 

pounds (potentially eight 

hundred pounds today) 

for every complete whale 

carcass that came ashore. 

Once a site is destroyed, it is lost forever. 

This project shares the unfortunate 

desecrations of Sugar Loaf Hill, 

Wegwagonock, and others. These sites are 

within and near the affluent estates of “The 

Hamptons,” and are often overlooked for 

their historical and cultural significance 

by the weekend home inhabitants and 

vacationers who come and go. 

Although Long Island’s archaeological sites 

are unlike the western archaeological sites 

widely recognized and seen in popular 

culture, they maintain the same reverence 

and academic value. 

Combining the fragility and ambiguity 

in recognizing Long Island’s indigenous 

archaeological landscapes, photography 

allows for the acknowledgement of their 

histories without putting them in physical 

danger. 

The ambitious goal of this project is to 

document and represent all significant 

indigenous sites on Long Island for their 

physical and memorial preservation. 

The images chosen for this journal 

represent a handful of those that have been 

researched and photographed, largely on 

the Eastern End of Long Island in Suffolk 

County. For updates, corrections, and 

new photographs, please view the project 

website, which features an interactive map 

of the site locations at: 

jeremynative.com/onthissite/ 


25

On This Site 

Jeremy Dennis 

Council Rock, Montauk NY Situated on a bluff just west of Montauk 

Manor, the 30-acre cemetery overlooks Fort Pond and the Atlantic 

Ocean. Once a Montauk Indian fortification, it was the site of the tribe's 

crushing defeat by the Narragansetts in 1654. It was already the burial 

ground for hundreds of Montauks when the Smithsonian Institution 

shipped the bones of two Montauks to Fort Hill for burial last year. The 

large boulder in the center of the cemetery's driveway was known as 

council rock, where the tribe held meetings and ceremonies. 

Fowler House, East Hampton NY The Fowler House was moved from Indian Field in Montauk to the area then known as 

Freetown in East Hampton. During the late 19th century, Arthur Benson, who owned and developed much of Montauk, offered 

deeds to plots of land in Freetown to Montauketts Indians who still lived in Indian Fields to entice them to vacate their traditional 

tribal lands. The saltbox-style house, now owned by East Hampton Town, once belonged to Montaukett Indian George Lewis 

Fowler and his wife, Sarah Melissa Horton. George Fowler worked as a gondolier and gardener for the artist Thomas Moran, 

whose Main Street, East Hampton house and studio, a national historic landmark, is being restored. Fowler was also a caretaker 

at Home, Sweet Home. Freetown received its name as because former slaves of wealthy local families settled it. The Fowler House 

is the only one that remains. The house was moved to Freetown around 1890 from Indian Fields and “is possibly one of the most 

historically significant structures in the Town of East Hampton,” according to town documents. Freetown is now gone, but the 

Fowler house is undergoing restoration in the historic district of East Hampton. 


On This Site 

Jeremy Dennis 

Fort Massapequa, Massapequa NY The Massapequa tribe had its principal settlement at Fort Neck, in South Oyster Bay, and 

extended eastward to the bounds of Islip and north to the middle of the island. Here were two Indian forts, the larger of which 

was stormed and massacred by Captain John Underhill, in the service of the Dutch, in 1653. The remains of the fort have been 

encroached upon and covered by the waters of the Great South Bay. Tackapousha was sachem of this tribe in 1656; also chief 

sachem of the western chieftaincies of the island, after the division between the Dutch and the English. 

See more at jeremynative.com/onthissite 


27

Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Rebecca Clark 

Bee 4 (Look) 

Graphite on paper, 

6” x 7 1/2”, 2009 


29

The Breath Camera: a prototype for anticapitalist photography 



The Breath Camera: 

a prototype for 

anticapitalist photography 


Left | Figure 1 

2016 Burned Landscape, 

Oregon Desert Trail BLM 

Lands, USA (with Krista 

Caballero). Photographic 

documentation. 

I am an artist and anthropologist with an 

interdisciplinary PhD from University of 

Victoria, Canada. Over the past 15 years I have 

explored relationships between photography as 

object, image and event, through installation, 

performance, and in academic research and 

writing. My artistic and academic practices 

are platforms to address the significance 

of photography by breaking it down to its 

fundamental properties in order to propose new 

forms of collectivity. My work considers the way 

that places like National Parks are maintained 

through photography; the relationships between 

archives and photography; and the structure 

of artworlds as a complex of people, funding, 

studios and materials. My writing and photoessay 

work has been published in journals such 

as Cultural Anthropology, Visual Anthropology 

and Imaginations Journal. My artworks have 

been installed in place-specific locations across 

North America and in venues such as Open Space 

Gallery, The Southern Alberta Art Gallery, and 

Arts Incubator. I am currently artist-in-residence 

in the Making Culture Lab at SFU investigating the 

role of the anarchival materiality within archives. 

trudilynnsmith.com 


31



The Breath Camera mixes the fleshy with 

the fleeting. It is a wearable form made 

to expand on capacities for noticing while 

immersed in/as camera. Bellows removed 

from a 4x5 large-format view camera 

were modified and attached to a soft front 

standard with simple lenses and a soft back 

standard holds a viewing screen. Users 

shroud themselves in a long 1 x 4 metre 

darkcloth and supports the camera in their 

hands. Controlling the flexible bellows, air 

circulates through the camera, and images 

slip in and out of focus. 

In/As the Breath Camera, immersion 

under the darkcloth and the motion of the 

bellows work together as a reminder of 

ongoing movement of the breathing body 

and more-than human world. The Breath 

Camera cycles: a fluctuating field firms up 

(contracting) and drifts (expanding). 

Breathing is a process of expansion and of 

contraction, breathing provides an important 

base for speech, song, laughter, yawning, 

coughing, sneezing, and panting. Difficulty 

breathing can be an indicator of stress 

and disease. 

The camera invites embodied 

experimentation with the foundational 

properties of photography: lenses, light, 

and images, while immersed in the ongoing 

movement of embodied experience out of 

which still shots are extrapolated as events. 

The camera can be experienced individually 

Figure 2 2016 Mapping Meaning. Santa Cruz National Preserve, USA. Photographic documentation. 




Figure 3 2016 Breaking Timothy O’Sullivan’s (1868) archive. City of Rocks National Preserve, USA (with Krista Caballero) 

Photographic documentation. 


33



Working the breath 

camera, the user’s cycle 

of breath participates 

in the unarchivable 

experience of the world 

and provides a setting 

for noticing multiple 

agencies and timescales. 




Left | Figure 4 

2016 Breaking Timothy 

O’Sullivan’s (1868) 

archive. City of Rocks 

National Preserve, USA 

(with Krista Caballero) 

Photographic 


Following | Figure 5 

2016 Breaking Timothy 

O’Sullivan’s (1868) 

archive Part 2/ 

Chrono-intermingling 

City of Rocks National 

Preserve, USA 

(with Krista Caballero) 

Photographic 


and collectively. Working the breath camera, 

the user’s cycle of breath participates in 

the unarchivable experience of the world 

and provides a setting for noticing multiple 

agencies and timescales. 

The misuse of cultural forms such as cameras 

and building divergent practices are central 

to my work with photography. Normally in 

photography, a button is pushed and light 

rays are converted to numbers or patterns of 

light and dark. Cameras record information 

and in doing so, propose to arrest time. 

The Breath Camera is an intervention into 

these habits, and is rooted in divergent 

relations with cameras, in creating forms 

that unfix images as a form of noticing. The 

breath camera severs relations with the 

fixed image (and object) to address ongoing 

violences and injustices that fixed images can 

contribute to in North America. 

The Breath Camera is an anticapitalist 

camera. Anticapitalist cameras are not 

governed by corporate logics, profit, 

dominant systems or capitalist worlds. They 

oppose the hold that corporations have over 

photography and cameras, and challenge 

the idea that relations between humans and 

photography began with the “invention” of 

fixed images 200 years ago. 

The Breath Camera is rooted in divergent 

relations with cameras designed to encounter 

difficult conversations about photography, 

such as its relationship to extinction, racism, 

colonialism, climate change and catastrophe. 

The video documentation and images in this 

essay document the camera — a monstrous 

form — intervening into moments at Mapping 

Meaning on Santa Cruz Island, experimental 

interventions during the centenary of parks 

and 50-year anniversary of public funding for 

the arts in the USA (with Krista Caballero) and 

pedagogical experimentation at University 

of Maryland. 


35







37



Figure 6 2017 Respiration. Pedagogical experimentation with students at University of Maryland in the Design Cultures & 

Creativity Program. 

Figure 7 Respiration. Pedagogical experimentation 

with students at University of Maryland in the Design 

Cultures & Creativity Program. 

Figure 8 Respiration. Pedagogical experimentation 

with students at University of Maryland in the Design 

Cultures & Creativity Program. 




Figure 9 2016 Video Documentation, Breaking Timothy O’Sullivan’s (1868) 

archive Part 2/Chrono-intermingling. City of Rocks National Preserve, USA 

(with Krista Caballero), 

https://vimeo.com/251201707 

Figure 10 2016 Mapping Meaning. Santa Cruz National Preserve, USA. Photographic documentation by Krista Caballero. 


39

David Foster Wallace, 

F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the 

vapidity of the bottomless, 

postmodern machine. 

Clark Nielson 

Clark Nielson is a third-year student in the Honors 

College at the University of Utah, majoring in 

Materials Science & Engineering. He thanks Dr. 

Andy Hoffman for encouragement, intellectual 

direction and input on this paper. In 2017, he 

participated in the Honors Integrated Minor in 

Ecology & Legacy, which was “emphatically the 

most impactful experience of my life thus far. I 

am not the only student who is less afraid to raise 

her hand in class now.” Clark loves to ski and 

skateboard, and would like you to know he and 

his friends have decided smoking is degenerate 

and are quitting. Clark wants to earn a creative 

writing minor before he graduates, and hopes to 

build skis with his materials science degree. 


David Foster Wallace, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the 

vapidity of the bottomless, postmodern machine. 

Clark Nielson 

"Whoever gives you pain reminds 

you of the homage that others 

used to pay you. But still, you 

sob tragically and call upon your 

madness, and you would go so far 

as to have it removed—this thing, 

your last remaining privilege—as 

if it were a stone.” 

Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting 

the Stone of Madness 


41



Clark Nielson 

1 

David Foster Wallace once told a reporter, 

“look, man, we’d probably most of us agree 

that these are dark times, and stupid ones, 

but do we need fiction that does nothing but 

dramatize how dark and stupid everything 

is?” He stood against postmodern media that, 

at its most base, turned mass entertainment 

vapid, self-referential, and cynical. Wallace’s 

confrontationally authentic writing style 

leaves naked the tragedy surrounding his 

premature death. He never wrote a word 

about his own demons; he didn’t need 

to. When Wallace wrote of depression, 

he did so embarrassingly and knowingly, 

acknowledging it as an ultimately selfish 

addiction to self-centeredness. Wallace’s 

suicide left an unintentional blackness to his 

posthumous readers. However, do not add 

nihilism and certainly not cynicism to this 

equation. Davis Foster Wallace will not 

be misunderstood. 

limelight in the wake of his first novel, This 

Side of Paradise. However, his fame did not 

last during his lifetime, and Fitzgerald died a 

drunken Hollywood scriptwriter, debatably 

successful. Edmund Wilson, who outlived and 

was close to Fitzgerald thought it “absurd that 

his drunken, often silly college friend could 

become a dying-and-reviving god.” In this and 

similar cases, dying preceded the mythicizing 

of the prematurely deceased artist as a 

painfully simplified victim of his time. Think 

Shelley. Think Mozart. 

In this essay, I review how these two authors 

overlap in a postmodern context. I’m 

interested in how their works deal with the 

consequences of losing self to expectation, 

ironic living, and the inherent restrictions of 

thought as a portal to “happy.” I gesticulate 

towards the degrading and personal 

repercussions of irony and cynicism. 

2 

Wallace’s gift to explicitly depict the inner 

turmoil of the mind hints towards the 

causation of his suicide. His pen could 

not keep up with the inspiration. The 

contradiction of Wallace, that he understood 

and could poignantly articulate the most 

complex failings of human thought while 

drowning in his own powerful truisms, 

surfaces in his coldly controlled honesty. 

Conversely, F. Scott Fitzgerald more directly 

inserted his well-publicized personal issues 

into the stories he composed; stories that 

are a perfect model of how fiction should 

be written. F. Scott Fitzgerald arrived in the 

My parents turned me onto David Foster 

Wallace. We would listen to his tapes on 

road trips through the desert, and I would 

fall asleep with my face against fogging 

glass, hearing his voice, complete with the 

footnotes, tell me about lobsters or tennis 

or porn. I woke up once to his voice reading 

“The View from Mrs. Thompson’s House,” and 

this is the essay that was my introduction to 

the terms “postmodern,” and “cynical.” In the 

essay, he writes about the shameful thoughts 

and the guilt these thoughts caused as he 

watched the twin towers come down again 

and again on September 11th, 2001, from the 

living room of his neighbor’s home: 




Clark Nielson 

There is what would strike many 

Americans as a marked, startling lack 

of cynicism… nobody’s near hip enough 

to lodge the sick and obvious po-mo 

complaint: We’ve Seen This Before… there 

are any number of cynical, detached, and 

ironic observations that could be made 

about the situation unfolding. 

These are the thoughts that occur to U.S. 

Americans at the beginning of the 21st 

century, and they undeniably occur in 2017 

as America’s repetitious stream of mass 

shootings and terrorism continues. Yes, 

we’ve seen it before. At this point in the 

carnage, it would be unfair to say that most 

Americans are being hip in their cynicism. 

It seems like cynical justifications are now 

required to get through the days after a 

Sandy Hook or a Vegas. 

I remember where I was when I heard 

about Vegas. I was checking my phone 

when I swiped over and saw the news. I 

wanted to throw up. The depressing thing 

isn’t that I went to school and nobody even 

talked about it. Sometimes this is the only 

response. It’s just that the postmodern line 

is more resigned now: “Yes, I saw the same 

news, and it’s going to happen again.” 

Wallace ends “The View from Mrs. 

Thompson’s House” with an admission 

that he has lost his innocence to a worse 

god than that of violence or trauma. As 

Wallace stands in a prayer circle with the 

type of people most empathetically hurt 

by the (capital H) Horror, he articulates the 

feeling of shame brought by being a cynic 

surrounded by unashamed earnestness: “It’s 

good to pray this way. It’s just a bit lonely to 

have to. Truly decent, innocent, people can 

be taxing to be around.” 

3 

I skipped all of my commitments for a 

few days this past autumn, for a variety of 

reasons. Primarily, I was depressed and 

didn’t want to go to school with the weather 

so romantic. Instead, I pedaled down to the 

graveyard on my street, which overlooks the 

city, and read a bunch of Fitzgerald short 

stories in the sun while chain-smoking. 

Naturally. Fitzgerald fit the weather, and 

the gloom. 

Throughout all of Fitzgerald’s writing there 

exists this haunting atmospheric sense of 

immediate, looming decay in the midst of 

relentless beauty. Beauty always fades. 

Beauty begs an answer for the value of 

what cannot be kept. Fitzgerald’s characters 

fumble to make sense of the ungraspable, 

intangible and mockingly transitory 

graduations of light into absence. They fail 

attempting to preserve the now past-tense 

present, and in their grasping, they fall 

victim to expectation. Think Gatsby floating 

in his pool. 

4 

In Infinite Jest, Wallace uses the only innocent 

character in the novel, Mario, to present 

a contrasting voice among the darkly selfaware 

students at Enfield Tennis Academy. 

Wallace describes Mario as a “cross between 


43



Clark Nielson 

a puppet and one of the big-headed 

disengages the mind from the present. Miller 

carnivores from Spielberg’s old specialeffects 

orgies about reptiles.” Because of or to express earnest emotionality has for 

identifies that to admit one’s own neediness 

Mario’s literally “reptilian” appearance, 

some reason become embarrassing in a 

he has no mask to hide behind. Mario’s setting where “humanness” gets laughed 

brother Hal tells us that Mario’s opinion is out of the room. Detached heads now 

the only opinion he is truly afraid of because watch bodies from the third person to avoid 

Mario’s absolute lack of pretentiousness involvement with the often-uncomfortable 

gives anything he has to say a painfully 

present, and this is irony: 

uncomfortable power: 

Being ironic, we can point at bodies 

The older Mario gets, the more confused and laugh without admitting our own 

he gets about the fact that everyone at 

embodiedness. We can treat life itself as 

E.T.A. [the tennis academy] over the age a spectacle staged for our entertainment 

of about Kent Blott finds stuff that is 

and then roll our eyes when it insists on 

really real uncomfortable and they get 

being ordinary and user-unfriendly. 

embarrassed. It’s like there’s some rule 

that real stuff can only get mentioned if This is thinking as an addiction: no longer 

everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a responding to stimuli but simply analyzing 

way that isn’t happy. 

from the outside. Ironic living results in a 

mental state of constantly narrating life 

Kent Block is ten years old. Students 

in the third person. Fictitious. The ironic 

become cynical right around the age of self lives fully in a state of perception 

ten. Mario is apparently unable to detect management. That is, managing and 

lies, the consequence of his uncorrupted analyzing full-time how the self appears to 

view of people. But Wallace emphasizes other bodies. 

that nobody thinks Mario is unintelligent. 

Mario’s naivety is a suggestion that the cold Ironic selves do not actually participate in 

intellectualism of postmodernism keeps life and circumstance; they rarely dance. 

people from confronting the real. A constant Imagine dancing with someone at prom or 

need for entertainment facilitates this 

some other equally strange event. They are 

distracted avoidance. 

far better looking than you, and definitely 

and emphatically don’t purposely want to 

5 

be dancing with you. They roll their eyes. 

They would rather be anywhere than dancing 

In his book, The Gospel According to David with you in this precise moment. This is 

Environmental 

Foster Wallace, Adam S. Miller argues that dancing with irony: avoiding the awkward, 

a postmodern need for distraction alters sweaty, real parts of life from beneath an 

our very thinking patterns in a way that inhuman mask. 

Ecology 




Clark Nielson 

6 

In Fitzgerald’s, This Side of Paradise, 

Monsignor Darcy explains the difference 

between a personality and personage to 

the protagonist Amory. Personalities serve 

as facades that “lower the people they act 

on.” A personality is a pretense that covers 

the nakedness of a personage, or what a 

person actually is. A personage “gathers” and 

is never “thought of apart from what he’s 

done.” 

The lies the mind tells itself about its 

personality (or its actual self if you will), 

draws the caricature person, which the 

ironic self insists on being. This conceptual 

definition of body, and self, measures the 

displacement between where the body is, 

and where the mind abstractly exists. As 

Don Draper puts it in the show Mad Men, 

“We make people who we want them to be.” 

And, I hear Alejandra Pizarnik call out, dead, 

from below the ground: “There I am, drunk 

on a thousand deaths, telling myself about 

me.” We stay stuck in our minds, dead, telling 

ourselves about ourselves upon a foundation 

of avoidant lies. Irony is that disconnected 

mind watching that caricature body have 

sex, sweat at a party, stare at a television set. 

Never fully participating in the event. This is 

self-voyeurism in the creepiest sense of the 

word. The boring, embarrassingly human 

aspects of life that this personality must 

avoid, may measure this distance. Ultimately, 

this insidious denial of self adds up. A tab 

will be paid if one chooses to face down the 

inherent fluorescence of existence. This will 

be uncomfortable. But if successful, the world 

might again take on that tangible, malleable 

and manageable quality of childhood. 

7 

I am being nudged awake. It is 7 a.m. It 

is time to go skateboarding. Someone is 

putting a cigarette in my mouth. Eight of us 

pile in a white tinted van. Nirvana’s “Rape 

Me” plays from a legitimate cassette player 

up front. Everyone is pretty hung-over. The 

van has actual ashtrays at every seat, so, 

cigs inside. My older brother left a bottle of 

amphetamines in the car the day before, and 

the bottle gets tossed around the van too. 

We get to the skate park early before the gate 

is open. Skateboards are thrown over the 

fence, followed by some “fucks” as each of us 

crashes down onto the lawn. It’s a tall fence. 

The pavement at the skate park has this 

ephemeral, almost intangible, viscous quality 

when the morning light hits the perfectly 

smooth cement. Stiff shivering bodies roll 

lazily out over the playing field. Warming up 

before other skaters show up when the park 

opens. Someone lights up another cigarette, 

and like a black hole, the orbits of each skater 

pull closer and closer until collision. 

“That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is 

about themselves,” Wallace tells us, and that 

this thinking, this unutterable neurosis of 

fictionalized self, simply consists of “scaring 

the ever living shit out of itself.” Large 

portions of Infinite Jest deal with thinking 

as an addiction, which is the first and only 

addiction. If, as Don Draper spits in the 

show Mad Men, “happiness is the moment 


45



Clark Nielson 

before you need more happiness,” then 

real addiction (physical dependence aside) 

occurs when that moment between expected 

contentment and relief from, “all the pain of 

the Losses your love of that relief caused,” 

shortens, and stems further thought past this 

immediately pounding and, in every case, 

knowingly misled faith that these always 

carefully performed rituals can brush off 

this unendurable moment until that next 

moment. Usually when the substance wears 

off. Chewing on old memories, overanalyzing 

the stimuli we receive, and perhaps even 

worrying about unchangeable things is 

just another addiction. Thinking promises 

happiness, perhaps, but thoughts don’t 

change anything. Willing our world to change 

never works. And this process makes us feel 

empty, every time. 

8 

In This is Water, Wallace argues that the 

“banal platitudes” of life carry real life-anddeath 

implications: “Think of the old cliché́ 

about ‘the mind being an excellent servant 

but a terrible master. This, like many clichés, 

so lame and unexciting on the surface, 

actually expresses a great and terrible truth. 

It is not the least bit coincidental that adults 

who commit suicide with firearms almost 

always shoot themselves in the head.” 

David Foster Wallace took his own life in 

2008. He did not use a firearm. He did not 

shoot himself in the head. 

Fitzgerald died four days before Christmas in 

1944. Few people attended his funeral. Years 

of affairs, trips to the hospital, car crashes, 

and general drunkenness ensured this. It 

took time for the glorifying of the saint to 

begin. It was then that Zelda wrote: 

I feel that Scott’s greatest contribution was 

the dramatization of a heart-broken + 

despairing era, giving it a new raison-d’être 

in the sense of tragic courage with 

which he endowed it. 

“Winter Dreams,” published in 1926 while 

Fitzgerald was planning Gatsby, follows an 

ambitious boy, Dexter, in his idolatry of a 

rich aristocratic woman bred well above his 

own breed. The love falters, and the boy is 

gracelessly disposed of shortly before they 

are to be engaged. A year later, a successful 

Dexter sits in a high-rise in New York City. A 

coworker casually mentions the name of his 

old lover and rumors of her abuse by her 

wealthy husband. And also, how much her 

beauty has faded. Something registers in 

Dexter. Not pangs of regret, but the absence 

of regret: 

He had thought that having nothing else 

to lose he was invulnerable at last—but 

he knew that he had just lost something 

more, as sure as he had married Judy 

Jones and seen her fade away before his 

eye. The dream was gone. Something had 

been taken from him…. For the first time 

in years he felt the tears were streaming 

down his face…. He wanted to care, but 

he could not care, and there was no 

beauty but the gray beauty of steel that 

withstands all time. 




Clark Nielson 

“Long ago, there was something in me,” he 

said. “That thing will come back no more.” 

Dexter mourns the loss of the ability to 

mourn. The loss of innocence that registers 

with Wallace in “The View from Mrs. 

Thompson’s House.” The golden pedestal, 

so carefully crafted by Dexter, collapses 

beneath a fictitious love. This love story 

echoes Fitzgerald’s own relationship with his 

wife Zelda, a legitimate “Southern Bell.” Zelda 

originally refused to marry the middle-class 

Fitzgerald. Like Gatsby, Fitzgerald buckled 

down and started to win fame and money 

with his writing. He won back his girl. Zelda 

eventually accepted the hand of the new and 

rising star; queue one of the most publicly 

distasteful and by all accounts deranged 

relationships of the 20th century. Fitzgerald 

got what he wanted, and was left with the 

glitter: 

“Because desire just cheats you. It’s 

like a sunbeam skipping here and 

there about a room. It stops and gilds 

some inconsequential object, and we 

poor fools try to grasp it—but when 

we do the sunbeam moves on to 

something else, and you’ve got the 

inconsequential part, but the glitter 

that made you want it is gone.” 

9 

My aunt has every edition of the Best 

American Short Stories, series on a shelf in her 

basement. I picked up the 1988 edition at 

random a few weeks ago. The argumentative 

nature of the introduction contrasted 

the often neutral to boring level these 

introductions uphold. This introduction, 

written by Mark Helprin, startled me in its 

relevance three decades later. Helprin attacks 

the minimalist school of fiction and effectively 

paints this enemy as “mice treading through 

lion territory” with an “unwillingness to deal 

with life other than obliquely” that is not 

subtlety but cowardice. These writers make 

an industry of ridicule, he claims, and he asks 

of their characters: 

Why do they always live in filthy unkempt 

apartments filled with ugly bric-a-brac, 

where everyone smokes, drinks, stays up 

all night, and is addicted to coffee? Why 

do they seem to exist as if there were no 

landscape, as if they lived in tunnels? Is 

this why they are never sunburned? 

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway 

traded correspondence throughout their 

careers. Hemingway adhered to the stoically 

masculine, “if you can cut a word or phrase, 

and still have a story, cut it,” policy that 

makes his writing easily recognizable. His 

writing is the definition of minimalism. 

Fitzgerald’s writing is a little less taut. 

But Helprin is not referring to Hemingway’s 

minimalism in his argument. Fitzgerald and 

Hemingway didn’t cut or reduce human 

conflicts in their stories the way that 

Helprin claims minimalist writing does. 

They wore their sufferings unashamed on 

their sleeves, and never danced around 

tragedy. Hemingway’s, Farewell to Arms, and 

Fitzgerald’s short stories terminate with a 

numbing note of loss after teasing beauty. 


47



Clark Nielson 

But at least they have something to say 

about the human experience, and they don’t 

treat life “obliquely.” They do not revert 

to cheap nihilism, and the bleakness they 

arrive at stems from the Horrors faced by 

the lost generation. 

of depression among bewildered patrons 

who need something more uplifting? When 

nothing human is challenged in media, the 

point becomes obscure and consumers find 

themselves continually asking, “What the 

hell am I missing?” 

Fitzgerald theorized and explored the idea 

that each person has a limited emotional 

capacity, which once depleted, leaves a 

person unable to feel anything at all. In his 

fiction, beautiful girls with social status and 

every shallow glamor get everything they 

ever asked for and find themselves, like 

Daisy, sobbing in a cascade of the finest 

European shirts, or arrive at a deadening 

emotional stasis. But the point is that 

there is a bloody reason and point to the 

deadening. Gatsby dies with his eyes open. 

The next post-war generation bred the 

deadbeats. Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. 

Thompson, and William S. Burroughs to 

name a few. They faced the atom bomb. 

Their writings don’t exactly advocate 

the, “getting fucked up because nothing 

matters,” mentality even though at times 

their characters definitely adhere to this line 

as they drunkenly flee to the ends of the 

continent. The reader can still squeeze light 

and character out of their stories. 

Contemporary media, on the other hand, 

relies on a caustic mixture of clever selfreferencing 

that makes a cold satire of the 

human emotion. When there is no point 

in mass entertainment than to present 

nihilistic overtures, what else can be 

expected other than high rates 

Don’t worry; there is nothing to miss. 

10 

Fitzgerald and Wallace showed us precisely 

how to be human. Wallace unforgettably 

dictated consciousness for the world and, 

finally, articulated the limits of introspection. 

Fitzgerald built worlds of impossible 

beauty, and then stepped aside to paint the 

collapse. Both suffered from the mental 

turbulence that accompanies a mind with 

something pressingly important to say. 

Please, forget the noose and the belt and 

the alcoholism. Forget these black stains 

for now, however enjoyable you might find 

delving into that darkness. Lose the image 

of Fitzgerald hunched drunkenly over his 

typewriter, composing his escape. The 

funerals are already crowded with this type. 

This is too easy. Act like you don’t have the 

natural desire to know what pushed them 

over. And, of course, you want to know 

exactly how someone did it, I know. Read 

the transformational lucidity and crystalline 

gorgeousness before rushing in with the rest 

of the eager cluster-fucking necrophiliacs. 

11 

I, like all contemporary Americans, have 




Clark Nielson 

seen the face of cynicism. Cynicism is sexy. 

Cynicism peers out from the back seat 

of a black Audi, next to the hot wife he 

probably cheats on. Cynicism convinces 

me, sometimes, that since nothing matters, 

anything earnest and real can be laughed 

at, that I can put on this ironic postmodern 

mask and avoid what it means to be a 

“fucking human being.” Wallace’s cage 

is safe: 

“Postmodern irony and cynicism’s 

become an end in itself, a measure of 

hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few 

artists dare to try to talk about ways of 

working toward redeeming what’s wrong, 

because they’ll look sentimental and naive 

to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from 

liberating to enslaving. There’s some great 

essay somewhere that has a line about 

irony being the song of the prisoner who’s 

come to love his cage.” 

Earnestness triggers an undeniable degree 

of repulsion to us now. Nobody remains 

innocent in this way. We need another 

Bradbury. I need Dandelion Wine. I need 

some starlit imagination. 

And what did we trade our innocence for? 

Black humor that can paw lightly over the 

Horrors when they occur, as if they too, 

don’t mean anything? And when the ironic 

mask is stripped off and beady eyes are 

forced to adjust to disorienting levels of 

saturation… this will be an uncomfortable 

confession. And when Helprin’s minimalists 

find themselves with their “heads shaved 

clean, in a prison camp,” the people they love 

dead, if anything is left at all to be felt, it will 

be the shame of being a part of the fucking 

human race that they originally needed the 

masks for. 

12 

This will sound cheesy, but—no don’t fucking 

justify this. Things have been stupid and 

meaningless for god knows how long, and 

people need a break. Postmodernism is no 

longer edgy, but degrading and tolling. This 

lack of earnest human experience has turned 

out to be a far more insidious and un-tame 

creature than originally thought. Inhuman 

intellectualism will be emphatically rejected. 

I believe most US Americans are noticing 

the absence of light, and the necessity. 

We now stand at a party we did not intend 

on attending, surrounded by people talking 

shit on not only the party, but the other 

people at the party. Only it’s no longer 

funny, it’s kind of sickening. And people are 

filing out. Suddenly everyone starts rushing 

towards the door to avoid being the last 

person in that room with that handsome 

man who arrived in a black Audi and whose 

grin is now acutely upsetting. 


49






Left | Gretchen Schermerhorn 

Survival Seven - Binoculars 

Screenprint, 14” x 14” 

Ms. Schermerhorn is currently the Artistic Director 

at Pyramid Atlantic, an art center dedicated to the 

creation and preservation of hand printmaking, 

papermaking and the art of the book, in Silver 

Spring, Maryland. She received her MFA in 

Printmaking from Arizona State University in 2004, 

and since then has completed artist residencies at 

Women’s Studio Workshop in New York, Columbia 

College Center for Book and Paper in Chicago, 

Seacourt Print Workshop in Northern Ireland, and 

California State University. Her prints, installations 

and works on paper works have been exhibited 

in New York, Boston and Washington DC, and her 

work is in national and international collections. 


51




Survival One - How to 

Make a Pair of Sunglasses 



Survival Three - Cashew 






Survival Five - How to Make Fishhooks 



53







Survival Two - Firestarter 



55

Identity, Narrative, 

and Miseducation in a 

More-Than-Human World 


Rae Wynn-Grant, PhD, is a wildlife ecologist at 

the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation 

at the American Museum of Natural History. 

Unapologetic about her love for studying 

charismatic megafauna, she spends a quarter 

of the year conducting fieldwork to measure the 

impact humans have on the ecology and behavior 

of wildlife. Rae is a conservation biology educator 

at the graduate, undergraduate, and high school 

levels, as well as a science communicator with 

special interest in increasing awareness of and 

participation in conservation biology for people 

of color. When taking a break from the science 

world, Rae loves to practice yoga, travel for 

pleasure, and catch up with her inspiring friends. 

Rae lives in New York City with her husband, 

daughter, and mother. 

Arts educator and museum consultant Toni Wynn 

writes creative nonfiction, museum exhibitions, 

essays, and poetry. Toni can be found where 

there’s art, love, and wind. 

raewynngrant.com | toniwynn.com 


Identity, Narrative, and Miseducation in a More-Than-Human World 


We see the world and the way the world 

functions as perfect and complete, especially 

in the absence of humans and human 

modification. 

Rae Wynn-Grant and Toni Wynn 

Daughter and mother, environmental 

scientist and poet, educator and 

educator, nature enthusiast and nature 

enthusiast, museum worker and 

museum worker, write about the ways 

nature impacts them as they live and 

work — as interdisciplinary influencers 

and just as humans — in a “more than 

human world.” 

A through-line of flashpoints — identity, 

narrative, and miseducation — are 

amplified where the two voices intersect. 

Excerpts from Toni’s nature poetry 

balance and interrogate Rae’s deep dives 

into conservation science. 

Toni Wynn: Much of my connection to 

nature now that I’ve moved to New York 

City comes from memory, buffeting winds, 

grey skies, and infrequent travel to wilder, 

natural spaces. 

At home in coastal Virginia I grew vegetables 

and herbs in my giant backyard. Five years 

of arugula with flavor! Then Rae sent me 

video of the dire-climate-change address 

John Kerry delivered across the river at Old 

Dominion University when he was Secretary 

of State. Next, links to reports from Rae’s 

associates at the pre-45 EPA. My son Asa 

phoned in his entreaties. I visited a friend in 

Norfolk whose neighbors had raised their 

homes on stilts. I’d lost a Toyota to a flash 

flood in 2003, and was regularly bailing or 

pumping out water that seeped through the 

floor of my basement during storms that 

coincided with high tides. There’s no denying 

water when you’re in it — in time, my house 

would be under it. I prepared to move. 

Rae Wynn-Grant: Nature was first 

introduced to me as in-crisis. Fear tactics 

exploded around this elementary-schooler 

in the early 1990s. I was equally terrified 

about being arrested for littering as I was 

about my Halloween candy being poisoned, 

or getting shot for wearing red in a blue 

gang zone. I have memories of crying 

hysterically over the extent of air and water 

pollution and not understanding why society 

would allow it to continue. The plight of 

endangered species was, apparently, too 

much to handle, and twenty years later I’ve 

found myself in a career dedicated to saving 

them from extinction. 

jagged top-to-bottom scar of lightning 

over the river. sheets of rain, but 

before, that slate grey sky. pages of 

clouds turn from north to east. bright, 

cowed southern sky helpless in its 

advance. severe now, weather and the 

toppled expectation of yellow gingko or 

orange sugar maple leaves. now with 

warning labels. 

30 September 2011 from “Solo Novo 

122 days” 

Rae Wynn-Grant: Through academia, I 

studied nature, the natural world, and 


57



the science of conserving nature. My love 

for nature sprouted organically, but the 

lens through which I operate and study is 

grounded in theoretical ecology. I’m glad I 

went the academic route, as it helped me 

realize that science is one of my strengths — 

and, ultimately, my career passion. 

Toni Wynn: There’s a false narrative — sold 

with urgency by commerce-driven American 

society — around how African American 

people aren’t terribly keen on nature. I 

bought that line as a new adult exercising 

her sudden ability to purchase her own 

things. But as I commuted across the Golden 

Gate Bridge, there was, crucially, nothing 

to buy. Nothing to see but natural beauty. 

My kids could watch horses on a hill from 

their bedroom window when they were 

small — the same years when Rae became 

hyperaware of the state of the environment. 

At night the horses sleep. Come daybreak, 

a collie speeds around them. To get them 

running? Because they’re pure that way? 

Saying what — my eyes can suffer 

more beauty? 

At night a telescope rings Saturn in, and 

four of Jupiter’s moons. Coyotes run, days 

later, at dusk, owning the canyon, barking 

vapor into air, a passage of fur, feet, 

and danger. 

from “A Brown Girl’s Nature Poem: 

Canyonlands” 

Rae Wynn-Grant: There is a critical 

intersection of identity, identity politics, 

social justice, and inclusivity that is lacking 

and yet essential for conservation to be 

effective. This was not something always 

clear to me. 

In summer 2014, I traveled to California 

to present my work for the first time at a 

prestigious ecology conference. I didn’t 

enter the journey confidently, knowing my 

performance needed to be particularly 

impressive as I would likely be one of the 

few, if not only, black scientists presenting 

work and would thus stand out. As I always 

do, I first flew to the Bay Area to spend a few 

days with my family before embarking on 

the two-hour drive to Sacramento to finish 

last-minute editing of my presentation for 

the next day. I listened to NPR during my 

drive; the programming focused entirely on 

the riots and unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, 

following the shooting of Mike Brown only 

days earlier. I cried as I drove, cursed as I 

drove, grew weary as I drove. By the time I 

arrived in Sacramento, I was in a mentally 

difficult place. On one hand, the biggest 

scientific opportunity of my career thus far 

was the next morning, and my presentation 

needed practice and polishing. On the other 

hand, my soul needed critical care and my 

grief was palpable. 

I was invited to present a study on the spatial 

distribution of human-induced mortality 

risk for black bears. And yet the entirety of 

my being was consumed with the realities 

of racially-motivated mortality risk for 

black men. I was pained to know that this 

conference of thousands of the world’s 

most elite ecologists would not, and possibly 




There is a critical 

intersection of identity, 

identity politics, social 

justice, and inclusivity 

that is lacking and yet 

essential for conservation 

to be effective. 


59



will never, hold space for myself and my 

community, and acknowledge the magnitude 

of the events in Ferguson. 

It was at that moment, hours before my 

presentation, as I stared at my computer 

screen paralyzed with sadness and 

concerned for the fate of the Ferguson 

protestors as well as the black men in my life, 

that I realized what I needed from my natureloving 

peers to do the work I intended to do. 

I realized that there is often no separating 

one’s identity from one’s profession, and 

to make an impact on effective black bear 

conservation —to do science as well as my 

peers — I require a space that acknowledges 

and supports me in my entirety. 

I have yet to find this space, yet my 

black conservationist peers and I are 

actively attempting to build one. In many 

ways, it is our own act of resistance, and 

simultaneously, is a necessary first step 

toward being able to tackle the challenges 

facing the natural world. This more-thanhuman 

world requires the world’s humans 

to restore it to balance. A color-blind onesize-fits 

all approach to facilitating this 

work is what has prevented us from 

achieving success. 

and am only fleetingly surprised when 

Philando Castile rises through the poem. 

Food shoots up from the soil, leaps into 

the kitchen. 

I can’t wait to feed you. Tricksters come 

two seasons late, 

imploded cauliflower the consistency 

of the molten core of the Earth. 

Sprout calls to heat: Here I am didja 

miss me? 

I don’t look for you in the scrum. I turn 

the dirt, 

dump handfuls of compost into hasty 

spaces I create for you. 

I do not clap the loose soil off my hands. 

I let it cling. 

I never finish. Still sleepy, before the dew 

burns off, 

before the rabbits disappear, I push 

myself outside, 

wary of the mystery that contains you. 

I don’t forget to thank you, 

the crabgrass, and vines that make my 

cuticles bleed 

from the endless pincer motion of 

my hands. 

Is this a substitute? 

Toni Wynn: This is the way it goes. Given 

time, the greatness, the grief, the day-to-day 

of being black in the United States bleeds 

through any task undertaken. A culture 

based on a pervasive, sinister mythology of 

the black body extends spiny tentacles, and 

no place is “unlikely.” I lean on my kitchen 

counter, breathing in the bounty of a harvest, 

For running an ice cream truck company, 

perhaps, 

keeping account of what’s selling, how 

fast, the jingles, what each neighborhood 

might yield? 

These ride-or-die images: 

rainbow pops, blue lips, red “He just shot 

his arm off” 




declarative statements Diamond 

Reynolds said 

into her phone, narrating her man’s 

demise. 

Should I write despair on a ledger 

and tear it until it disappears? 

Text comes in R U OK four emojis three 

question marks. 

Today the tomatillos look like tiny 

chartreuse lanterns 

And as joy would have it, fireflies light 

them as I slumber. 

I do not clap the soil off my hands. 

from “You” 

often work against our goals. 

Toni Wynn: Humans are good for studying 

other humans. Outside of that — and art — 

I’m chronically skeptical of what benefits our 

species provides. 

TO: Students: Medicine II, Dentistry I, 

Occupational Therapy 

Grad I, Physical Therapy Grad I 

FROM: Xxxxx Xxxxx PhD 

Associate Professor 

Department of Anatomy and 

Neurobiology 

Director, Gross Anatomical 

Laboratory Facilities 

Rae Wynn-Grant: Traditionally, conservation 

science is taught using a more-than-human 

approach to nature. But at the same time, we 

have a difficult time escaping conversations 

about ourselves and our differences. An early 

debate in conservation classes surrounds 

the question “do we fight for species because 

they are inherently valuable (to the world), or 

because they provide services (to people)?” 

Making a business case for the conservation 

of living things and places is uncomfortable 

for every conservationist I know, as we 

generally see the world and the way the 

world functions as perfect and complete, 

especially in the absence of humans and 

human modification. However, there is 

a need to incentivize conservation — a 

need to sell it for conservation to maintain 

relevancy and to continue garnering support. 

This is especially true in the face of rapid 

globalization and capitalist markets that 

The annual ceremony for the interment of 

cadaveric ashes from the gross anatomy 

teaching laboratory will be held on 

Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 3:30 PM 

at the MCV Memorial Garden, Forest Lawn 

Cemetery (400 Alma Avenue), Richmond, 

Virginia. A map is attached. Everyone is 

invited to attend. Xxxxxx Xxxxxx, of the 

Department of Patient Counseling, will 

officiate. 

Kindly announce this occasion to your 

classmates who may not have heard or 

checked their e mail. Your attendance 

at the moving and inspirational event is 

encouraged; students who have attended 

this service in the past have attested to a 

profoundly moving spiritual experience. 

We have many possessions in life but only 

one- our body- is truly our own. To share 


61



this intimate possession is a tremendous 

gift, and the interment ceremony honors 

those who have given this gift, which 

enables students to gain the knowledge to 

serve others in their chosen profession. If 

any student feels moved to speak briefly 

at this ceremony, he/she would be most 

welcome. If a class representative would 

like to make a more formal presentation 

as part of the ceremony, he or she may 

contact Chaplain Xxxxxx directly: 

Xxxxx xxxxxx 

Patient Counseling 

xxx-xxxx or fax xxx-xxxx 

xxxxx@vcu.edu 

With best wishes to all of you as your 

pursue your education here at VCU. 

This is a found poem. --TW 

Rae Wynn-Grant: A refocusing on the 

identity of scientists who do conservation 

science, or people who do conservation work, 

and an inherent valuation of the protection, 

safety, opportunities, and futures of these 

individuals and their communities will 

transform the effectiveness and relevance 

of conservation. It is arguably the only way 

for this field to move forward. Listening to 

and centering the perspectives of those 

historically underrepresented in this field 

is critical for the sea change this planet 

aches for. Even more importantly, we need 

to transform understanding into action, 

especially from allies and those with decisionmaking 

power. A healthy, functioning, morethan-human 

world is achievable if we make 

equity and inclusion foundations of our work. 

Toni Wynn: 

We know little about the lives of Africans 

In 17th century Virginia, the video guide 

tells. 

And this is how some of them lived 

Here on Jamestown Island. 

We know more every hour. 

Even the name of the first black boy 

Birthed on bloody Virginia soil. This, 

Perhaps, is his skull. 

Dig. 

We surely know the boy. 

from “William, What He Saw” 

Poetry by Toni Wynn from the following 

publications: 

the place within where the universe resides (chapbook), 

Shakespeare Press Museum, 1993. 

Color, Voices, Place (with John Sousa and Carla Martinez), 

Shakespeare Press Museum and SeaMoon Press, 1997. 

Reckoning (with Barry Ebner), Editions BaD, 1997. 

Ground, Shakespeare Press Museum, 2007 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Rebecca Clark Bee 20 (The Real Work), Graphite on paper, 30” x 22”, 2011 


63

Notes on 

an archive 


Left | Mexico Excavations 

Workers from Mexico’s 

National Institute of 

Anthropology look over a 

complete skeleton found 

during construction of a 

subway line in Mexico City, 

June 12, 1995. Finds such 

as these are common in 

Mexico City, which was 

built on a lake bed and was 

already one of the largest 

cities in the world when 

Hernán de Cortés arrived 

in 1519. The archaeologists 

are attempting to determine 

from what period the 

skeletons date. (AP Photo/ 

Guillermo Gutierrez) 

Nat Castañeda is an interdisciplinary visual 

artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Castañeda 

works primarily in video and collage, with an 

emphasis on tactile intimacy with her materials 

remaining an important aspect of all her projects. 

Common issues in Castañeda’s work are the role 

of technology within personal narratives and 

exploring unknown and underrepresented stories 

within the historical record. 

She received her MFA from the School of Visual 

Arts and has shown at venues such as El Museo 

del Barrio and Electronic Arts Intermix. In 

addition to her art practice, Castañeda works 

at The Associated Press where she curates 

AP’s photographic archive of historical and 

contemporary photojournalism. Castañeda’s 

photography has appeared in the New York 

Times, U.S. News & World Report and USA Today. 


65



It is an extraordinary thing to interact with an 

archive, let alone one of the most important 

news archives in the world. 

When you spend hours in an archive, you 

experience a sort of shift between time and 

space. It can be disorienting. Skin tones are 

turned inside out and subjects take up an 

otherworldly countenance. I discovered black 

and white negatives humming with lavender 

accents, a remnant of the chemical bath that 

brought them to life. In 35mm negatives, I 

often came across colors so unnatural and 

unexpected that the images seemed more 

suited for a museum wall. 

In 2007, I was hired by The Associated Press 

to work in their photo library. My role was to 

help with the digitization of over five million 

negatives and prints housed in the archive. 

The AP’s archive spans the age of film—from 

glass plate negatives to 35mm, the preferred 

medium for photographers before the 

introduction of digital photography. 

The negatives are kept in aging beige 

envelopes with typewritten summaries that 

provide contextual information to be used 

in a corresponding news report. With a light 

table and a magnifying loupe, my job was to 

examine negative after negative for anything 

that might be deemed “newsworthy” and 

visually strong enough to justify the tedious 

process of digitization. 

My experience as an archivist lasted four 

years and I am convinced that I will look back 

at that time as one of the most formative 

experiences in my visual and intellectual life. 

The process of editing news photos not 

only shaped my understanding of how the 

historical record is maintained but shifted the 

way I understood photographic film. I now 

understand that negatives are objects which 

contain a liveliness of their own, independent 

of context or worth within the news industry. 

All negatives are in a state of decomposition, 

a reminder of the fleshy nature of film, but 

we intervene, extending their life as we scan 

their corporeal self into a digital one. 

The following series of images were made 

during my time as an archivist and taken 

with my iPhone camera. They are from my 

own personal archive and aren’t particularly 

important as news photos. Instead, because 

of their ambiguity, these images find 

themselves in the outer boundaries of the 

archive; too odd, too beautiful, too quiet to 

fit into the established news narrative. Yet, 

I’ve discovered the outer boundaries of the 

archive to be full of imaginative possibilities. 




Left | Egypt 1 Ten kilometers North of Cairo, not far from the Pyramids, is a small village called Abu Rawash in March 1982. 

Located on the outskirts of the desert the villagers share their environment with snakes, scorpions and other reptiles. (AP Photo) 

Above | Emulsion Neg 1 A damaged negative from the Associated Press photo library is shown. (AP Photo) 


67



Map A United States Air Force Soldier looks over map in Libya, Nov. 24, 1951. (AP Photo) 




When you spend hours in an 

archive, you experience a 

sort of shift between time 

and space. 


69



Egypt 2 Women in Upper Egypt village walk, next to Luxor, Egypt in April 1984. (AP Photo/Paola Crociani) 





71



Civil Rights 2 Civil Rights Meredith March - A black man wearing a handkerchief as a mask against tear gas helps a white man 

and woman out schoolyard in Canton, Mississippi, June 10, 1966, after police used the tear gas to disperse a crowd of Meredith 

Marchers and several hundred townspeople who had set up tents for the marchers. Others sit in the choking gas at right. Partially 

collapsed tent is in right background. White frame in center background is rear of marchers’ tent truck. (AP Photo/Charles Kelly) 




Japan Earthquake A building crumbles in the aftermath of an earthquake, date unknown. (AP Photo) 


73

In Conversation with 

Consciousness: A Reflection 

On My Use of Metalogue to 

Make Sense of the Ecological 

Context of Mental Health 


Weston Wood graduated from the University of 

Utah with an Honors B.S. in Communication and 

participated in the Honors College Integrated 

Minor in Ecology & Legacy. He currently lives in 

Salt Lake City, working odd jobs in education, 

research and advocacy. He spends the time he 

can spare escaping into Utah’s conifers, canyons 

and caring for his elderly cat. 


In Conversation with Consciousness 


“Rivulets run down this patterned 

landscape of ridges and ravines, smelling 

sharp of sap and soaked earth. Course, 

meandering but inextricably linked. As I 

listen to a breeze of various pitches course 

through the budding oak and stubborn 

conifers, I remove my hand from this 

bark and notice the stark similarities 

between it and the larger lay of the land – 

homonymous but far from monotonous. 

It required being alone in this space, far 

more than spectacle, to realize sensuously 

that I am not alone. As humans, we never 

have been, and hopefully never will be, 

alone in natural spaces. I suspect that I, 

among many, have been a poor listener.” 

So goes the introductory paragraph 

of my Honors Thesis for my H.B.S. in 

Communication at the University of Utah, 

Consciousness is a Conversation: Towards 

an Eco-Dialogical Theory of Communication 

(Wood, 2017, p. 1). My thesis meandered 

between many themes, topics, problems 

and perspectives, but was motivated by 

the pathos that I located in the Wasatch 

Mountains as described above. In the paper 

you now read, I will share the metalogue 

methodology that I used to explore 

my relationship to myself and to larger 

ecosystems. I hope to assume the role of 

storyteller rather than researcher and convey 

the significance of this methodological 

experiment as I experienced it. 

This outward oriented inner-work originated 

in a coalescence of various ecological 

theories and my work on interpersonal 

dialogue with Dr. Leonard Hawes, my 

thesis supervisor. This resulted in a series 

of transcribed and analyzed conversations, 

or metalogues, in which I studied both the 

process and text. Of particular importance 

to this piece, and indeed myself, is the 

potential for this method to lend awareness 

to how larger ecosystems and socio/ 

economic/political/etc. structures flow 

through us, how these lines of contact may 

manifest discursively, and the implications 

for mental health. 

Metalogue can reveal the relationality which I 

argue is intrinsic to the self. Whether spoken, 

written, or thought, our conscious existence 

is conversational and our relationships with 

others, systems and structures leave spoken 

traces that can be etched and analyzed. I 

think metalogue can activate our inherent 

agency to improve our collective wellbeing 

by acknowledging these voices and “editing” 

these conversations that are always already 

occurring. I will include selections from the 

thesis that I think are most relevant, and 

frame them with paragraphs of reflection. 

A Coalescence of Theory and Very 

Personal Praxis 

My thesis was motivated by my desire 

to interrogate mental health from an 

environmental humanities lens. I took 

Dr. Hawes’ class Culture & Dialogue in 

which he uses critical theory to construct 

a non-hierarchal space where students 

are encouraged to examine their own 

communication (as opposed to abstract 

analysis of communication). In this space, 

students are empowered to speak truth 


75



in their relationships. This class proved 

revolutionary for my mental health because 

it prompted a radical shift in my relationship 

with myself. 

For the keystone assignment of the class, 

the student transcribes and performs a close 

textual analysis of an honest conversation 

with someone important about problems 

in their relationship. I realized that my most 

problematic relationship was with myself, 

that I spoke to and treated myself poorly. 

So, I transcribed and analyzed a spoken 

conversation with myself to tease out the 

discursive manifestations of my anxiety and 

depression. While I initially thought that I 

was cheating, Dr. Hawes encouraged me 

to continue along this line of questioning. 

Using this dialogic method, usually applied to 

an interpersonal relationship, I was able to 

destabilize monolithic notions of subjectivity 

in a profoundly productive manner. 

The method was deeply informed by Bakhtin, 

as “Any understanding of live speech, a 

live utterance, is inherently responsive... 

and necessarily elicits it in one form or 

another: the listener becomes the speaker” 

(1986, p. 68). I elaborated that “The act 

of [listening] makes dialogue distinct [as 

opposed to dominant adversarial forms 

of communication in our culture]… It is a 

productive exchange between voices, as a 

result of often deliberate turn-taking” (Wood, 

2017, pp. 4-5). Through slowing down my 

inner monologue (as a spoken dialogue) 

and honestly listening to myself, I identified 

recurring patterns of anxious thought 

and “edited” these abusive conversations. 

I overcame crippling anxieties, which in 

turn has had a profound effect on my 

relationships with others. 

It soon became clear that this dialogic 

method provided an avenue by which to 

explore the interpersonal dynamics of 

larger systems, especially human 

relationships with the more-than-human 

world. I located my studies around the 

systems theory of Gregory Bateson, Mladen 

Dolar’s psychoanalysis of the voice, and 

later, David Abram’s deep ecology. What 

follows is an abbreviated synthesis from my 

methodology section: 

Bateson’s systems perspective articulates 

mind as immanent in the variety of 

systems within which we are embedded, 

and blurs commonly held distinctions 

between the biological organism (including 

the thinking self) and the environment 

(1972, pp. 454-71) ‘Mind’ is “immanent” in 

all mental activity, which Bateson argues 

is a system or “loop” that transforms 

information and results in the alterations 

of variables within the system (1972, p. 

315-320). Additionally, he argued for the 

“[correction of] the Darwinian unit of 

survival to include the environment and 

the interaction between organism and 

environment…the unit of evolutionary 

survival turns out to be identical with the unit 

of mind” (1972, p. 491). That the legacy of 

Cartesian dualism holds the “self” to be 

both transcendent and operating through 

the human body is a grave error that 

results in malady. 




Within this framework voice can therefore 

be understood as our relationality in 

action. Mladen Dolar’s psychoanalytical 

theory of the voice in A Voice and Nothing 

More demonstrates voice as essential to 

the thinking self. He argues that voice 

“can perhaps also be seen as the lever 

of thought” instead of the “vehicle of 

meaning” or “fetish object” (2006, pp. 

4-11)...and that voice can be better 

understood as an enabler of thought, 

bound with thought, or even being 

thought itself (Dolar, 2006, pp. 1-11). Dolar 

also discusses the voice as inherently a call 

to the other at length throughout his book 

(2006). Therefore, “voice” or vocalization 

is information at points of interaction and 

transformation between various human 

and more-than-human “systems,” whether 

they be orcas or old-growth stands of oak 

(Wood, 2017, 8). 

David Abram’s deep ecology lends insight 

into what conversations are always 

occurring and what voices may be better 

heard. The phenomenology Abrams 

grounds in ecology reveals that we are 

beings perpetually perceiving the larger 

world around us in an active, dynamic 

process that shapes both perceiver and 

perceived. (Abram, 1996, p. 31-72). This 

occurs within “fields of flesh” from which 

we can never truly remove ourselves to 

an impartial objectivity – we are always 

already interacting with our environments 

(Abram, 1996, p. 66). One crucial insight 

is that language itself is material, of the 

“flesh,” arising out of “living speech” that 

originated spontaneously in conversation 

with the living field. (73-92). Reciprocal 

perception occurs through vocalizations, 

both narrowly and broadly defined. 

Additionally, many in the industrialized 

world have lost the ability to “speak to” 

the larger biosphere and instead speak 

merely “about” it (Abram, 1996, p. 22). Like 

Bateson, Abram points out that very real 

maladies of health have been a function 

of imbalance with the more-than-human 

world in a multitude of cultures, and 

they have been cured by restoring this 

balance (Abram, 1996, p. 22). This idea 

invites exploration as to how our modern 

voices remain ecological processes and 

what nonhuman voices are waiting to be 

engaged in a very material, “real” sensory 

experience, and how these relationships 

might play into our mental health. 

This background framed the metalogues 

I conducted in which I attempted to 

trace the voices that function as points 

of conversational contact between self, 

human and more-than-human others and 

demonstrate how we exist systemically. I 

hoped it would prove useful for folks who 

live under dominant assumptions about the 

self as primarily individual and the merit 

of personal gain over community, when 

our own evolutionary history and ecology 

suggests the opposite to be far healthier. 

Bateson defines metalogue as “a 

conversation about some problematic 

subject…[in which] not only do the 

participants discuss the problem but the 

structure of the conversation as a whole 


77



I realized that my most 

problematic relationship was 

with myself, that I spoke to 

and treated myself poorly. 

So, I transcribed and analyzed 

a spoken conversation with 

myself to tease out the 

discursive manifestations of 

my anxiety and depression. 




is also relevant to the same subject” 

(Bateson, 1972, p. 1). Metalogue was the 

keystone of the dialogic transcription analysis 

used in my thesis as it “allows analysis not 

only of discussion of the topic of interest, 

say, our relationship with the natural world, 

but the relationship itself as we live it. The 

phenomena that is the topic of discussion 

is also intended to be occurring in the 

discussion.” (Wood, 2017, pp. 7-8). Thus, I 

enacted metalogues with myself and others 

and conducted dialogic transcription analysis 

of them as an experimental method. 

I will now share a few selections of metalogue 

that demonstrate its potential significance 

for exploring our relationality outwards 

and interrogating systemic dynamics of 

mental health. What follows first is from my 

conversation with myself that demonstrates 

how this method allows me to slow down 

and unpack problematic self-discourse. The 

numbers in parenthesis signify the duration 

of pauses in seconds: 

Utterance: 33. even now (3) you were 

being a dick to me, you were saying these 

two days off were really bad for me, and 

this is always what you do (2) 34. and I’m 

like fair, to an extent, but that’s partially 

because of the way you treat me (4)and, 

we’re trying to work on that, but we’ve 

really regressed and we have a lot of ways 

to go, and it comes down to more than 

just (1) a ok you not being as much of a 

dick and acknowledging, but you no more 

cop outs 12:46 

35. and another part of me real is being 

honest, eye we’ve done some good but we 

also (2) I also xhhhh 

36. I also haven’t worked as hard as I 

(1) should 

37. I say should, but that’s a bit (unin) 

38. I haven’t worked as hard as I would like 

myself to, Hence ((circles with hand)) the 

start of me being an asshole to you 

39. It’s on me, and this perpetual 

disagreement we’re having (4) doesn’t 

help (3) what I have done, I acknowledge, 

and that’s awesome good job you ((clicks 

mouth)) good job. 

40. I also (2) acknowledge that I had 

expectations that have not been met 

(2)13:41 

41. That’s ok, I have been through a lot 

42. You’ve been through a lot (2) 

43. You’ve been through a lot, and that’s 

ok 13:49 

(5) 

44.That’s (.5) totally fine 

xhhhhh 

45. You’ll get there (3) you’re doing well (3) 

Metalogue: An example of the value of 

dialogic turn-taking for me. I often set 

expectations for myself that I do not 

meet, and am very harsh with myself 

in response. This is what another voice, 

less heard in my day-to-day inner 

conversations, is referring to as “what 

you always do.” These expectations are 

imposed by a domineering voice that 

feels external pressures to perform. I 

have internalized the value of perpetually 

increasing my productivity in order to 

prove my dominance over the work I am 

doing, re-enacting patriarchy. Through this 

reflexivity, I am able to reveal patriarchy 


79



as it lives in me, and reject my problematic 

performances of masculinity and replace 

them with radical self-care. 

Through slowing down my thought as 

spoken discourse, I was able to work out 

my problems with myself in a manner 

akin to how I would with another person. 

Additionally, I was able to uncover what I’ve 

now interpreted to be learned practices of 

patriarchal capitalism. In other words, how 

patricarchial capitalism is implicated in my 

problems and challenge this system “as it 

lives in me” via my voice. It is difficult for me 

to describe how this felt, but after completing 

this conversation I felt focus and peace unlike 

anything since my original self-dialogue. 

Next, I will sample metalogues with human 

others, Basil and Aldo, on nonhuman voices 

and mental health. They reveal ourselves 

as innately interwoven with the more-thanhuman 

and a direct connection between 

our experiences of mental health issues and 

sensory contact with said voices. 

Conversation with Basil about being outside 

of human constructed spaces: 

Utterance: W: yeah, but - 

37:21 B: Cause I definitely feel like a 

different energy when I’m in those 

spaces, and= 

W: oh god me too 

B:=clarity 

W: it’s so, I keep coming back to the word 

nourishing for these things, cause whether 

it’s (2) a real diverse community, human 

or non, even if I’m like - an imposter, and 

predatory, even - I still feel better 

37:50 B: mhmmm 

W: cause it’s still so much richer than the 

world I live in day to day 

B: day to day 

W: which is a fucking, I don’t want to say 

desert, because the desert’s much better 

38:12 B: I mean I think (2) I don’t know, like 

in those spaces I feel a level of connection 

and I guess that’s like the root of the 

collective is you need connection of people 

and whatever the issue or cause is and (2) 

38:37 B: I don’t know, I have issue with 

people that are like we just need to get 

kids out in nature and then we’ll solve the 

issue and it’s like well (1) people can’t like 

breathe in their homes so let’s like, how 

bout we clean up the air there first 

38:51 W: right yeah yeah totally 

B: but I guess like the one thing that I think 

can be well there’s various things but I do 

think like (.5) at the root of like what I’ve 

learned being in more wild places is what 

connection means= 

W:mhmmm 

39:16 B: which is like ironic because 

sometimes you equate wildness with 

solitude= 

W: right 

B: but I think that’s extremely problematic 

W: extremely 

B: ummm 

W: it’s solitude after you kill everyone that 

lived there 

B: ((laughs)) (2) yeah and likee I think 

community in places like the west is pretty 

wild in itself, and (2) 

Metalogue: B then provides a remarkably 




insightful response to the tendency to 

locate one’s emotional relationship with 

nonhuman nature as exclusively within the 

boundaries of the individual body, which 

resonates for me. “The human mind is not 

some otherworldly essence that comes to 

house itself inside our physiology. Rather 

it is instilled and provoked by the 

sensorial field itself, induced by the 

tensions and participations between the 

human body and the animate earth… 

Each place its own mind, its own psyche!” 

(Abram, 1996, p. 262). 

Basil and I have both had profound 

emotional experiences in wilder, less 

urbanized spaces with which we have 

developed relationships. The nuances 

of these experience often escape our 

ability to describe them in individualistic 

language, but our embodied presence 

permits both B and myself to be immersed 

and take an active part in these places. 

This “different energy,” “clarity,” and “root 

of the collective” is clear textual support 

to Abram’s claim to our conviviality 

with the more than human world that 

is due to our senses (1996), including 

what we hear while out there, and that 

community of human and nonhuman is 

deeply interrelated. I am struck by the 

profundity of their articulation “what I’ve 

learned being in more wild places is what 

connection means.” Exposure, and the 

ability to be open to hearing the many 

others that compose these environments, 

in turn nourish and teach the human self 

as a moment of dialogue. 

Basil and I shared common experiences 

of emotive relationships with more than 

human spaces, which had a material effect 

on our wellbeing. Community is a common 

theme applying to all forms of life, our 

shared existence sustained by sensory 

entanglement. Additionally, we enacted 

these themes in our conversation as we 

discussed them. The following selection of 

my conversation with Aldo speaks to 

similar experiences: 

Utterance: 12:22 W: it’s interesting-its (.5) 

it’s quieter in regard to human noises, all 

the bullshit that’s, ya know gonna make 

this a pain to transcribe cause I’ll have to 

hear us over it 

A: mhmmm 

W:((laughs)) 

A: exactly 

W: But uh (1) yeah, and uh I mean you can 

use this storm or just being in pine trees 

in general as an example but what do you 

like, what to you hear when it’s quieter and 

what does that mean to ya? 

12:47 A: (4) wind going through trees, 

even just like a gentle breeze, and you can 

hear it rustling everything and it’s just so 

much more clear than (2) when there’s a 

lot going on you tune out so many things 

because 

W: yeah 

13:08 A: I mean, you just that would be 

input overload if you heard every fucking 

sound which sometimes I do ADD comes 

out but uh when it’s that quiet those 

simple beautiful noises are the one 

things that you can you-you can focus on 

everything around you (1) without it being 


81



overwhelming and you can, I feel like I 

can take it all in rather than ya know like 

cancelling out that shitty music in that car 

over there 

((Music plays in car outside house)) 

13:32 W: yeah yeah yeah 

A: I don’t need to like block anything, I can 

take it all in, and it’s-it’s fucking enjoyable 

((whistles to dog)) Blue come here (1) 

come here 

W: So it’s like, yeah it’s like (1) even though 

that’s a song that I love, Run the Jewells 

13:50A: I didn’t even hear it ((laughs)) 

13:50 W: But right now it’s like, yeah 

putting effort into blocking it so I can 

focus on you and this conversation, it’s 

interesting how (1) ya know 

((car races down 700 east)) 

Metalogue: A describes in sensory detail 

the more-than-human voices that he 

characterizes as soul-nourishing, and once 

more compares them to those heard in 

built spaces where similar nonhuman 

sounds have been silenced. The choice to 

listen to and acknowledge every sound 

he is in contact with in the latter would 

serve as a trigger for his diagnosed and 

pathologized Attention Deficit Disorder; 

yet granting that same attention to his 

perceptions of the former is the opposite. 

He has to “block out” the various urban 

voices, while he thrives on the speech 

of winds racing through trees. Also 

interesting is both are present in this 

particular conversational moment, both 

Social 

the blaring music on the street near our 

conversation and his interaction with 

his dog. 

Like Basil and myself, Aldo has a qualitatively 

different experience with his mental health 

in ecologically rich spaces as compared 

to built environments where these voices 

have been silenced. For us, these morethan-human 

voices have had a role in 

our growth, sustained our wellbeing and 

informed our interactions with others in 

turn. Understandably, their loss is implicated 

explicitly in our own issues of mental health. 

The awareness lent by this process has 

indeed revealed the conversation role of 

the nonhuman other in the development of 

the self and the benefits of listening to and 

engaging these voices. 

Further Questions 

This work has certainly problematized 

traditional notions of what an individual 

subject is and how these ideas about the self 

live within me. I think that hearing the voices 

of human and nonhuman others as we grow 

plays an a priori role in our development, 

and conversation can indeed be productively 

understood as a conversation (Wood, 2017, 

p. 94). While I have intuitively agreed with 

the notions of relational ontology for some 

time, I think the eco-dialogic method has 

successfully revealed that our relationality 

can be understood discursively. That 

I was able to achieve a more nuanced 

understanding of my own relationality, in 

conviviality with my human and nonhuman 

communities alike, was deeply rewarding and 

helpful in negotiating these relationships. 

This process provoked childhood memories 

of growing up with a maple tree who was 

Ecology 




“mine,” one with whom I had a profound 

sensory and emotional relationship. Through 

this project, I unpacked the significance of 

this connection and was able to connect 

with other participants through similar 

experiences. Given the opportunity to grow 

with nonhuman others as a child, I was 

quite seriously formed by them, and in turn, 

remained open to emotional bonds with 

beings both similar and radically different 

than myself. This experience has rippled 

through and remade my spoken, felt 

relationships with many others. I am excited 

by the possibility to explore relationality 

outwards from the self in greater depth and 

for more people. 

I am convinced that self-dialogue can be 

a productive avenue to resolve anxieties 

that riddle our relationships with ourselves 

and others. By changing the discursive 

form to spoken conversation, one is able 

to recognize multiple voices and come to 

understand multiple truths as they exist 

within one traditionally-bounded human 

subject. Recognition and understanding 

can help resolve these differences through 

a deliberate choice to listen to all. To what 

extent can mental health be examined, how 

meaningfully can more people heal ourselves 

through this method? 

The true power of this method to heal 

seems to lie in its ecologically-grounded 

understanding of voice, relationships and 

mental health. These metalogues recognize 

our utterances as true and legitimate, and 

couple them with an understanding of 

human voice as a material process that 

has co-evolved with a multitude of human 

and nonhuman communities. Through our 

voices, my conversational partners and I 

were able to uncover and reflect upon these 

relationships and locate ourselves in larger 

systems. For example, I lost the maple tree 

because of market forces, and Basil and 

Aldo had experienced similar pains. This 

project successfully teased out the intimate 

connection between the loss of nonhuman 

voices and pervasive maladies which seem 

to emanate from those individual and 

collective losses. 

I am grateful that most of my struggles have 

been personal, given my current privilege and 

comfortable petite bourgeoisie background. 

I hope that this dialogic method can help us 

be better to others and ourselves, and learn 

to live healthier lives within the imperialist 

white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy 

(hooks, 2013, p. 1) that teaches us the 

only worthwhile way to live is to dominate, 

commodify and isolate ourselves from our 

communities. Oppression is systemic and 

must be diagnosed and treated as such, and 

change is the realm of organizing, direct 

action, and policy that improves material 

conditions for those struggling and (I hope) 

transforms our society before cascading 

ecological collapse makes our Earth 

unlivable. However, at the risk of falling into 

the neoliberal trap of thinking exclusively 

in terms of individual actions, I insist that 

exploring our relationality outwards from 

the individuated self to the more-thanhuman 

should play a valuable role in doing 

so. I invite criticism as to how to do this 

work better. 


83



This intimate view of discourse, grounded 

in ecology, invites us to think of ourselves 

as the conversational components and 

composers of larger systems. Dependent 

on each other as we are, we may use 

these transcribed texts to transform 

how we live our relationships touched by 

systemic exploitation. Gradually we might 

shift our notions of self, from those of the 

domineering individual who understands 

most other life as inferior and exploitable, 

towards one that coevolved conversationally 

with a multitude of voices, one that is part 

of a nurturing community. For the inherently 

more powerful, I believe listening grounded 

in this method can continue to prove to be 

a provocative political and ecological act. 

References 

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and 

language in the more-than-human world. New York: 

Pantheon Books. 

Abram, D. (2005). Between the body and the breathing earth: 

A reply to Ted Toadvine. Environmental Ethics, 27 (2), 171- 

190. 

Bakhtin, M., McGee, V. (trans). (1986). Speech Genres and Other 

Late Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. 

Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press. 

Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. London: 

Wildwood House. 

Dolar, M. (2006). A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge, MA: The 

MIT Press. 

Foucault, M., & Pearson, J. (2001). Fearless speech (p. 12). Los 

Angeles: Semiotext (e). 

hooks, b. (2013). Understanding patriarchy. Louisville Anarchist 

Federation. Louisville Lending Library. 

Springer, S., & Gahman, L. (2016). Fuck Neoliberalism… And Then 

Some!. 

Sytaffel. (2008). Bateson – Steps to An Ecology of Mind. Media 

ecologies and digital activism: Thoughts about change for a 

changing world. Retrieved from https://mediaecologies. 

wordpress.com/2008/05/21/bateson-steps-to-an-ecologyof-mind/ 

on April 6th, 2017. 

Wildman, W. J. (2010). An introduction to relational ontology. 

The Trinity and an entangled world: Relationality in physical 

science and theology, 55-73. 

Wood, W. (2017). CONSCIOUSNESS IS A CONVERSATION: 

TOWARDS AN ECO-DIALOGIC THEORY OF 

COMMUNICATION. Undergraduate Research Journal. 

Retrieved from http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/URJ/ 

article/view/3874 

Wood, W. (2016). The Ecology of Empowerment: A 

Particular Politics for an Astounding (Anxiety Inducing) 

Anthropocene. Impact: Ecology and legacy integrated minor. 

Salt Lake City, UT: The University of Utah Honors College. 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Rebecca Clark Bee 7 (Sway), Graphite on paper, 30 x 22 in., 2009 


85

Markers 



Marker 


Left | Andrea Sherrill Evans 

Marker #4 

silverpoint and acrylic 

on prepared paper 

29.5” x 31”, 2012 

Arizona-born and Baltimore-based artist 

Andrea Sherrill Evans has a practice 

founded in drawing, painting, sculpture, and 

performance. Her work aims to complicate 

the idea of nature and explores the division 

between the human and natural world. Evans 

received a BFA in painting from Arizona State 

University, and MFA from the School of the 

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University. 

She is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural 

Council Artist Fellowship in Drawing, St. 

Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist 

Award, and Blanche E. Colman Award. Select 

exhibitions include Onloaded: Andrea 

Sherrill Evans, phICA (Phoenix, AZ), Where 

Nature Ends, The Cluster Gallery (Brooklyn, 

NY), Passing, Left, The Dorado Project at 

the Buggy Factory (Brooklyn, NY), Clear-Cut, 

Emmanuel College (Boston, MA), and Mean 

Girls at SPACE Gallery (Pittsburgh, PA). Evans 

currently teaches in the Drawing Department 

at the Maryland Institute College of Art. 

andreasherrillevans.com 


87

Markers 


Woven throughout my art practice is the 

aim to complicate the idea of nature and 

the often didactic division between the 

human and the natural world. The use of 

drawing to investigate the subject of nature 

recalls the picturesque landscape sketches 

of the Romantic painters, but their focus on 

sublime scenery with mythic proportions is 

transposed onto new forms of nature that 

reveal the active, and irreversible, impact of 

the human hand. 

The human mark on the landscape is 

present both literally and figuratively 

throughout the Marker series. This group 

of drawings explores the human impact on 

the land alongside the human desire for 

a connection with nature. These brightly 

colored trail blazes rupture an otherwise 

seemingly untouched wilderness, clearly 

marking the points where the human and 

natural world collide. 

In their use in natural spaces, trail 

blazes designate a particular path. They 

must intentionally stand out from the 

surrounding environment, and require 

repetition and specific placement in order 

to guide one through an unknown space. 

While these markers may disrupt the 

notion of a true wilderness, they provide 

an access point to a direct experience with 

the natural world. As they lead human 

movement through the landscape, keeping 

one on the trail, they simultaneously protect 

the surrounding ecosystems from further 

destructive human impact. 

As the images of these trail markers 

are translated through the process of 

drawing, they are removed from their 

specific context. These signs are thus 

decentered and disconnected from serving 

their particular purpose. With the lack of 

geographical specificity, these markers no 

longer point us toward the trail ahead, but 

rather, toward larger questions about our 

role in shaping the future of a more-thanhuman 

world. While these markers may be 

a reminder of the crushing and irreversible 

human impact on the natural world, they 

may also provide a glimpse of the potential 

for the touch of human hand to be one of 

preservation and conservation of the forms 

of nature that still remain. 


Markers 


Andrea Sherrill Evans Marker #3, silverpoint and walnut ink on prepared paper, 29.5” x 23”, 2012 


89

Markers 



Markers 



Marker #2 



29.5” x 33”, 2012 


91

Markers 



Marker #5 



29.5” x 36”, 2013 


Markers 



93


The Energy & Information 

Ecosystems of the Colorado 

Plateau: An Arts/Sciences 

Field Study 


Richard Lowenberg, 1st-Mile Institute founding 

director, has spent nearly 50 years creatively 

integrating critical understandings and grounded 

involvements in non-profit organizational 

development, architecture, ecosystems design, 

rural community tele-network planning, theater, 

new media arts, photography, writing, teaching 

and grounded eco-social arts/sciences practices. 

1st-mile.org/contact 


95

The Energy & Information Ecosystems of the Colorado Plateau 


Residencies + Research Collaborations + 

Exhibitions + Performances + Workshops + 

Education + Book + Web 

Field Study”, being initiated as a project of 

1st-Mile Institute’s SARC Program, proposes 

to complement other regional research, 

resource studies, decision-support processes 

and cultural actions. Framed by creation of 

field-furthering, interdisciplinary, innovative 

arts/sciences collaborations, this multi-year 

project proposes to establish research thinkand-do 

residencies, while cooperating with 

national parks, wilderness areas, tribal and 

rural communities, government agencies, 

educational and cultural institutions and 

many creative individuals, to inventory, map, 

assess, story-tell, exhibit, publish and most 

creatively present enhanced understandings 

of the complex human and non-human 

‘energy and information ecosystems’ of the 

Four-Corner States Colorado Plateau. 

“The Energy & Information Ecosystems of 

the Colorado Plateau: An Arts/Sciences Field 

Study” is a grounded environmental arts/ 

sciences initiative, now being designed to 

complement other regional eco-research, 

cultural works and community decisionsupport 

processes, with collaborative 

residencies to inventory, map, assess 

and most creatively present enhanced 

understandings of the complex human 

and non-human ‘energy and information 

ecosystems’ of this four states region. This 

initiative emerges from a deep love of this 

most special place. 

Introduction 


the Colorado Plateau: An Arts/Sciences 

At the creative, intellectual, educational 

and public communications heart of this 

project is the precept that while many of 

us espouse a need for improved ecological 

understandings and dedicated actions, few 

of us understand ecology as a dynamic, 

integrated whole systems science. Given 

the daunting complexity of our real-world 

condition, researchers, policy-makers, 

activists and the rest of us, usually think and 

work along narrow, single-issue paths (water, 

population, air, climate, land use, tech.), 

largely ignoring the intangible, immaterial 

nature and processes that physics generally 

refers to as ‘energy and information’. The 

nodes and flows that bind and direct all 

matter, have no less significance than our 

more widely studied material ecosystems. 

We are now learning that understanding 

these mostly invisible forces makes all the 




difference, if we are to act humanely and with 

nurturing care for our local-global selves 

and surrounds. 

The arts and the sciences are each other’s 

best friends; two sides of the same coin; 

a primary currency in the 21st century. 

They offer a convergent path to an ecounderstanding 

of our world and our place 

therein. SARC is an onramp to that path 

forward, here to spark our imaginations, and 

to challenge our creative spirit and resolve. 

In this four state region, the convergent arts 

and sciences can be cornerstones of our 

economic and cultural future. 

“We are at a transition point where we 

are questioning our disciplinary habits 

and looking for ways to integrate findings 

from numerous fields of knowledge. One 

possible solution is to encourage the fusion 

of the scientific and artistic imagination 

in education, civil society, and scientific 

institutions. By encouraging significant 

collaborations between scientists and 

artists, science becomes rooted in and 

more responsive to the new and emerging 

cultures that are actively developing new 

ways to reach out to the public. This will 

ultimately help insure that our institutions 

reflect our interdependence.” 

The Colorado Plateau 

The Colorado Plateau is a roughly 130,000 

square mile geo-physically described ecoregion, 

within the Four-Corner states: Arizona, 

Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. Most of 

the area is drained by the Colorado River 

and its main tributaries: the Green, San 

Juan, and Little Colorado Rivers, plus the Rio 

Grande and its tributaries. This magical yet 

fragile place is one of the most extensively 

researched eco-regions in the world. 

Longtime home to many indigenous peoples, 

the region has the greatest concentration of 

National Parks, monuments + public lands in 

the U.S. 

Andrea Polli, Ph.D, Mesa Del Sol Chair, 

Assoc. Prof., Fine Arts and Engineering, 

UNM 

Its richness in energy resources is the 

basis for economic vitality plus contentious 

exploitation. 

The Colorado Plateau has many stories to tell, 

some of which this initiative hopes to explore. 


97



and of our need to think differently, by 

taking “steps toward an ecology of mind”. 

Grand Challenges 

Our greatest local-global ‘Grand Challenge’ 

is to develop ‘a unified ecological field 

theory’, integrating physical, biological, 

environmental, information, social 

and economic processes, to move our 

understandings, intents and actions towards 

the most challenging, yet ultimately most 

important humane goals of our networked 

contemporary society: ‘demosophia’ 

(people wisdom). 

The Earth and all upon it, is bathed in, 

permeated by and all-involved in a universal 

flow and flux of electromagnetic radiated 

energy and information. We cannot address 

the critical issues of changing climate, water, 

energy, food, health, population, economics, 

politics or security, without a better 

understanding of our dynamically integrated 

matter-energy-information environment, 


the Colorado Plateau: An Arts/Sciences Field 

Study” is a proposed multi-year project, 

intending to develop more creatively 

informed processes as basis for applied 

regional ecological understanding and 

decision-making. Information, like water, the 

air we breathe and community health, 

is considered an ‘intangible and externality’ 

by our dominant political-economic systems. 

Yet we should know that such immaterial 

‘common pool resources’ are the true 

determinants of quality of life. The interdynamic 

states of matter, energy and of 

information are fundamental constituents of 

our evolutionary ecological existence. 

This cross-disciplinary “Arts/Sciences Field 

Study” will take a scaled look at select 

energy and information ecosystems, from 

human social-scale telecommunications 

infrastructure and services (broadcast and 

broadband), to mapping and documenting 

the many coal, gas, oil, uranium, hydro, 

solar and wind energy sites, systems 

and distribution networks in the region. 

It will study and present the infrared 

signatures of diverse regional plants and 

other organisms, will record and analyze 

insect communications, will document 

atmospheric electro-phenomena, will sonify 

the quakings of the Earth, will compose new 

bird songs and will shine a creative light on 

the region’s wealth of eco-cultural stories, 

languages, imaginations, dreams and 

world-views. 





the Colorado Plateau: An Arts/Sciences 

Field Study” is intended to augment other 

Four Corners regional ecosystem research, 

assessments, mappings, learning and 

decision-support initiatives, integrating 

emergent patterns for ‘whole systems’ 

interactions and interventions, with 

collaborative, highly creative processes 

and outcomes. 

Arts/Sciences Residencies Proposal 

outreach programs, museum exhibitions, a 

beautiful book and interactive web site. 

An initial two-year period (2018 –2020) 

will be used to institutionally structure the 

program, apply for start-up and long-term 

program funding, nurture existing and 

establish new regional partnerships, create 

educational materials and best-practices and 

extend applied ecosystems understandings 

to improve regional economic, cultural and 

social processes and outcomes. 

1st-Mile Institute and its SARC (Scientists/ 

Artists Research Collaborations) Initiative 

proposes the creation of an Arts/Sciences 

Residency and Research Program. 

This project is intended to make a small 

difference; to propagate greater 

‘eco-mindedness’ and an ecological worldview, 

with the Colorado Plateau as the richly 

inspiring eco-physical setting. 

“For too long we’ve been looking at each 

of these problems in isolation, or at most, 

trying to understand how two systems 

interact with one another. The historical 

structure of research reflects a belief in 

restricted, ‘disciplinary solutions.’ But 

times, they are a-changing. What we 

need to investigate now is how multiple 

By its very nature, this ambitious project 

must attempt to be inclusive of the many 

communities, institutions, people and deeply 

motivated work and ways of the Colorado 

Plateau and surrounds. Partnerships and 

working relationships are being explored, 

joined and established. 

The proposed Arts/Sciences Residency and 

Research Program will result in selected 

artists and scientists collaborations, 

interdisciplinary research studies, scientific 

papers/writings, geospatial mapping and 

modeling, site-specific performances, digital 

media stories and artworks, educational 


99



systems evolve and adapt in response to 

one another, and explore the common 

properties of these systems.” 

“It all sounds highly improbable until you 

realize that it is not that large problems 

are intractable, but that they require 

audacious imagination, a willingness to 

take risks, convening the right groups of 

collaborators, and asking very challenging 

and seemingly far-out questions. After 

all, who would have suspected that there 

could be such things as space-time, 

quantum entanglement, Turing machines, 

and natural selection? These are wonders 

of the imagination that also facilitate 

interactions with our environments.” 

David Krakauer, President, Santa Fe 

Institute, 2015 

Information, be it embodied in organisms, 

the mind, or the culture, is part of a larger 

selective system that determines through 

successful competition or cooperation 

what information survives. Information 

can be encoded in genes, nerve nets, 

or institutions, but the selective system 

that promotes survival remains similar. 

A selective system is a pattern producing 

and recognizing system, be it the pattern 

of life on earth, the symbolic order of the 

mind, or the pattern of culture. A selective 

system manages complexity. ... 

Heinz Pagels, The Dreams of Reason 

Potential Four-State Artist Invitees 

The Colorado Plateau has long attracted 

creative individuals, and this four-state region 

is home to many artists of all disciplines, 

including some remarkable creators already 

deeply involved in interdisciplinary, ecominded 

art/science practices, as writers, 

poets, performers, musicians, new media 

makers, land artists, photographers, 

conceptualists and more. An extensive pool 

of such artists from the four states will be 

developed for arts/sciences residencies, 

collaborations and presentations, as 

programs become formalized. 




“Just as the physical environment 

determines what the source of food 

and exertions of labor shall be, the 

information environment gives specific 

direction to the kinds of ideas, social 

attitudes, definitions of knowledge and 

intellectual capacities that will emerge.... 

When there occurs a radical shift in 

the structure of that environment, this 

must be followed by changes in social 

organization, intellectual predispositions 

and a sense of what is real and valuable.... 

Towards an Ecological Understanding of 

the Energy-Information Environment 

When speaking of ‘the environment’, most 

people still think only of the tangible, 

physical environment of air, earth, fire, 

water and life. But these material systems 

We might say that the most potent 

revolutionaries are those people who 

invent new media of communication, 

although typically they are not aware 

of what they are doing.” 

Neil Postman 

The Nature of Information 

“Complex systems in nature and 

society make use of information for the 

development of their internal organization 

and the control of their functional 

mechanisms. Alongside technical aspects 

of storing, transmitting and processing 

information, the various semantic aspects 

of information, such as meaning, sense, 

reference and function, play a decisive 

part in the analysis of such systems.” 

Bernd-Olaf Küppers, Professor Emeritus 

of Natural Philosophy, University of Jena, 

Germany, author, Information and the 

Origins of Life, MIT Press, 1990 




Information Ecology 

The Nature of Information 

Information, like matter and energy, is a 

primary ecological constituent. 

Information requires life, and it endows life. 

Information is universal, with qualities and 

properties varying according to scale. 

Information is the difference in a state of 

being resulting from any interaction, macro 

to micro, between two or more systems. 

Information at human-earth scale may 

be thought of as constituting a complex 

dynamic environment, with which all of 

life interacts. 

The dynamic flow of information tends 

to reorganize all living systems and 

social constructs. 

The human brain and nervous system have 

evolved through cumulative genetically 

coded experience, unique self-referencing 

processes, and a seeming tendency to be 

all knowing. 

Human senses evolved to sense narrow 

visible and auditory ranges of spectral 

information, though we invisibly and 

intangibly continually interact with 

all information. 

Human technological developments, as 

sensory aids, allow us to tune in to, ride 

upon and manipulate large parts of the 

information environment. 

Information has value. It may be free, cheap 

or expensive, based on its availability and 

demand, processing requirements, and 

ability to make a difference. 

In human terms, pollution and waste in the 

information environment are qualitative: 

ignorance, confusion, deception; as well 

as quantitative: sensory overload and high 

noise to signal ratio. 

Information is a verb, not a noun. 

are bound together in an emergent flow 

of sustaining energy and information; the 

Earth-Sun-Universe connection. It is this 

thermodynamic life force, this radiant 

electromagnetic environment, and its 

impacts on the human body and mind, and 

on all life, to which a sense of ecology must 

be acknowledged. 

We have long known that the environment 

is much more, with contemporary physics 

and ecosystems sciences showing that 

‘the environment’ exists in the elementary, 

complex, inter-dynamic and co-evolutionary 

states of matter, energy and information. 

While we understand a great deal about 

material ecosystems, and are now including 

entropy and energy flows in our equations, 

we have barely applied understandings of 

ecology to information, and therefore to an 

integrated, whole-systems understanding 

of ecology. This will have evermore 

troubling consequences as local-global 

societies increasingly tune into, develop, 

pollute, manipulate and live in the 

information environment. 

Human use and manipulation of 

the electromagnetic spectrum for 

communications, and the production 

and evermore saturating flow of energy 

for power, are having direct effect upon 

all living organisms, in ways barely 

understood. This energy-information 

environment; the flows and concentrations 

of cause and effect in this invisible, dynamic 

ecosystem; and the symbiotic relationship 

between the production of communications 

technology, with the co-evolution of 




the human psycho-sensory system, is 

considered too esoteric and unfathomable 

a subject for most people to involve 

themselves in. Nonetheless, it is 

becoming clear that energy-information 

processes determine the dynamic course 

of social evolution. 

Colorado Plateau Mapping 

An historically major element and mode 

of arts/sciences integration, now rich with 

relational digital data, is mapping and 

modeling. How do we map intangible and 

invisible dynamics over time? 

The overpowering chaos of the universe 

is miraculously awesome. The continuous, 

delicate balancing act between order and 

disorder involves us entirely, from molecule 

to mind. High entropy (chaos) matter-energy 

displays resistance and inflexibility. It is the 

quality of low entropy (order) that makes 

matter-energy receptive to the imprint of 

human knowledge and purpose. We can 

neither create nor destroy matter, energy 

or information. We live on the qualitative 

difference between these natural resources 

and waste; the increase in entropy. 

High entropy; noise in the information 

environment, is constituted by ignorance, 

confusion, deception and obfuscation. To 

ignore the simple and elemental truths of 

the Entropy Law, is undoubtedly to promote 

more undesired disorder over time. 

Life’s delicate balance requires greater 

sensitivity and perception. An ecology 

of the information environment; ‘an 

ecology of mind’; would foster intelligence, 

creativity and inspiration as our most 

valued resources. Within this conceptual 

framework, the arts, sciences and lifelong 

learning in pursuit of truth and beauty, 

ought to be the ultimate exemplars of a 

culturally rich, sustainable society. This 

would be a real Information Revolution. 

At the short end are the gamma waves, so tightly packed 

that a billion strung together would barely cover a fingernail. 

At the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum are 

enormously long waves. Most waves are measured in cycles 

per second, but these are so huge that they take more than 

a second to pass by, which makes them more than 186,000 

miles long, or more than twenty times the diameter of the 

Earth. There are indications of some waves as much as forty 

seconds, or seven million miles in length. At the moment we 

cannot begin to guess at the significance of these signals. 

All we can do is record that they exist, that they traverse 

galaxies, that despite their very low field strength, life is 

sensitive to them. 

See more at 1st-mile.org 




Resources & References 

The International Map Year: 2015-2016, International 

Cartographic Assoc. + UN Initiative for Global 

Geospatial Information Management ((UN-GGIM) http:// 

internationalmapyear.org www.icaci.org 

A World that Counts: Mobilising the Data Revolution for 

Sustainable Development, Report prepared at the 

request of the United Nations Secretary-General, by 

the Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data 

Revolution for Sustainable Development, November 

2014. 

SAFEGUARDING THE UNIQUENESS OF THE COLORADO 

PLATEAU: An Ecoregional Assessment of Biocultural 

Diversity, 2002, Center for Sustainable Environments, 

Northern Arizona U.; Grand Canyon Wildlands Council 

and Terralingua: Partnerships for Linguistic and 

Biological Diversity. 

The “Clean Power Plan” and the Colorado Plateau, Taylor 

McKinnon, August 7, 2014 

http://www.grandcanyontrust.org/news/2014/08/cleanpower-plan-colorado-plateau-part-1/ 

Sojourns Magazine, Sedona, AZ www.sojournsmagazine.org 

Land Arts of the American West, UNM, http://landarts.unm. 

edu/index.html 

ARID: A Journal of Desert Art, Design and Ecology, http:// 

aridjournal.org/ 

Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), www.clui.org 

“Cybercartography – Mapping out the Mystery”, By: Fraser 

Taylor, June 8, 2014 

http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/cybercartography/5 

Archaeoacoustics https://sites.google.com/site/ 

rockartacoustics/ 

Perceptual Worlds and Sensory Ecology, Stephen Burnett, 

PhD (Dept. of Natural Sciences, Clayton State University) 

© 2012 Nature Education 

www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/perceptualworlds-and-sensory-ecology-22141730 

Towards Understanding Plant Bioacoustics, Monica Gagliano, 

Stefano Mancuso + Daniel Robert, Cell Press. 

Impacts of Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field (RF- 

EMF) from Cell Phone Towers and Wireless Devices 

on Biosystems and Ecosystems – A Review, S Sivani, D 

Sudarsanam, Department of Advanced Zoology and 

Biotechnology, Loyola College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 

India, Biology and Medicine, 4 (4): 202–216, 2012. 

Immersed in a New Media Environment: Visualizing the 

Electromagnetic Space, Susana Jorgina, 

April 20, 2010 https://susanajorgina.wordpress. 

com/2010/04/20/visualizing-the-electromagnetic-space/ 

Information Ecology (section for the Recommendations 

for Actions and Commitments at Earth Summit II: NGO 

background paper), 1997, www.infohabitat.org/csd-97 

Information and the Origins of Life, Bernd-Olaf Küppers 

(Professor Emeritus of Natural Philosophy, University of 

Jena, Germany), MIT Press, 1990. 

Energy and Information, Myron Tribus & Edward C. McIrvine, 

Scientific American, Sept. 1971. 

Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language and Life, 

J. Campbell, Simon & Schuster, 1982. 

The Poetry of Thermodynamics: Energy, entropy/exergy and 

quality, Silvio 0. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, 1997, 

Elsevier. 




The Passage from Entropy to Thermodynamic Indeterminacy: 

Long-term Principles for Sustainability, Silvio Funtowicz, 

EC-JRC, ISIS + Martin O’Connor, C3ED, UVSQ, Bioeconomics 

and Sustainability: Essays in honour of Nicholas 

Georgescu-Roegen, Kozo Mayumi + John Gowdy (editors) 

The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Nicholas 

Georgescu-Roegen, Harvard U. Press, 1971. 

The Economy as an Evolving Complex System II, Santa Fe 

Institute, W. Brian Arthur, Steven N. Durlauf, David A. 

Lane, Eds., Addison-Wesley, 1997. 

1st-Mile Institute 

1st-Mile Institute, founded 

in Santa Fe in 2006, is 

a think-and-do-tank 

currently stewarding 

two programs: The New 

Mexico “Broadband for 

All” Initiative, and SARC 

(Scientists/Artists Research 

Collaborations). 

The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural 

Capital, Robert Costanza, et. al., Nature, Vol. 387, May 

15, 1997; + Changes in the Global Value of Ecosystem 

Services, 2014, Elsevier Ltd. 

Toward a Sustainable World Economy, William E. Rees, 

Institute for New Economic Thinking, 2011 annual 

conference, Crisis and Renewal: International Political 

Economy at the Crossroads. 

The Way: An Ecological World View (Appendix 2: What 

is Information?), Edward Goldsmith, U. of GA Press, 

1992/1998. 

From Energy to Information: Representation in Science 

and Technology, Art, and Literature, edited by Bruce 

Clarke and Linda Dalrymple Henderson, 2002, Stanford 

University Press. 

Perspectives: Examining Complex Ecological Dynamics 

through Arts, Humanities and Science Integration, Nevada 

Museum of Art Center for Art + Environment (CA+E), Reno, 

Nev., June 2015. 

Ecosystem Informatics, Oregon State U., Ecoinformatics 

Education + Ecoinformatics Collaboratory 

Steps to an Ecology of Networked Knowledge and Innovation: 

Enabling New Forms of Collaboration among Sciences, 

Engineering, Arts, and Design, Roger F. Malina, Carol 

Strohecker, and Carol LaFayette on behalf of SEAD 

network contributors, Leonardo MIT Press Ebook, 2015. 

(see: SARC, pg. 53) http://www.mitpressjournals.org/ 

page/NSF_SEAD 

National Parks Arts Foundation, Tanya Ortega, http://www. 

nationalparksartsfoundation.org 

SARC (Scientists/Artists Research 

Collaborations) 

SARC (Scientists/Artists Research Collaborations), was 

successfully piloted as a featured program of ISEA2012, 

and is now structuring long-term eco-cultural initiatives. 

Initial education, science research, cultural institutions and 

supporters have included the New Mexico Consortium, Los 

Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, University of New 

Mexico, Santa Fe Institute, Institute of American Indian Arts, 

Santa Fe Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe Art Institute, 

and City of Santa Fe. SARC has produced ‘Arts/Sciences’ 

programs for the CURRENTS: International New Media 

Festival, annually since 2012. 

While developing its regional cultural and educational 

initiatives, SARC is also participating in networked national 

and global interactions. SARC is co-producer, with Cabine 

Voltaire (NL), of an online Google Hangout series on Astro- 

Arts/Sciences. Invited SARC presentations were given at the 

XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology, ‘Facing an Unequal 

World: Challenges for Global Society’, July 2014, Yokohama, 

Japan, and at Balance/Unbalance, at ASU, Tempe, AZ, March 

2015. SARC collaborated on and is featured in “Steps to an 

Ecology of Networked Knowledge and Innovation: Enabling 

New Forms of Collaboration among Sciences, Engineering, 

Arts, and Design”, a 2015 Leonardo MIT Press Ebook. 

“ECOS” 

The SARC “ECOS” initiative is being structured upon 

intent to address local-global “Grand Challenge” issues of 

climate, communications, energy, information, ecology and 

economics, with greater eco-minded intelligence, creativity, 

multi-sector cooperation and sustaining outcomes. “ECOS” 

seeks eco-cultural co-conspirators. 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Rebecca Clark 

Bee 19 (Hum), 

graphite on paper, 

13 3/4” x 13 1/2”, 2011 


Field Play 


Dr. Magdalena Sandoval Donahue is interested in 

increasing science accessibility and applicability. 

She combines her background in geoscience, mobile 

technology, and art to create data visualization 

tools and science outreach and education 

efforts. She co-founded Think Ubiquitous, LLC, an 

environmental reporting software development 

company. Her work specializes in report 

automation, interactive data visualizations, and 

(geo)science education. Dr. Donahue also utilizes 

her art background to create visualizations from 

actual Earth datasets which she prints on fabric and 

then creates apparel. Dr. Donahue is a consulting 

geologist, part-time lecturer at the University 

of New Mexico, and is authoring books on the 

geology of Colorado and New Mexico. She is also 

a 2-time Olympic Marathon Trials Qualifier and 

personal running coach. A native of northern New 

Mexico, Dr. Donahue spent her youth in Truchas 

and Los Alamos, NM. Growing up in these rugged 

landscapes was the basis for much of her curiosity 

about and appreciation of Earth processes; her 

family ties also ground her interest in increasing 

science usability for rural and diverse populations. 

think-ubiquitous.com 


Field Play 


Introduction 

The original idea for Field Play – or a digitally 

immersive field trip – grew out of the desire 

to avoid carsickness I often experienced on 

geologic field trips. When perusing an array 

of materials, often driving on small or dirt 

roads, it is difficult to integrate information 

from a variety of sources and in different 

mediums to grow a comprehensive view 

of a location. My original thought was to 

assimilate maps, data, and photos/sketches 

into a digital booklet; the idea grew to be 

much more complex and interesting. 

I have always been interested in the 

integration of technology into field sciences. 

Geoscientists must think in a complex, 

4-dimensional space-time framework, 

working with timescales ranging to billions 

of years – much beyond the human 

timescale, and spaces and environments 

that are no longer in existence, or took place 

on different parts of the globe. Much of this 

complexity can be teased out and displayed 

using interactive digital tools, allowing for a 

personal, curiosity-driven exploration of a 

topic, location, or time period. 

explore a way to allow users, regardless of 

background, drive their own educational 

experiences because I believed that by 

placing education in a personal context, 

a user would then be more likely to learn 

relevant material. 

I feel that it is critical to place education – 

particularly science education – in a context 

that is familiar to the learner, thus reducing 

potential points for alienation or intimidation, 

and increasing the relevance and application 

of science. I grew up in rural northern New 

Mexico, a place of enormous inherited and 

cultural knowledge, but one that is also 

poor and traditionally skeptical of science 

education. The people of these educationally 

underserved regions are excellent learners, 

teachers, and scientists – but are rarely given 

any choice or control over the direction or 

application of their educations. I believe that 

by allowing users to drive their educational 

experiences (formal and informal), they 

are more likely to learn relevant material, 

expand upon that base, and create a selfdriven, 

efficient education that allows for the 

powerful application of relevant knowledge 

to real-life problems. 

Field Play began in the year following the 

birth of my elder daughter. I took leave 

from graduate study as I had a newborn 

and was working through postpartum 

depression. This was a time of great creative 

energy, as I permitted myself to fully take 

leave from graduate work and focus on the 

parts of geoscience that really drew me: 

education, data visualization, and technology 

integration. During this year, I wanted to 

Background 

Digital technologies – web-based, mobile 

and wearable – are becoming increasingly 

used in geoscience education. Increased 

access to technology and computing power 

are paired with a growing recognition of 

the need to diversify methods of teaching, 

research, data collection and management, 

and scientific communication both within 


Field Play 


geoscience communities and world 

populations. As digital tools and student 

populations evolve and diversify, traditional 

educational methods need to be updated. 

Digital technology is making inroads into 

the geosciences. As topics such as climate 

change, natural resources exploration, and 

funding cuts to research and educational 

institutions become increasingly part 

of our national discourse, the need to 

communicate with and educate the 

communities that support geoscience and 

environmental research is increasingly 

critical. 

The ongoing Field Play mobile device 

application seeks to create a data-rich, 

location-sensitive educational tool 

suitable for use by an audience that ranges 

widely in skill. Such a tool requires the 

collection and streamlining of data from 

many sources and in many formats including 

maps, data tables, annotated photographs, 

etc. Field Play works to streamline the access 

to this range of tools using location, topic, 

and keyword search functions to direct a 

user through their educational experience. 

Field Play enhances the traditional field 

experience by enfolding tools such as 

location-triggered audio content, augmented 

reality-enhanced landscapes, multiple types 

of layered basemaps and location-specific 

data and references. 

Field Play was originally deployed in the 

Albuquerque, NM, area. The application 

Mental 

was also featured in the 2014 New Mexico 

Geological Society Fall Field Conference 

(NMGS FFC), located in the Sacramento 

Mountains of southern New Mexico. 

Demonstration trips have been created 

throughout the western US and Canada. 

Role of Technology in Field Education 

Advances 

Technology is often seen as a virtual 

world completely separate from our own 

human world, an environment in which we 

engage once we have removed ourselves 

from the “real” physical world. This bias 

presents a unique challenge when it comes 

to introducing technology into education 

in the geosciences. Students believe they 

must make the decision to engage their 

technological device – where information 

lives and is accessible - or else they choose 

to engage the world around them – the 

world that has inspired the collected digital 

knowledge. This daunting divide turns out 

to be a solvable user interface (UI) problem 

that works to minimize the gap between 

integration with the real world and digital 

content. Mark Rolston, chief creative officer 

at Frog, talks of taking the computers out 

of computing so that we users do not have 

to stop our lives to operate a computer 

terminal (Rolston, 2011). Field Play brings 

powerful content into the field without 

sacrificing the attention of the participants, 

by embedding knowledge and device use 

into the environment. 

Many attempts to bring digital data into 

the field have relied on the user to discern, 

navigate, and relate pertinent content into 

the context of the field experience. This 

requires the user to maintain a mental map 

Ecology 


Field Play 


of both the physical environment as well as 

the content layout. 

For example, if students are standing 

at a scenic viewpoint with typical digital 

information access, they first have to know 

where they are standing; next they must 

pull up the appropriate map or diagram to 

relate their vantage point to the available 

data they wish to retrieve. Throughout this 

entire experience, students expend needless 

mental energy and time simply trying to 

access information. Many beginning geology 

students are intimated and feel unqualified 

to pursue further study because they do not 

understand how the content is arranged. 

Because they do not comprehend this 

organizational data structure, they become 

frustrated and feel they cannot understand 

geology. It is key to realize that in these 

situations, the stumbling point lies not 

with the student, but rather in faults of the 

technology and its human interface. Donald 

Norman, author of Design of Everyday Things 

(Norman, 1988), puts it this way: When you 

have trouble with things, whether it’s figuring 

out whether to push or pull a door or the 

arbitrary vagaries of the modern computer 

and electronics industries, it’s not your fault. 

Don’t blame yourself: blame the designer.” 

The Field Play experience differs dramatically 

from the laborious process of data 

navigation. By pulling location and device 

orientation from a myriad of sensors, Field 

Play can deliver the necessary content when 

and where it is needed. As a user approaches 

a location, an audio file is played back that 

recites some of the more relevant feature(s) 

without user intervention. If the student 

wishes to view a map, they simply open 

the application where a map, automatically 

centered on their current location, is 

displayed. When the student spots a physical 

feature that they wish to know more about, 

the student points their phone camper 

at the feature in question and labels are 

superimposed on the moving camera feed. 

In Field Play, the variable data sources a 

geologist uses, which may have previously 

distracted from the new students’ field 

experience, are now smoothly embedded 

into the environment, making content 

available as the students’ needs change. 

Rather than a virtual experience separate 

from reality, the student now experiences 

what is known as augmented reality. 

While augmented reality (AR) is not new, 

the solutions are often difficult to use and 

content generation is typically geared 

toward a more computer science oriented 

audience. In order for AR to be utilized for 

educational purposes, both the end user 

experience and the content generation must 

be simple and straight-forward. The goal of 

Field Play is to employ the AR experience to 

enhance field geology, rather than to distract 

from the environment, the questions at hand, 

or the discussions that may be occurring 

between colleagues. 

Field Deployment 

The end goal of Field Play is to create a 

personally-scalable educational experience. 

In practice, the embedded GPS within mobile 

devices triggers location-aware interactive 


Field Play 


content to become available when the 

user is within a set proximity of the feature 

(e.g., audio alert when approaching a fault 

zone). Additionally, users are given the 

option to interactively explore topical and 

location-based sub-modules that include 

AR binoculars, informational text, audio, 

topographic and geologic maps, and short 

YouTube lessons while in the field. 

Field Play content is both trip-specific and 

stand-alone. Content exists within the 

Field Play ecosystem at two levels: curated, 

scientific content created by Field Play, and 

crowd sourced data originated by users. Both 

of these data types are fully “mashable,” and 

can be combined by users to create personal 

topical or location-based trips using our trip 

creation tool. 

Field Play content can be accessed online as 

well as via mobile device. We are working 

to expand our curated and crowd-sourced 

content to provide an up-to-date, easily 

accessible resource of reliable geologic 

and scientific information for recreational, 

educational or professional use. 

Conclusions 

Field Play is an augmented reality educational 

and experiential tool that integrates 

geoscience educational content with the 

physical world. Built to run on Android 

mobile devices, the Field Play system is based 

around the creation of a data-rich landscape 

through which users engage in locationaware 

content to explore their environment 

through geologic field trips. Field Play has 

two goals: 1) Improving access to abundant 

scientific information while in the field, and 

2) Promoting scientific education on a large 

scale, in a way that is personal, relevant, and 

interest-driven. 

Field Play was incorporated into the 

New Mexico Geological Society Fall Field 

Conference (Donahue and Donahue, 2014). 

This three-day trip in southern New Mexico 

included AR stops, annotated photographs, 

audio content of critical features, and 

links to guidebook and other pertinent 

scientific publications. For this trip, Field Play 

created predetermined routes based on 

conference road logs, as well as free-standing 

supplementary content. 

As formal geoscience education grapples with 

the relevance and feasibility of field methods 

courses, and as communication within and 

across progressively specific geoscience 

branches becomes increasingly critical in the 

world of large data sets and interdisciplinary 

science experiments, tools such as Field 

Play that facilitate exploration, learning, and 

communication are of vital importance. Field 

Play is one attempt to bring evolving digital 

tools into a field-based science, and to do so 

in a way that benefits a range of audiences. 

Field Play is currently (Fall 2017) offline, 

undergoing major revision and update. 


Field Play 



Field Play 



Field Play 


References 

Donahue, M.S. and Donahue, J.P., 2014. Field Play and the 

2014 New Mexico Geological Society Fall Field Conference: 

Incorporating augmented reality and location sensitive 

content to create an interactive, data-rich landscape: 

Geological Society of America Abstracts with programs, 

v. 46, no. 6, p.739. 

Chen, X., Choi, J., 2010. Designing Online Collaborative 

Location-aware Platform for History Learning: Journal of 

Educational Technology Development and Exchange, 3(1), 

13-26. 

Rolston, Mark, 2011. http://www.zdnet.com/article/frogcreative-chief-think-outside-the-computer-box 

Norman, D. 1988. The Design of Everyday Things. London, 

MIT Press 



Brooke Larsen 

Brooke Larsen is a writer and climate organizer 

from Salt Lake City. As a current student in the 

University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities 

Graduate Program, she explores the role of story 

in the climate justice movement. She is a Rio Mesa 

Young Scholar and spent the summer of 2017 

cycling across the Colorado Plateau listening to 

stories from people on the frontlines of climate 

change and environmental injustice. She works 

for Torrey House Press and organizes with 

groups such as Wasatch Rising Tide, Uplift, and 

SustainUS. She recently won the High Country 

News Bell Prize for her essay “What are We 

Fighting For?” and was published in the anthology 

Red Rock Stories. Brooke graduated from 

Colorado College with a degree in environmental 

policy and researched land and water issues in 

the American West with the college’s State of the 

Rockies Project. 



Brooke Larsen 

Few can draw the boundaries of the Colorado 

Plateau on a map, but the senses provide 

direction. You know you’re in this bioregion 

by the feeling of rust-colored sandstone 

sticking to your feet. When people first 

walk on the iconic red rock of the Colorado 

Plateau, they often don’t trust their footing, 

not knowing that the sticky solidified sand 

will grip their soles. The layers of uplifted 

sandstone reveal the earth’s deep time 

in hues of salmon and burnt orange. 

Sandy washes, which only see water when 

thunderstorms bring flash floods, contrast 

the appearing certainty of the surrounding 

cliffs. Whiffs of sage picked up by howling 

wind remind visitors that life abounds in this 

high desert. 

Visitors flock to red rock country from across 

the world to see some of the United States’ 

most loved national parks—from Arches 

in southern Utah to the Grand Canyon in 

northern Arizona. Over 60% of the region 

is federally-owned public land and 25% is 

sovereign Native land. The patchwork of land 

ownership between the federal government, 

tribes, the state, and private land owners 

rarely follows ecosystems or geology, but 

rather politics. Straight lines marking the 

boundaries of reservations and national 

parks juxtapose winding topography. State 

trust lands allocated during statehood leave 

perfect squares in a checkerboard fashion. 

Private land is scarce and urban areas are 

small. Flagstaff, the region’s largest city, is 

home to just over 71,000 people. 

My ancestors were the Mormon pioneers 

who colonized what is now the state of 

Utah six generations ago. Identifying as a 

sixth-generation Utahn gets one far in rural 

Utah, but I feel no pride in my ancestors’ 

genocidal acts and brutal attempts at cultural 

erasure. Rather, I identify my ancestry to 

say the politics written on the land also 

run in my blood. To uncover the Colorado 

Plateau’s layered stories, stories not in my 

family history, I biked 1,500 miles across 

the region for eight weeks in the summer 

of 2017, listening to stories from those 

on the frontlines of climate change and 

environmental injustice. 

The political boundaries on the land create 

narratives of contradiction that layer on 

top of one another, burying uncomfortable 

histories and perpetuating myths to appease 

special interests and political agendas. 

On the Colorado Plateau the dominant story 

is wild—whether that’s wilderness or the 

Wild West. The region’s vastness and stark 

beauty easily invites protectors, but the 

myth of pristine and romanticized cowboys 

also erase Native histories and ignore the 

horrors of settler colonialism. The forced 

removal of Havasupai People to protect the 

Grand Canyon is no more innocent than my 

ancestors’ attempt to squash Native culture 

and supplant it with their own. 

Beyond the wild, the Colorado Plateau faces 

a hidden struggle of sacrifice. I didn’t bike to 

protected places but rather, the forgotten 

ones. I didn’t map my route around national 

parks or wilderness areas but rather hubs 

of resistance and sacrifice zones. Under the 

iconic red rock, prospectors find tar sands, 



Brooke Larsen 

oil shale, uranium, coal, oil, natural gas and 

a sweep of other minerals. The region’s 

geology and low population density lead to 

silenced injustices in remote corners most 

often nearest to the poor and people of color, 

especially Native people. In Washington, D.C. 

and regional Bureau of Land Management 

offices, sacrifice is technical; on the ground, 

sacrifice is personal. 

P.R. Spring is one of many sacrifice zones. 

The Environmental Impact Statement for the 

mine says, “Visual resources are generally of 

low quality.” 

In early June, I met a small group of climate 

activist friends near the mine. My friend, 

Kailey, joined me for the bike ride from 

Vernal, Utah to PR Spring across the heart 

of the Uintah Basin. A few miles into our 

ride, Kailey asked me how many oil rigs I’d 

counted. Thirteen, I said. Counting started 

as a game, a distraction from our burning 

thighs, but eventually, counting turned 

into hysteria. The machinery showed up as 

pawns on the checkerboard of Ute land, state 

land, and private land most likely owned 

by descendants of Mormon settlers. The 

rigs blended into the politics but stand out 

against the snowcapped Uinta Mountains 

rising behind us to the north. I stopped 

thinking about the disturbance on the land 

today, and instead the climate projections 

for this region ran through my head on 

repeat. 99% chance of megadrought. As early 

as 2050. 20% of the Colorado River will dry 

up. 3.2- million-acre shortfall of water. 99% 

chance of megadrought. Unless we keep all 

remaining fossil fuels in the ground. 

We pedaled uphill all day. We were in a 

desert of double desecration. The earth was 

barren from historic overgrazing. We biked 

past frack pad on frack pad on frack pad. 

Some well sites contained massive crane 

machinery that moved up and down as it 

pulled oil from the earth. Other spots were 

less obvious with just a small tank and a 

few pressure gauges connected to pipelines 

that discreetly ran along the side of the road 

beneath sage and rabbit brush. The tailing 

ponds and mix of chemicals flared with 

odorless methane making the air smell putrid 

and sour, like rotten eggs mixed with that 

gas station scent. While biking through the 

Uintah and Ouray Ute Reservation, a herd of 

wild horses blocked the road, forcing us to 

stop and wait while the fifty horses decide to 

trot past. 

In the early evening, we summited the 

last hill. The pavement ended, and we 

approached the biggest monstrosity yet— 

the PR Spring tar sands mine. Situated on 

the Tavaputs Plateau in the Book Cliffs, the 

P.R. Spring tar sands mine threatens the 

surrounding watershed. The mine occupies 

the dividing line between Uintah and Grand 

County. The Uinta Mountains that rise in the 

north near Vernal and the La Sals that jut in 

the south outside of Moab emphasize the 

scale of the surrounding watershed. 

The White and Green Rivers run nearby, 

both tributaries to the hardest working 

river, the Colorado. 

Fences decorated in no trespassing signs 

lined the side of the road, shining in the 

fading sunlight. Giant black piles of land torn 



Brooke Larsen 

to pieces rose beside the scraped earth. So 

far, U.S. Oil Sands has failed to prove the 

economic viability of the mine. As I biked 

past, I raised my middle finger, a pathetic 

expression of my rage. 

For eight years, resisters, agitators, land and 

water protectors have engaged in direct 

action and camp outs, protesting the mine 

and raising awareness. Last year organizers 

held an action camp at the mine, reclaiming 

land with seed bombs and large banners. 

Twenty people were arrested. This year 

friends gathered to reconnect with the place 

and one another, not engaging in direct 

action but rather writing, singing, and sharing 

meals together. 

Kate Savage, my friend and co-organizer 

of Wasatch Rising Tide in Salt Lake City, 

disagrees with the State’s claim that P.R. 

Spring is of low scenic value. Kate helped 

organize the action camp at the mine last 

year, but has known about the Book Cliffs 

since she was five-years-old. Her conservative 

father had a “Save the Book Cliffs” sticker on 

his Mormon Bishop’s binder. He was not an 

environmentalist, but a hunter who loved 

the place. 

During our recent visit to the Tavaputs 

Plateau, Kate and I rode in the back of an 

old pick-up truck to see nearby petroglyphs. 

After negotiating with cows who wouldn’t 

leave the small unpaved road, I asked Kate 

what the area meant to her. She responded, 

“This isn’t Arches or the Uinta Mountains. 

But just look how special it is—these aspen 

groves, and Douglas fir trees, and the cliff 

structures. The wildlife is off the charts. We 

saw forty elk yesterday.” 

In the high desert, only the most aesthetic 

earns protection, and often not even that if 

profitable minerals lay in the ground. The 

standard of aesthetics is not only employed 

by industry or land agencies, but also 

conservationists. The federal government 

traded the land that the tar sands mine rests 

on, and much of the fracking fields in the 

Uintah Basin that I biked through, after the 

designation of Grand Staircase-Escalante 

National Monument. The protection of Grand 

Staircase kept millions of tons of coal in the 

ground in one of the Colorado Plateau’s most 

scenic areas, but at the expense of more 

emissions elsewhere. Land protection rarely 

factors parts per million, and for too long the 

conservation movement advocated for the 

protection of certain areas at the expense of 

others, including our climate. Land exchanges 

don’t include the cost of climate chaos. How 

do we price our future? 

Kate came to the climate movement 

reluctantly. “I was into protecting land and 

living differently,” she said. “Climate seemed 

so abstract to me. I was like, ‘how can you 

care about parts per million, you can only 

care about land, right?’ I had to go through 

social justice movements to get to climate. 

It came full circle with the Keep it in the 

Ground movement, because it was about 

land defense, which is originally where my 

heart was.” 

The vastness and stark beauty of the 

Colorado Plateau easily invites protectors. 



Brooke Larsen 

Climate change makes the importance 

of protecting the region’s land and water 

twofold. The oil rigs and tar sands mine 

pollute the land and water today, but they 

also contribute to climate chaos, which on 

the Colorado Plateau means potentially 

unlivable drought. The previous Secretary of 

the Interior Sally Jewell once called the Keep 

it in the Ground movement naïve. Is it naïve 

to demand a livable future? 

During our last evening camping near the 

mine, Kailey and I organized our gear to 

get ready for our bike ride early the next 

morning. As we stuffed our panniers, we 

overheard our friends singing, “Daddy won’t 

you take me back to Muhlenberg County, 

down by the Green River where Paradise 

lay?” They sat a couple hundred yards away 

under the shelter of aspen, cushioned by 

tall grasses. Kailey and I leaned our bikes 

against a car, set aside our gear, and ran 

over to them. We often sing “Paradise” by 

John Prine, sometimes changing the lyrics 

from Muhlenberg County to Uintah County, 

making our own ode to the Green River that 

flows through our home region. I laid down 

in the grass and quietly sang the chorus with 

my friends, resting in my paradise. 

Throughout the summer as I biked across 

the Colorado Plateau, I consistently found 

land converted to energy extraction 

zones and early signs of climate change. 

The resistance at P.R. Spring connects to 

communities across the Colorado Plateau 

through a shared watershed, but also a 

shared experience of sacrifice. 

Eighty miles south of Moab sits the last active 

uranium mill in the country, just three miles 

north of the Ute Mountain Ute town of White 

Mesa. The mill processes uranium mined 

across the Colorado Plateau and radioactive 

waste from all corners of the country. I met 

with Thelma Whiskers, an elder in White 

Mesa who has resisted the mill since the 

‘90s. When I biked up to her house, I found 

puppies huddled under the shade of the 

front porch. She joked that she wanted to 

get rid of the puppies, but her grandchildren 

loved them. She invited me inside her home 

and then sat down on a couch under a wall 

covered in family photos. 

Thelma quietly told me about the injustices 

her community faces. “This place is 

dangerous for us,” she said. “The young ones 

have allergies, diabetes, and asthma. The 

water doesn’t taste good. We don’t drink it.” 

The herbs that Thelma’s mom collected 

no longer grow near the mill, and the mill 

has been in violation of the Clean Air Act 

for radon emissions, a radioactive, cancercausing 

gas. 

For decades, White Mesa has been ignored, 

but in May, 2017 the community led a 

spiritual walk to the mill and over one 

hundred people joined them in solidarity. 

Those that showed up ranged from other 

Ute Mountain Ute tribal members from 

Towaoc, Colorado and Diné people who have 

suffered from uranium mining on the Navajo 

Nation, to activists from Moab and Salt Lake 

City. I asked Thelma how she felt that day. 



Brooke Larsen 

Injustice births from 

silenced stories. Hope 

lives in deep listening 

that sparks action. 



Brooke Larsen 

A smile overcame her face and she said, 

“We were strong.” 

Injustice births from silenced stories. Hope 

lives in deep listening that sparks action. 

From White Mesa I biked south to Bluff 

and met up with my friend Montana, who 

would bike with me over the steep hills in 

southwest Colorado. Friends made the 

biking easier, not necessarily distracting 

me from the heat and steep climbs, but 

at least giving me companionship in the 

somewhat absurd journey. From Bluff, we 

followed the San Juan River east to the town 

of Cortez, Colorado. It was unbearably hot. 

The sun beat down so strongly and the air 

was so dry that sweat instantly evaporated, 

leaving a layer of salt on my burnt arms. 

Everything around us appeared rusted red. 

The red rock inspires passion and awe, but 

in temperatures abnormally hot for mid- 

June, the fiery appearance of the earth 

matched the stark heat that challenged my 

sanity. Continuing on required focus. Often 

I just thought about getting over each hill, 

but the human impact on the landscape also 

consumed my mind. While biking along the 

San Juan River, I passed oil and gas wells on 

the river’s edge. I thought of those signs in 

national forests telling visitors to not camp 

within a few hundred feet of water. How do 

we define harm? 

As the temperatures began to cool with 

the setting sun, we reached Cortez and the 

home where Bill Anderegg, a young climate 

scientist at the University of Utah, grew up. 

He spends his summers at his parents’ home 

to study the aspen die-off in the nearby San 

Juan National Forest where he adventured 

as a child. Bill has scruffy blonde hair and 

a casual demeanor, and it quickly became 

clear that he chose his research not just 

because of an interest in climate science, but 

also a love for the outdoors. Shortly after we 

arrived, Bill took his two-year-old twin girls to 

bed and then we ate a home-cooked meal of 

bison burgers and green chilies grown from 

his parents’ garden. 

In the morning, we drove into higher 

elevations and thankfully cooler 

temperatures. Every few miles we’d pull 

over on the forest service road and walk into 

one of Bill’s many research plots, looking 

for the metal numbered tags nailed into his 

research subjects. Bill told us that aspen 

support more biodiversity than any forest 

type in the Mountain West. Each tree in a 

stand of aspens is connected, sprouting from 

the same lateral roots. They’re also dying 

and stand no chance of adapting to climate 

change. Bill’s plots ranged from healthy, 

dense stands shading a diversity of colorful 

wildflowers to a sea of dead stumps. To the 

dead plots Bill responded, “I guess I don’t 

have to come back here.” As we walked 

away, each step felt heavier. 

A drought in the early 2000s caused the 

aspen die-off still unfolding. The drought 

was significant not because of precipitation 

levels but temperature; it was two to three 

degrees centigrade hotter than previous 

droughts. This year was a wet year, but the 

aspen are still dying. Bill said, “Aspen death 

is somewhat fascinating because it’s sort of 



Brooke Larsen 

a slow motion crash and it tends to play out 

over a decade or so.” 

Climate change also feels like a slow motion 

crash, including the continual attempts to 

turn rock into money. When talking about 

the P.R. Spring tar sands mine, my friend 

Easton Smith said, “It’s a particularly strange 

example because this mine actually never 

starts. It starts and stops and starts and 

stops. Which feels like a broader, microcosm 

of the whole issue of climate change. It’s 

always looming, and it’s always approaching, 

and it’s always here, but I don’t always feel it. 

It just kind of feels like a myth, but clearly, it’s 

so real. And I wonder if that’s how crisis feels 

until it’s upon you in a more visceral way.” 

The aspen-die off makes climate change 

personal for Bill. During his first summer of 

graduate school, he returned to the forest 

where he grew up and found a lot of dead 

aspen trees. “Even some of the campsites 

where we took family pictures were just 

completely dead,” Bill said. “That was one 

of the biggest triggering points—realizing, 

wow, there’s something big going on here, 

it’s visible and it’s visceral and it’s during 

my lifetime.” 

When I asked Bill how he copes with 

measuring the death of his childhood forest, 

he shared a term used among climate 

scientists: Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

“It feels a bit like the plot in a Hollywood 

movie where there’s a scientist that sees 

something coming towards earth or 

knows that something is going to happen 

and is trying their best to scream it to the 

government officials and nobody is listening. 

The climate change story feels like that, but 

there’s tens of thousands of scientists trying 

to make the case.” 

He copes by focusing on what he can do, 

taking measurements, throwing himself 

into his work, and trying to avoid thinking 

about how depressing the big picture is. He 

has dedicated himself to a place and tries to 

know it as well as he can, not too unlike my 

friends camping near the tar sands mine. 

Bill also holds onto hope. He said, “I think 

of climate change as an opportunity story. 

There’s a lot of bad things happening but 

that means we have a huge agency on the 

world and we have a responsibility and 

opportunity to fix this. Having that hope 

and that inspiration is probably much more 

important than feeling concerned or worried 

or depressed. We can certainly fuck it up, but 

we can also try our hardest and end up with 

a lot better world at the end of it.” 

As I biked away from Cortez the next day, the 

image of the dead aspen stumps consumed 

my thoughts. The oil rigs seemed to rise 

up exponentially with each sacrifice zone I 

entered, and I kept seeing aspen fall. From 

southwest Colorado, I went further south 

to northwest New Mexico. Shortly after 

crossing the state line, I went into a grocery 

store to use the bathroom and splash cold 

water on my face. Outside the bathroom 

door, I found a sign that read, “Attention 

Customers: We are sorry but there is no 

cold water going to the sinks so if you wash 

your hands be very careful it is very hot 



Brooke Larsen 

water. Thank you, Safeway Management.” 

Everything is very hot. 

The Bureau of Land Management has 

leased 91% of public lands in the Greater 

Chaco region of northwest New Mexico, 

and they continue to try to lease away the 

remaining 9%. Much like the land I biked 

through in the Uintah Basin, Greater Chaco 

is also a checkerboard of tribal, state, and 

federal land. Satellite images of the region 

show a bright red methane hot spot. On the 

ground, land managers try to blend in the 

wells with the surrounding environment by 

painting them a color officially called “juniper 

green.” No matter how hard they try to 

hide their impact on the land, though, the 

environmental injustices are still apparent. 

One well I biked past was right across the 

street from an elementary school for the 

local Navajo children. 

From the Greater Chaco area, I made my 

way west. I biked through Navajo and Hopi 

land, at times feeling like I was in another 

country as I passed gas stations specific 

to the reservations and signs in languages 

I didn’t understand. And legally, I was in 

another nation, a sovereign nation. However, 

as I biked through the Black Mesa area, a 

stunning plateau of pale orange and desert 

shrubs, I was reminded of the ways the same 

forces desecrating the Tavaputs Plateau 

are also threatening indigenous livelihoods. 

Peabody has mined the coal in the Black 

Mesa area and depleted the groundwater, 

threatening sheep herding families in the 

region. As I biked across the land, I couldn’t 

necessarily see the depleted ground water, 

but I felt the concern as I passed “Water is 

Life” signs and listened to stories of loss and 

contamination from the elder who sold me a 

lime popsicle to cool me down in the middle 

of a ninety-mile day. 

After reaching Flagstaff, a border town to 

many southwest reservations and the largest 

city on the Colorado Plateau, I headed north, 

back towards home. My family would meet 

me when I reached Utah, biking and driving a 

support vehicle for the last week of my ride. 

For most of my journey, friends biking or 

driving provided me company and support. 

When I departed Flagstaff, though, I was 

alone. 106 degrees. 80 miles. Zero shade. 

In the middle of my ride, I reached the sole 

gas station and filled one water bottle with 

ice, mistakenly not filling all four. I bought a 

piece of pizza that probably would normally 

have tasted half as good. After eating under 

the shade of the gas station, I hopped back 

on my bike and a few miles later took a drink 

from my once icy water bottle. It already 

tasted hot. I poured the water on my hand. It 

felt like I scooped it out of a hot tub. I wanted 

to sit down, but the ground burnt. I took a 

deep breath. Just ten more miles and I can 

pour ice all over me, I told myself. Five miles 

later I barely inch up the hill. A man driving in 

the opposite direction yelled across, “Are you 

OK?” I waved and said yeah, even though I 

felt like I might fall over any second. A couple 

minutes later the same man drove next to 

me and was more direct this time, “Do you 

want a ride?” Yes, yes I do. I threw my bike in 

the back of his truck. I opened the passenger 

door and was greeted by three huskies laying 

across the backseat. He was a musician and 



Brooke Larsen 

he gave me his card. I thought he was some 

kind of miracle. 

In Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit says, 

“Power comes from the shadows and the 

margins, our hope is in the dark around the 

edges, not the limelight of center stage. Our 

hope and often our power.” 

The actions with the power to generate new 

ways of living will rise from the communities 

who most clearly understand the failures 

of our current systems. The politics that 

divide up the land will shift when stories 

from sacrifice zones project louder than 

narratives claiming unsacred places exist. As 

Wendell Berry says, “There are no unsacred 

places; there are only sacred places and 

desecrated places.” 

A few days after the end of my bike tour I 

reunited with my friends with whom I’d sung 

with on the Tavaputs Plateau eight weeks 

prior. We sat in a circle under moonlight 

in the backyard of the Beaver Bottom 

Bungalow, a home more commonly referred 

to as the BBB where organizers of Wasatch 

Rising Tide live and host poetry readings, 

convene organizing meetings, and make 

music. We started singing “Paradise” and 

my body teleported back to P.R. Spring. In 

the second line of the chorus the father 

responds, “I’m sorry my son but you’re too 

late in asking, Mr. Peabody’s coal train has 

hauled it away.” I hear the lyrics as a call 

to action. 

The politics inscribed in the land and 

flowing in our veins evoke grief and rage. 

But Rebecca Solnit has another lesson for 

us in Hope in the Dark: “Joy doesn’t betray 

but sustains activism. And when you face 

a politics that aspires to make you fearful, 

alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act 

of insurrection.” 

My friends and I sing not because we believe 

U.S. Oil Sands will stop mining when they 

hear our harmonies. We sing to imagine 

another story. We sing for the joy of it. 

Environmental 

Ecology 


ombus love 

Erin Halcomb 

Erin Halcomb loves everything nature. She has 

experience staffing a U.S. Forest Service fire 

lookout and working in fire suppression. She 

has also surveyed for wildlife, namely fishers 

and flying squirrels. She currently works in 

environmental education but enjoys freelance 

writing. She likes days spent walking. 


ombus love 

Erin Halcomb 

This past spring, I fell in love with bees. 

There was some nuance to it; it wasn’t like I 

fell for every single thing that had four wings. 

I fell for the biggest, Bombus, those within 

the bumble bee genus. Their morphology 

resembles gnocchi. They have gold and black 

shag across their backsides, fringe all down 

their legs, and fur on their cheeks. 

Perhaps it was because they weren’t 

whizzing past, or half-deep in anthers, that 

my attention gained such traction. And 

neither was I, so to speak. I was on a foray 

for mushrooms but at best I was browsing. 

The woods were gilded in pollen. They 

echoed with thrush song. I bent down to 

pick up a castaway can and caught sight of a 

bumble on the ground. First, I was taken by 

her heft and her hair, and then by the way 

she carried herself. She was velveteen and 

bulbous. She crawled – marched, flounced 

– across the forest floor. Nearby, I heard 

another. I found her hovering low, also intent 

with survey. 

These were the Spring Queens, the lone 

survivors of last year’s colony. They, too, 

were hunting not for quarry but for home. 

They were searching for a bunker, for 

some abandoned burrow, to finish in 

waxen chambers. 

I began watching, I mean really seeing things, 

years ago. I’d been hired to do so, to sit on 

a mountaintop and look-out. I worked for 

the Forest Service. I watched for fires. I soon 

took notice of smaller beings. I began to hear 

the quiet types, humming. In the subalpine 

meadows surrounding the lookout, I 

remember watching a bee land and latchon 

to a bloomed obelisk. Its added weight 

had caused a sway and I’d smiled in simple 

pleasure. I knew little else about the bee’s 

labor than its byproduct, a name, pollination. 

Oh, but now I know. Only bits and bobs, 

but still: Bees are wasps that went vegan. 

Bumbles specialized further by becoming 

fleeced and all that fuzz enables them to fly 

in cold weather and on cloudy days. They 

summit peaks of 10,000 feet. 

They have stinky feet. They dig and spit 

and whirr; hitch together their film-thin 

wings; and heave their not-so-svelte selves 

to and fro swatches of color. For most of 

their lives, Bombus mine flowers. They pack 

loaves of protein into paneers on their hind 

thighs and, vamoose, they take to the aerial 

interstate. Flight speeds can reach 10 miles 

per hour. 

We arrange bumbles according to stripes, 

and by the length of their tongues. We study 

their flower fidelity. One scientist tied tinsel 

to the leg of a queen and chased after her in 

a quest to discover her lair.* Hives are hard 

to find. 

The largest bumbles in the world -- ginger 

ping-pong balls in Patagonia – are on the 

cusp of extinction. Parasites, habitat loss, 

and poison: we have not done right by them. 

Bombus franklini used to fly the meadows 

that I once strolled but none have been 

found for a decade. That’s about the same 

amount of time that has elapsed since I 

worked on the lookout, and it’s passed 


ombus love 

Erin Halcomb 

by as easy as a bag of flour being sieved. 

I’d be spooked by that if those mountains 

hadn’t held me so tight. 

Over the years I’ve fancied a number of 

things: bog orchids, sugar pines, porcupines 

and bison. There’s a litany of birds. And, 

sure, there’s been people too. I’ve swooned 

for poets and sculptors, but in those 

relationships, I can’t seem to canoodle 

without complication. We live by choice. 

I prefer mountain time and clean forms 

of adulation. 

I’ve come to consider Bombus as bison 

of the sky. Their cousins, the honeybees, 

are like cattle. We brought them here. We 

shuttle them in tens of thousands, in trailers, 

and set them out in pastures. European 

honeybees are commodities. In the fall, 

when flowers dwindle, they compete with 

native bees for food.** 

Honeybees have perennial societies. 

Whereas, every bumble dies at the end of 

the season except the newborn queens. 

The queens overwinter solo, in the 

subterranean, surviving on their reserves. 

We measure Bombus lifespans in weeks. 

But in the darkness of winter, I find myself 

wanting to know something more relevant, 

like ‘total wingbeats,’ something that tells 

more about their will, and the effort it takes 

to stay warm. 

*Dave Goulson reports doing this in his charming book: A 

Sting in the Tale. 

** Cane, James H., and Vincent J. Tepedino. “Gauging 

the Effect of Honey Bee Pollen Collection on Native Bee 

Communites.” Conservation Letters, vol. 10, no. 2, 2016, pp 

205-210. 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Rebecca Clark 

Bee 33 (Evening) 

Graphite on paper 

21 1/4” x 10 3/4”, 2012 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 


Pollinate 

Rebecca Clark 

Rebecca Clark 

Bee 27 (Drone Comb) 

Graphite and 

watercolor on paper, 

18” x 15”, 2011

Mapping Meaning, the Journal (Issue No. 1)

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