Moontime in Eagle Creek: Stories for Sustainability
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MOONTIME IN EAGLE CREEK: STORIES FOR SUSTAINABILITY by Aliette Karma Sheinin B.A. Dartmouth College, 2001 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Interdisciplinary Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) March 2009 © Aliette Karma Sheinin, 2009 ABSTRACT The most common and influential approaches to sustainability in contemporary western society have been science-based. Consequently, sustainable living is usually defined in generalized, universalized, and quantified terms. While science is important for sustainable living, science alone cannot incorporate critical, yet specific, places, times, and events. Sustainable living in one country may not be sustainable in another, sustainable living right now may not be so in the ffiture, sustainable living for me may not be sustainable for you, for example. What’s more, science itself is embedded in and reproduces place-, time-, and event- specific dimensions. Negotiating these dimensions of life into our understanding and practice of sustainability is imperative. In contrast to science, narrative seeks to construct and reflect knowledge of place-, time-, and event-specific dimensions of life; narrative as a mode of knowing is concrete, contextualized, specific, personally convincing, circular, imaginistic, interpersonal and emotive. Narrative, as well, is a process of knowledge construction, a way of coming to know place(s), time(s), and event(s). The goal of this dissertation is to negotiate, humbly, both science and narrative. My hope is that this work, as arts-based research, can expand our possibility(ies) for new ways of knowing and living sustainably. My negotiation between science and narrative takes place in Eagle Creek, a 2.21km long creek in West Vancouver, British Columbia. Eagle Creek begins from a reservoir and flows through forested municipal land, undeveloped private land, and developed residential land before discharging into the Pacific Ocean. Originally, I set out to investigate sustainability issues surrounding Eagle Creek’s role in drinking water and power generation, recreation, and salmon spawning. What I discovered in my research was far from what I 11 expected. This is a story about those surprises. My hope is that in this story is an opportunity for you to negotiate, for yourself, new ways of knowing sustainability and living it, wherever, whenever, and however it may be for you. To the lives of our dreams! 111 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS viii PREFACE ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii DEDICATION xiv Phase I: NEW MOON 1 INTRODUCTION 2 Science and Authority in Sustainability Narrative as Alternative Mode of Knowing Narrative as Theoretical Lens Introducing Eagle Creek EAGLE CREEK 24 Phase II: FIRST QUARTER MOON 36 FIELD NOTES 37 EXERCISING SUSTAINABLY 46 Phase III: FULL MOON 85 iv FIELD NOTES .86 RESTING SUSTATNABLY 96 Phase IV: LAST QUARTER MOON 112 FIELD NOTES 113 EATING SUSTAINABLY 136 Phase I, again: NEW MOON 153 Exercising Sustainably 156 Resting Sustainably 158 Eating Sustainably 178 EPILOGUE: FULL CIRCLE 185 ENDNOTES 187 BIBLIOGRAPHY 191 APPENDIX I: Current Practice and Conventional Thought in Sustainability 208 APPENDIX II: Glossary of Screenplay Terms 209 V LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Selected Species and Habitats of Eagle Creek 28 Table 2: Temperature and Precipitation in Eagle Creek’s Catch Basin 41 Table 3: Cloud Typology at Eagle Creek 42 Table 4: Nutritional Content of Selected Species in Eagle Harbour 133 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Map of Eagle Creek, West Vancouver 25 Figure 2: Land distribution in West Vancouver 35 Figure 3: Topography at Eagle Creek 89 Figure 4: Biogeoclimatic ecosystem classification of Eagle Creek 90 Figure 5: Eagle Harbour residential layout 115 Figure 6: Watercourse development regulations at Eagle Creek 117 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Illustration 1: Orthophoto of Eagle Creek source water 38 Illustration 2: Simplified Hydrologic cycle of Eagle Creek 44 Illustration 3: Orthophoto of Trans-Canada Trail crossing 87 Illustration 4: Eagle Creek’s tree species around Trans-Canada Trail 93 Illustration 5: Orthophoto of Eagle Harbour 114 Illustration 6: External anatomy of 0. kisutch (Coho salmon) 119 Illustration 7: Leaf shapes 123 Illustration 8: Leaf characteristics 125 Illustration 9: Peeling bark for tea 128 Illustration 10: Tidal flat fish trap 130 Illustration 11: Fishing line 130 Illustration 12: Hooks for salmon 131 Illustration 13: Internal anatomy of 0. kisutch (Coho salmon) 132 Illustration 14: Tulipia sp. (tulips) 160 Illustration 15: R. macrophyllum (Pacific rhododendron) 161 vi” PREFACE Dear Reader, In this dissertation, alongside science, are faeries and a salmon soliloquy, voices in the clouds and poetic verse from the sun; likely this dissertation is not what you’re anticipating from a research project on sustainability. In the following pages I invite you to surrender your expectations of reading about new indices for salmon habitat enhancement, or protocol recommendations for watercourse protection, and instead, open yourself to other possibilities. As Eagle Creek teaches me, the answers about sustainable living that we think we are looking for aren’t always necessarily the answers we need to hear. The first possibility I invite you to consider that this research on sustainable living contributes is the teaching ofEagle Creek. The narrative that you read should be considered as a transcription of Eagle Creek’s teaching— “teaching” as in the active verb, not “teachings” as in the passive noun. Eagle Creek (not Aliette Sheinin) right here, right now, wherever you are, is actively storytelling. The teaching of Eagle Creek that I transcribe here is important for both academic and public communities interested in sustainable living because to grow beyond our ego-driven domination of ourselves and nature, we need more direct, open, present communication with the more-than-human. Many scholars have argued for this kind of communication, but few actually provide the doorway for living it. Honored as Eagle Creek’s student, my responsibility is to connect other people to Eagle Creek’s “primordial sacred language,” as David Abram (1997) calls it, “essence” as I like to call it, or “prana,” “ch’i,” “vital energy,” or illiaster,” as it is referred to in India or China, or by ix Pythagoras and Paracelsus. In this dissertation then, are gateways to artful curriculum making. As education scholars Clandinin and Connelly (1992) state, “Teachers and students live out a curriculum.. An account of teachers’ and students’ lives over time is the curriculum” (p. 365). A transcription of Eagle Creek’s teaching, Moontime in Eagle Creek can enable you to directly, openly, presently live out with nature a curriculum for sustainably. Moontime in Eagle Creek is an invitation for you to be “with the universe, with all that there is, with the divine that is manifest in the physical as well as spiritual world” (Brennan, 1993, p. 314). The second main contribution to sustainable living that I would like to offer you from my research is an invitation to unanswered questions that span a variety of disciplines. Eagle Creek, for instance, teaches me to follow a “pull” or “call.” For earth science or geography, a sample question that my research can springboard, for example is: “What are the mechanisms through which Earth ‘pulls’ someone?” Is it something, for example, in a rock? A sound frequency emitted by plants? A pheromone emitted by beetles? Resonance between a person’s DNA and the DNA of a piece of land? Eagle Creek teaches me to tune in to different perceptual faculties than I had been accustomed to using with other humans. For neuroscience or kinesiology: “What perceptual faculties beyond the five senses are people capable of(or can tap back into)?” Some interesting hypotheses could be explored here: orgone (Wilhelm Reich), electromagnetic field (Robert Becker), human energy field (John Pierrakos), biofield (Valerie Hunt). Pursuantly, in English a sample question arising from my research is: “To communicate experiences of expanded perceptive ability, what new forms of narrative expression must we unearth?” Eagle Creek teaches me that the rhythms of the moon and my internal rhythms are always, everywhere linked. For biology or space science a question is: “What effects do Earth’s atmospheric bodies have on the human energy system?” x An asteroid or a piece of space rubble, for example? Eagle Creek teaches me about wholeness, unity, one-ness between and among the human and more-than-human. For ecology: “What is the life cycle of a drop of human blood from when it leaves a person’s body, moves through the ocean, rainclouds, rainfall, and finally recirculates back into that same human body?” Fields such as economics or business might benefit from a commodity chain investigation, while philosophers might ask, “Who really are we? Where does the human begin, where does the human end?” A last example of the kinds of questions that this research on sustainable living and Eagle Creek can call forth, are questions related to boundaries of teaching/learning in general. Eagle Creek taught me to keep opening the limitations I had placed on what I thought I could or “should” learn in my research. For all disciplines, a subsequent question is: “If we throw the limitation of what we think we can learn outside the boundary, and do it again and again and again, what happens?” Alternatively, “If we stop asking questions, and just listen, what happens?” The third main invitation that I extend to you in this dissertation is the possibility of a revisioned research ethicsfor scholarship. I begin my argument with a discussion about the limits of science: as epistemological arbiter of truth, science often remains insulated from critique and political contestation. This same insulation of knowledge can and does happen in the academic community, not just in sustainability studies, but in many fields (i.e., a researcher proposes or argues one thing, but in practice does another).