THE ECOLOGY OF PARADOX: DISTURBANCE AND RESTORATION IN LAND AND SOUL by Rowland S. Russell A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England (2007) Committee: Mitchell Thomashow (Chair), John Tallmadge, and Fred Taylor © Copyright by Rowland S. Russell 2007 All Rights Reserved i ABSTRACT This heuristic study explores environmental disturbance and ecological restoration in several North American settings in order to uncover epistemological, philosophical, aesthetic and ethical considerations revolving around those place-based processes. With fire as one of the central metaphors of this work, the initial place-based chapter examines Northern New Mexico's Pajarito Plateau to explore the region's fire ecology. The study then moves to the Pacific Northwest to draw from wild salmon restoration efforts in urban Seattle habitat. The third place-based chapter focuses on the Midwest grass and farmlands in order to investigate the seeming contradictions between managing prairie landscapes for agricultural commodity versus biological diversity. In the final chapter, the metaphorical implications of disturbance and restoration are explored in terms of individuals, communities and as a society. In explicating the philosophical and phenomenological foundations of disturbance and restoration, personal experiences are used in the study as examples to develop applied practice of paradox. It also examines and illuminates correspondences between ecological and eco-psychological cycles of disturbance and restoration within the context of paradox, which for the purpose of this work is defined as any place or context where seemingly contradictory elements coexist without canceling each other out. Drawing from landscape and ii literary sources, the study seeks to extrapolate a metaphorical correspondence between exterior and interior realms of paradox. The conclusion is that attention to processes of disturbance and restoration in nature can yield wisdom that informs our relationships with our ecological surroundings, our communities, and our individual selves. Furthermore, specific practices can emerge to help humans deal more healthfully and strategically with the complex, divisive issues of our places and times. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely grateful to each of the places I studied, as well as to all of the authors and organizations whose works illuminated my research. I also appreciate my workplace and literary colleagues, as well as my community of friends for their ongoing support throughout this long journey. My ultimate thanks and appreciation goes to my dissertation committee, consisting of Mitchell Thomashow (Chair), John Tallmadge, and Fred Taylor. Their guidance to me both in research and writing, and their overriding belief in my work, made this dissertation possible. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract...................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements...................................................................................... ii List of Figures.............................................................................................. iv Chapter I: Place-Based Paradox.................................................................... 1 The Gift of Pain Correspondence Borrowed Senses Placing Perception In the Realm of Paradox Chapter II: Fire Walk on the Pajarito............................................................ 22 Ruination Fire Walk on the Pajarito Burning Question Chapter III: The Mists of Time.................................................................... 83 Time Transing Cinematic Ecology Nurse Logs Wild Time: A Stitch in the Social Fabric Chapter IV: Thinking Like a Prairie.............................................................. 152 Roots and Routes Soil Building/Soul Building Ghost Roads Rumination Eating Oil Fundament/Firmament A Diversity of Disturbance Chapter V: Practices of Paradox.................................................................. 229 Religio Shattering Seeking Refuge: Carrying Capacity of the Soul Controlled Burns Endarkenment Works Cited.............................................................................................. 289 v LIST OF FIGURES Salmon Woman......................................................................................... 109 1 CHAPTER I: PLACE-BASED PARADOX THE GIFT OF PAIN And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.1 - Wendell Berry Day begins with a search for life in a place of death. I‟m walking to Keene‟s Greenlawn Cemetery, seeking peace in an otherwise hectic day. As I enter, my breathing slows, shoulders relax. Redwings, thrushes, and wrens call from tree and cattail perches on Beaver Creek‟s expansive marshes. Wildflowers bloom from wood and road edge. Greenlawn has witnessed its share of angst and grief, yet I find pleasurable refuge here amid a profusion of wildlife. A shadow passes to my right. I look up as a turkey vulture tilts and veers over the ridge. Fitting, I think, to encounter here a creature that transforms decaying death into soaring life. While vulture searches for road kill sustenance, I‟ve been in pursuit of philosophical nourishment contained within religious upheaval, debilitating illness, familial angst, and existential crisis. It‟s not that my own disturbances are all that striking; what intrigues me is how our internal 2 processes of destruction and resurrection can mirror those of landscapes, and how ecological processes often defy divisions humans habitually make. As the graveyard vulture disappears over the hill to the east, I reflect on another time when the shadow of death passed over me. If our bodies can be perceived as a metaphorical landscape, then a naturally occurring disturbance regime of physiological ruin once cleared space in me for restorative new growth, provided the quixotic gift of pain, and perhaps set me on this enduring quest to explore the ecology of paradox.2 Awakening one morning, I couldn‟t dress without bolts of excruciating pain shooting up my spine and down my legs. Debilitating discomfort intermingled with growing numbness in my face and extremities. The symptoms baffled my environmental education center‟s on-call physician, as well as the orthopedic surgeon I was referred to. On a hunch, our savvy on-site nurse made an appointment with a neurologist who immediately sent me to the hospital. A spinal tap confirmed a diagnosis of Guillan-Barre; a viral induced illness which attacks and damages nerve endings along the spinal column (including those controlling function of vital organs). Paralysis or death was a distinct possibility. Restoration seemed a universe away. I lost over twenty pounds from my already slim build. Hands and feet felt as lifeless as cinder blocks. My face was completely paralyzed, except for my jaw. Incapable of making the necessary seal to swallow, I manually held my lips closed. Unable to close my eyes to sleep at night, I gently pushed the lids down, like lowering the shades.3 3 Painfully aware of my limitations, I found I could not walk more than a few steps unaided. One evening I tried to carry a stack of dirty dishes to the kitchen counter and tumbled in a clattering heap as the whole dining room fell silent. Another time, out at the basketball court, I tried to take a jump shot. My feet never left the ground and I fell flat on my face. To handle the physical pain attending devastated nerve pathways, I took heavy pain medication. But I was at a loss about how to handle the psychic pain. My body now a foreign landscape, feeling a burden on my friends, I fell into a deep depression. As with land, perhaps body too requires its periodic cycles of disturbance and restoration. Renowned for his work with leprosy patients in India in the mid-20th century, Dr. Paul Brand almost literally stumbled on the knowledge that became the basis for his ground-breaking medical work and for his book The Gift of Pain, co-authored with Philip Yancey. One morning Brand watched a leper stumble off the roadway, badly fracturing his ankle. Picking himself off the ground, the man walked on as if nothing happened. Recalling his training in neurology, a light went on for Brand.4 He posited that those afflicted with leprosy had lost the neural ability to feel pain. Formerly, any physical contact with such patients was discouraged – the fear that their very flesh was diseased overrode any empathetic impulse. Brand surmised that lack of sensation led to accidental wounds, which unexamined and unfelt became infected and gangrenous. He devised an 4 ingenious training program to cultivate bodily awareness in his patients, to help compensate for their sensory deprivation. Even those of us without such illnesses, posits Brand, will go to great lengths to avoid pain, not realizing its gift to us of teaching presence. My neurologist cautioned me that nerve regeneration, to the extent that it was possible (some never recover), could be as excruciating as the onset of the illness. “Move into the pain.” he urged counter-intuitively, “that‟s evidence that your nerves are healing.” I consciously willed myself to stretch and exercise, despite the agony, lest I permanently lose precious mobility. “Congratulate me, I have