LandabréJournal of the Afssociationið of Icelandic Geographers 25. árgangur / Volume 25 2011 Special Iss ue: P racticing Nature-based Tourism. E dited by Gunnthora Olafsdottir

Landabréfið 22(1), 2006 1 Landabréfið Journal of the Association of Icelandic Geographers

25. árgangur / Volume 25 2011

ISSN 1027–4049

Útgefandi / Publisher Félag landfræðinga, [email protected]

Ritstjóri og ábyrgðarmaður / Editor-in-chief Dr. Karl Benediktsson, [email protected]

Ritstjóri þessa heftis / Editor of this Special Issue Dr. Gunnþóra Ólafsdóttir, [email protected]

Ritnefnd / Editorial Board Björn H. Barkarson, Félag umhverfisfræðinga Dr. Emil Bóasson, Félag landfræðinga Dr. Gunnþóra Ólafsdóttir, Félag landfræðinga Dr. Katrín Anna Lund, Mannfræðifélag Íslands Dr. Kristinn H. M. Schram, Félag þjóðfræðinga á Íslandi Dr. Sigríður Kristjánsdóttir, Skipulagsfræðingafélag Íslands Stefán Helgi Valsson, Félag háskólamenntaðra ferðamálafræðinga

Hönnun kápu / Cover design Jón Ágúst Pálmason

Umbrot / Layout Karl Benediktsson

Prentun / Printing Hjá GuðjónÓ

Félag landfræðinga Póstfang: pósthólf 5391, 125 Reykjavík Netfang: [email protected] Veffang: www.landfraedi.is Umræðulisti: [email protected]

Stjórn 2011–2012 Formaður: Fanney Ósk Gísladóttir Gjaldkeri: elín Vignisdóttir Ritari: Hulda Axelsdóttir Varaformaður: Ása Margét Einarsdóttir Meðstjórnandi: Kári Gunnarsson Efnisyfirlit / Contents

Frá ritstjóra / Editor’s comment 2

Special Issue: Practicing Nature-based Tourism Edited by Gunnthora Olafsdottir

Greinar / Articles

Practicing (nature-based) tourism: introduction 3–14 Gunnthora Olafsdottir

‘Praying the Keeills’. Rhythm, meaning and experience on pilgrimage journeys in the Isle of Man 15–29 Avril Maddrell

Multi-sensory tourism in the Great Bear Rainforest 31–49 Bettina van Hoven

Mobile in a mobile element 51–75 Eric Ellingsen

The destination within 77–84 Hildigunnur Sverrisdóttir

Umræður / Discussion

Imagine being here now 85–95 Lucy Lippard Frá ritstjóra / Editor’s comment Fyrir nær tíu árum var Landabréfið gert að ritrýndu tímariti sem uppfyllir fræðilegar kröfur um vinnslu greina og ritstýringu. Síðan hefur útgáfan haldist með svipuðu sniði. Birtur hefur verið fjöldi greina, eftir landfræðinga og aðra, um afar fjölbreytt efni. Með þessum 25. árgangi tímaritsins verða nokkrar breytingar á efni og útliti, sem miða að því að vinna ritinu traustari sess innanlands og í hinu alþjóðlega fræðasamfélagi. Að þessu sinni er um þematengt hefti að ræða, þar sem allar greinar snúast um tiltekið viðfangsefni. Uppruni greinanna er ráðstefna um náttúrutengda ferðamennsku, sem haldin var í Reykjavík snemma á árinu 2011. Gert var samkomulag við ráðstefnuhaldara um útgáfu Landabréfsins í kjölfar ráðstefnunnar og tók dr. Gunnþóra Ólafsdóttir, landfræðingur og einn af skipuleggjendum, að sér að ritstýra heftinu. Höfundar greina í þessu hefti eru bæði íslenskir og alþjóðlegir fræðimenn, en allar greinar ritsins eru að þessu sinni á ensku. Titlar, ágrip og lykilorð eru hins vegar einnig á íslensku og áfram verður að sjálfsögðu tekið við handritum á íslensku til birtingar í ritinu. Samhliða útgáfu á pappír eru greinarnar í fyrsta sinn gerðar aðgengilegar á vef Félags landfræðinga. Þetta er ekki síst gert í þeirri vissu að mikið af efni Landabréfsins eigi erindi út fyrir landsteinana og er mikilvægt skref til að auka útbreiðslu ritsins og áhrif. En jafnframt hefur ytra útlit hins prentaða tímarits verið endurhannað. Væntir ritstjóri þess að kortið á forsíðunni gleðji hjörtu íslenskra landfræðinga, sem flestum þykir vænt um hin fallegu og rúmlega aldargömlu kort danska herforingjaráðsins.

Almost a decade ago, Landabréfið – the Journal of the Association of Icelandic Geographers – was transformed into a refereed scholarly journal. The publication has been unchanged since. Diverse articles have been published, by geographers and other scholars. With this twenty-fifth volume of the journal, several changes are evident in both content and form, the aim being to secure the future of the journal as a vehicle for geographical scholarship, internationally as well as domestically. This time round, the journal’s content is centred on a certain theme. The articles originate from a conference on nature-based tourism, which was held in Reykjavík early in 2011. An agreement was made with the organisers of the conference about the publication of a special issue, and dr. Gunnthora Olafsdottir, geographer and one of the organisers, took on the task of editing it. The authors are both Icelandic and non-Icelandic, but all articles in this special issue are written in English. Titles, abstracts and keywords are provided in Icelandic, however, and manuscripts written in Icelandic will of course be welcome in future issues. Parallel to conventional, paper-based publication, the articles are for the first time made electronically accessible through the website of the Association of Icelandic Geographers. In part this is done because of our belief that much of the material published in the journal is of value for readers outside Iceland, and it is an important step for increasing the exposure and impact of the journal. But the paper version has also undergone a facelift by a professional designer. The editor expects Icelandic geographers to appreciate this move, fond as most of us are of the beautiful topographic maps that were crafted over a century ago. Karl Benediktsson

2 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Practicing (nature-based) tourism: introduction Gunnthora Olafsdottir*

ABSTRACT Little is still known about human practices in nature or elsewhere in the context of tourism. There are however positive signs of change in this respect in the wake of the cultural and performance ‘turn’ in academia. Phenomenological perspectives have emphasised investigation of the performative and hybrid aspects of living and moment-to-moment being and allows for deep scrutiny of human practices in the context of tourism. This paper discusses this change and its meaning for tourism studies as well as giving an overview of relevant literature that has made great contributions to this development. It then introduces this special issue of Landabréfið, which stems from the conference Practicing Nature-Based Tourism, which was held in Reykjavík, Iceland, on February 5–6, 2011. The papers in this issue provide different and insightful insights into how life is currently practiced in the context of (nature-based) tourism.

Keywords: Practicing and performing tourism, embodiment, subjectivity, nature-society relations, nature-based tourism

ÁGRIP Að framkvæma (náttúrutengda) ferðamennsku: Inngangur Lítið er enn vitað um athafnir fólks í náttúrunni eða annars staðar í tengslum við ferðamennsku. Hins vegar eru í deiglunni jákvæðar breytingar í þessa veru í kjölfar hins aukna vægis sem menning og iðja/athafnir hafa fengið í fræðilegri umræðu. Fyrirbærafræðileg sjónarhorn hafa þýtt aukna áherslu á að rannsaka áhrifamátt og samverkandi hliðar lífsins og upplifun augnabliksins, sem býður upp á að kafa djúpt í athafnir fólks í tengslum við ferðamennsku. Í greininni eru þessar breytingar ræddar og þýðing þeirra fyrir rannsóknir á ferðamennsku reifuð. auk þess sem gefið er yfirlit yfir rannsóknir sem hafa átt stóran þátt í þessari þróun. Þar á eftir er þetta sérhefti Landabréfsins kynnt, en það er sprottið frá ráðstefnunni Practicing Nature-Based Tourism, sem haldin var í Reykjavík 5.– 6. febrúar 2011. Greinarnar sem hér birtast gefa mismunandi innsýn inn í hvernig lífinu er lifað í tengslum við (náttúrutengda) ferðamennsku.

Lykilorð: Að framkvæma ferðamennsku, holdtekja, sjálfsveruleiki, tengsl náttúru og samfélags, náttúrutengd ferðamennska

The acknowledgement that nature has a terms of what ‘nature’ can do for us in crucial place in the contemporary world our increasingly technological societies has resulted in increased academic and and lives (see Bennett 2001, 2010). In the political awareness of “the importance of past, increasing cultural sophistication and understanding nature-society relations as technological development, along with an integral part of the political, economic, adherence to ideologies of utilitarianism social and cultural constitution and recon- and the Enlightenment, have transformed stitution” (Jones and Cloke 2002, 1) of human-nature relationships, physically and ever-changing lives and places. Apart from ontologically distancing humans away from the obvious and urgent focus on nature nature in the name of civilisation, progress conservation as part of an intensifying and development (Gold and Revill 2004). environmental crisis, there are also many The Romantics’ answer to this was to place important questions to be addressed in nature outside the margins of the built-up

* Guest Editor of this issue of Landabréfið. Corresponding address: Gunnthora Olafsdottir, Reykja- víkurAkademían, Hringbraut 121, 107 Reykjavík, Iceland. Email: [email protected]

Landabréfið 25, 2011 3 world where its naturalness could be pre- tions that are ideologically separable from served. Accordingly, the general Western other industries and separable from our view is that ‘nature’ – especially nature to everyday lives (Franklin 2003). The busi- admire and connect to – resides where ness emphasis and getting to grips with its industrial society is not (Macnaghten and workings has been owed to “policy led and Urry 1998). industry sponsored work” (Franklin and The question of where nature resides Crang 2001, 5) aimed to gain information is intimately associated with the idea that to enable (re)adjustment of the tourism human beings seem to have great ‘need’ or ‘products’ towards market demands, which at least appetite for close encounters with initially dominated this research arena. the natural world. Such appetite crystallises Another long-established aim has been to most explicitly in nature-based tourism1 explore the negative effects of tourism on that feeds on the perceived need to under- natures and cultures and the consequent take ‘exodus’ from the everyday in order to managerial needs based on an ideal pre- ‘be in nature’. On the face of it, such a move tourist ‘authentic’ state (Desforges 2005). reflects a firm Romantic belief in the thera- In this genre tourism is usually regarded as peutic and regenerative agency of nature for a negative and destructive phenomenon that the human being whose everyday may be quite ruthlessly rolls over places and people tiring and stressful. Surprisingly however, to serve very particular tourists’ (and tour- very little is yet known about how such as- operators’ capitalistic) individualistic needs sumptions work out in praxis (see Olafsdot- (Desforges 2005) and deploying concepts tir forthcoming), or more generally about like Butler’s (1980) ‘tourist area cycle of human practices in nature, or elsewhere, in evolution’ as yardstick for the progressing/ the touristic context. There are however damaging development. In both cases the positive signs of change in this respect in main research focus has been on defining, the wake of the cultural and performative describing, categorising and quantifying di- ‘turn’ in academia introducing phenom- chotomous interactions between tourist as enological and post-phenomenological ‘consumers’ (often referred to as particular perspectives that emphasise investigation species appearing in flocks: mass tourists, of the performative and hybrid aspects adventure tourists, nature tourists…, see of living and moment-to-moment being Löfgren 1999) and tourism employees which allows for deep scrutiny of human and/or destinations as ‘providers’, which practices and performances in the context prompts the familiar commoditisation of of tourism. ‘tourist experiences’ as products that can The performative turn presents a radical be bought and consumed. turn for tourism (and other cultural) studies. Without belittling the importance of Traditionally researchers have engaged with understanding the complex ebbs and tourism from the conventional positivist flows of this industry and its sometimes Cartesian derived detached perspective and irrevocable and grave affects on cultures regarded it as a specialised industry – an and natures (see for example Fennell 2003; economic thing (Franklin and Crang 2001) Weaver 2001), such stress on functionalism, – made up of countless economic transac- as argued by Franklin and Crang (2001), and

1 Officially defined as “[l]eisure travel undertaken largely or solely for the purpose of enjoying natural attractions and engaging in a variety of outdoor activities. Bird watching, hiking, fishing, and beach- combing are all examples of nature-based tourism” (Travel Industry Dictionary 2011).

4 Landabréfið 25, 2011 descriptive skin-deep scholarship, carries of willing one’s own body to move” (Mat- the risk of downplaying the complexities of thews 1996, 10). This idea – that knowledge tourism. For that reason, and influenced by of the world is continuously acquired and the currents of post-modernism and phe- gradually accumulated through the body’s nomenological, existential, post-structural action, i.e. embodied – has been extremely and/or deconstructionist thinking, as well well received by anti-Cartesians across the as acknowledging the growing importance disciplines, as it allows for the necessary of tourism on both national and individual active relationship between the mind and levels, academics across the social-sciences the (sensing) body and between the active and the humanities have begun to open up body and the environment (communication the complex spatial structures involved with that has now been medically confirmed, see touristic transactions and look for explana- for example Sternberg 2001). It thereby tions (see Ateljevic 2000). acknowledges that every human practice Fundamentally, this move is driven by the and the knowledge it provides is always observation that Descartes’ mind-body du- influenced by and relative to the situa- alism, postulating a disembodied objective tion at hand – is always spatially specific. ‘self ’ as the source of all wisdom, is physi- De Biran’s work has been taken forward cally impossible. How can knowledge of the in various ways by different thinkers and world (or thought for that matter) somehow currently finds trace in Marxism, structural- appear, function and be put to use in an ism, post-structuralism and different works isolated mind – a mind that does not have within French philosophy that are becoming any connection with the world or a body increasingly important in Western academia and thereby the senses and what is sensed? (Matthews 1996).3 This basic observation and criticism can For tourism studies, deployment of this be traced back to the French philosopher work meant that, instead of postulating di- and metaphysical thinker Maine de Biran2 chotomous interactions and emphasising an (1766–1824) who developed St. Augustine’s ontological divide between hosts and guests, notion – one of the two grounding pillars people and places, it allowed researchers in Descartes’ work – that true knowledge to explore the active relationships between resides in the inner self. This being a to- them and find that whenever one is doing tally objective state where the knowledge tourism (cf. Crouch 2002) – producing or perceived is verified true and pure by God consuming goods and services or whatever (Matthews 1996). Rather than simply ignor- else in this context – one is always affected ing it without fixing the physical problem by various abstract and material elements of the isolated mind and more importantly, that come into and impact upon the in- discarding its connection to the Creator, teractions (see discussion for example in as was the case in the development of Cloke and Perkins 1998; Crouch 2000, 2002; positivism and empiricism, de Biran “saw Franklin and Crang 2001; Coleman and the foundation of learning as lying not in Crang 2002). This led to the observation intellect or cognition, but in the experience that tourism is not merely a product, a des-

2 Short for François-Pierre-Gonthier Maine de Biran. 3 Henri Bergson, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Lois Althusser, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Luce Irigaray can be named. Although their work is different they all build their world view on the fundamental idea that the (social, cultural, political, economic and material) environment has active agency that impacts upon individual thought and action.

Landabréfið 25, 2011 5 tination or a commercial exercise (Crouch as language acts to mark out, signify and 2002) – but indeed a creative, contextual, categorize the world” (Franklin and Crang embodied practice, which does not take place 2001, 17). At the time, Dean MacCannell ‘far away’ but is indeed “infused into our had already introduced the idea of holiday/ everyday and has become one of the ways leisure travels as a cultural practice (see in which our lives are ordered” (Franklin MacCannell 1973, 1976, and later develop- 2003, 2, emphasis original) and one of the ments in MacCannell 1992, 2001), yet it was ways in which we orientate ourselves and detached in nature and focused on the fun- take a stance to a globalised world. This damental drive for these practices.4 Judith perspective thus emphasizes that tourism Adler (1989) then radically urged for the practices are integral to living – creating need to engage with travel as performed art subjectivities and senses of place and self to elicit information on what tourist prac- in an ongoing process, and originate in the tices are about and what affects them. Later varied ways people make sense of, engage traces of Adler’s, Culler’s and MacCannell’s with, and enact the modern world in the work can be found in John Urry’s (1990, context of tourism. 2002) Foucault-inspired notion of the Acknowledging that tourism is a crea- tourist gaze, which was the initial attempt to tive cultural practice in this specific context articulate tourists as reflexive beings where has propelled exploration into different di- the gaze represents a physical technology mensions of this productive system which through which tourists connect to and gradually moved towards the performative. consume places via images and sign value Performativity (see for example Thrift and of our global socio-economic community.5 Dewsbury 2000) recognises that representa- Although acknowledging the agency of tions and semiotics, norms and discourses, representations to impact upon where peo- (other) humans and nonhumans and what- ple go, what they come to see and how they ever else that comes into moment-to-mo- engage with the attraction, the concept was ment being of the spaces of travel (or in any criticised for its sensuous limitations and other contexts for that matter) have agency objectifying dichotomous nature (see Cloke that interacts in varied ways and in so doing and Perkins 1998, who respond to some of co-constitutes the affective and perceptive the criticism and rework the concept – see outcomes. Here a few milestones will be below). Game (1991) points out that the mentioned. gaze leaves out the complex sensuous bod- Jonathan Culler (1981) is maintained ily desires and activities involved with tour- to have paved the way for the transition ist practices and experiences. For instance of tourism studies from representation the longing to feel the warm sun on your to enactment by arguing that “tourism face, the fresh air in you hair, the soft sand

4 For MacCannell, what drives leisure and holiday travel is the Romantic regenerating affect of getting in touch with the inner self via ‘authentic’ experiences. In 1992 MacCannell divorced the idea of the authentic from the tourist endeavour but holds tight to the assumed individualistic agenda of seeking entertainment through celebrations of life by attending fun events like carnivals and/or experiencing ‘the spectacular’ (both in things and life) and get connections with the true inner self through consumption of the ‘magical powers’ invested in these via prevailing collective tastes (see MacCannell 1992 and 2001). 5 For Urry (1990, 1991), what propels holiday tourism is a search for ‘different’ meaningful experi- ences, which one hand he ties to the individual getting a Romantic spiritual connection with the attraction, whatever it may be, and on the other hand to being in the ‘right’ place.

6 Landabréfið 25, 2011 under your feet…, and feeling it is indeed a places (and themselves as a community see part of ‘being there’ and part of the des- Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998) and thereby tination’s place-meaning. Striking the same highlight the need to study representations vein, Veijola and Jokinen (1994) point out as active agents in touristic practices. With that the body is the main vehicle for travel this on board, Cloke and Perkins (1998) therefore full attention needs to be given to rearticulate MacCannell’s and Urry’s ideas how it makes sense of and experiences the of tourism as a cultural practice to capture world and the various directive agencies that more adequately the multi-sensuous and are bound to come into and impact upon active participation involved with adventure its engagements e.g. time and tour-operators tourism and the representations to which power to organise and qualify time via these practices and materials respond. They their itineraries and guide’s comments (see introduce the embodied, active and reflexive also Castañeda 1991). The potential active notion of tourist performance:6 agency of abstract and material others on In our view the notion of the tourist performance individual practices had indeed been em- more adequately captures the experience of pirically observed by Cantwell (1993) who adventure tourism because it connotes both in his investigation of representation of a sense of seeing and an association with the culture in tourism, found that folk dance active body, heightened sensory experience, performances risk, vulnerability, passion, pleasure, mastery, always pick up previously circulating represen- and/or failure. In adventure tourism, tourists tations, and work them through in a poetics as performers are gazers and active beings stringing together images, visitors, performers (Cloke and Perkins 1998, 214). and the history of their relations (Franklin and Articulating the active sensuous and crea- Crang 2001, 17). tive participation on behalf of the tourist Thereby Cantwell not only acknowledged and the emotions and psychological affects their impact but also the effect, continua- it crystallises, called for a phenomenological tion and reworking of prevailing ideas on approach in tourist studies which acknowl- individual practises. These results fell into edges the embodied nature of the practice place with Cloke and Perkins’ study of the and turns the attention to the spatialities of active agency of representations in promo- moment to moment being where the human tional material (1998) and commodification (tourist/traveller) and the (social, cultural, practices (2002) in adventure tourism in economic and political) environment, come New Zealand, and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s together and interact via the practice of do- (1998) study of how images and semiotics ing (nature-based) tourism. This propelled impact upon how local people represent investigation into various potential directive and promote themselves, claiming that rep- agencies that impact upon how people live resentations do much more than show and their lives in this context and (importantly) speak, they do. They seem to impact upon what affects it and why. Jane Desmond (1999) how people understand and engage with studied human-nature relationships and

6 Here Cloke and Perkins build upon and take forward MacCannell’s assumption that part of the reason why people travel are individualistic needs for encounters with pre-established idealised places and the reflexive nature of Urry’s tourist gaze. They however don’t believe that tourists dwell in a disengaged Romantic bubble whilst travelling à la MacCannell, nor in Urry’s limited take on the bodily activity. For them Urry’s gaze only represents one of the five senses and feel his take on the gaze is too static in nature and as such implies the traditional dichotomous practice of looking at and enacting picturesque vistas from a distance (see Cloke & Perkins 1998).

Landabréfið 25, 2011 7 found active and directive agency of rep- formation – one of the fundamental drives resentation in staging tourists’ perceptions behind this activity and (sometimes) exten- of animals and cultures in holiday tourism sive travels. Larsen (2003, 2005) highlights in the form of direct commands, infrastruc- the performative agency of the camera, ture and design, and in the ideas about the as one of the main touristic accessory, in relationships between humans and nature shaping tourist practises. Similarly, Scarles they unquestionably mediate and thereby (2005) demonstrates how places and im- keep alive. Indeed, as Orvar Löfgren (1999) ages of places are mediated via touristic observes, tourism practices reflect a long photography and how they shape individual history of how to do things – how to look at experiences of being on tour and feed into landscape, how to behave as a tourists, how the creative process of becoming tourist. to fish, sail, sunbathe, birdwatch…, which Haldrup (2004) notes how car-driving as is bound to impact upon individual thought part of touristic nature-based sightseeing, and action in this context. Tim Edensor calls forth specific activities and engage- (1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2001) then works ments with place. Bærenholdt et al. (2004) with such ideas in his extensive studies of then claim that tourism practices actively touristic behaviour and detects massive create destinations and sense of place. directive agency in prevailing norms and Cater and Cloke (2007) further recognise conventions attached both to places and that adventure is a performed kinaesthetic practices. People seem to do their utmost to activity in nature-based adventure tourism. live up to and perform the ‘proper’ drama Huijbens and Benediktsson (2007) show (Edensor 1998). Edensor (2001) claims how a high-tech 4x4 off-road vehicle me- that performances are always individually diates creative interaction between tourists and culturally specific and made up of an and nature. Olafsdottir (2007) focuses on interconnected mixture of habitual, instinc- the therapeutic agency of nature-based tual and commonsense elements that partly travels and demonstrates how different work to regulate tourist behaviour and how travel modes (walking and driving) set up the individual engages with place. More completely different relationships between recently Tucker (2007) found resistance to tourists and nature on tour and the conse- appropriate behaviour in tourist tour-guide quent affective registers. Walsh and Tucker interactive negotiations. (2009) highlight how the backpack, as a The active and directive agency of tech- technological thing, shapes touristic prac- nology in touristic spatialities in nature tices and experiences in situ. and elsewhere has also been highlighted. Nonhuman agency and its articulation is Michael (2000) shows how walking boots another important issue in the development not only expand and buffer the physical of tourism as a creative, contextual, embodied interactions between the human body and practice. Deploying a phenomenological ap- the natural world one moves through, they proach Simone Fullagar (2000) observes also bring in a particular set of ideas that that in the state of awe – in the total are bound to come into and affect the rapture of fear or wonder – the perceived spatial landscapes of the walking subject. gap between one and the other disappears. Lorimer and Lund (2003) then observe Following Fullagar, and inspired by Latour’s how hill-walking as a technology per se in actor-network theory (ANT see Latour leisure and tourism mediates powerful ideas 1993, 1999, 2002) and Whatmore’s (1999) about selection and deployment of specific relational agency, Cloke and Perkins (2005) techniques and devices as part of identity did an empirical study of how nonhuman

8 Landabréfið 25, 2011 agency (of whales and dolphins) comes uted between the human and nonhuman and into and affects tourist performances and whatever else that comes into it: experience of place. The results indicate the [T]he essential character of space in tourism active agency and manipulating power of practise is its combination of the material and representations on tourists’ mindsets and the metaphorical. Once we acknowledge the actions; of practices of staging in organisa- subject as embodied and tourism as practise tional place performance; and of regulating it is evident that our body does encounter powers in the form of legislation, technol- space in its materiality; concrete components ogy, skill and unpredictable performances that effectively surround the body are literally of non-human nature that are bound to ‘felt’. However, that space and its contents disrupt the organisational choreographed are also apprehended imaginatively, in series delivery. Accordingly they rework their no- and combinations of signs. Furthermore, tion of performing tourism to incorporate the those signs are constructed through our own active interaction between the historical/ engagement, imaginative enactment, and are representational and purposeful individual embodied through our encounter in space and with space (Crouch 2002, 208). wants with the unpredictable performance of ‘the other’ in touristic practices. Here This is not by any means a complete ac- travel count of this development,7 yet it should be represents opportunities and spaces in which acknowledged that all the studies mentioned the flesh of the body encounters viscerally the above have made great contributions to the flesh of the world, in which the purposeful tourism literature in terms of recognizing reaching out to connect with the other is and opening up different parts of the com- accompanied by unintentional touch (or plex geographical foundations of touristic hunting) from the other (Cloke and Perkins practises, and some have lead to increased 2005, 906). sophistication in the development of theo- Cloke and Perkins acknowledge that the retical approaches to tackle these realities. outcome of the interaction between the Their suggested relational understanding tourist and nature (and anything else that of the world requires epistemological comes into and effects the present mo- sensitivity to the multi-dimensional and co- ment) – the sense of self and place – is constitutive nature of touristic practices and co-constituted by the human and nature or experiences in nature and elsewhere where whatever comes into and effects the present tourism takes place and it is in that spirit we moment. This kind of creative openness produce this special issue of Landabréfiðon finds an echo in David Crouch’s (2002) practicing (nature-based) tourism. articulation of tourism as an embodied The endeavour has direct ties with an practice which is inspired by Doreen Mas- Icelandic grassroots project called Without sey’s (1993) articulation of human practices Destination, made up of two interconnected as co-constitutive creative encounters with events aiming to build up a positive, in- contextualised space (see also Massey 2005) formed and critical discussion that may and nonrepresentational theory (Thrift help to enrich the local discourse on Iceland 1996) which moves the creative agency as a tourist destination (see Reykjavík Art from being subject-centred to being distrib- Museum 2011a). One of these was the in-

7 The newest addition is probably Larsen and Urry's (2011) just-published rearticulation of the tourist gaze which emphasizes the multisensual, socio-cultural and embodied nature of the performance of gazing.

Landabréfið 25, 2011 9 ternational art exhibition Without Destination, formed both during the tour via the mobile held at the Reykjavík Art Museum from walks and when recollecting the stay and January 20 to April 10, 2011 where wander- its consequent affective experiences after lust, destination and the concept of place the tours, she found that the presence and played a leading part. The other was the absence of belief was a fundamental and international interdisciplinary conference active element in the engagement with Practicing Nature-Based Tourism convened at nature and individual place-meaning, both the exhibition venue during the weekend of in sense of ‘journey’ and what was taken February 5–6, 2011, focusing on the varied home. Maddrell thereby flags the need to and multi-dimensional nature of nature- be attentive to the various elements that based tourism practices. Papers were called come into and potentially effect touristic from the local and international academic practices and experiences in different places community. Some thirty-six papers were and contexts. received from a diverse crowd of activists, In her paper Multi-sensory tourism in the artists, anthropologists, historians, cultural Great Bear Rainforest, cultural geographer geographers, physical geographers, (land- Bettina van Hoven presents her empirical scape) architects, economists, biologists, study on multi-sensory experiences of hik- philosophers and tourism researchers, and ing in grizzly bear territory in the context of twenty-five papers were selected (see Rey- ecotourism. Drawing on extensive empirical kjavík Art Museum 2011b). Subsequently data, some of which are available to the the presenters were invited to submit full reader via links to digital video recordings academic papers to this special issue, dedi- featuring some of the sensuous experiences cated to the conference topic. Many showed gained via sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, initial interest, seven papers were submitted and mobility, she provides rich material to before the set deadline and five made it rethink how one becomes to ‘know’ places through to the pages below. via an ecotourism hiking endeavour. The Interestingly, all contributors focus on article also highlights the active agency the travelling being – a term coined for the of representations, values and nonhuman event, without a fixed definition, but al- agency in the production of touristic sense luding on one hand to the human being in of place by showing how individual stand- the touristic context, and on the other to points towards this particular rainforest and the embodied subjective state and experi- its wildlife performance impact upon how ence ‘to be travelling’ – where the ongoing it is encountered, negotiated and practiced creation of a sense of self and the other in the hiking-ecotourism context. is taking place in the context of (nature- In Mobile in a Mobile Element, landscape based) tourism. architect Eric Ellingsen addresses the power The cultural geographer Avril Maddrell of the tourism industry with its representa- leads the way with her paper ‘Praying the tions and stories to shape individual sense Keeills’. Rhythm, meaning and experience on pil- of place from the tourist side. In his active grimage journeys in the Isle of Man, where she performance of memory, he produces a delves into the specificities involved with vivid narrative account taking the reader touristic experiences of two different spir- on a journey down the memory lane of his itually-inflected pilgrimage holiday-walks. own touristic visits to various parts of the Drawing on extensive empirical data and world. Combined with a tour of relevant exploring it in relation to the concept of ideas, he presents his experiences in situ and ‘travelling being’, focusing on the spatialities unpacks his reactions in the effort to tease

10 Landabréfið 25, 2011 out the elements and the relationships that monopolised by tour-operators and institu- compose and constrain a situation. Similar tions who via commodification practices to Peggy Phelan’s (1997, 12) call, “I want manipulate specific elements of culture and you to hear my wish as well as my miss”, nature that transforms communities and urging for a critical read and engagements places and “imposes a disguise on locals with her detailed accounts/performances whether they like it or not” (p. 93). Lippard of public memories, Ellingsen urges for the stresses that tourism which denigrates the need to be alert to the curation of tourism communities it builds its attraction on is and its power to impact upon how we un- simply wrong; that there has to be room derstand and relate to the world around us. for the locals, their diverse wants and needs, In such critical enactment we can question histories and cultures and current (problem- how ‘healthy’ it is for the visitor, the visited atic) issues at the touristic ‘sense-of-place and whatever else it touches. production table’ to serve the good for all. Striking a different note in her paper, For that to happen, Lippard maintains that The destination within, architect Hildigunnur what most urgently need to be addressed Sverrisdóttir discusses the importance for are the conventions and limitations that the travel industry to gain deep knowledge society has created for itself, so their unjust of the affectual affordances of nature and directive agency on human practices can the nature of the experience that people be rectified. are hoping to find with their participation What follows, then, are five insightful pa- in nature-based tours. Drawing on her own pers that give different insights into how life extensive experience as a tour-guide in Ice- is currently practiced in the context of tour- land she finds a tendency of the tours being ism and what comes out of it. They bear too rigidly organised yet the most treasured witness to the potential fruitfulness and moments of the tours are usually not tied critical agency of opening up and engaging to any pre-established must-sees or dos but with the spatial structures of tourist prac- rather to something completely random, tices which I hope will aid and encourage simple and unforeseen. She wonders wheth- further and much needed research of these er tour-operators are perhaps overlooking complex and multi-dimensional realities. fundamental tourists’ needs or misreading the nature of touristic visits by putting too Acknowledgements much emphasis on the quantitative spatial The Without Destination project, from which this special issue sprang, was carried out in frame of travel. Thereby, she argues, they collaboration with the Reykjavík Academy, prolong the grip of the controlling ‘system’ Reykjavík Art Museum and the Association in society that people might actually be try- of Icelandic Geographers with financial ing to escape. contribution from the Nordic Culture Fund, the The highly esteemed activist and writer Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Lucy Lippard, one of the key-note speakers Culture, the Municipality of Reykjavík Culture and Tourism Fund, Visit Reykjavík, Promote of the Nature-Based Tourism conference, Iceland, the Icelandic Tourist Board, the then finalizes this issue with her discussion Embassy of the United States of America, the paper Imagine being here now. Taking Santa Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Fe, New Mexico, as an example, she writes and the Association of Independent Theorists about the massive creative power we have in and Researchers of the Reykjavík Academy. Other contributors are Dynamo Reykjavík, the context of tourism to shape how places Esja Travel, Hótel Holt, and Melabúðin. On and people are perceived and practiced, and behalf of myself and my collaborator Markús how it is currently and too unquestionably Þór Andrésson I would like to thank the above

Landabréfið 25, 2011 11 mentioned institutions and firms for their Cloke, P. & H. C. Perkins 2002: Commodifica- invaluable contribution. Special thanks go to tion and Adventure in New Zealand Tourism. Hafþór Yngvason, Soffía Karlsdóttir and Kristín Current Issues in Tourism 5(6): 521–549. Dagmar Jóhannesdóttir at the Reykjavík Art Museum, Sólveig Ólafsdóttir, Viðar Hreinsson Cloke, P. & H. C. Perkins 2005: Cetacean per- and Ólafur Hrafn Júlíusson at the Reykjavík formance and tourism in Kaikoura, New Academy, and Edward Huijbens and Karl Zealand. Environment and Planning D: Society Benediktsson at the Association of Icelandic and Space 23(6): 903–924. Geographers for their co-operation and endless Coleman, S. & M. Crang 2002: Grounded support. Last but not least many thanks are due tourists, travelling theory. In: S. Coleman to all the local and foreign artists and academics & M. Crang (eds.), Tourism. Between Place and who participated in the event and contributed Performance. New York & Oxford: Berghahn their work to the exhibition, the conference and Books. Pp. 1–17. this journal – kærar þakkir to all of you! Culler, J. 1981: Semiotics of Tourism. American Journal of Semiotics I: 127–40. References Crouch, D. 2000: Places around us: embodied Adler, J. 1989: Travel as Performed Art. American lay geographies in leisure and tourism. Leisure Journal of Sociology 94 (6): 1366–1391. Studies 19(2): 63–76. Ateljevic, I. 2000: Circuits of tourism: step- Crouch, D. 2002: Surrounded by Place. Embod- ping beyond the ‘production/consumption’ ied Encounters. In: S. Coleman & M. Crang dichotomy. Tourism Geographies 2(4): 369–388. (eds.), Tourism. Between Place and Performance. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books. Pp. Bennett, J. 2001: The Enchantment of Modern 207–218. Life. Attachments, crossings and ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Desforges, L. 2005: Travel and Tourism. In: P. Bennett, J. 2010: Vibrant Matter. A Political Ecol- Cloke, P. Crang & M. Goodwin (eds.), Intro- ogy of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. ducing Human Geographies (2nd edition). Oxon: Hodder Arnold. Pp. 517–526. Butler, R. W. 1980: The concept of a tourist area cycle of evolution. Canadian Geographer Desmond, J. 1999: Staging Tourism. Bodies on 24(1): 5–12. Display from Waikiki to Sea World. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Bærenholdt, J. O., M. Haldrup, J. Larsen & J. Urry 2004: Performing Tourist Places. Aldershot: Edensor, T. 1998: Tourists at the Taj. Performance Ashgate. and meaning at a symbolic site. London & New York: Routledge. Cantwell, R. 1993: Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture. Chapel Hill: Univer- Edensor, T. 2000a: Walking in the British coun- sity of North Carolina Press. tryside: reflexivity, embodied practices and ways to escape. Body & Society 6(3-4): 81–106. Castañeda, Q. 1991: An “Archaeology” of Chi- chéan Itza: Discourse, Power and Resistance Edensor, T. 2000b: Staging tourism: tourists as in a Maya Tourist Site. Albany: State Univer- performers. Annals of Tourism Research 27(2): sity of New York (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis). 322–344. Cater, C. & P. Cloke 2007: Bodies in action. Edensor, T. 2001: Performing tourism, staging The performativity of adventure tourism. tourism. (Re)producing tourist space and Anthropology Today 23(6): 13–16. practice. Tourist Studies 1(1): 59–81. Cloke, P. & H. C. Perkins 1998: “Cracking the Fennell, D. 2003: Ecotourism (2nd edition). Lon- canyon with the awesome foursome”: rep- don & New York: Routledge. resentations of adventure tourism in New Zealand. Environment and Planning D: Society Franklin A. 2003: Tourism. An Introduction. Lon- and Space 16: 185–218. don, Thousand Oaks & New Delhi: Sage.

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14 Landabréfið 25, 2011 ‘Praying the Keeills’. Rhythm, meaning and experience on pilgrimage journeys in the Isle of Man Avril Maddrell*

ABSTRACT This paper explores the concept of ‘the travelling being’ through the lens of pilgrimage walks in the Isle of Man in the British Isles. Focusing on pilgrimage offers a particular spiritually-inflected perspective on the experience of travel and associated meaning-making. The pilgrimage walks studied centre on the sites of small sixth to twelfth century chapels, known as keeills, which are scattered across the Manx landscape, and provide a focus for ecumenical reflection and celebration of Celtic Christian heritage. Participants’ experience of two different forms of pilgrimage walks are analysed using qualitative techniques, with reference to embodied and affective experience, mobilities, rhythm, meaning-making and belief. While all participants appreciated the experiences of walking in the landscape, companionship, heritage expertise, and time-space for reflection, individual sense of ‘journey’ and experience, including a sense of the onward journey or what was ‘taken home’, was deeply inflected by the presence or absence of belief. Pilgrimage narratives offer insight to the meanings ascribed to and derived from the experience of spiritually inflected mobilities and rhythms, as well as the arrhythmia pilgrimage can represent relative to secular worldviews, and the arrhythmia non-believers may experience and negotiate when participating in pilgrimage walks.

Keywords: keeills, walking, rhythm, pilgrimage, journey

ÁGRIP Beðið við bænhústóftir: Taktur, merking og upplifun í pílagrímsferðum á Mön Í þessari grein er kannað hvað það þýðir að ‘vera á ferðalagi’ með því að skoða pílagrímagöngur um eyna Mön á Bretlandseyjum. Með því að beina athyglinni að pílagrímsferðum fæst sértæk trúarleg sýn á ferðareynslu og merkingu ferðalagsins. Göngurnar á Mön snúast um rústir af litlum bænhúsum sem voru reist á 6. til 12. öld og ganga nafninu keeills. Þau finnast á víð og dreif um eyjuna og bjóða upp á trúarlega íhugun og lofgjörð til arfleifðar keltneskrar kristni. Eigindlegum rannsóknaraðferðum var beitt til að greina upplifanir þátttakenda í tvenns konar pílagrímagöngum með tilliti til hvaða áhrif þær hefðu á fólk og tilfinningar þess, og hvaða hlut hreyfing, taktur, merking og trúarleg afstaða ætti í slíkum upplifunum. Þátttakendurnir nutu þess að ganga um landslagið, nutu félagsskaparins, menningararfsins og þess að hafa tíma og rúm til að hugsa, en upplifanir af ferðinni sjálfri og þau áhrif sem fólk tók með sér heim voru ákaflega lituð af trú eða efa þátttakendanna. Sögur úr pílagrímsferðum gefa innsýn inn í þá merkingu sem gefin er slíkum ferðum, sem eru af trúarlegum rótum runnar, og þá upplifun sem fæst af því að taka þátt í þeim. Einnig má lesa úr þeim sitthvað um hinn truflandi takt sem þátttaka í pílagrímsgöngum kallar fram hjá þeim sem ekki trúa. Lykilorð: Bænhús, göngur, taktur, pílagrímsferðir, ferðalag

Introduction: Pilgrimage belief is not a prerequisite for completing a walks as an embodied pilgrimage (Eade and Sallnow 1992; Cole- practice and experience man and Eade 2004; Morinis 1992). Equally, While a pilgrimage might be described for faith adherents, one’ s whole life might loosely as a journey to what is considered be understood as a ‘sacred journey’ (Dyas to be a sacred place and/or with a sacred 2004) and while pilgrimage in the Western intention, as will be discussed below, faith Christian tradition is often represented by

* Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of the West of England, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY, UK. Email: [email protected]

Landabréfið 25, 2011 15 the demands and challenges of the outer reductive, each step (like each breath) takes physical journey, it is the simultaneous us closer to death. entwined inner intellectual, emotional and Movement can be highly significant, spiritual journey which is considered the whether as part of quotidian ritual or more significant (Dyas 2004). Alain de practice or extraordinary event or jour- Botton (2003) famously notes in The Art ney, significance being attributed through of Travel, most travellers expect travel to the ascription of meaning. “Movement is change them, without realising they have rarely just movement; it carries with it the brought ‘themselves’, with all their usual burden of meaning ...” (Cresswell 2006, 6) emotional baggage, attitudes and values, and where movement contributes to this with them. Reflective and reflexive travel- meaningful shaping of social time and space lers, including pilgrims, see their journeys as it is described as mobility (Cresswell 2006); an opportunity to shed or transform some mobilities being experienced through bod- of the baggage which constitutes the self. ies and senses, inflected by place, practice, Furthermore, for pilgrims, the inner jour- belief, emotion and affect, but also by the ney should continue beyond the end point constraints and agencies afforded by socio- destination (typically a shrine) and even the economic, cultural and political context, as return home. Indeed, life beyond the pil- well as physical capacities. Thus any study grimage and knowledge taken home to one’s of movement and rhythm needs to be sensi- community was at the heart of the ideal of tive to context and aware that rhythms can medieval as well as present day pilgrimage follow the beat of conformity or alterity: (Dyas 2004). In addition to pilgrimage- While everyday rhythms speak of normed, based narratives and knowledge, what was possibly regulated, activities, these are “al- ‘taken home’ may have included souvenirs ways only ever partial and susceptible to dis- of travel and objects deemed sacred by ordering by counter rhythms and arrhyth- dint of their proximity to what was ‘holy’, mia” (Edensor 2010, 2). Cresswell (2006, but ultimately the pilgrim as travelling be- 6-7) has argued that within the study of ing aspires to develop or change spiritually mobilities “[i]t is the issue of meaning that – and hence in their practice – as a result remains absent from accounts of mobilities of their travel. in general, and because it remains absent, For most of us, movement and travel important connections are not made”. The are everyday activities, often so taken for pilgrimage accounts explored here provide granted by the able-bodied that they only insight to the ways in which this particular become apparent when they require extra form of mobility is practised and ascribed effort or cost or are hampered in some way. meaning, as well as ways in which partici- Movement is at the heart of most people’s pants derive meaning through their practice experience of living, and this is extrapo- and experience, in this case, specifically the lated by Ingold and Vergunst (2008, 2) to experience of walking – and praying. the act of walking: “Walking is not just Walking is a particular form of mobility, what a body does; it is what a body is”. We with its own rhythm, which can be individ- can critique this mobility-centric view of ual or collective. Although runners, horse the world while recognising that everyday riders or motorcyclists would challenge any movements do have their own ontology, sense of a walker’s monopoly of a fusion linking past and present, in Ingold and between body, mind and wider surround- Vergunst’s (2008) terms, each of our steps ings through motion, Ingold (2004) argues is part of our life course, indeed, at its most that, with reflexivity, walking can synthesise

16 Landabréfið 25, 2011 locomotion and cognition. Rebecca Solnit rhythm of sea tides, the flows of com- (2002) has described this process as ‘The muting traffic, or night and day; or those mind at three miles an hour’: “Exploring the of seasonal shifts or annual events, land- world is one of the best ways of exploring scapes are inescapably shaped by rhythms the mind, and walking travels both terrains” (Jones 2010). There is a constant ongoing (Solnit 2002, 13) – this is clearly pertinent confluence of landscape and rhythm, of to the motivations and experiences of par- which regular pilgrimage is a part; and in ticipants on pilgrimage walks. turn religious life and practice are often Given that pilgrimage studies have grounded in the rhythms of Sabbaths, tended to oscillate between a focus on holy days and patterns of observance. Thus places with fixed shrines or the mobilities both landscape and rhythm can be seen to of pilgrims, the ability of rhythmanalysis mediate between static reified notions of “to mediate between overdrawn, static rei- place and the dynamic flows of mobilities, fications of place [and] hyperbolic accounts including those places and mobilities expe- about spaces of flows” (Edensor 2010, 18) rienced through and shaped by pilgrimage. reflects the potential for reciprocal insights Equally, pilgrims’ accounts of their journey between pilgrimage studies and rhythmanal- offer a rich opportunity for the exploration ysis. Within analysis of walking and rhythm, of the rhythms, arrhythmia, meanings and purposive walking is frequently represented emotions in pilgrimage narratives, offering as constant, rapid, task-destination focused, insight to the meanings of spiritually in- in contrast to more discursive walking, flected mobilities and rhythms, a perspective however, in reality, purposive, discursive given little attention within wider studies of and conceptual/critical walking can all be mobilities and rhythms to date. combined in a single walk (Edensor 2010, 6) The next section outlines the significance – and pilgrimage, at its most reflexive, can of pilgrimage sites as visitor destinations, be argued to exemplify this combination followed by an outline of the advent of re- par excellence. However, this walking and cent pilgrimage walks in the Isle of Man and rhythm cannot be separated from the con- detailed analysis of participant accounts, text where they take place: the landscape, with particular reference to outer physical rural or urban. As Wylie (2007) summarises, and inner spiritual/ reflective journey, em- landscape is so much more than a material bodied experience, reading the landscape as topography or a view, any perspective of life metaphor, as spiritual agent, lifecycle, landscape inevitably combines its material- rhythm and arrhythmia. ity and the socialised perception of that ma- teriality; “landscape is not only something Pilgrimage: destination, we see, it is also a way of seeing things” journey and visitors (Wylie 2007, 7); furthermore, it is a site of Faith-inspired travel is “one of the most inhabitation, life, action, practice, rhythm. significant types of tourism in the world In pilgrimage walks, as with other forms today by volume and prevalence” (Timo- of embodied experience of landscape, the thy and Olsen 2006, 276) and pilgrimage pilgrim encounters the landscape visually is an important constituent of that arena: and materially, engaging with it kinetically, “contemporary pilgrimages draw together sensually and imaginatively, both seeing and the largest regular assemblages on earth” becoming part of the picture, literally and (Morinis 1992, 1). Religious pilgrimage has metaphorically marking and being marked been experiencing what Justine Digance by it. Whether it is through the diurnal (2003, 143) describes as “a marked resur-

Landabréfið 25, 2011 17 gence” around the globe in the last few This has been described in theological terms decades, with numbers increasing by twenty as a “quite remarkable” (Stausberg 2011, 61) times in post war years (Stausberg 2011) and promotion of pilgrimage by the Lutheran European pilgrimage centres such as Fatima state church to sites of pre-Reformation (Portugal), Santiago (Spain) and Lourdes pilgrimage, notably Nidaros Cathedral in (France) all attracting between 4-5 million Trondheim, one of the most important pre- visitors per year, making them “among the Reformation pilgrimage sites in Europe. Af- most powerful travel destinations of their ter 40 years of visits by Swedish pilgrims, in respective countries” (Stausberg 2011, 57). the 1990s the church of Norway formally In Paris, the cathedrals of Sacré Cœur and undertook to promote Nidaros, working Notre Dame attracted 6 million and 13.5 with local government, the tourism sector million visitors per annum respectively in and local history associations, resulting in a the 1990s (Shackley 2001); but on a global number of pilgrimage routes e.g. from Oslo scale these numbers are dwarfed by those to Nidaros. In popular discourse, the new visiting pilgrimage sites in India and Japan routes are framed in terms of searching for (Stausberg 2011). Defining religious tour- the religious roots of personal and national ists as distinct from ‘regular’ tourism can be identities, as an exploration not only of the fraught, indeed distinctions between tour- outer, but also of ‘inner landscapes’, part of ist and pilgrim have attracted much debate individuals’ “biographical project” (Staus- (see for example Turner and Turner 1978; berg 2011, 62). Morinis 1992; Coleman and Eade 2004; As Stausberg (2011, 59) notes, “[n]ew Dyas 2004), but by comparison, there has pilgrimages and pilgrimage centres keep on been very limited engagement with and emerging” and my focus here is on the re- understanding of the “actual interface cent development of a small scale Christian between heritage, religion and tourism” pilgrimage in the Isle of Man, located in the (Stausberg 2011, 11). I would add landscape centre of the British Isles in the Irish Sea. to that list: analysis of pilgrimage practices Pilgrimage walks on the Isle of Man can large and small has much to contribute to be seen as tapping the spiritual aspects of understanding the interface of landscape, the island’s landscape and cultural heritage heritage, religion and tourism/travel. (which sit at the heart of the Island’s current Within Western Christian denomina- niche tourist offering). While, to date, these tions, pilgrimage has largely been a Roman walks are dominated by residents, they have Catholic or Anglo-Catholic practice, indeed, attracted a modest number of participants Protestant pilgrimage has been described as from the UK, Ireland and North America, an “apparent oxymoron” (Coleman 2004, so have the potential for attracting visitors, 45), given post-Reformation opposition to who, regardless of self-definition, might be pilgrimage practices which were seen as the- described as ‘tourists’ for the purposes of ologically redundant and widely corrupted. economic accounting. Yet, increasing participation in pilgrimage by Protestant Christians has been a signifi- Praying the Keeills: cant part of the wider growth of contem- pilgrimage walks in the porary pilgrimage in Europe, both in terms Isle of Man of numbers and destinations. These include The Isle of Man’s faithscape has been domi- a growing number travelling the Camino de nated by Protestant Christianity since the Santiago, but also those revived in Lutheran seventeenth century, but in recent years it countries such as St Olav’s Way in Norway. has developed a series of pilgrimage walks,

18 Landabréfið 25, 2011 an activity more typically associated with the initiative, but quickly became ecumenical, non-Protestant churches and with groups led by a voluntary group of clergy and la- from the Island travelling elsewhere. The ity. It centres on a week of walks to, and focus of emerging pilgrimage practice is on worship at, the keeills during May, and has the remains of the tiny sixth to twelfth cen- been held annually since 2006. From the tury chapels known as keeills, of which there outset the programme was designed to ac- are over 200 archaeological remains identi- commodate all ages and mobilities, intend- fied across the island, with about 35 having ing to include all who were willing to “go identifiable foundations and footings (See on a journey” (Interview, Bishop Graeme figure 1). A few of these structures have Knowles 2007). Praying The Keeills might been used for occasional worship, e.g. an be seen as a ‘post-modern’ take on pil- annual outdoor Roman Catholic Eucharist, grimage. It is firmly grounded in the core informal services by Protestant churches, shared beliefs and practices of participating and visits by those interested in Celtic or denominations and located in a distinctive alternative spirituality, but have come to locale, which is linked historically and in greater attention within the churches and the present day to wider regional/ global non church-going population through an movements, but it is deliberately fluid and event called ‘Praying the Keeills’, which informal, with each day’s walk and worship sought to draw on the keeills as a ‘spiritual freestanding; it welcomes all, focuses on in- resource’. Praying the Keeills (PTK; often dividual reflection and experience, and does referred to more informally as ‘Keeills not require prior or complete commitment Week’) grew out of a bishop-led Anglican to the whole programme. It attracts mem-

Figure 1 Keeill foundations at Llag ny Killey (photo: Avril Maddrell).

Landabréfið 25, 2011 19 bers of different churches and participants and church, so in many ways this research who are not affiliated to a church or any was part of my own pattern of return and religious institution. Although it attracts connection to ‘home’. visitors from outside the island, it is pri- marily run by locals for locals, and its eight Moving and being moved: pilgrimage day published programme allows people walks in the IOM to ‘drop-in’ or ‘opt-out’, reflecting inter- Pilgrimage journeys can be pursued in est, other commitments and the weather, isolation, but are more typically a collective meaning that numbers attending on any undertaking. This collectivity can be expe- given day might vary between 20 and 100. rienced through the shared experience of In this paper I am drawing on data from walking: PTK participants in May 2010 and 2011, [W]alking is a profoundly social activity: that as well as from the related June 2010 Isle in their timings, rhythms and inflections, the of Man pilgrimage holiday, which incor- feet respond as much as does the voice to porated a number of keeills (note how the presence and activity of others. Social ‘pilgrimage holiday’ conflates ‘pilgrim’ and relations are not enacted in situ but are paced ‘tourist’). The latter was organised by the out along the ground” (Ingold and Vergunst 2008, 1), not-for-profit Christian holiday company Journeying, with one of the two leaders but for pilgrims there is more than this. drawn from the PTK organising commit- A central aspect of pilgrims’ social rela- tee. Data collected was largely qualitative tions is that of shared belief and purpose, and included in-depth interviews with with the rhythms of any pilgrimage being organisers/leaders, 40 research postcard shaped by the worship or ritual as much responses1, six written/photo diaries, three as the demands of the topography, e.g. the each from PTK and the Journeying pilgrim- pilgrimage punctuated by monastic offices age walk; I also draw on my own participant or the Muslim call to prayer. The sense of observation diary. It merits note that two equality before God and the liminoid quali- thirds of PTK participants were female and ties of the pilgrimage time-space led Turner this was reflected in the research postcards and Turner (1978), based on an extensive returned and volunteer photo-diarists. study of Lourdes, to describe the particular However, in addition to the leaders, the social relations of pilgrim groups as commu- Journeying holiday group was made up of nitas, whereby individuals are liberated from three women, all of whom volunteered to normal social status and responsibilities to keep photo-diaries, and two men, who com- create new bonds and a collective sense of pleted research postcards at the end of the belonging, as well as providing a map for week; the latter inevitably provided much the reform of post-pilgrimage society (Eade less detailed accounts of their experience, 2000). In practice, normative constraints are relative to the women’s photos and diaries. usually experienced and communitas as both For myself, I grew up on the Isle of Man, free association and long-term driving force and was able to draw on my knowledge of has been critiqued as romantic, but despite its landscape, as well as networks of family this, the concept has had a “powerful im-

1 Unable to survey participants, research postcards were distributed to PTK participants on three days in 2010 and 2011; it asked for some brief indication of demographics and posed a key research question for the wider project: “What has been your experience of ‘Praying the Keeills events and has landscape played a part in that experience?” Postcards were stamped, addressed and completed on a voluntary basis.

20 Landabréfið 25, 2011 pact” on pilgrimage studies (Eade 2000, xx), we walk the same path, for each one the experience is perhaps because it nonetheless captures unique’ (Journeying walk Photo diary, Mary, Roman something of the shared experience and Catholic, 2010). aspirations of pilgrimage. For example, walk leaders, for whom The two following short extracts from PTK week was the culmination of months walkers’ postcard responses illustrate a of preparation and planning, explained number of significant elements of these that when it was their turn to lead, they pilgrimage walks: firstly, both the visual were unable to focus fully on their own aesthetics and challenges of the material experience when preoccupied with the the landscape; secondly, the significance of practicalities and responsibilities of the co-presence with others, as sources of so- walk and worship. Within the participants cial interaction, or knowledge and practice; there was a core group who attended each and thirdly, a sense of spiritual experience/ day’s walk and worship, while others only proximity to the Divine: participated one or two days, or could only I have felt close to God as we have worshipped at attend evening or weekend events outside the keeills and walked together in this beautiful normal working hours; some attended island .... (PTK Postcard 3, 2010, female, 46–55, with partners or as part of a group (e.g. Methodist). the Minister’s Fellowship), others attended The whole experience was a very moving and spiritual on their own; some were deeply embedded one. We met wonderful people, went to spectacular in the dense social networks of the Island, places and learnt much in the process... (PTK Postcard others knew few if any of their fellow walk- 3, 2011, male, 36–45, Methodist). ers at the outset of the day. This variety and fluidity contrasted with the Journeying Others referred to the pleasure in visiting holiday group, who, with the exception of new places, or seeing familiar places afresh, one leader, were all visitors to the island, and as well as the opportunity to “take time out” undertook an ongoing and broadly linear and to journey covering the length of the island escape the hustle and bustle of life and remind ourselves over seven days, lodging, cooking and eat- of the marvellous works of God’s Creation... (PTK ing together along the way, allowing time Postcard 4 2010, female, 26–35, Methodist). and space for more sustained embodied movement, social interaction and spiritual Interestingly, these comments were all engagement. That is, the sort of sustained reported by residents of the Island, peo- journey and community more typically as- ple who had not travelled far in terms of sociated with pilgrimage. Allowing for these distance, but who, nonetheless, had been differences, the following discussion out- ‘moved’ by their experience. lines and analyses some of the shared and While the outward aspects of pilgrimage varying experiences, reflections, meanings walks were shared by participants, inevitably, and rhythms recorded by those on pilgrim- as with any group of travellers, individual age walks in the Isle of Man. experiences differed, reflecting each partici- pant’s own contexts and positionalities. As Lifecycle, past and present one Journeying diarist noted: Numerous walkers reported attending Praying the Keeills each year, as part of an Photo 33. Looking back to start of path to Eary Cushlin ... you need to push upward (toil) to see the ongoing spiritual praxis: view from the top (blessing) ... The pilgrim’s path ... This is the third year I’ve attended. I find it very we continue to journey, in groups or alone and although inspiring. The company on the walk is great and the

Landabréfið 25, 2011 21 worship at the keeills is fantastic (PTK Postcard 2, Several respondents linked their experi- 2010, male, 46–55, Church of England). ence of the pilgrimage walks to their memo- For one couple, participation in Keeills ries of their earlier lives/selves, including Week has become part of a much-antici- three who made reference to re-living or pated annual cycle of return to the Island, remembering aspects of childhood expe- which speaks of community, communitas, rience. Two former school friends, now landscape and heritage: retired and living in England, gave very dif- ferent perspectives on change in their lives. We look forward to coming back to the Isle of Man The first combined familiarity with the land every spring for the opportunity to meet with old due to family connection, with the novelty friends and new acquaintances to walk the beautiful of visiting the keeill free from the obliga- countryside and pray together in the places that were holy to our Celtic forbears so many years ago ... How tions, responsibilities – and charges – of her wonderful to be in the countryside with all of the previous career as a school teacher: other pilgrims (PTK Photo Diary, Doug, 66–75, As [X] is my mother’s family farm I am very familiar Methodist, 2010). with the territory and as a teacher 20 years ago at This quote also hints at a common observa- a Primary School nearby, it was a relief to visit the tion made by many of the pilgrims, that of site without hoards of kids! (PTK Postcard 9, 2010, female, 66–75, Church of England). continuity with, or following in, the foot- steps and prayers of those who built and For her friend it was a poignant reminder of worshipped at the keeills – as Rebecca Solnit her youth on the Island, as well as an aware- (2002, 1) notes: “roads [and footpaths] are a ness of how her new-found faith gave her a record of those who have gone before”. different perspective and sense of personal change and development. As a historian, I ponder the sense of continuity of standing with others in a place where generations Quite a personal experience as I was revisiting places of people have stood for centuries past. They’re not seen for many years. Also my companions were unknowable now, except for ‘Juan the priest’, but it’s friends from that period, so it was quite nostalgic. as close as we can get. In the case of Saturday, we At that time I was not a Christian, so the new visits were seeing the hills around us as the earliest people had an added dimension, a sense of having grown at the keeill saw them. (PTK Postcard 26, 2010, personally. (PTK Postcard 16, 2010, female, 66–75, female, 66–75, Church of England [by affiliation Evangelical). but non-believing]). Thus, the pilgrimage walks can be identified ‘[photo] Time for prayer and reflection at Maughold keeill site, and remember all those Christians who have as part of an annual calendar, individual prayed and worshipped here before us and those who life cycle, and the longer ebbs and flows of will come in the future’ (PTK Photo Diary, 2010 faith practice and place-temporality across Alison, 26–35, Methodist). history. It was a profound experience to touch with Christians from centuries ago and with Christians of a variety of Embodied journey and journey as denominations from the Island and afar as we prayed metaphor together (PTK Postcard 1, 2010, female, 66–75, [photo] Footpath – the path of life we are all Roman Catholic). travelling’ (Adele, Journeying walk Photo diary The sense of the old monks wandering about these 2010, Quaker) (figure 2) British Isles is so very real to me and it makes my experience heightened (PTK Postcard 7, male, 66–75, [Photo 26 grass labyrinth outside Peel cathedral; Methodist). labyrinths have long been used as a simulacrum for

22 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Figure 2 Footpath as metaphor for life’s journey (Photo: Avril Maddrell).

pilgrimage] ‘labyrinth ... life/ journeys take many desert and water recurred in photographs twists and turns.’ (Journeying walk Photo diary and commentaries, frequently linked to 2010, Mary, 56–64, Roman Catholic) Biblical references or allusions. Two of the Having been invited simply to photograph three noted their need for both the solitude and make note of those things which were and contemplation of the ‘desert’ and the ‘significant or meaningful’ on their journey, reviving refreshment of ‘water’: perhaps it was inevitable that, given the na- ture, duration and ‘billing’ of the Journeying I chose both [sand and water] as I felt that they are both important elements in our Christian journeys .... pilgrimage walk, each of the three diarists [photo 9] Flowing stream – many Biblical references on this walk recorded reflections on the – ‘the water of life’, ‘by the rivers of Babylon’ nature of journeying and lessons learned (Journeying walk Photo diary 2010, Adele, 66-75, from their pilgrimage walk. Their informal Quaker). agape service on Sunday evening also in- vited reflection on the metaphors of sand For one diarist on the Journeying walk (desert) and water experiences, depending who had never participated in a pilgrimage on individuals’ needs, and these themes of walk before, there was a strong sense of

Landabréfið 25, 2011 23 doing something new, being at the begin- dwell with us.’(Journeying walk Photo diary 2010, ning of something and being curious as to Kate, 46–55, Evangelical Baptist) how it would unfold. For her this was not a The idea of journey was further storied familiar part of her faith-practice, but as the through her photo diary, especially her first following extract illustrates, her sense of life and last photos which acted as ‘bookends’ as walking with God was deeply engrained to frame her experience, thereby contrast- as was her practice of reflexivity. ing her new boots and equipment at the Beginnings – meeting the group for the first time beginning of the journey with her worn – from N,E, S & West, Newcastle, London, boots and artefacts collected along the way, Hampshire, Ireland and Canada – for a common symbolic of both her embodied material purpose - pilgrimage on the Isle of Man. journey and the intertwined inner spiritual experience of that journey in and through Eating together – discussing the notion of pilgrimage the landscape (see figure 3): ... what will our pilgrimage be like? Will it have purpose? [Photo 1] ‘Boots, socks, hat, bag – clean, unused, untried on this journey ... I would like to be inwardly refreshed on this walking week. To have time & opportunity to draw closer [Final photo] Dirty boots and socks to God – to walk with Jesus – to be a companion Walking stick, cut from holly bush in Laxey [near along the way. beginning of journey] Worshipping together. We invited God to come to us, Favourite stone from Laxey beach Shell from to speak to us through His word, the Bible, and to Fleshwick beach. [near end of journey] (ibid.)

Figure 3 Kate’s rucksack, hat, boots etc. at the beginning and end of the Journeying pilgrimage walk. (Photo: courtesy of Kate).

24 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Note the shell and staff, long emblematic [after prayers on top of the mountain and 15 minutes of pilgrimage, as well as the slate stone with silent walking] I enjoyed that so much I decided I quartz veining in the shape of a cross, a wanted to spend the whole of today’s hike in silence metonym for Christ and salvation. to better appreciate my surroundings. It was magical. Embodied experience of the landscape I walked a little apart from the others lost in my own was commonly read hermeneutically, as awareness of things like the sound of the skylarks high above and the bleating of sheep and lambs all metaphor for life, including spiritual life. around. The walking was lovely too [photo] over As Solnit notes, pilgrimage “takes hold of springy heather and [bilberry] bushes and clumps of that image and makes it concrete, acts it grass, not too steep and with terrific views to Snaefel out with the body and the imagination in a and other hills and mountains and valleys. world whose geography has been spiritual- ised” (Solnit 2002, 50). For a while I did Hara walking, balancing my pole in both hands and concentrating on my belly and legs. The changing landscape, rough paths, moorland, Memories of Eckhart House. I was aware of being cliff top, meadows, valleys helped to shape my apart from the group, while still a member – it felt a understanding of the journey in my life in the last bit lonely at times, but the silence allowed me to be one 18 months... (Journeying Postcard 1, 2010, male, with nature and I was glad not to listen to or take part 46–55, Church of England). in what was often very banal chatter .... [the next day] Climbing higher and higher reminded me of reading I took a lot of photos today. I didn’t feel particularly Hind’s Feet on High Places by Hannah? [Hurnard] spiritual or in touch with nature like I did yesterday, about the Christian life and overcoming obstacles, or but I enjoyed the day very much.... (Journeying walk Dante’s Divine Comedy – we keep climbing out of Photo diary 2010, Adele, Quaker, 66–75) the mud and mire to reach the glorious summit – but As Solnit notes, to return to the earth (Journeying walk Photo diary 2010, Adele, 66–75, Quaker). the rhythm of walking generates a kind of [Photo 4] Stile – journeys/ life have narrow places, rhythm of thinking, and the passage through barriers to be negotiated ... [hard going] Our walk a landscape echoes or simulates the passage was mainly downhill – hard going on rough ground or through a series of thoughts. This creates a stony path – it felt at times like a desert experience an odd consonance between internal and ... We had anticipated reaching the Millennium external passage, one that suggests the mind (Monks’) Walk and when we reached it it was a is also a landscape of sorts and that walking disappointment because it was so difficult. is one way to traverse it (Solnit 2002, 5–6). Sometimes life is like this. Think of Brown wanting If ‘flow’ is “typified by alternating to be Prime Minister for so long – and then when he self-consciousness and unreflexive states” finally achieved it – he seemed to find it a struggle. (Edensor 2010, 14), then Adele’s account (Journeying walk Photo diary 2010, Kate, 45–56, above surely epitomises ‘flow’, with its Evangelical Baptist). heightened sense of ‘mindfulness’ of While the informal programme for each present experience, sensitivity to the sur- day’s Journeying walk included times of rounding environment, awareness of collective worship and individual prayer links between past and present practice, and contemplation, individuals took op- alternating with less intense experiences. portunities to enhance their experience As the above illustrates, Adele also gave and focus (as was also observed during the the most eloquent account of the rhythms PTK walks). One diarist recorded how she of emotion and affect in her life, including opted for protracted silence one day, the grief, corporeal pleasure, spiritual fulfilment separation facilitating greater awareness of and reliving of childhood experiences, il- surroundings and self: lustrating how emotion is associated with

Landabréfið 25, 2011 25 and triggered by particular places and walk Photo diary2010, Kate, 45-56, Evangelical evocations (Davidson et al 2005; Maddrell Baptist) 2009a; 2009b) and how “Motion and emo- The photo, to be used as a frequently seen tion ... are kinaesthetically intertwined” screensaver on her computer, was to act (Sheller 2004, 221): not merely as a mnemonic, a prompt to memory, but also a prompt to action – or [anniversary of deceased mother’s birthday] A very emotional moment looking at a grave of several rather to reduced action and greater spiritual members of a family up at the top beside a tower engagement. Her photographs were also built by the same man [Corrin’s Tower] ... discursively framed as a prompt to return. Many rhythms and journeys are circular and [Photo 28] Mourne Mountains – looking across cyclical rather than linear, and engagement at my own country – a warm happy feeling. Also in and through places often prompt revisit- mountains represent endurance... ing those places rather than a crossing off Great buzz walking today; first up Cronk [ny Arrey the list and moving on. Laa] mountain. I love the buzz I get from climbing mountains, both the physical and the spiritual .... Photograph looking backwards – covered our journey yesterday Peel to Eary Cushlin – included [upper deck bus journey back to Douglas] Like being the house. a child again sitting on top and admiring the wonderful A lovely shot – to remember the place – Niarbyl views ... (Journeying walk Photo diary 2010, Adele, – where I would like to return and spend time to Quaker, 66–75). explore the beach and coast – opportunity to do all Transformation is at the heart of Chris- the possible walks from Eary Cushlin’ tian theology, and while less explicit than (Journeying walk Photo diary 2010, Kate, 45–56, the penitential pilgrimages of the medieval Evangelical Baptist) period, the principle of change is implicit in As Ingold and Vergunst (2008, 17) point contemporary Christian pilgrimage and part out, “the long walk of life is not a unidi- of the ongoing rhythm of Christian faith rectional progress from start to finish”, and and practice. For some this may centre on other visitors shared the desire to return to physical, mental or emotional healing, but the Island and continue their praxis: for many believers it focuses on a closer relationship with God. One Journeying dia- Now I know the location of some keeills, on future rist was particularly sensitive to what she visits I will be able to add my prayers to those of wanted to ‘take home’ from her pilgrimage previous ages.’ (PTK Postcard 16, 2010, female, 66–75, Evangelical) experience. In addition to collecting arte- facts along the way, recording Celtic pat- Not surprisingly, residents whose lives terns to reproduce in quilting, and being are embedded in the locality made less ref- keen to keep a copy of her diary completed erence to ‘return’, for them ‘seeing things for this research, she also had a clear sense anew’ was a more common response: of what she had gained spiritually through Appreciate details lost when you whizz by in a car her journey and that she wished to retain: (PTK postcard 15, 2011, male, 56–65,Church of I took a picture looking up the hill at the ‘mountain’, England). remembering the evening hymn: ‘I lift my eyes to the quiet hills at the end of a busy day’. The sort of Arrhythmia and disrupting dominant picture to use as a screensaver on my pc to bring the rhythms calm and quiet into the home and to remind me to Another aspect to the mobilities and slow down and take time out with God.’(Journeying rhythms flagged in the introductory dis-

26 Landabréfið 25, 2011 cussion is that of arrhythmia, and I would needs without commitment to organised like to make two points here in relation traditions...” (Reader 2007, 226). Praying to disrupted rhythms or being ‘out of the Keeills walks have attracted people step’. The first is to suggest that the very “who wouldn’t darken the door of church” undertaking of pilgrimage may be seen as (Interview Phil Craine 2010), and some of out of step with mainstream, largely secu- these participants’ experiences underscore larised Western society; furthermore while Lund’s (2008, 98) point with regard to the some contemporary pilgrimage practices San Sebastian Easter procession, might appear highly regulated and com- It is ... evident that although the movement mercialised, some can be seen as a counter performed in the procession is one in pace, rhythm or disruption to everyday life and rhythm and direction, particular narratives the dominant rhythms of capitalist society. still make themselves apparent through the While not wishing to romanticise these various ways in which people take part.” pilgrimage walks on the Isle of Man, and One PTK participant’s reflection illus- recognising that participants from off the trated the tension she felt between her island buy ferry or plane tickets and may sense of participation and separation and occupy rooms in guest houses, Praying the how this was, at least in part, reconciled Keeills is non-denominational and non- through her response to the Celtic prayers, commercial (and Journeying a not-for-profit which synthesised the dichotomy between company). The pilgrimage walks are led by her physical presence/ participation and her volunteers, printing overheads are funded ‘absence’ of belief: by donations and there is no commodifica- tion of the walks: no t-shirts or souvenirs I attend more for the keeills than for the praying. beyond the memories of experiences, worn In fact I feel something of a fraud during the prayer boots, a prayer sheet, shell or pebble picked sessions, but I am, I hope, respectful of the sincerity of the prayers offered.... Though I don’t, can’t, up along the way – and photos to encapsu- respond to the religious elements of the prayers, I often late that experience and one way to ‘take it respond to the sheer poetry of the words, especially home’. These walks could be marketed ag- the old Celtic prayers ... (Postcard 26, 2010, female, gressively and commoditised, but as yet the 66–75, Church of England [by affiliation but event remains grounded in voluntarism and non-believing]). gifting, and the Manx tourism authorities As Jiron (2010, 140) notes, appear reluctant to promote an explicitly religious event. Ironically the very lack of The body is sensitive to the rhythms lying denominational label, official status, or dedi- outside of it, the multiple and diverse cated funding, as well as reliance on a loose rhythms that are captured by the senses, and group of volunteers, could make the future also performs in accordance with the various of Praying the Keeills vulnerable. rhythms and situations it faces. Secondly, participant responses also il- For this and other respondents, their experi- lustrate a different sort of arrhythmia within ence is part of the whole, a welcomed pres- the community of participants, those who ence in the group, but they are walking to a share the external rhythm of the walk but different inner beat than those who walk in keep a different internal rhythm. It is widely faith. However, they may not be alone, just recognised that religious pilgrimages can at- as commentators have noted the permeable tract those who avoid or even reject institu- boundary between ‘pilgrim’ and ‘tourist’ in tionalised religion, “because of its capacity religious cultural centres or along pilgrimage to provide a way of dealing with individual routes, the same permeability and two-way

Landabréfið 25, 2011 27 slippage must be recognised in relation the inspirational landscape. The travelling to ‘believer’ and ‘non-believer’: for many, being on ecumenical pilgrimage walks in belief is better represented as a dynamic the Isle of Man has been shown to walk to continuum rather than a dichotomy with a number of different rhythms, resulting a fixed divide (Maddrell 2009a). Other from, and in, different meanings and experi- participants who identified themselves as ences. For both believers and non-believers, believers acknowledged experiencing chal- the aesthetics of landscape, time-space for lenges to their faith, e.g.: reflection, the value of good companions, The landscape definitely played a role in the atmosphere scholarship and food, were widely appreci- yesterday. We were surrounded by Manannan’s mist ated. For the faith pilgrim the sense of but our hill remained clear and still, and it felt as travelling towards or closer with God was though we alone had sunshine. A rock in the bay strong, as were the hermeneutics of the that kept disappearing with the waves, then appearing journey and landscape: again reminded me that faith may be lost to me at [Photo of keeill in St Maughold’s church yard] ‘... times but is always there. (PTK Postcard 9, 2010, foundations remain in spite of time passed, and the female, 66–75, Church of England). Lord enhances by scattering daisies (as I journey I Thus individual faith itself can be seen to must remember to look for the enhancements big and have its own ebbs and flows, with times of small).’ (Journeying walk Photo diary, Mary, Roman more and less secure faith interleaved. Catholic, 2010). In this Isle of Man case study, while some Conclusion reported finding the keeills themselves nu- The mobility turn within the social sciences minous ‘thin places’ where they experienced has been useful in re-examining the nature a particular sense of God’s presence, far of pilgrimage, particularly the outer physical more pilgrims reported drawing close to journey, as an embodied practice, walking God through the landscape, environment and rhythm, what Edensor (2010, 4) de- and worship. Pilgrimage, mobilities and scribes as rhythms “folded in and through rhythm analysis have much to offer each the permeable body”, and how these link other, but understanding the meaning-mak- to the inner spiritual/ emotional journey. ing in and through pilgrimage praxis, and Likewise, analysis of pilgrim accounts sheds the long term rhythms of thought, belief light on the way in which meaning is given and practice this may generate, require an to particular mobilities and practices. The understanding of the theology - or rejection role of movement and rhythm can cause of theology - which underpins it, as well the walker simultaneously to separate from as personal and social contexts. More such and still the claims of everyday life, while studies will provide a richer understanding ‘speeding up’ or energising the body. It of pilgrimage in different countries, faiths can facilitate the spatial and psychological and denominations, as well as new and chal- separation from everyday concerns and lenging perspectives on mobilities, rhythms occupations, which in turn make space for and their meanings. protracted fellowship and reflection. Several respondents/ interviewees referred to the Acknowledgements juxtaposition of movement (walking), co- I would like to thank the organisers of presence and opportunities for solitude, the Nature-Based Tourism conference in Reykjavik February 2011 for the opportunity accessing the relative quiet of rural/coastal to participate, and to thank the two anonymous landscapes and inner ‘stillness’, allowing referees for their constructive comments, also them to focus on the spiritual, as well as Gunnþóra Ólafsdóttir for her patient editorial

28 Landabréfið 25, 2011 support. The research discussed in this paper is Jiron, P. 2010: Repetition and difference: part of a wider project on Christian pilgrimage rhythms and mobile place-making in Santiago and landscape funded as by an AHRC/ESRC de Chile. In: T. Edensor (ed.) Geographies of Religion and Society programme grant (AH/ Rhythm. Nature, Place, Mobilities and Bodies. HOO9868/1). Farnham: Ashgate. Pp. 129–144. Lund, K. 2008: Listen to the sound of time: References walking with saints in an Andalucian village. de Botton, A. 2003: The Art of Travel. London: In: T. Ingold and J. L. Vergunst (eds.), Ways Penguin. of Walking. Ethnography and Practice on Foot. Bradley, I. 2009: Pilgrimage. A Spiritual and Cul- Farnham: Ashgate. Pp. 93–104. tural Journey. Oxford: Lion Hudson. Jones, O. 2010: ’The breath of the moon: the Bunyan, J. 1678–1684: The Pilgrim’s Progress From rhythmic and affective time-spaces of UK this World to That Which is to Come. London: tidesin. In: T. Edensor (ed.) Geographies of Eliot Stock. Rhythm. Nature, Place, Mobilities and Bodies, Farnham: Ashgate. Pp. 189–203. Coleman, S. 2004: From England’s Nazareth to Sweden’s Jerusalem. Movement, (virtual) Maddrell, A. 2009a: A place for grief and belief: landscapes and pilgrimage. In: S. Coleman and the Witness Cairn at the Isle of Whithorn, J. Eade (eds.), Reframing Pilgrimage. London: Galloway, Scotland. Social and Cultural Geogra- Routledge. Pp. 45–68. phy 10: 675–693. Coleman, S. & J. Eade 2004: Reframing Pilgrimage. Maddrell, A. 2009b: Mapping changing shades London: Routledge. of grief and consolation in the historic land- scape of St. Patrick’s Isle, Isle of Man. In: J. Colhill, C. 2006. A Pilgrim’s Guide to Iona Abbey. Davidson, L. Bondi, L. Cameron & M. Smith Glasgow: Wild Goose Publications. (eds.) Emotion, Place and Culture. Farnham: Ash- Cresswell, T. 2006: Place. A Short Introduction. gate. Pp. 35–55. Oxford: Blackwell. Morinis, A. (ed.) 1992: Sacred Journeys. The An- Davidson, J., L. Bondi & M. Smith (ed.) (2005) thropology of Pilgrimage. Westport: Greenwood Emotional Geographies. Aldershot: Ashgate. Press. Pp. 1–25. Digance, J. 2003: Pilgrimage at Contested sites. Reader, I. 2007: Pilgrimage growth in the mod- Annals of Tourism Research 30(1) 143–159. ern world: meanings and implications. Religion Dyas, D. 2004: Medieval patterns of pilgrim- 37: 210–29. age: a mirror for today? In: C. Bartholomew Reader, I. & T. Walter (eds.) 1993: Pilgrimage in & F. Hughes (eds.), Explorations in a Christian Popular Culture. London: Macmillan Press. . Aldershot: Ashgate. Pp. theology of Pilgrimage Shackley, M. 2001: Managing Sacred Sites. London: 92–109. Thomson. Eade, J. & M. J. Sallnow (eds.) 1991: Contesting Sheller, M. 2004: Automotive Emotions: Feel- the Sacred. London: Routledge. ing the Car. Theory, Culture and Society 2(4/5): Eade, J. 2000: Introduction. In: J. Eade & M. J. 221–242. Sallnow (eds.), Contesting the Sacred (2nd edition). Solnit, R. 2002: Wanderlust. A History of Walking. London: Routledge. Pp. ix–xxi. London: Verso. Edensor, T. 2010: Geographies of Rhythm. Nature, Stausberg, M. 2011: Religion and Tourism. London: Place, Mobilities and Bodies. Farnham: Ashgate. Routledge. Pp. 1–20. Timothy, D. J. & D. H. Olsen (eds.) 2006: Tour- Ingold, T. 2004: Culture on the ground. The ism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys. London: world perceived through the feet. Journal of Routledge. Material Culture 9(3): 215–340. Turner, V. & E. Turner 1978: Ingold, T. & J. L. Vergunst 2008: Introduction. Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. Oxford: Oxford University In: T. Ingold & J. L. Vergunst (eds.), Ways Press. of Walking. Ethnography and Practice on Foot. Farnham: Ashgate. Pp. 1–19. Wylie, J. 2007: Landscape. London: Routledge.

Landabréfið 25, 2011 29 30 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Multi-sensory tourism in the Great Bear Rainforest Bettina van Hoven*

ABSTRACT This article draws on images and stories generated during filming for a documentary about the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada. Specifically, I use material filmed during a trip with Spirit Bear Adventures, a First Nation-operated ecotourism venture. This journey provides rich material to rethink ‘knowing’ about the Great Bear Rainforest by reflecting on the varied experiences from the ‘sensescapes’ encountered. In this article, I discuss different, multi-sensory experiences and tourist performances in the context of hiking in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Keywords: Multi-sensory experiences, tourism, Great Bear Rainforest, First Nations, qualitative research

ÁGRIP Ferðamennska og fjölþætt skynjun í Great Bear Rainforest Þessi grein byggir á myndum og sögum sem urðu til við töku á heimildamynd um í Great Bear Rainforest í Bresku Kólumbíu í Kanada. Nánar tiltekið er efni sem fest var á filmu í ferð með Spirit Bear Adventures, vistvænni ferðaþjónustu frumbyggja, tekið til greiningar. Ferðalagið býður upp á ríkulegan efnivið til að endurhugsa hvað felst í að „þekkja“ Great Bear Rainforest, með því að velta fyrir sér hinum margvíslegu upplifunum sem fengust með skynjun á vettvangi. Í greininni fjalla ég um hina fjölþættu skynjun og athafnir ferðamanna sem eiga sér stað í gönguferðalagi um Great Bear Rainforest. Lykilorð: Fjölþætt skynjun, ferðamennska, Great Bear Rainforest, frumbyggjar Kanada, eigindlegar rannsóknir

Introduction This article emerged from the production on how the standpoints are practiced with of a video documentary on the Great Bear (and within) the landscape. Rainforest (van Hoven et al. 2009). Using During the production process, the the voices of some of the stakeholders, the forest was visited by myself and a part documentary explores different meanings of the production team carrying three and values assigned to the forest by these video and three photo cameras in order stakeholders. It utilizes a sequence and/or to collect data for the documentary. For combination of spoken word, differently a production team from the Netherlands, paced visuals, and music in order to relay key challenges in gathering data within the an emotional dimension of the issues forest were imposed by the remoteness of portrayed and engage the viewer more by the location, its limited accessibility, and offering these additional sensory experi- possible dangers resulting from venturing ences (e.g. when compared to a written, into grizzly territory without a guide. Since academic article). However, the standpoint the area is located within First Nations’ ter- is portrayed outside the landscape in ques- ritory, it was necessary to negotiate access tion (see also Daugstad 2008). In this article, either by seeking permission from one of the focus is not on such representations but the Band Councils or by participating in

* Faculty of Spatial Sciences, Department of Cultural Geography, PO Box 800, 9700AV Groningen, the Netherlands. Email: [email protected]

Landabréfið 25, 2011 31 activities organized by First Nations for article, I include hyperlinked video clips to a broader public. We chose the latter and provide more insights into the experiences joined the First Nations’ operated ecotour- of the group. ism venture Spirit Bear Adventures as tourists (see Spirit Bear Lodge n.d.). This proved Multi-sensory tourism to be a fortunate choice because it resulted Until recently, the visual dominated tourist in the desired visual material for the docu- experiences (Rojek and Urry 1997), neglect- mentary as well as providing an opportunity ing encounters through the other senses, to rethink ‘knowing’ about the Great Bear i.e. the olfactory, the auditory, the gustatory Rainforest by reflecting on the rich and and the tactile. Several authors have already varied experiences from the ‘sensescapes’1 pointed at the need to address tourism as a encountered. In this article, I seek to draw corporeal experience (Markwell 2001, Pan out multi-sensory experiences to explore and Ryan 2009). Underlying reasons for this the role and to some extent the interaction neglect include the emergence of mass tour- of all senses in co-constituting experiences ism which markets places and place experi- in the Great Bear Rainforest. In so doing, ences as spectacle (see for example, Ryan et multiple connections are created between al. 2000). This is particularly the case where different places, i.e. the self, the home, the the tourism experience is one from within a forest and perhaps even the world, as well as tour bus and where the visual sense is priori- different times (or rhythms), i.e. geological tised by providing an environment in which time, human time (the presence of First Na- the reach of other senses is reduced “to a tions in the past and now, our own presence) framed, horizontal visionscape” (Larsen as well as non-human time (that of plants 2001, 89). Larsen (2001, 89) refers to the and animals). Tourists hook up with and “protectionist sightseeing bus that func- may become aware of connections within tions as a mobile, transparent ‘iron bubble’ different networks in which the elements [...] which promises the tourist a risk-free, of the forest “recommend themselves […] glancing ‘voyage of voyeurism’”. Indeed, through a variety of characteristics, [draw- Dann and Jacobsen (2003, 20) noted that ing] the person down into their world surely the worst way to take in […] a place is and make for an understanding of their in an air-conditioned tour bus, cut off from concerns and a commitment to their care” the natural street odors in an encapsulated (Power 2005, 48). ‘sanitized, hygienic bubble’ where the only Before discussing multi-sensory expe- activity is visual - that of passively ‘looking riences in the Great Bear Rainforest, I down one’s nose’ at the Other through a provide a framework of reference for in- tinted window. terpreting and situating these experiences. In addition to the way in which tourism I then, briefly, describe the geography of has been perceived, the neglect of the body the Great Bear Rainforest and the organi- is symptomatic of, Clarke (2002, drawing sational context of the trip. Then I invite on Horkheimer and Adorno 1994), notes the reader to embark on a journey to and “civilization, the modern world, [which] into the forest. In the second half of the has slowly and methodically prohibited

1 The senses are “a kind of structuring of space and defining of place” (Rodaway 1994, 4). A number of authors replace the concept landscape, which prioritises the visual, with sensescape, in order to create room for the role of all senses in experiencing and knowing the environment (see references throughout this article).

32 Landabréfið 25, 2011 instinctual behaviour” and “touching, feel- sense, e.g. sound or taste. Feintuch (2004) ing, smelling [is] something unhomely, un- considers how Cape Breton’s fiddle music canny.” As a result, “the [human] body […] helped shape local identity, Gibson and as a vessel of consciousness, [has become] Connell (2007) discuss the role and meaning ontologically sealed off from the world it is of music in tourism in Memphis and, in a conscious of ” (Carolan 2009, 1). When the similar vein, Schofield (2009) explores Man- seal is ‘broken’, opportunities are created chester’s popular music as non-traditional for developing and experiencing a differ- heritage. These examples do not consider ent sense of being in the world. Authors ‘unspecific’ sounds of nature, i.e. the aural like Pan and Ryan (2009, 631) imply this (see Pan and Ryan 2009, 630). McCartney by stating that multisensory tourism is an (2002, 1), however, has argued that enrichment and stipulate that “the more interactive a tourist or traveller is with his environmental sounds hold an unusual place or her surroundings, the more the senses are in our imaginations. They make up the often unnoticed ambiences of our daily lives: they stimulated; that is, when a tourist decides are so much with us and surrounding us that to step out of the ‘comfort zone’, his/ her it takes a special effort to bring them into the senses are liberated; hence the travelling ex- foreground, and pay attention to them.3 perience is enriched”. In their article, which focused on travel accounts by journalists in This need for a special effort to foreground New Zealand, they differentiate the impact taken-for-granted sound might explain a fo- each of the different senses has on the ex- cus on more readily accessible sound such act nature of the tourism experience. Spe- as music. cifically, they mention olfactory experiences Taste is mostly addressed in the context “to be the most closely tied to memory, of food tourism but, interestingly, these [smell] links the past to the present to linger studies do not necessarily foreground the to inform the future through recall” (Pan sensory aspects of tourism (see, for exam- and Ryan 2009, 628). In their earlier study, ple, Sims 2009, Lin et al. 2011). A notable Dann and Jacobsen (2003, 4) explore ol- exception is the work by Everett (2008, factory experiences in greater depth. They 338) who explicitly aims to use food tour- quote Tuan, who already claimed in 1977, ism as “a conceptual vehicle with which to that “odours often lend character to places explore issues of multi-sensory experience, making them easier to identify and remem- embodied engagement and non-represent- ber” (Tuan 1977, 11) and remind us of an able knowledge generation”. Interestingly, expression coined by Porteous (1985, 359): she found that engagement with food some- ‘smellscape’2. times occurred in a ‘sanitized bubble’ which There are other studies, too, that high- prevented the engagement of other senses light the role of sensory experiences in to enhance the gustatory experience. In any representing and knowing place. In sensory case, Everett’s study focused on the con- tourism and in other disciplines, the focus sumption of meals. In exploring the Great has however tended to be on one particular Bear Rainforest, gustatory experiences do

2 The concept ‘smellscape’ “suggests that, like visual impressions, smells may be spatially ordered or place related” (Porteous 1985: 359). 3 McGookin et al. (2009) have proposed an interesting way of including urban sound in navigation systems by creating ‘audio bubbles’. For tourists who explore a city by way of ‘serendipitous wandering’, rather than by mapping out routes along tourist highlights using a map, this system helps users to combine their wandering with finding (multisensory) points of interest.

Landabréfið 25, 2011 33 not concern meals but ways of engaging stretching roughly from northern Vancou- more fully with the forest and thus gaining ver Island until the border of Alaska (see deeper knowledge. figure 1). It is the last and largest remain- In the case presented in this article, ing, intact temperate rainforest in the world mobility is an important factor in how (Prescott-Allen 2005), and represents one the forest is experienced, both in terms quarter of the world’s coastal temperate of when and how sensory experiences rainforest (Smith and Sterritt 2011). The are mobilized. Lewis (2000) appropriately Great Bear Rainforest is an exceptionally describes the sensation of movement as a diverse area, both culturally and biologically. ‘sixth sense’. Moving on foot is the main It includes “exceptional marshes, estuaries, mode of mobility for Spirit Bear Adventure hot springs, productive riparian plant asso- tourists. Edensor (2000a, 82) notes “walking ciations, ocean-spray zones, karst habitats, articulates a relationship between pedestrian and forests on recent postglacial volcanic and place, a relationship which is a complex landforms” (Prescott-Allen 2005, 2). The imbrication of the material organization area supports tremendous wildlife diversity and shape of the landscape, its symbolic with grizzly bears, black bears, six million meaning, and the ongoing sensual percep- migratory birds as well as endemic and tion of moving through space […] walking charismatic species, amongst which the also (re)produces and (re)interprets space ‘Raincoast wolves’ and the white Kermode and place”. Further, Edensor (2000a, 92), bear, and a multitude of unique botanical drawing on Wainwright (1969, 33), claims species (Smith and Sterritt 2011). In addi- that “there are certain rural spaces in which tion, the Great Bear Rainforest is home to walking is not fruitful”, and Wainwright’s over 2,500 salmon runs (i.e. salmon popula- quote specifies such spaces as forests for be- tions that return to a specific river over a ing confined, lacking living creatures and vi- particular time period) (Temple 2005). It sion ahead. The forest provides “significant, is important to note that the rich diversity contested and ambivalent affordances [that] in the Great Bear Rainforest includes rich constrain behaviour along certain possibili- human cultures as well as the area has been ties, connected to bodily capacities and lim- populated by 29 First Nations groups for its of the human organism” (Macnaghten over 10.000 years (Prescott-Allen 2005). and Urry 2000, 169). Yet, the case in this The abundance of ancient trees such article suggests what Crouch advocates that as cedar and spruce, growing to about precisely through walking (in its various 60 metres tall, makes B.C.’s rainforests an forms), spatialities are “developed in practice, important economic resource. However, ontologically, discursively made sense and timber harvesting has been done with little felt in an embodied way” (Crouch 2001, concern for ecological diversity, adopting 63, original emphasis). Through walking in clear cutting and retention logging as key the forest, the boundaries between “people, method. In 1997, environmentalists, First plants, animals and places [are not thought Nations and forest industry clashed in the of as] static, but instead as relational, ac- Great Bear Rainforest over destructive tive, dynamic, ongoing and fluid” (Waitt et logging practices (see CBC 1997). When al. 2009, 44). environmentalists targeted the international market, the forest industry saw their sales the Great Bear Rainforest figures dwindling and agreed to begin ne- The Great Bear Rainforest is situated along gotiations over the future management and the coast of British Columbia, Canada, protection of the area. Negotiations over

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Figure 1 Location of the Great Bear Rainforest and Klemtu (source: CRIG 2011). what should happen with the Great Bear ists, First Nations and various other Rainforest in terms of managing economy, stakeholders (among whom the tourism ecology and culture between the provincial industry) took over ten years4. and national government, environmental-

4 See also Smith and Sterritt (2011), Clapp (2004), and Hoberg et al. (2004) for more details on the process of negotiating agreements regarding the management of the Great Bear Rainforest. For discussion of issues pertaining to ecosystem based management see, for example, Howlett et al. (2009) or Price et al. (2009). Rossiter’s (2004) article additionally provides a useful historical geographical background on land and resource claims in the area and ‘geographical imaginations’ produced by environmental NGOs. These articles are important, too, because they also address the role of humans as a part of the Great Bear Rainforest’s wilderness. Last but not least, Dempsey (2010) examines the role of non- human actors, specifically grizzlies in (unevenly) shaping the agreements regarding the management and protection of the Great Bear Rainforest. It is important to note that, at the time of writing, there were still conflicts that remain unsettled and began to emerge. In addition to uncertainties about the exact implementation of EBM, hunting, aquaculture and ongoing logging, a key issue was the planned oil pipeline by Enbridge from Alberta through the Great Bear Rainforest with oil tankers travelling through and stopping in forest.

Landabréfið 25, 2011 35 Tourism with Spirit Bear by plane from Vancouver via Bella Bella to Adventures Klemtu, or by ferry from Port Hardy where The experiences discussed in this article Klemtu is a stop on the way to Prince Ru- were obtained during a four day trip facili- pert. To undertake this trip from the Neth- tated by a First Nations-operated ecotour- erlands costs approximately 4500 euros per ism venture called Spirit Bear Adventures. person (transportation and stay in Klemtu). Spirit Bear Adventures operates out of the It is therefore not a trip many people can or village Klemtu (see figure 2). Originally would consider. Nevertheless, Doug (Spirit conceived to provide walking tours for Bear Adventures guide) describes visitors people anchoring at Klemtu’s harbour in as “middle-class, outdoorsy people”. He 1996, Spirit Bear Adventures gradually estimates that about 60-70 people join the began to incorporate cultural and wildlife organized boat tours per year, and that 75 to tours by boat. In particular, the attention 80 percent come from Europe. Our group for the (white) Kermode bear (spirit bear) consisted of, apart from myself, two re- by the global media since the mid-1990s, search assistants (Annemieke and Annalies), accelerated developments in tourism. By my husband Olaf, our two-and-a-half-year- now, most people that come to Klemtu, old daughter Caitlin, Margot, a 67-year old come to see bears. The company does em- woman from Vancouver Island and Lucas, a phasize bear encounters in both image and journalist in his 30s from Vancouver. From word but it sees a wildlife experience as an Klemtu, there were two guides, Doug and integral part of a cultural experience and Vern, who accompanied the group, as well even a personal-spiritual journey. as Murray, who operated the boat. It must be noted that Klemtu is very Markwell (2001) argued that even though remote; it cannot be accessed by car. A few the advent of new technologies has enabled possible ways of accessing the village are tourists to access more and more diverse

Figure 2 Klemtu. See fig. 1 for the location of the village. (Photo: Bettina van Hoven)

36 Landabréfið 25, 2011 natural places, and even though promotion- sometimes more, sometimes less suited al material promises wildlife encounters, the for humans. These trails included walking tourism industry often provides a structured on uprooted plains, climbing over or under and controlled form of tourism encounter fallen trees and across rocks and boulders, with nature (e.g. through paths, boardwalks, moving through bear dens, shifting through boats etc). In so doing, the tourist is often shrubs (see figure 3) or overhanging, mossy separated from nature/wildlife. The Great branches, and wading and sliding through Bear Rainforest is, I would argue, what mud and rivers5. Edensor calls a heterogeneous space, one In terms of recording data during and that allows for or even demands unbounded about these journeys, several sources were performance, one that hosts “more vivid used. Visual data was captured and recorded and varied sensual experience” and in which with three video cameras and three photo “haphazard features and events disorder cameras that were used interchangeably the tourist gaze” (Edensor 2000b, 340). by three researchers as well as one of The Great Bear Rainforest does not ac- the Klemtu guides. In addition, the audio commodate an experience mediated from tracks on the video recordings composed within “an encapsulated sanitized, hygienic data (e.g. people narrating what they saw bubble” (Dann and Jacobsen 2003, 20) as well as conversations between group because there are no roads on which to be members about their experiences as they transported by bus. In this place, the body were happening). Research diaries were touches and is touched – involuntarily and kept that comprised written notes by the voluntarily – by natural elements in various researchers as well as some video recordings sensory ways (Abram (1996, 68) calls this served as such. The non-academic visitors “reciprocity of the sensuous”). The trip by were interviewed about their experiences, Spirit Bear Adventures was organized in a observations and meanings they ascribed way that encouraged such experiences. The to these during their stay at the Great Bear daily excursions were not planned precisely. Rainforest after the walks. During the The guides usually suggested a few pos- reviewing of all visual data when prepar- sible locations that were good for wildlife ing the editing stage for the documentary, viewing or important cultural sites, and the memories, observations and highlights were group then expressed their preferences. shared in discussing data. These discussions Once arrived at the location, the exact route were taken into account in the analysis was determined by the conditions imposed of all available data by the author of this by the weather and the forest. Although article. This article is therefore to some the guides would aim for locations they degree built on auto-ethnographic data. knew bears spent time, there were no pre- In experiencing the Great Bear Rainforest established routes, boardwalks or viewing and reflecting on these experiences, I must platforms as, for example, in the rainforests “acknowledge how [my] life histor[y], ... on Vancouver Island (Pacific Rim). Instead, age, gender and the privileged position of the group hiked along bear-made trails, [my] middle-class, academic background [...]

5 The trip incurred many possible risks and dangers. For that reason, tourists were required to sign a ‘Waiver of all claims, release from liability and assumption of risks’ form (the list of risks includes: (steep and slippery terrain, rough and dangerous water, wild animals, exposure to natural elements, food and water poisoning, and even the tour operator and other participants, all of which may cause injury or death).

Landabréfið 25, 2011 37 Figure 3 Hiking through the Great Bear Rainforest. (Photo: Bettina van Hoven) shape [my] engagement with this project” obtained a good sense of its spaciousness, (Waitt and Lane 2007, 160). I view this level its extent and the amount of forest. We also of engagement as an asset without which saw the amount of forest logged (clear cut) it would have been difficult, if not impos- and the extent of the cleared site. In many sible, to discuss the embodied experiences areas in British Columbia, clear cuts are presented in this article. ‘masked’ by a green, forested strip along the In what follows, I begin by describing our roads from which they might be viewed and approach to the Great Bear Rainforest by hence, for visitors like us, this was one of plane and boat because these allow for dif- the rare occasions to witness a part of the ferent “visual registers” (Franklin and Crang conflict that took place before we visited. 2001, 13). I then want to briefly explore Accessing the Great Bear Rainforest by air multi-sensory encounters with the forest provided a global connection – it illustrated and its elements. Although moving through what we, the visitors, may know as ‘green the Great Bear Rainforest always engaged lung’ from the media, reminded us of the multiple senses at any point in time, and I need for sizeable forests in light of climate sometimes point out these connections, I change and alerted us to the rapid decrease largely discuss each separately. of old-growth forests around the world. During our four-day trip, all of our Approaching the forest movements were preceded by boat trips. When we first approached the Great Bear A different picture emerged as we viewed Rainforest, we did so by plane (see video the steep mountains rising from and disap- clip, van Hoven 2011a).6 In so doing, we pearing into the sea, a landscape intercepted

6 The video clip bears witness to some of the non-human actors that make up the landscape. Some spoken responses are audible, e.g. the 2,5 year-old traveler singing or narrating in Dutch a bear viewing (‘tourist performance’).

38 Landabréfið 25, 2011 by wide, flat marshlands (see figure 4). Ap- the bears again (Doug, personal conversa- proaching our landing sites in this way, we tion). Much less visually attractive perhaps connected with geological time, the snow- but an important ingredient to the lush and capped mountains being the most dominant tall growth of the trees is the salmon. It is reminder of geomorphologic processes dragged into the forest and left half eaten during the last ice age as well as the area’s by bears, and further consumed by other mythical past (e.g. the Tsimshian legend of animals. Eventually salmon nutrients are Moksgm’ol, the Spirit Bear). absorbed by plants and can be found in Our mobility was significantly impacted the highest tips of the highest trees. These by the forces of nature which was the main provide shelter and shade for fellow forest variable in determining when and where dwellers and benefit the salmon that needs our routes started and stopped, what route cool rivers to spawn (see e.g. Reimchen 2001 we took, how we moved along it and how and Reimchen n.d.). this felt (see also Cresswell, 2010). As we stepped off the boat, wherever tides al- Bear viewing lowed us to stop, we were increasingly Before we advanced into the forest, the engaged by the forest and its elements. It guides provided a safety briefing as well as is important to point out that the landscape brief reports on what might be expected on we see and experience today is made, to a the basis of a recent trip or recent wildlife large extent, by non-human-actors. Two key viewings. These ‘reports’ were very influ- actors are bears and fish. Grizzlies dig up ential in how we saw the forest and inter- roots for their food supply and in doing so, preted the wildlife we encountered. Our air the soil. This then provides better liv- imagination of what we might encounter ing conditions for both animals and plants was additionally fuelled by our “virtual inhabiting this soil and eventually benefits capital” (Curtin 2006, 311), i.e. previous

Figure 4 Khutze Inlet, Great Bear Rainforest. (Photo: Bettina van Hoven)

Landabréfið 25, 2011 39 expectations, experiences and desires, viewing a grizzly) and sometimes mysti- or fears about wildlife based on “a large cal (when viewing the Spirit Bear) whilst stock of knowledge and images assembled Lucas’ experienced a changing emotional from sources such as television, film and response from fear to excitement and even advertising” (Curtin 2006, 311, see also comfort. Beardsworth and Bryman 2011). Margot, Margot (narrating the grizzly encoun- for example, had an imagination of bears ter): as wild and unpredictable. She said during The one [day] that was the most thrilling, however, an interview: was ... we were sitting on a log by the water waiting for the bear and we were radioed from ... our boat I don’t want to be overly romantic about it, but they are driver, telling us that there was a bear heading in our one of the wildest animals and the most unpredictable direction. He said it was a grizzly and it was heading animals and they’re obviously very wise and they don’t directly towards us. I must admit I was quite … like intruders and you don’t quite know what mood excited and nervous at that point. And sure enough they’re in, how well fed they are, how irritable they the bear came through the bush and looked at us [...] are, so you’re not quite sure ever what they’re going and started heading towards us and that’s when our to do. So walking on a trail was … well not anxiety leader, Doug, asked us to step forward and asked us ridden, there was a sense of heightened awareness to move away from the edge of the water and at that [...] the word grizzly just has a connotation of point the bear [...] reared up upon its hind legs, which built- in fear. was a scary site, and then very quickly turned and Lucas, too, had some hesitations about fled into the bush again. grizzly viewing on foot. He recalls during Margot (narrating the Spirit Bear en- an interview: counter): Well, to be honest I was probably more scared the day ...I could see the entire white, a kind of dirty blond, before the tour started because when I came on this bear as he moved across our field of vision until he tour originally I didn’t realise that we were going to be disappeared on the other side. And so it was a brief walking on the same land that the bears were walking and almost mystical feel to it, it was so short but ... on, since I’ve been on a previous bear viewing trip where very real. And I don’t know if that describes my all the bear viewing was done from the boat. So when feelings or not but it was, it was very exciting in a ... I found out we’re going to be on land I thought, wow mystical, spiritual way. It sounds corny I know but… this could be challenging, [...] this could be scary. [doesn’t finish her sentence]. During the walks, expectations sometimes Lucas: persisted, or changed. For example, when When you’re actually out there with the bears here, the Doug concluded his safety briefing with a coastal bears it’s, I find, not all that scary especially comment on having seen a very large grizzly if you’re with an experienced guide, who knows what during his last visit, ‘very large’ was variably he’s doing. And the bears themselves are pretty mellow. interpreted as fearsome or exciting, as the I mean if you’re not bothering them then they’re not video-recorded group members’ comments going to bother you, as far as I can tell from my limited revealed. The anticipation of bear viewing experience [...] I have to say today, seeing eleven bears in rapid succession that doesn’t happen every day of triggered bodily responses. Regardless of the week. And especially to be able to be close to the cause (fear or excitement), excess per- the bears in their natural environment that was ... spiration was experienced by most of the exciting and we saw all kinds of different action group members. today, including a large black bear that was very bad During the interviews, Margot and Lucas at catching fish and that provided some comic relief. recalled their bear encounters. For Margot So it was, it was all good. this was sometimes ambiguous (when

40 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Throughout the hike, the group stayed agreement about this performance as being alert, as bears announced their presence appropriate, at least for some visitors in our through visual, audible and olfactory group, which may be attributed to a worry traces such as food, hairs, scratches, or that noise may alert grizzlies to our presence faeces. These traces were pointed out by or discourage wildlife from approaching. the guide (figure 5 and video clip on ‘bear However, Caitlin, the two-and-a-half-year- viewing’, van Hoven 2011b) who then es- old traveller, was quite oblivious to this kind timated when the particular bear that had of cautious or appreciative performance, left the trace might be encountered by us. she had not been ‘educated’ to adapt her When such an encounter occurred, often behaviour and neither was she aware of by binoculars or a camera first, most group “external surveillance [which] may restrict members communicated with the animal(s). the scope of performances and help to un- The video data provide several examples of derscore communal conventions about ‘ap- talk to bears, mostly in the form of whis- propriate’ ways of being a tourist” (Edensor pering, which included comments on their 2001, 72). Instead, Caitlin sang to the bears appearance and movement, and requests or urged the rest of the group (loudly) to to approach the group (Annemieke) or to explain what we were seeing. move away from it (Margot). Undoubtedly, bear viewing comprised a The data suggest, I would argue, that significant part of the entire travel experi- most group members ‘performed’ in a way ence. Curtin (2006, 303, drawing on van that was appropriate in this setting: with a Manen 1990), suggested, these experiences sense of awe, or as Edensor described in the “can never be fully grasped in their imme- case of the Taj Mahal, “solitudinous gazing” diacy. Instead, they gather significance as (2001, 72). There seemed to be an unspoken we reflect on and give memory to them”. In

Figure 5 Interpretation of traces by Spirit Bear Adventure’s guide Doug Neasloss. (Photo: Bettina van Hoven)

Landabréfið 25, 2011 41 that context then, the group was important experiencing the sounds in the field), and in ‘placing’ the bear viewing experience as they became a powerful reminder of the the group offered opportunities to share presence of the aural (Pan and Ryan 2009). experiences and thus “consolidate[d] the At the time of hiking through the forest experience and transform[ed] it into a the role of the ever-present soundtrack of cherished memory” (Curtin 2006, 305). For nature was ‘drowned’ due to the presence most, if not all visitors, bear viewing can of more immediate sensory input, or sim- be considered a “wild-animal-triggered peak ply the strain of movement. Nevertheless, experience” (DeMares and Krycka 1998, the role of sound was one that augmented xx)7. Having said this, I would emphasize emotions of joy as sound was ‘attached’ to that this encompassed all of the following: the presence of wildlife and thus served as approaching the forest, imagining the view- an announcement of experiences to come. ing of the animal and all the multi-sensory In the forest, as McCartney (2002, 1) also impressions and stops along the way. It pointed out, “environmental sounds form is also important to note that visitors are a powerful conduit to memory. Hearing a embedded in the wild animal’s territory and particular sound or ambience can launch conduct the viewing as a part of the same a chain of related memories, whether ex- network of beings whilst hiking (and stop- perienced consciously or working subcon- ping) in the forest. Ballantyne et al. (2010) sciously, that reconnects us with particular also consider this broader context, at least to places and times in our lives”. However, for some extent, by taking into account sensory some the aural was cause for concern or impressions, emotional affinity, reflective re- even fear as in the case of a noisy waterfall, sponse and behavioural response in a study because our approach might not be audible on marine-based wildlife in Scotland. by bears. In this case, sound combined with imagination and triggered a bodily response Multisensory experiences (goose bumps, increased heart beat, sweat- ing). For example, Margot described during Sound the interview: In the case of the Great Bear Rainforest, sounds concerned both the unnoticed and And then we would walk up a trail which was usually ever-present ones and, less often, the ones a bear trail on the edge of the water, which is a bit announcing ‘tourism highlights’ such as nerve wrecking because walking along the water means a bear’s roar. The fact that many sounds that the sound of your hiking is ... drowned out by were an almost taken-for-granted part the water sounds and you might surprise the bear. So I’d always been told not to do that, but Doug knows of the tourism experience became clear what he’s doing. So then we would get to a location only when analysis of video data took where we would wait because it was a bear feeding place which explicitly aimed at pulling the location and there were salmon in the water and we different sensory experiences apart. On would sit and wait for the bear to come, come to us if video (see video clip, van Hoven 2011c), they weren’t there, if they weren’t there already. the sound of wind on a speeding boat, the sound of a waterfall, seagulls and buzzing Touch flies, and the sound of people whispering, As noted above, sound such as a grizzly’s shouting or cursing as a response to these roar, was met by an involuntary bodily was foregrounded (when compared to reaction; it was felt as well as heard as the

7 Even though bear encounters are different from swimming with whales (DeMares and Krycka 1998) or dolphins (Curtin 2006) because of greater perceived (and possibly actual) danger.

42 Landabréfið 25, 2011 body shivered, or the skin produced goose became a part of the forest experience. The bumps. Indeed, Obrador-Pons pointed out use of touch in experiencing the Great Bear that the haptic system is not limited to skin Rainforest therefore “enhance[d] a sense of contact but it consists of “the entire sen- immersion and presence, of intimacy and sory motor and cognitive components of proximity. Haptic modalities of perception the body–brain system” and that “the haptic reveal[ed] our withness with things” (Obra- system plays a central role in the constitu- dor-Pons 2007, 136, emphasis added), and tion of feelings and habitual perceptions as imbued a sense of enchantment. well as in the formation of subjectivity and intersubjectivity” (Obrador-Pons 2007, 135 Smell drawing on Paterson 2005; see also Oakley As implied above, smell is one of the et al. 2000). sensory experiences that has received rela- In the case of the Great Bear Rainforest, tively more attention in tourism studies as all experiences were framed by the haptic it is believed, I reiterate, to “be the most for, at all times, wind and weather touched closely tied to memory, [smell] links the our skin thus warming, cooling, moistening past to the present to linger to inform the or stroking us. Touch provided connections future through recall” (Dann and Jacob- with the forest as shrubs, ferns, mosses, or sen 2003, 628). In their discussion, Dann spider webs attached and detached as we and Jacobsen made an interesting claim passed. In addition, we were encouraged by relevant to this paper. They noted that our guide to reach out and explore forest smells are most often described in terms elements such as tree bark, trace hairs, ber- of the thing they originate from and that ries, different leaves or even dying salmon the quality of a place is often expressed which had come to spawn and slowly in the way it smells, i.e. “nice places smell disintegrated in the rivers. In a study on good, nasty places smell bad” (Dann and walks with people with visual impairments, Jacobsen 2003, 5). However, in the case of MacPherson (2009) described how one of the Great Bear Rainforest, I would argue her visually impaired respondents feels in- that this differentiation cannot be made as hibited to use touch in order to ‘see’ because readily. Without a doubt, the predominant it makes her look ‘too blind’. In contrast, odour, once travelling on land, was that in our case touch enhanced our seeing, gave of “bear poop” (to quote Annemieke). it more depth and provided nuances to our In fact, this smell was so dominant that it view of the forest. Rather than just seeing was necessary to come right up to another lots of different sizes and shapes of leaves, object with a scent, say a berry or flower, we were able to name them and describe to escape from it. In addition, the “bear them in a personalized way, thus enhancing poop” was so strong that it could virtually their meaning (see video clip, van Hoven be tasted (this sentiment is also visible in 2011d). the video link provided where Annemieke, Touch also emphasized the experiences when asked to describe the smell, ‘tastes’ of the forest as one shared between trav- the air before exclaiming “berepoep!” (bear ellers because we helped each other along poop; see video clip, van Hoven 2011e). across mossy logs, algae covered rocks, It is an odour that, in our ordinary lives, against the flow of a river or when stuck would not normally fall into the category in the mud, or as we shared hugs upon suc- ‘good’ but it still augmented the overall cessful hiking or wildlife viewing. This is im- experience in the forest and helped it be portant because in this way, the group also conceived of as ‘nice place’. It is likely that

Landabréfið 25, 2011 43 this reconfiguration of olfactory impression encountered power relations. In First Na- from bad to good was possible due to the tions culture, some knowledge is owned unique situation in which it was obtained, by families and they need to give formal namely whilst hiking through bear territory permission to the guides so they may share and in the close vicinity of large predators. this knowledge. As a result, we were not In terms of providing a link between past, shown plants and did not hear stories that present and future, it is probable that this were not sanctioned by elders to be known is the odour that will evoke memories of by outsiders. Nevertheless, this link to a hu- the Great Bear Rainforest. man presence in the Great Bear Rainforest through tasting was significant as a way of Taste integrating humans into the wilderness we With the exception of ‘tasting bear poop’ experienced. Last but not least, taste could through smell, taste was a choice experi- also be taken home; we could drink tea ence. Some experienced it more than oth- made from herbs that grow in the forest ers. It was also a guided experience since it or eat chum salmon. Taste thus extended needed to be pointed out to us by the guide our experiences and encouraged us to revisit which plants (or part thereof) were edible the forest in our imagination at different and when. The video data shows some times and in different ways. hesitation by group members to put plant parts (e.g. berries, roots) in their mouths Mobility (see video clip, van Hoven 2011f). I can only All of the descriptions above of experienc- speculate that a reason may be the detach- ing the forest through the senses are ways ment of many humans from the origin of of ‘seeing’ the forest, as in a kind of “vision their modern processed foods. However, that happens through bodily immersion upon consuming the forest product, faces rather than detached observation” (Lund reveal pleasant surprise. The interrelation and Benediktsson 2010, 6). As Michael between an involuntary bodily reaction (2000, drawing on Ingold 1993) pointed (e.g. raised adrenalin due to the suspense out, “depending on the kind of activity in caused by eating unknown forest prod- which we are engaged, we will be attuned ucts, followed by the emotion of relief or to picking up a particular kind of information, achievement) and the actual flavour which leading to the perception of a particular unfolded on one’s taste buds likely consoli- affordance” (Michael 2000, 111, emphasis dates memories of the forest carried into added). I will therefore conclude the sen- the future. It must be noted that taste was sory experiences with some observations also the most ‘educational’ sense, because of the role of mobility in sensing the Great it was linked to the provision of aboriginal Bear Rainforest. knowledge about and uses of plants. As a As noted above, our routes were deter- result of this kind of information about mined to a great extent by the conditions forest products, a connection was created presented by nature; the tidal influence, the between the past and the present and, more water level in rivers, the density of shrubs significantly, First Nations culture and our and so forth. These were our “conduits in own (“this berry, that you are eating now, space” (Cresswell 2010, 24). We carried was used by our ancestors to…”)8. As a neither map nor compass to determine part of our gustatory experiences, we also routes or seek out ‘tourism highlights’ but

8 See also Moscardo (1996, 385) about the relevance of “generat[ing] visitor interest in a topic on-site by making connections to their experiences.”

44 Landabréfið 25, 2011 relied on our guides for directions. They Would I come back... I’ll certainly come back to took us along invisible routes, retraced our this area, but would I re-do this trip? Probably steps when encountering a ‘dead end’ and not, but I would highly recommend it to friends and knew detours. They assessed the suitability acquaintances who are fit enough, because it’s not, you of viewing spots by monitoring the water know, I’m older and you, you would have to be quite level, the presence of fish and berries and fit at my age in order to do this and fit enough and not timid about the great outdoors. I mean if they other environmental cues that indicated that didn’t... didn’t have some hiking experience I don’t bears might want to come to this place to eat think they should do it.[...] if I wasn’t fit I couldn’t or rest. Due to the changing levels of water, have done it. fish etc., such locations could be different on a day-to-day or hour-to-hour basis. Due The physical strain of the hike is also vis- to the impact of nature, the weather, the ible (sweating) and audible (heavy breathing growth of plants during times when routes by the person operating the camera) when were used less by guides, the routes taken revisiting the video data. The experience offered different affordances, at times mak- was akin to what MacPherson (2009, 1048) ing it easy for us to pass through but not observed: “Walkers have a temporal orien- at others. Since we did not have a map (or tation to the present moment and to the GPS), we were not conscious of distance demands of the terrain they are walking travelled. Having said so, map-distance through”. The focus was very much on the would not have been as meaningful as felt now-moment, looking to the ground, the distance. Considering the backing up, retrac- roots under our feet, or the algae-covered ing, detouring and hiking up and down we rocks in the water. The guides, through were required to do, it was probable that their multiple visits under different condi- we crossed greater distances than simply tions, were very familiar with the terrain from A to B on a map. However, longer and all its ruggedness and slipperiness. But distance might appear shorter due to the the tourists experienced difficulties nego- richness of experiences encountered along tiating the terrain, some more than others. the route. As a result, although our bodies Those who exercised regularly benefited might have become increasingly tired, they as their bodies did not tire out as quickly, simultaneously came to life (see also Eden- were more flexible or better able to bal- sor 2000b) ance. Those whose bodies were aged, or The video data reveals the effort we even impaired by inappropriate clothing undertook to move, trying to get across were less mobile (see also Michael 2000). logs, or rivers, against the flow of water, Our youngest traveller either had a view- and through mud - with our boots getting point from close to the ground or from a stuck (see video clip, van Hoven 2011g). baby-carrier backpack, which enabled her Annemieke’s research notes reveal: to look further ahead. None of us had the same view of the forest as we were moving Olaf and Caitlin are not coming along because the through it. In spite of the strain of move- trail here [Powles River] is too rough [...] we follow ment described here, there were also mo- the [Spirit Bear’s] trail through thick forest. Then we ments of standstill. However, during these cross a river and our feet are increasingly becoming wet inside our boots. moments, even though our legs did not move, we were not immobile. Instead, we Margot’s recollections of the trip high- extended limbs to grab plants for tasting, light the physical strain as she explains: extended our senses by smelling, listening

Landabréfið 25, 2011 45 or viewing, gazing through binoculars or of a plane and boat when moving towards cameras in order to spot wildlife (see also the forest, and walking/ hiking/ wading Lund and Wilson 2010). As is apparent when moving through the forest. Even from the description above, and in the when the walking stops, the body remains words of Cresswell (2010, 25), “moving mobile in reaching out to the forest in dif- is an energy-consuming business. It can ferent ways: touching, smelling, tasting and be hard work”. Therefore, as the number hearing. These modes are relevant because of hours hiked progressed, spots that were they provide barriers and opportunities for chosen as potential viewing spots inadvert- partaking in the multi-sensory experiences ently became resting spots as, finally, some described. For example, planes and boats as group members’ bodies demanded relaxa- means of transportation comprise a selec- tion and sometimes even sleep. tion mechanism for potential visitors (e.g. those with sufficient funds to pay for and Conclusions without fear of such means of transporta- In this article, I presented different, multi- tion). Different routes to and in the forest sensory experiences and tourist perform- required different mobilities, and different ances in the context of hiking in the Great mobilities result in different distances (or Bear Rainforest. When compared to our nearnesses) to the elements of the forest. first, Cartesian view of the forest from the It is through these mobilities that relation- airplane, it transpires that the hike made the ships with the forest were felt, formed, forest multi-dimensional. Hiking turned out interrupted, renewed and interpreted (see to be “a place-making practice” (Waitt et al also Cresswell, 2010). 2009, 44). The hike helped recognize, under- The context for this kind of tourism stand and engage with landscape, the forest facilitated by Spirit Bear Adventures pro- and its elements as something alive and as vides a specific experience that may not be possessing the “ability to actively engage us mirrored by many ecotourism operators. and provoke our senses” (Abram 1996, 56). In the discussion above, I noted that the Dewsbury and Cloke (2009, 696) stipulated structures controlling access and the level “landscape encapsulates embodied practices of direct contact with nature and wildlife of being in the world, including ways of was largely determined by the forces of seeing but extending beyond sight to both nature themselves, rather than vehicles a sense of being that includes all senses and encapsulating the tourist, boardwalks, an openness to being affected”. In perform- signs, viewing platforms etc. Having said ing tourism in the Great Bear Rainforest that, some degree of control was exercised this is exactly what occurred, the travel- by the guides who were in charge of the ling being was affected by the forest and routes we hiked as well as encouraged some its elements, and the boundaries between behaviour such as tasting plants whilst cau- one and the other were blurred. As Lund tioning against other such as wandering off and Benediktsson (2010, 2) maintained, alone in grizzly territory. Markwell (2001) “the land itself is imbued with an ability to commented on restrictions imposed by the transfer meanings to humans”. The transfer tourism industry on human/ wildlife inter- of meaning largely proceeded by employing action. It is possible that a key difference is the senses, by smelling, feeling, listening to in the extent to which ecotourism operators and tasting the forest. perceive of nature as ‘Other’, fearsome, and There are different modes of mobility risky, and of human guides as possessing that structured our experience, i.e. the use both the knowledge worth conveying about

46 Landabréfið 25, 2011 nature and the ability and means to do so. In ism: implications for the design of powerful contrast, Spirit Bear Adventures approaches interpretive experiences. Tourism Management nature as an active element in the tourism 32(4): 770–779. experience, as possessing the ability to con- Carolan, M. S. 2009: “I do therefore there is”: vey knowledge. This may be attributed to enlivening socio-environmental theory. Envi- the way in which the First Nations’ guides ronmental Politics 18(1): 1–17. defined the relationship between humans CBC 1997: The fight over ‘spirit bear’. May 27th, and nature. The following quote by a mem- 1997, Clearcutting and Logging: the war in the woods. ber of one of the First Nations in the Great CBC Digital Archive, http://archives.cbc.ca/ Bear Rainforest illustrates this (Easterbrock, environment/environmental_protection/ personal conversation: topics/679-3924/, 1998 (accessed June 24, 2011). Koeye [watershed in the Great Bear Rainforest] to me is just [...] a beautiful, spiritual place. It’s a place Clapp, R. A. 2004: Wilderness ethics and politi- that has a gift of teaching all of us life-lessons that cal ecology: remapping the Great Bear Rain- will carry for the rest of our lives. forest. Political Geography 23(7): 839–862. Ecotourism operators elsewhere might Clarke, S. 2002: From aesthetics to object relations: be encouraged then to offer more multi- situating Klein in the Freudian ‘uncanny’. http:// sensory experiences, but this may require www.btinternet.com/~psycho_social/Vol1/ redefining the role of nature in the tourism JPSS1-SHC1.htm (accessed June 24, 2011). experiences not in terms of a passive object Cresswell, T. 2010: Towards politics of mobility. to use as setting or admire from afar but as Environment and Planning D: Society and Space an active element to work with. 28: 17–31.

Acknowledgements Crouch, D. 2001: Spatialities and the feeling There are several people who contributed to of doing. Social & Cultural Geography 2(1): the becoming of this article. I would first like 61–75. to thank Doug, Vern and Murray for making Curtin, S. 2006: Swimming with dolphins: a possible the journey upon which the article is phenomenological exploration of tourist based, as well as Margot Steward and Lucas recollections. International Journal of Tourism Aykroyd for participating. The Gratama Research 8: 301–315. foundation financed a significant part of the research. Paul Barratt and Gunnþóra Ólafsdóttir Dann, G. M. S. & J. K. S. Jacobsen 2003: Tourism and Markús Þór Andrésson provided a forum smellscapes. Tourism Geographies 5(1): 3–25. for presenting earlier versions of the article. Tim Edensor had many encouraging words during a Daugstad, K. 2008: Negotiating landscape in bear conversation. Last but not least, the article rural tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 35(2): benefited greatly from the comments made by 402–426. two anonymous referees - thank you. DeMares, R. & K. Krycka 1998: Wild-animal- triggered peak experiences: transpersonal References aspects. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology Abram, D. 1996: The spell of the sensuous: perception 30(2): 161–177. and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage Books. Dempsey J, 2010: Tracking grizzly bears in Brit- ish Columbia’s environmental politics. Envi- Beardsworth A. & A. Bryman 2001: The wild ronment and Planning A 42(5): 1138–1156. animal in late modernity. Tourist Studies 1(1): 83–104. Dewsbury, J. D. & P. Cloke 2009: Spiritual landscapes: existence, performance and im- Ballantyne, R., J. Packer & L.A. Sutherland manence. Social & Cultural Geography 10(6): 2010: Visitors’ memories of wildlife tour- 695–711.

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Landabréfið 25, 2011 49 50 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Mobile in a mobile element Eric Ellingsen*

ABSTRACT From the times of Pausanias to Pliny the Younger, we have been articulating a philosophy of place and people by collecting stories acquired though touring. Places and people are glued together in stories. Stories provoke reflection. One of the central ideas in this essay is to use a tour of stories to propose a philosophy of refraction. A philosophy of refraction needs to replace a reflexive philosophy. Though I do maintain throughout this essay that we see ourselves better by seeing others, I think it’s even more radical: we are the others we are seeing. We are all others. The way I try to show this philosophy of refraction, of becoming the things that pass through us, of being the way we move, is through setting up a few comparative modes of travel: the plane experience on one end and the ground experience on the other. From doom tourism to dark tourism, nature-based tourism to pro-poor tourism, everybody takes tours for different reasons. I think we keep moving to keep things whole, as the poet Mark Strand says. I hope you take the time to take this essay tour personally. That’s the point. Keywords: Philosophy of refraction, subjectivity, staging tourism, representations

ÁGRIP Á hreyfingu í hreyfanlegu efni. Frá tímum Pásaníasar til Pliníusar yngra hefur mannkynið sett staði og þjóðir í heimspekilegt sam- hengi í gegnum ferðasögur. Sögur líma saman staði og fólk. Sögur endurvarpa veruleikanum. Ein af meginhugmyndum þessarar greinar er að á grundvelli ferðasagna mætti leggja drög að heimspeki bylgjubrotsins. Heimspeki bylgjubrotsins þarf að taka við af heimspeki endurvarpsins. Því er haldið fram í ritgerðinni að við fáum skýrari sýn á okkur sjálf með því að horfa á aðra, en það má jafnvel taka róttækari pól í hæðina: Við erum þeir sem við sjáum. Við erum allir hinir. Til að sýna hvað heimspeki umbreytingar felur í sér – að við verðum þeir hlutir sem fara í gegnum okkur, og að verund okkar sé fólgin í hreyfingunni – er í greininni fjallað um nokkrar leiðir nútímafólks til að ferðast: Annars vegar upplifun á flugiog hins vegar hina jarðbundnu upplifun. Ástæður ferðamennsku eru margvíslegar: Að upplifa grimm örlög, myrk öfl eða náttúruna, eða koma fátækum til hjálpar. Ég tel að það sem heldur okkur á hreyfingu sé viðleitni til að halda hlutunum heilum, eins og ljóðskáldið Mark Strand segir. Ég vona að þú gefir þér tíma til að taka þessa ritgerð til þín. Það er málið. Lykilorð: Heimspeki bylgjubrots, sjálfsvera, sviðsetning ferðamennsku, framsetning

InTRODUCTION To work spatially does not necessarily entail Should we not learn the lesson that, for the creation of representational distance, and example, the woods, which poets praise as we can precisely avoid this distance, essentially the human being’s loveliest abode, is hardly static and unproductive, by insisting that grasped in its true meaning if we relate it only time is a constituent of space. Or as a friend to ourselves. (Uexküll 2010[1934], 142) has said: space is ‘a constantly mutating simultaneity of stories-so-far’. (Eliasson WARNING: like a story, this paper con- 2008, refracting Massey 2005) tainer contains a certain amount of thinking Marla – the big tourist. Her lie reflected my lie. that spills out and leaks all over the place. (Narrator, Fight Club – Fincher 1999, refrac- Rather than attempt to patch the cracks ting Palahniuk 1996) and prevent the leaks, the leaks are precisely

* Species of Space/Institute für Raumexperimente, Germany. [email protected]

Landabréfið 25, 2011 51 what have been cultivated. It is through the an experience of the intensive relationships cracks where energy is exchanged. These involved in the situation. I want to make a crackles are the grain boundaries where sense glue so that a feeling of all the rela- ideas slip over each other and annealing is tionships of sound and temperature and possible. This is also an excuse. This paper speed can stick to my memory. The idea will fall apart. So an academic bib may be is that if all these senses stick together, a required in reading. A suspension of pro- fuller actual physical encounter with the fessional, professorial disbelief. Stories are actual physical relationships of the com- told to see where they go. This is about the position of travel can take place. Maybe importance of maintaining an on-the-way it would be too much? Overwhelming? philosophy. It asks for you to take it person- Stun me so far past dull that I would be ally. To take everything personally. numb? Choke me with vitamins? But I’m not overwhelmed. I’m underwhelmed. A I. The Runway thinking taxi slight shake. Some bumps. Barely enough I am in a commercial airliner flying to physical stimulation to stimulate new soil Iceland from Berlin. I am moving 900 km for ideas for a philosophy of tourism. The per hour. I am sealed, seated and still. I am feeling of being bored at moving 900 km/h 12,000 meters above the earth’s respiring, makes me laugh. The feeling of having to floating, spinning crust. I breathe the 23 °C think about the relationships involved to bleed air in the cabin. The monitor on the feel the complexity the situation makes me seat in front of me says the air outside laugh. The roars are reduced to a low hum, the cabin is –60 °C. I try to think my way a vibration cushioned by the seat cushions. into feeling what –60 °C really feels like. Recirculated air flows around me. I’m try- I don’t think I have ever been that cold. I ing to think my way into a feeling of the don’t think it’s the windows fault. I have environment I am moving through. The read Richard Sennett (1974) on plate-glass inside is replenished by the outside, but the windows and separation from the public in outside is compressed, heated, pressurized, The Fall of Public Man; Michael de Certeau’s filtered, and mediated. I’m trying to think (1984, 112-115) refraction of Jules Verne’s my way into a feeling of the environment I (2009[1870]) submarine windows in Twenty- am moving through. Centimeters of acrylic thousand Leagues Under the Sea. But here I cabin windows separate me from a place am wondering how fast 900 km/h feels made up of intense relationships, the plane as the monitor in front of me embedded being there and my being in the plane two in the economy seat tells me I am moving parts of this intense composition. It is as if 900km/h. With windows down driving something was speaking to me underwater; as a teenager in Kentucky, I topped out I can see the mouth move but can’t under- at 140km/h. Once. I can see what 12,000 stand the words. meters above the earth’s living, boiling crust Every environment, from boiling water looks like, but the experience privileges vi- to sweaty armpits, air travel contrail to the sion and filters out the rest of my senses. craquelure of a painting, from heating the I’ve free-fallen from 3,000 m (tandem). temperature around your mouth by breath- Once. Falling is not flying. And while fly- ing to the cooling of lava and landscapes on ing, I’m forced to try and think what the the loose by pumping thousands of gallons place I am flying through really feels like. I a minute of water onto heated rock while mean I have small sheltered feelings of the others are hiding where there is “a collec- situation. But I have to think my way into tion of films that could have turned Hugh

52 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Hefner into cryptocrystalline pumice” Mechanization Takes Command. And William (McPhee 1989, 134) to seek protection Cronon (1991) writing about the ice-sheets from lava bombs in Iceland, everything to cool Pullman’s cars in Chicago in Nature’s is a constant set of differences caught in Metropolis. And Bruno Latour (2004) writing interrelationships of pressure, tempera- about actants in Politics of Nature. And Jane ture, speed, respiration, large convection Bennett (2010) writing about thing-power by cycles of heat exchange, of energy flow- writing about Bruno Latour and the right of ing and material cycling. This summarizes things in Vibrant Matter. I’m flying over the the core of everything Manuel De Landa Atlantic Ocean as I take a swig of cool water (1997; 2002 refracting Gilles Deleuze and bottled from who knows where. I chew on Félix Guattari 1987) gets at: intensive dif- the roll in the plane numb machine suit that ferences drive processes. Some of these 350 of us wear together, chewing together, intensive interrelationships are composed swallowing together, swallowed in together, into airplanes. Some into walking shoes. and sealed in together. We’re crossing time Some into paper books. Whether walking zones. We do not see or feel the wake of on the ground or walking to the bathroom contrail, the vapors and vortexes we are in an airplane, I am also one of these in- leaving behind. tensive material environments, a variable, One of the things this paper sets out to now in flight relationship. But in the plane, achieve is the start of a Ecopsycho-philos­ I don’t feel other intensive relations which ophy, a feeling thinking philosophy while I endorse by participating in: the cheap oil moving, an emotive contact as a mode of that allows the plane to mount to this speed, travel with the relationships that are the this height. The ship or pipe conduit that oil places, the things, and while being mobile traveled in. The politics of those pipes. The in that mobile place. Ecology is the flow lobbies. The metal in the plane, the alloys, of energy through material and the inter- the rivets, the patents, the person power relations of that material as it cycles. The that makes sure it’s air tight. The metal energy flowing and the material cycling which takes geological pressures millions are inseparable. In other words the energy of years to transform biomass into fossil flowing through the material is a kind of fuels is not felt. The CO2 being released by refraction; something passes through some- the plane as contrail as we move through thing and is changed. This is what informs the atmosphere is not felt. I unwrap my a philosophy which I will continually refer bread roll made who-knows-where, from to in this paper as a philosophy of refraction. the plastic bag made somewhere else. By contact with relationships I mean, coming I’m preparing for a talk on Eco-tourism, into contact with the processes and con- eco from Greek Oikos, home-tourism. I straints coupled together to give form and think of writing a philosophy of home organization to things. The plane is one travel, a week spent in a walk around the extreme. To travel in an airplane means to block. I think of how in a plane we always reduce the degree of contact with the rela- enter a city from above. I recall Fernand tionships which constrain and organize and Braudel (1996) writing about the ice trade are constrained in the place moved through. from the Italian mountains to facilitate a Another extreme is to walk. While walking, market of meats in The Mediterranean and the contact with the relationships at play, the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip the politics of the street (made out of the II. And Siegfried Gideon (1948) writing insides of volcanoes and dinosaur bones, as about cooling mechanisms and mobility in Eco-philosopher Timothy Morton (2007)

Landabréfið 25, 2011 53 says in Ecology Without Nature), the speeds, 900 km/h – gain significant meaning when the weather, the directions of where one is we feel them. The more the senses are en- allowed to go, the contract of gravity and listed in that feeling, the more powerful the our two physical motor centers (center of bond to experience and memory. A unitary moment and center of gravity), and who scene happens according to Edelman (2006, walks on which side of the street and who 13–14), when we are “conscious of being gives way to who, and are there joggers, and conscious and can report on the experi- is alcohol being consumed there, and are ence.” Feeling the relationships of things vegetables being sold there, and bread… glues experience together with emotions to- All these things may be contracted into gether with the world. We become bonded. the experience of street. The smells. The Storied. Stories. “And then, connectedness temperatures. The light levels. The sounds. between people in that all think in terms of The body balancing its weight. The spa- stories” (Bateson 2002, 12). So this is also ghetti of senses twisted together. The meat a philosophy of tourism because tourism ball of desire. The stains of memory and is a bonding profession. Tourism curates a expectation. The stories following then are form of contact. evaluated between these two extremes: be- That’s a lot. I can’t prove this, but this ing in a container and disconnect perceptu- isn’t a prove-to-you paper. You’re either ally from the environment you are moving fuming, or fusing, or refusing to go on. through, vs. being the container connected That’s ok. I hope you take it personally. perceptually to the environment you are and This is not a strip mall; it’s a market place are moving through. of ideas; you have to watch where you’re Every thing is a set of intensive relation- going. Ideas may squat sidewalk space il- ships, a composition of forces and materi- legally. There are dogs around. So there’s als squeezed, heated, cooled, transported, crap and crud here; good for the roots, bad respiring, half-living, changing. Everything for the shoe’s treads and new carpets. (Un- is in motion. Everything. And as we attempt less you’re as story strategic as Mr. Snopes to preserve the “differences which make in Major De Spain’s house in a William a difference” (Bateson 1972, 381), know- Faulkner short, and you force yourself into ing that “perception operates only upon a carpet cleaning job because you whipped difference“ (Bateson 2002, 27), the earth poop on the rug on purpose – see Faulkner is spinning. And the macro molecules are 1993.) Maybe a paper can be allowed to spinning. And the waves are swashing. And throw the random foot out into the side- the synaptic gaps are chemically/electrically walk and trip you without contextualizing are firing together and wiring together(Edelman why, like how “[t]his silence would be more 2006) connecting along the most reinforced pedagogical in a meatpacking plant”, as routes of last times. Every center is in Johannes Goransson (2007, 40) says in A orbit. All things are composed of interre- New Quarantine Will Take My Place. This says lationships. And this paper claims that it is you’re reading. You’re in contact. You’re crucial to understand all things as intensive hands are coordinating a motion of pages, relationships and then to cultivate contact of paper saplings liquefied and smushed with as many of the seams along which into 2D planes. You don’t know what the those differences are exchanged; the cracks last word of this sentence will be till you along which the relationships respire. The get here spazzing. Inger Christensen (2006 relationships which compose the situa- [1969], 3) walks by saying, “It. That’s it. That tion – the plane, the bread, the -60 °C, the stated it. It is. Goes on. Moves. Beyond.

54 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Becomes. Becomes it and it and it. Goes moving matters. I hope this paper feels in further than that. Becomes something else. motion. I don’t want it to fit back together Becomes more. Combines something else nicely in the end. Even Newton couldn’t with more to keep becoming something be- humpty-dumpty back together the beam sides something else and more.” Touring is of light after rainbow-ing. an opportunity for combination. In holding This philosophy of refraction is ap- these smushed sapling pages the mechanics proached through stories. Those stories of your hands confounds the most cutting will try not to merely reflect encounters, edge robotics, the same way fingers and but provoke encounters. Encounters al- the human hand astounded Walt Whitman low grip, something to hold onto. The last (2010, 31): “And the narrowest hinge in my time I was a geographer I came back as hand puts to scorn all machinery” (Song of someone else. Myself). The molecules in the room where A story links an experience with a time you are reading are volatile, which means as and a space. Stories allow us to connect our you read this you smell something. All odors eyes to our brains, what is visible to what dabble in turbulence. What? What’s the taste we see. Stories are contracts, glue makers, in your mouth right now while your eyes are grip opportunities. Stories let us stick to rolling? What sounds are coming through each other and stick to places and stick the window or walls right now? We are so in time and stick in memories and stick in bad at being nomad. feelings. When any story is told well, like John McPhee (1989) telling the story of II: Take off: how Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson managed to A Philosophy of Refraction cool the lava flows in a war against nature This paper focuses on the importance of in Iceland with pumps, that story refracts experiencing the relationships that com- the original experiences again, reincarnates pose and constrain a situation. It trades those experiences, refracts an implicit view reflexivity, being reflective of an experience of nature evolving between a mechanistic or place or theory, and replaces reflection metaphor and an organic metaphor What with refraction. Reflection requires proof: happened back then doesn’t just happen I’ve read this and this and this and am adding this back then. Stories are not mirrors, and a bud to that branch and here is the thesis tree. To writer is not a mirror holder. The images refract something allows that thing, an ex- are distorted in story telling, sharpened perience, a story, to enter and pass through and blurred at the same time. We are not you and pass out of you. You are changed each other’s mirror. Lou Reed has it a little in the process. The story is changed in the wrong: I’ll be your mirror, reflect who you are. process. The theory is active and actively A picture reflects that an experience shaped in the process. Everything comes has happened, but rarely gives the person out on the other side slightly jarred, tilted, looking at the picture an experience of the slanted, swerved, and changed. This paper story that happened. If I show a picture takes place from inside the tilt. I haven’t of the giraffe I saw in Tanzania, that pic- gotten to the other side yet. I’m mid-travel. ture needs a story or it simply reflects that I’m trying to do my learning knowing in I’ve been there, and that some things were front of you. Francisco Varela (1990, 191) there too, a giraffe, a truck, a shirt, oil from says, “the fact that whatever it is that we somewhere, tires from somewhere leaving know, it is not separate from what we do treads here, buttons and threads on my shirt to know it.” The way we perceive ourselves from somewhere, for example, etcetera. A

Landabréfið 25, 2011 55 philosophy of refraction requires a story III: Please stay in your seat: with the picture. This paper is a philoso- Estimations: Vito Acconci phy of refraction. This paper is asking the Vito Acconci made a series of experiments reader to be a traveler, a traveler reader, a from 1969 to 1970 called Estimations (Fig- refractive reader unafraid of hiking around ure 1). The estimations consist of Acco- in a drift of academic discharge, unafraid of nci standing in a place and estimating the re’s: re-feeling-re-thinking-re-acting. Afraid distance between him and some object: a of taking things personally? Retry. Because tree, a bridge, a road, a sign. By moving through a philosophy of refraction there is into his estimation, his body merged the recognition involved, and with that recogni- estimation with his mind through experi- tion comes the chance of new knowledge ence. For Acconci, these estimations were production, which is to say that when we are techniques for amplifying dimensions. In conscious that we perceive, we are agents particular, the dimensions of an art work. of change while being changed. Stories are As Vito Acconci says on the Art Institute the containers then that carry that change, of Chicago’s (2011) website, the estimations but the content is a little like Kurt Von- were a way to “get myself off the page and negut’s (1998) Ice-nine, the content is a into real space. These photographic pieces polymorph substance that goes through were ways to, literally, throw myself into my everything when it comes in contact with environment.” Mathematically, a dimension your imagination. The stories related here is a variable which contains information. did not happen, they are not over. They are, Acconci was attempting to move his art as Olafur Eliasson (2009) says, refracting off the page and get his body involved as what Doreen Massey (2005, 9) says, stories- part of the environment, not simply into so-far; stories always happen exactly now. the environment as if the environment

Figure 1 Estimations (Vito Acconci 1969– 1970, reproduced with permission).

56 Landabréfið 25, 2011 was out there. This is similar to Acconci’s that experience and allows the experience to (1969) better known Following Piece, the be felt in the moment of having it. A meas- urban shadowing of a stranger where the urement is a translation, like counting foot destination was simultaneously fixed in a strides into meters and time when walking. kind of attached distance – the person tailed An expectation says when walking between – and in motion (the tail was moving). The points I will arrive. An estimation tries to path is the unknown stranger, which glues understand the variables which play a part the relationships to a set of constraints: the in that arrival while measuring the variables place, the stranger, the act of measuring, an in play, to qualify the quantitative, to break awareness of preserving a moving distance down the parts and look at them while in from a moving target while renegotiating the situation rather than cutting the parts the contract with the place and the people out of the situation and taking them into around that distance (the shoppers, subway a lab so they can be understood and then riders, sidewalk strollers, etc). reinserted into the place. A good example A person walking in slow motion through of the difference can be performed through a park, like the artist Olafur Eliasson (2009) a simple perceptual experiment. does in Non-stop Park (Zeitlupenstudie) (figure (PLEASE TRY THIS ESTIMATION 2). Walking differently through a space EXPERIMENT: Set a stop-watch at 0:00: causes the contracts implicit in how that 00. Close your eyes. Start the stop-watch. space, whether public or in ‘nature’, and Open your eyes when you think three min- the urban codes regulating the organization utes have passed. The expectation is that of materials (curbs, gravel, hedges) and the you will open your eyes around the time flows through that space to be renegotiated when three minutes has passed, and that (speeds, paths, don’t walk on the grass, don’t it will either feel longer or shorter than run beside the pool or you won’t be allowed three minutes. The estimation happens to swim, etc). consciously and interior to the experi- The perception of how we are allowed ment. While feeling the time passing you to use space changes the space and us when improvise some system of measuring the we connect ourselves consciously within the time passing as you feel it passing (counting, critical experience of the feeling of mov- tapping your feet, etc). In this experiment ing. This is the ground experience, compared you experience the estimation and the ex- to the plane experience. The way we don’t feel periment simultaneously.) our self moving matters: “No feeling is also Whether metric or cardinal, measure- a feeling,/ a powerful one surrounded by ments attempt to transfer a set of cor- all feelings”, the poet Ben Mirov (2010, 1) respondences and relationships from one says. But I don’t want to live in a state of situation to another. This is similar to the no feeling. role of metaphors, as described by Manuel An estimation is not simply synonymous De Landa, “metaphors are important with expectation. An expectation is a feeling knowledge producers because they allow which is thrown ahead of an experience. you to transfer a structure of relations An estimation happens inside of an expe- from one domain to another domain” rience, is conscious of the experience it is (quoted in Ellingsen 2007, 216). Acconci’s having without tripping up feeling of the estimations allowed him to simultaneously experience. In other words an estimation focus his perception within an experience simultaneously scoops up and includes the which he could have, analyze at the same projected measurement thrown ahead of time, and then transfer that experience and

Landabréfið 25, 2011 57 Figure 2 Non-stop park (Zeitlupenstudie) (Olafur Eliasson 2009, reproduced with permission). analysis into an art project. He could coor- same time wander within the process and dinate a thinking and feeling and making record that process while making contact and measuring at the same time. This is with the place and perceiving that contact incredibly difficult. This is the complexity and having a container – an art project, of having a destination while being aware which is co-produced by the place and of the departure and in motion and at the coupled to the thought and felt experience.

58 Landabréfið 25, 2011 The combination of fixing while wandering gravity as the body measures by walking the while having a destination allows Acconci surfaces and speeds of the place in accord to experience the experiment. with the body in motion. The technique, the Eliasson’s walk is done without a pre- form, is a precise coordination of the de- scribed spatial frame, without a Euclidean tails of the body to and the place as a special geometry of set points, without a spatially spatial moment ; the entire dynamic compo- organized system before he shows up. I sition include the people in the place and the don’t mean to set up a difference of qual- place and the art project in a kind of elastic ity or a judgment of method between the entanglement, a constant connected cloud. two artist’s experiments. Acconci shows up Eliasson’s moment is amplified because the with a map and plan, a rule, an algorithm, speeds and the perception of speeds of the a system. He might not know exactly what other things in the immediate surroundings stone and tree he will walk between before adjust to the slow motion walk, as occurs he arrives, but he fixes two points and cuts with the woman walking by in the photo his one line of flight fixed between them. for example. Everyone in the space takes it Interior to the geometric fixed points of personally when Eliasson moves this way, that perceptual line, a spontaneous emer- including Eliasson. I would say that these gence of felt detail through measured very different kinds of walks, Acconci and experience can occur. He is going to stop Eliasson, are both very different but very in front of things he didn’t know to stop effective ways of grounding the experience. Of in front of before setting up the rules. Will touring. Most of us walk like we are having focus on relationships in the space without plane experiences; we don’t look where we knowing what those things focused on will are, we just look where we are going. In be before he starts. But he does construct a these two examples, the walk transforms known frame, guardrails to the walk, a path from a stale dance into a honed awareness, a of relational directions, from which to start stable uncertainly – a stabilized relationship and a stop. This allows an analytical layer. with place which preserves the uncertainty Eliasson’s walk experiment on the other of the place. The romance of merely walk- hand, shows up without a frame around the ing is unflattened; the stories become bev- project; it has no predetermined beginning eled shovel tips which can be used critically or end, no prescribed boundary around the to dig into a subtle non-didactic critique of experiment. Rather, the feeling of when how we perceive ourselves and a place by to start and end the experiment happens moving a little differently. spontaneously interior to the experience. POINT OF INTEREST (or a stick in the But, Eliasson’s movements are precise and road to step over): Official quote: predefined before he gets there. His mode, Experientia is rendered ‘experience’ the slow-motion walk, is practiced, a skill, and distinguished from experimentum a technique set ahead of time. The route is (experiment), though this distinction was not not prescribed, but the dance, the slow mo- common in the period (Shapin and Schaffer tion walk, is proprioceptivly learned. While 1985, 345). slow motion walking all the focus has to remain on the body, on the interrelationship IV: A movie about a Maasai of body part, the heal lifting, the tip of the Village, Tanzania, 2010 foot curling, the bend of the wrist, the hips The cave was found in a complete pristine pivot, the bodies jointed double pendulums, state... Hardly anyone was allowed in there; the center of moment and the center of very few scientists... And we had to know the

Landabréfið 25, 2011 59 most famous caves, Lascaux in the Dordogne preservation of authentic ritual? Maybe it’s area or the Altimera in the Pyrenees, had like Mangalitsa swine, an endangered spe- to be shut down because too many tourists cies of pig which you have to eat to save, were in there and they, their breathing, their because without a meat market for the exhalation of breath, caused molds on the species the species will go extinct, will get walls which they [the scientists] cannot fight hybridized and bred into another species. off (Herzog 2011). The comparison is a paradox of survival, When my guide drives up to the Maasai and the strange forms preservation takes. village, my first feeling is that I am entering The Maasai are historically a nomadic tribe, another airplane place, a tourist fuselage yet modern tourism is forcing a strategy of which seems to warp my estimation of stay as the villages manage a paradoxical what a nomadic pastoral life consists of in existence: a nomadic tribe fixed to a place contemporary today. Members of the vil- so tourists can move in and out of the lage are waiting to greet the tourists (figure nomadic village. 3). They are wearing traditional garb. They The tour is an experience curated to ap- wait until all the tourist trucks are emptied. peal to a desired surface of difference, of They gesture that it is time and OK to take tradition, of an opposition to the place I pictures. They start dancing, cherry picking come from, of a nature and cultural divide, the tourists one by one to dance with them. a modern and rural divide. What is not men- I feel like this greeting is not the preserva- tioned or shown by the tours or explained tion of a way of life, but a romantic mys- by the villagers are the constraints and social tification of a life of a village which all the forces that inform the shapes we see. While tourists have estimations beforehand. But taking pictures, we are not aware of the dy- maybe I am wrong. Maybe this is the very namics of the situation; not aware of the exploitative mechanism which will allow the processes, or interrelationships, the ecolo-

Figure 3 Maasai tourist welcome, Tanzania (© 2010 Eric Ellingsen)

60 Landabréfið 25, 2011 gies which organize the things we see. The honeymoon. We are not in the circle; we are Samburu practices, the age-sets, the polyan- part of the circle’s circumference. My wife is dry, the practiced warrior notions, the group chosen to enter into the circle . She is jump- lion hunts, the male warriors wrestling to ing up and down like a pogo stick, like the keep the lions tail, the gerontocracy which ground is a trampoline, as two women from still enslaves wives, the ceremonial axis of the tribe place necklaces around her neck. anxieties caused in male circumcision and I do not know that changes in shape and female genital cutting , the loss of a water- design of those necklaces indicate the social hole in the daily pattern of a villages life, the position, ranks and social climbing through febrile fears that cause the pulling of chil- child bearing and livestock wealth, until I dren’s teeth prematurely, the covering of return home to my studio in Berlin. I know corpses with fat and butter so the corpses the necklaces are round like the villages are will be devoured by animals, the position round, like the scarification on the cheeks of the knot of hair on the front or back of the men and women are round, that the of the woman’s head indicating the loss of round necklace makes my wife’s head look a male or female child. I can feel that I am like it’s on a platter when worn. I know that not feeling the things and processes that if we buy one of those necklaces on our still organize parts of the Maasai rhythms tour, and that if she wears it or displays it and way of life. But I don’t know how to back home in Berlin or Kentucky, it will in- look for what I don’t know I am missing, dicate an exotic economic relation in terms but I can feel it. I am trying to get the plane of the ability to travel half-way around the experience window open, trying not to be world as a tourist on a honeymoon and buy there in a way that is built on reflections, round necklaces (figure 4). I’m not afraid of like Tati’s (1967) Playtime, the modern exotic feelings. I am afraid of an exotic feel- paradox of literally seeing into a situation ing which is built on generic and uniformed (through the window) but seeing nothing expectations, ideals which filter experiences, about the relationships inside the situation inherit imperialisms, and preserve essential- (the lives of the people), while showing to ist hierarchical world views which frame and the movie watcher the modern paradox of crutch and patronize the experiences and seeing what is missing. This is similar to living relationships of being here. what Rowe and Schlutsky (1993) call the The way the Maasai villages wear the difference between phenomenal transparency display of their crafts and wares is fascinat- and a literal transparency. ing, a spatial inflection I can’t stop thinking The rites of passage through polyrhythm about. I want to write about how the form of sound and dance and throat singing can of each village is a circle, but I want to last 10 or more days in a Maasai celebration; write with a sensitivity of someone who can it lasts 10 minutes for the tourist group. x-ray a situation in an attempt to see and But I love these 10 minutes of sounds and understand the organizational structures songs. Ethnopoetics, as UBU web’s Jerome informing the circular shapes and forms. Rothenberg (2008) curates it, has changed Each circle in the village organizes smaller my life, changed the way I think, changed circles. In the internal circler space of every the way I write, why I write, changed the way Maasai village is an animal corral. This cor- I recite my poems and teach the classes and ral is in the center of the compound, but learn from those classes. I take a picture of not necessarily the center of the circle. The my wife jumping up and down. The danc- corral houses the economic center of the ers are arranged in a circle. We are on our lives – the humans, the cattle, the fowls,

Landabréfið 25, 2011 61 Figure 4 Maasai tourist traps, Tanzania (© 2010 Eric Ellingsen) the tourists. The grazers are moved out of way the body works. I am living a cycle of and into the center every day. Around that circles from Berlin to Kentucky, to a Maasai center fence there are tables. Under those village, back to Berlin, to Iceland, to Berlin. tables are chickens and small animals. And There are no right-angles in these memo- each section of fence and table and smaller ries. Everything curves. When I try to look animal pen is owned, or managed, by the at one experience my gaze slides from a family whose circular house is closest to it. point of interest into another. So each family uses a bit of the inner circle for their own family’s economy: the small V: News Program: Sometime animals and the wares (the hats, brackets, between me and now earrings and circular plate necklaces which Tourism organizers rarely talk about ecol- my wife is trying to, politely, return). It’s ogy, instead they talk about nature. But not quite as fractal as the African villages nature is a human construct, an image which ethno-mathematician Ron Eglash which preserves a separation of culture (2002) writes about in African Fractals, but and nature. We should be through that after it is a shape repeated everywhere, a circle Latour’s (1993) We Have Never Been Mod- representing a cycle, a return and a return ern. Old habits are hard to break. I mean, and a return. A village without edges. A human DNA is 95% chimp and 35% of circle invites an opening anywhere, to any that DNA is daffodil, as eco-philosopher direction. When looking at a curved wall Timothy Morton (2010) says. He also says: your eyes stay in motion, there is no flat “[A] beaver’s DNA doesn’t stop express- surface to stop the gaze. The modernist ing itself at the end of its whiskers, but at architects knew this link between form of the end of its dam… You probably drove materials and the perceptual tuning of the or flew here today using crushed liquefied

62 Landabréfið 25, 2011 dinosaur bones, most of your house dust the place is now me, a human animal, part is your skin, the environment is starting to of a population of human animals that look like a not very successful upgrade of shows up in trucks and provides a reshaping the old term nature.” (Morton 2010) Any of the social forces, the ecologies of place, idea of nature carries over an essentialist, around which the nomadic tribe organizes wilderness view of the world. Ecology, itself in a very slow motion nomadism? Do on the other hand, focuses attention on we need tourism protection laws? Should processes and interrelationships, on differ- I be there, or is how I am there a better ences which drive processes and most of question? Where are the tools given to the those processes are non-human. Which tourist to navigate through these feelings means an ecology based tourism would of how to be somewhere? Do all the tour- be non-human centered tourism while in- ists feel them? I didn’t get that sense when cluding humans as tourists as a structural I was there. Do we need tourist training, force which is renegotiating the terms of like anthropologists, or ethnographers, or life and organisms and intensive processes sociologists, who are at least trained to be on the planet. sensitive travelers, romantic in an un-ideal- If Gertrude Stein (2004, 251) is right izing way (hopefully)? Do I need to go to in her evaluation of Oakland, “there is no be a sensitive tourist school? If I saw them, there there”, then am I looking for a here would I know how to respond to the blood here when I visit the Maasai? Am I looking smeared hides, to the death rate of children for something I am missing in the west? Can so high that a child isn’t considered a child I look for what exists here without using my till that child survives to the age of three, to frame of reference as a base to judge and the woman making the houses out of mud evaluate what’s here? Can I see what is here and cow dung and piss, sleeping with small on its own terms? My being in the Maasai livestock, with only firelight, under animal village makes them less nomadic. But every skins and commercial cotton cloths, under way of being nomadic is unique. There are the sky, with a belly full of fermented but- buses of me’s from all over. And the wares termilk and boiled stem bark for my protein that are hung on the interior circular wall needs? Would these experience help me of the corral, around which and under to know know my own stories and places which the livestock are kept, is as much differently? Is that the point of tourism, an economic wall protecting the modern or is that reflective tourism? Mirror tour- rituals and traditions from the economic ism? What about a refractive tourism? I’m predators that are also me. The paradox is changing the place, let the place change me. structural, urban, similar the thorny acacias Would I come back better able to see and stinging nettles wrapping the villages the appalling rituals we practice where I’m circular outer wall which is built by the men from, the fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in the Maasai tribe (the women build the for natural gas and the grim collusion of homes). These stinging nettles once pro- politicians around an exploitation of the tected the Maasai from the lions. Now the West’s (and the worlds) natural resources lions are legally projected by national and (watch the documentary Gasland – Fox international regulations from the Maasai. 2010)? Would I be able to render and relate Do I see my purchasing and taking home to the appalling stories of my well education of a platter head necklace as part of an countries storage of nuclear waste tactics economic campaign in which the nomadic involving hollow mountains outside of Las dependence on the flows of nature though Vegas which John D’Agata (2010) tells in

Landabréfið 25, 2011 63 About a Mountain (a MUST read!)? What a short hike and SUV? Should all places be about the power broker urbanisms of Rob- entered by foot, like psycho-geographer Ian ert Moses, the wasted food practices, the Sinclair (see Piklington and Baker 2002), agrochemical businesses where board mem- who implies that the only way a person can bers simultaneously sit on the US Depart- know a place is by walking through it? But ment of Agriculture and the corporations is a one hour walk around a wall of wares, which genetically modify seeds to contain a few minutes sitting on the bed in the dark suicide genes (watch The Future of Food – in a hut of one of the women who makes see Koons Garcia 2004), the collusion of those wares and wants my wife and I to take chemical warfare and Bayer and bees (watch one of them home so she can fend off the the Vanishing of the Bees – Langworthy and forces of contemporary progress by partici- Henein 2009). The stunningly psychotic and pating, even if forced to, with the machines totally complicit economic, borrowing and of that progress? Can I know these things loaning practices of the place I am from around my own eco rather than my ego? My being protested on Wall Street while this own Oikos, my own home, my own home- paper is being written? Are these the mod- logos, home logic, my own home-nomos, els which I bring with me? (see Stein 2004) my own home-laws, my own economy and The pictures of my being in a Maasai village ecologies? Is identifying with the structure communicate that I can choose to travel. So of the relationships when touring different am I endorsing the unspoken systems or- then identifying with simply the surface ganizing the places from where I am coming of those relationships? I think so. I think with these mobile economic options that when you make contact with the structure give me the choice to travel? Can I know of where the interrelationships are coupled the things I carry with me, the processes I together, you feel a dynamic sense of what represent, like when using a credit card to organizes and informs the surface of those pay for the tour operator? Who takes the relationships, which is good because the time to research their credit card company, surface of things are usually the only things headquartered, if from the US, probably a picture can capture. I think that when in South Dakota because South Dakota you make a connection with the structures allows the most lenient lending and debt organizing the experiences, you get a better building possibilities, entrapping consum- understanding of the surfaces too. Do I ers under the guise of spending options? know how to see feel the experiences I am (I come from a warped eco-relationships touring in relation to the structural ways I perversely tuned to profit and not people, organize the daily micro-relationship in my and here I am in the Maasai village seeing own life? I don’t know. the urban form inflecting and changing in [This section of the tour has been cut response to a preservation profit structure short.] based on my tourism. Should I trade them Most tourism shelters me from the con- bootleg copies of Plagues & Pleasures on fusion of these experiences. They package the Salton Sea narrated by John Waters (see the experiences and tell me what they mean Metzler and Springer 2004), a depressing and then I have images to prove that I’ve eco-condition of tourism and development been there, done that, seen it. These tours which occurred in the Western US, for their are reality patronizers (see for example bootleg copy of The Gods Must be Crazy? Desmond 1999; Edensor 2000, on stag- (see Uys 1981) What can I know from the ing practices in tourism). If you wanted plain tourist experience? From a bus? From dancing you’d have to wait for the festival,

64 Landabréfið 25, 2011 and you might not be invited. Or, has the time and the other, the relations without the re- festival shifted to the arrival of the tourist lationship. Intellectually, I have bootstrapped bus each day? What kind of festival is this? the academic theories. But when there I’m What’s being sacrificed? Still images of the thrown into a state of feeling what I’m not nomadic tribe? I don’t mean to imply that feeling, and being aware of the retardation there are experiences which are not real. Or of an exotic expectation. The reflection that some experiences are more real than of the Maasai society I was given feels dis- other experiences. I mean to simply identify torted, and this distortion feels supported a kind of experience which imitates and is by the tour. Expectations are met: the look organized by our expectations, and then are of difference. The deep experience of that forced to conform to those expectations, difference, physically, psychologically, intel- versus a kind of experience which causes lectually, is severely stunted. It’s hard to tell the experiencers to reorganize their expec- the differences which make a difference. I want to tations and estimations of the world, where refract the experience. Like now, I’m trying they come from, where they are while hav- now to refract that experience, which is ing the experience, where they will be when intimidating as hell when reading is more the ‘tour’ is over. This is similar to what refereed for right and wrong than a territory biologist Jakob von Uexküll (2010[1934], to play in moving through ideas differently. 113–114) called the difference between a How to say I feel more in the Maasai village search image and a perception image. A search from the studio in Berlin where I am writ- image is the thing you are looking for when ing this, that I was when I was there. I don’t you show up to a place. “The search im- know what this means. How to know what age wipes out the perception image” (von to ask when I am there, and where to ask Uexküll 2010[1934], 113). In other words when I return home How to history better you see what you are looking to find, and by asking better. you risk not seeing what’s there. All expe- The word ‘history’ comes from the ancient riences are real, but what does the ability Greek verb meaning ‘to ask.’ One who asks of having the experience endorse, what about things- about their dimensions, weight, systems, what politics, what perceptions? location, moods, names, holiness, smell, is a I leave feeling the Maasai tour is another historian. But the asking is not idle. It is when air-plane experience. I don’t have the feel- you are asking about something that you ing of being absorbed in the experience. realize you yourself have survived it, and so I’m shut out. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I you must carry it, or fashion in into a thing don’t think so. I believe a sense of respon- that carries itself (Carson 2010, no page). sibility comes with being allowed to have How to carry something back? To con- the touring experience. However, I don’t fidently write and ask these things from know if being absorbed is the purpose of the place of not knowing is a hard way to the visit? Of losing my ego and gaining a organize a written tour. relationship based in-feeling, the German Einführung, with the place, the people, the VI: The second in-flight rituals, the living history, the political and double-feature screening: social and ecological relationships which being in-paradox & pressure and organize the Maasai into the throwntogethernessing animate forms which I visit on the tour? I Visiting the Maasai Village I felt a kind of am an animate form too. We all are. I am sad simulacrum of a relationship with a aware of the Levinas’ (1990) critique of no-nomadic human. I feel a non-human

Landabréfið 25, 2011 65 relation decaying. It wasn’t as artificial as and we always seem to know which capital the reenactment of rural life villages I grew freedoms are best for the rest of the world, up with – Fort Boonsboro in Kentucky, the right? candle makers and wool weavers in sad coon [The trial of being throwntogether and skin caps circa our expectations of back then discordant harmonies has been closed for (see Fort Boonesboro State Park 2006) The this essay.] Maasai was not this. It was a different kind of authentic human, non-human social VII: Ngorongoro Conserva- relation changing right in front of me, and tion Area, Tanzania, 2010 which I was changing by being there, like a I have many sightings. The animal tourism social Schrödinger observer in-paradox. I around safaris at Ngorongoro Conserva- was in-paradox. We’re getting good at liv- tion Area in Tanzania makes sure. This is a ing in-paradox. The macro-molecules. The remarkable tourism of near-distance, of being species we have to kill to save. The nomadic near to a strictly curated distance: tourism tribe who stays put. I was effecting and seen from a truck. You can stand up if you being affected. I was being refractive. But want. I’m informed by Gunnþóra Ólafsdót- it was also something staged, a feeling like tir, the editor of this special issue, in com- one social order wasn’t moving at all and ment note GO45, that “Jane Desmond’s another was moving so quickly I didn’t even book Staging tourism would have been a good have time for nostalgia. The social order I read for this discussion.” I just want to pass am from was barely moving compared to that info on. the rate the Maasai’s social life is changing. Over 220 vehicle permits are allocated And what kind of modern trade tourism to tourism companies in order to conduct non-spice route was I helping to establish? a trade in sightseeing in the Ngorongoro A trade route of encounters with ideas for Crater. This number has nearly doubled in sure, not even necessarily new ideas, or the last 10 years. In 1996, there were 122 real ideas, more like ideas shrink wrapped licensed tour companies; in 2010, 220+ and curated to reflect back the ideas which licensed tour companies (Ngorongoro I want to see ahead of time. And the ones Conservation Area Authority 2011). Drivers they see of me they see on the programs from these companies corral the animals, made in the TV West, the ones which por- walkie-talkie their way through the crater tray not only our stories but the concerns with a constant update of info where the and recreations which structure our lives. non-humans which the humans want to An example is when I lived and worked in see are hanging-out. The humans are from Ghana for a year. In 1996 I was asked on a everywhere. Travel thousands of kms from pretty regular basis if I knew O.J. Simpson. everywhere else in the world to get here Not if I knew of O.J., but what was he like to watch an elephant travel a few hundred personally. Because surely, being from the meters to a watering hole, and then speed States, I knew O.J. personally. The glove off in a covered truck that seats eight as fast never fits in the West, was my rhetorical as a leopard to see a lion a few kilometers answer. We’ve read Deleuze, we’ve been across the park yawn. Like me, some of the deloused, we starting to think maybe it’s humans spent hundreds if not thousands of worth caring about where our food comes combined hours of their lives to coordinate from, we all know each other personally in the estimated financial resources to get here. the West, the ecological glove never fits us So getting here took years. The drivers look because it’s always someone else’s glove, for other drivers. I’m happy to be a human

66 Landabréfið 25, 2011 animal. So taking a cue from the drivers, do everyday. Most of what we bring when I watched the human animals that were we travel are things we are trying to get watching the non-human animals. If I was away from. It’s hard not to be cynical. I was falling for what David Foster Wallace (1997, board. I felt bad for being bored, both in the 381) pitches, that “the real spectacle which back of the truck and around a campfire. draws us here is us,” it was alright with me. But here was a species at least whose lan- I am usually pretty happy, though often guages I could understand, even if I didn’t nauseated by, that drawl to watch my own understand where they came from, why species watching. I’ve been practicing for a they came. Their migration patterns seemed long time. My oldest buddy from Kentucky, more complex than the animals walking to a Brian, and I used to go out just to practice pond. But I listened. It was a migration they people watching. We called it that, people did year after year to a place called away. A watching. We practiced the eye for our crea- place called distance. These migrations were tive writing. We needed to practice the eye, loops back and forth, not to the same places needed to practice picking up the details. We but in the same way to different places. The were taking advice from other writers, like patterns of their thinking and experiencing George Perec, who in Species of Spaces and place were the same, same stories over and Other Pieces outlines techniques for practic- over. I don’t mean to claim superiority in the ing seeing: “observe the street, from time way I travel. When I travel I like getting lost. to time, with some detail for systems per- I like showing up without a map. Without a haps… “Get rid of preconceived ideas… guide book. Without a reservation. It’s takes “What do you observe… You still haven’t preparation to maintain a state of being looked at anything, you’ve merely picked unprepared. It’s a stable uncertainty. It’s out what you’ve long ago picked out” (Perec like a weird copulation combination of the 2008, 50). To look is an obsessive itch. walks of Acconci and Eliasson. I usually A specific kind of nature preserve is pre- know my dates of arrival and departure; I served in these game parks, a preservation try to be aware of a precise way of being of potential sightings. A sighting in these conscious how I move while there. It’s not preservations requires the coordination of better or worse than other tourists, it’s just some of the most intense technologically different. But it does make me scramble sophisticated communication and transpor- to see where I am, because I don’t read up tation devices in the world. If you are a on a place much before I get there, I don’t tourist who can afford it, you can take a tour research the right restaurants. It means I at night and make sightings with infrared usually miss things. It means that I usually binoculars made for the military. To get have to just talk to people. It means I have closer, we’ll have to starve the lions better. to guess which people to ask and how to ask Camp stories the first night was a long them. It means that I have to have a little laundry list of how close we got. These micro-encounter. It means I often have to stories don’t last very long. And then the scramble. In asking those questions I end rest of the night consisted of people telling up wanting to do something I didn’t know stories about what they do, and where they to ask for. It’s often uncomfortable, and are from, and what they are getting away unromantically so. And annoyingly so to from. I listened for hours the first night to my wife, who often settles for a partial plan- four people talking about how far they had ning: a few reservations, like rock cairns, to to come to get away from what they do dot a trip to guarantee at least the chance everyday. Then they talked about what they to get lost right.

Landabréfið 25, 2011 67 Every part of tourism industry is based I was in Zurich running a workshop on walking and mapping when a biker was hit by a tram. I estimated that it happened on being mobile in a mobile place. And this about a minute before we were right in front of it. I didn’t mobility is a tourism organized by distanci- stop and look. I looked, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t not let the situation affect me. I was affected. My speed changed. The ated propinquity, to tour a concept of Nigel walking experiment ended. We all slowed down to almost Thrift (Anderson and Harrison 2010). This still. After a while of silence I was talking with a friend, and is a nearness which doesn’t allow us to see we weren’t sure if by not stopping we were not adding to the emotional power of taking the time. We didn’t want to be how far we have traveled as a species to ar- gawkers. But maybe, we thought, to stop and simply let the rive at the safari, a distance which doesn’t act affect the spatial flows around us was a way of offering a kind of spatial emotional support by participating from allow us to see how far we have not come as the crowd. By slowing or stopping, a crowd bump formed a conscious species, a species conscious of which was so big it was starting to shut down traffic on all sides and in all directions. A spatial bump that on the fringes our social and cultural impact by traveling. of the stopped flows, got people out of their cars. Drivers Every time we travel to a place we risk not who didn’t know what they were honking and screaming at to get going, had to get out of their cars to see what merely bringing home a new experience, they were stuck in. And we were all stuck. And it didn’t we risk making the place traveled to more feel like the spectacle theories I’ve read in studying crowds like the home we left. But I had the feeling and power. It wasn’t the image Debord (1995) laments and lambasts regarding societies and spectacles. It didn’t feel that on the safari I was seeing us as a human like we were watching to get the details of a story out of species. After the first nights campfire dis- it, it felt like we were watching because we were drawn in by care. It was a species in concern for one of their own. appointment, I spent more time watching And it was a way of feeling which had an immediate affect the people and listening to them talk to each on the spatial dynamics of the species around it. Strangely enough, I saw the same thing happen last week when visit- other. When they were looking at the lions ing Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. I wasn’t visiting as a tourist. and the zebras and the giraffes, I was seeing I was researching an education experiment. But from my hotel window, on the day I was leaving, a guy was crushed us by looking at the shapes and forms we by a car right under my hotel window. The concern was the force other species to take and conform to. same. Everything stopped. At least one hundred people I watched the people watching the animals rushed to see. And again I had the feeling that it was not out of the need of spectacle, but rather a deep connection of for days, and it was great. But the tourist concern for one of our own. The radii of the experiences operators didn’t put it this way, and the hu- were defined by the sounds of the accidents, by touching the accidents, by literally smelling the fear and concern. By man species were not on any of the check- being able to walk and stop and stare in places and in ways lists of wild animals and I saw some rare which the streets and sidewalks do not usually allow people ones. A missionary group of evangelicals. to walk and stop and organize. An army dentist. Two retired high-school [The story which led to an opening in the public-school teachers. A family hoping to essay which I was calling “Touch Tourism, adopt. A person starting an NGO for the the Paga Pond, Northern Ghana, Summer rights of rivers. The conversations they had 1996”, has been removed to shorten the were not very interesting. But the way they essay.] had them was interesting. What they said to each other didn’t engage me. But the way IX: they said things to each other, the structure that informed what they said, captivated me. X: Zanzibar, 2010: Either we are not wild enough as species to My final night in Zanzibar I listened to a be included on the interesting sighting lists, man die. A thief had been caught under- or we are too wild to see it. neath my bedroom window. A vigilante force of 12 taxi-drivers and shit-shooters VIII: Holding pattern: hanging out with the taxi-drivers had sur- Zurich, Switzerland, 2011 rounded the thief in a tight ring defined this trial is very small to fit into the essay, so you will have to move closer to the by the radius of their arms swinging sticks words to read them and fists. There was another thief but he

68 Landabréfið 25, 2011 slipped though the ring. I was told later that allowing me to leave. I didn’t know who I there were other robberies the week before should tell that couldn’t hear it themselves, my wife and I arrived, and the aggregated out their windows, at their front desks, at retribution was all the more brutal. I grew their security guard post outside the front up in Kentucky. The sounds of fists smack- hotel door like our security guard who was ing flesh of cheeks and faces on a Friday on duty, or not on duty on purpose. I didn’t night are not unfamiliar. I don’t mean to know how to be this kind of tourist. I didn’t romanticize it, but fighting was just one want this to be the part of the tour which of the ways to pass the time and center stood out. Was this a face-to-face encounter the attention. But it was nothing like this. of differences, what Nigel Thrift’s (1996) Ironically, somehow hearing these sounds non-representational theory might call made me feel less like a tourist. It threw me the centrality of an encounter? Shouldn’t this into the politics of the place I was in a way happen with even the smallest things, the that visiting the Maasai village didn’t throw canny exchanges? How much Nigel Thrift me because the trip to the Maasai village would I have to read to get to increase the didn’t allow me to see the way decisions in centrality factor, because after this, even the village are made and the way unscripted the little things I experienced changed? I actions take place. didn’t know why I was crawling back to the Listening for 35 minutes to someone be- window with the video camera again, but ing beaten to death under a window shakes this time for different reasons, thoughts and you up. It doesn’t go away like a car accident feelings breathing down my neck. I didn’t goes away. The emotional state doesn’t get know why I was crawling back to my bed for absorbed by time. Leaning my head cau- different reasons again not having made the tiously out the window, only 8 meters from video a second time. I didn’t know what was the scene, at first I was listening in a spec- louder: the sounds of fists landing sharp tacle of disbelief and curiosity. I debated blows on bare cheeks, or the over-tuned if I should slip my hand over the lintel and strings on the warping instrument of all record the situation with my new smart the stories and theories and thoughts I had phone video camera. I opted for sneaking collected in the past ten days. I didn’t have back into my bed. I didn’t mean to lie awake any estimation back-ups with me. I had no shaking. I didn’t want to romanticize the refraction energy. experience while I was having it. I didn’t What to me was an experiential con- know if I was angry or scared or fascinated vergence of sounds and images in seeing and frightened, if I should feel guilty about and hearing someone beaten to death by feeling fascinated, or for wanting to film it, a vigilante mob of do-gooders, was to the or for not wanting to film it, for not throw- hotel owner, and the other business owners ing a nights shape of local justice into the around the hotel, because they were in their on-line video world. I didn’t know if this windows, a quick unsympathetic shrug and would be news or new material for an art a short explanation of how it’s easier for project, or would I simply be shaping new the police if they don’t show up till after material for old stereotypes to reinforce new it’s over. The hotel owner said, that’s how misunderstandings? I didn’t know the role it is here over and over. An experiential the experience was asking me to play. storm which years later still leaves me on I didn’t know how to engage within the first clap of applause, after a lecture, or the encounter as it was happening. The a performance, or a sporting event, violently encounter was not inviting me in, but not flinching. I think sometimes I am still a

Landabréfið 25, 2011 69 tourist of Tanzania. That I will be stuck capable of holding onto and the tour guide there forever, in that window, listening to has to see it, feel it in your questions, feel it myself deciding if I should listen. I’m stuck in the questions you are not asking but want in so many places like this. Most are not so to ask if you only knew how. Our guide cu- extreme. But I’m still in so many of those rated these stories just enough so they hurt, places I’ve toured, the experiences of which but not enough to paralyze me, not enough are touring my sense of who I am, what I to overwhelm me on the spot to the emo- should do, why. tional safety of numbing. My guide didn’t let me go numb. She un-numbed me by XI: Auschwitz-Birkenau, regulating the speed of my tour, by stopping Poland, Dec 30, 2010 and slowing and speeding through spaces. A half a year after leaving Tanzania, my wife She curved the experience. I would have and I took a tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau. time to break down later. I was wiped out, When given the option of tour guide, I went emotionally, physiologically, physically, after against my instinctual need for being alone going through the tour. That’s the point. to experience the horror-space, but out of But after the tour I knew I needed more, sheer emotional survival instinct, I took my not more emotional flooding, but more in- wife’s advice and we took the guide with us. formation fix on the curation of the tourism The guide was a guard-rail against which and the preservation of places of the sto- my intellect could lean as my feelings went ries, which are still only stories-so-far. There over the edge. I was able to lean closer over was a gift shop, which is a strange thing in the edge of the things I was looking at in itself, though nothing seemed strange after the hope of being able to emotionally fall the tour, because everything was strange. In in. Our guide was from Oświęcim, grew up the gift shop, my tour guide told me, there there. She came from a whole family of tour was a book called Preserving for the Future guides. She was finishing a PhD in Kraków (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum 2004). in the science of tourism economics. In The book was the proceedings from an In- order to feel what you are seeing she said, ternational Preservation Conference which you need stories. was held to combine tourism with mole- You need one story about human hair cules, horror with decision making, emotion from corpses being woven into socks for with reason, and theory with policy with U-boat sailors, as you stare at tons and tons acting. What needed to be replaced? How of human hair and hear figures of more. much fence? Could new trees be planted? You need stories with grip, stories which Did they have to be similar species? Could become small doors, small thresholds pried the Pope light a candle and keep that lit open into the situation which you are tour- candle in a torture cell? Was a sock made ing to help you enter, help you touch and out of hair an object or part of a corpse, hold onto the situation, pick it up as it and should that corpse part be interned, changes you. If the past in relation to the or should it be displayed, and if displayed present traps you in an airplane of time should the display be underground like a form an event that is timeless, these stories grave or next to the shoes without shoe- are the senses primers. Stories are doors, laces (because the feet would swell) like an door stories. Unlike most doors, these do object? Was the town surrounding the site not have a fixed shape which you then slide the site too? How many tourists were too through. They are doors which exactly fit many tourists to a group, to a guide, to hear the size of your body mind, what you are a story, to feel the parts of history that are

70 Landabréfið 25, 2011 not past? Those were some of the lighter safety or the accusation of a social organiza- questions debated in the conference. tion still warped? I think it’s warped. And The conference was held in order tell I think this warp is NOT unique to Ger- stories to use those stories to make material many. And I think we are all connected to decisions about tourism and preservation. it in ways which the surfaces barely reflect Preservation in this case had to decide on any longer but which we can feel when we a geographical boundary to the camp. Like allow the relationships which compose the trying to define a natural preserve with situation to enter in through our feelings lines and fences while migrating species and refract us. When we take it personally. and populations involve much more com- I mean, where I’m from in the US, the plex patterns and systems, the concentra- Republican party is articulately agreeing tion camp doesn’t end where the fences right now, today, November 2, 2011, that enclose the site? But where does the camp the environmental crisis is a scam, that the end and is it important to ask? Does the fence between the Mexican/US boarder camp include the town, the industry of should be 8 meters tall and electrified to which supported, was forced to support, the kill on contact, and that there should be chemical manufacture and the mechanical no regulation for companies wanting to infrastructure maintenance which allowed tap into nature reserves. I think most of us the camp to operate? This was a comply or are going through the politics and decision be killed on the spot situation, as explained curating the world as if we are tourists by my tour guide. But if the town was also experiencing the way things work from an considered the railroad companies and the airplane. We are citizens from an airplane tracks part of the camp, as Lars von Trier’s sense of what’s personal to us. The world is (1991) Europa implies. (Though I hesitate to there for pictures and machine parts. Again, mention Lars in light of his recent Cannes I need a guide. Sometimes it’s philosophers, festival 2011 Hitler comments.) Preserving for poets, artists. Lately it’s been geographers. the Future was made because like nature-based Not because these disciplines are somehow tourism, these stories are only stories-so-far, special; they are simply aware of how they they are not even close to being stories that move, like Wallace Stevens (2000) who says happened back then. he often composed poems when walking; Again, on the train back to Berlin back and they use that movement, that ground from Auschwitz-Birkenau, I found myself experience, to critique and inform their a tourist, blown away, desperately looking work and the world and themselves into a for hand-rails because I had a grounding refractive product. What are my responsi- experience – intellectual hand-rails, emo- bilities in such tourist contracts? What are tional hand-rails, theoretical hand-rails, the tour operator’s responsibilities? Is it historical hand-rails, anything to make the to be response-able, as biologist philoso- visible seen, anything to understand the pher Francisco Varela (2005) cleverly but pictures I couldn’t take, the things that are poignantly says “To be more bio-logical as not there. Every time I take a walk around a species of these spaces?“ As a perceptive Berlin now I am conscious of the police being with agency by being here, creating that are on 24-hour patrol outside all the an economy, changing the ecology of the Jewish synagogues and schools and cultural place, the nature of the place through my institutions. I don’t know if the guards’ little local economy? Maybe a feeling of being there upsets me or comforts me? I responsibility can occur through contact, don’t know if they offer the perception of and the abstraction becomes real without

Landabréfið 25, 2011 71 loosing the abstraction, without losing the in its imagination”. What if we need to go feeling part of thinking? Maybe this al- slower to feel how fast things are changing, lows a resourcefulness to recompose the or how fast they are not changing? Would it relationships around our responsibilities to help to take more time to get to where we those things as processes, ourselves and our are going, to see fewer places in tours and species included? stay longer and slower in a few places? Can The landscape architect/movement ex- we make the arrival to the places and the pert Frederick Law Olmsted designed Cen- departures from the tours crucial parts of tral Park in NYC so that the curves of the the experience of the tour? To include the roads curated the traffic without the need places in-between the places we want to visit of speed signs disrupting the picturesque as crucial to the visit? It would be extreme, perception of the place. The speed of the but what if we imitated the performance of motion of the horse and buggies could be the artist Tino Segal, who, in traveling to the felt by the drivers and they could adjust their places where he exhibits his art, doesn’t fly. speeds according to the feeling of their tip- Rather, he takes the trans-Siberian to Japan, ping. Their movement was a composition and boats to New York. In other words, of travel which allowed them to feel the coordinating how his work is done is also mechanisms that allowed the motion and part of the work, part of the critique of the motion itself. In other words, much like the work, part of the perception of where a sailboat and not at all like a steam-liner, the art starts and ends, how difficult is it bodies stayed attached to the curves as the to draw a circle and boundary around art. wheels take the curves and the body took And it takes Tino longer to get to where in the park he’s going. It’s slower. He has time to make Tourism has the opportunity of re-mat- art estimations while getting there. Maybe it tering the traveler’s perceptions. Tourism should take us longer to get around. Maybe is a voluntary opening to difference and we need to slow up to catch up to where we different experiences. Tourism is a story think we have gotten with all this progress. making machine. Sometimes, like poet Maybe we need to take things more per- travel writer Eileen Myles (2009, 24) says sonally. Take where our food comes from in The Importance of Being Iceland, “I’m not personally. Take how we get from one place sure if I’m telling a story or unveiling my to another personally. Take stories person- mania.” I think good story telling does both. ally. Maybe then we’ll feel more responsible I think like the title of the book, we become for the world, we’ll risk society better having the places we travel. Maybe we already are let the world pass through us, allowing us to those places and don’t know it yet. Maybe reconstitute the way we cycle in relationship feeling the importance of being the places to the other materials and energy for the we are requires a scale of motion we can interrelations we can understand, and the feel? If we are no more aware of our daily ones we cannot yet. spinning around the sun, then we are of our sun spinning around some other solar The closing landing center, can be aware of the motions and I want to land the ending on a runway which emotions which are organizing the daily I did not write but which was a tremendous radius and circles we live in? As Doreen help in helping me to re-think some of the Massey (2005, 138–139) says in For Space, ideas turned over in this touring paper. I “I know we all ‘know’ this [that the earth can’t footnote the author of these words; is spinning]; the point is to feel it, to live she or he was one of the initial referees for

72 Landabréfið 25, 2011 this paper. I don’t know if this is illegal. I should be without doubt, the point being have never come across a paper that quoted that what counts as a ‘real experience’, as the one of the anonymous referees. I also love author defines it, is really quite variable thus the idea of referring to an author I can quote some sort of justification for the definition but whom I don’t know, can’t footnote, and of a ‘real experience’ as opposed to, I guess, cannot identify, and it would be unethical non-real ones, seems necessary. It is interesting to note the compassionate for me to know their names. It’s a lot like affect the author describes in Zurich compared the Pirandello (1921) play Six Characters in to the horror in Zanzibar, however (assuming Search of an Author, and I’m just agreeing the cyclist died) many would find it horrific to be the director of this paper and not the that automotive death is so easily accepted author? Probably not. Maybe it’s more like and wonder what the juxtaposing of these my version of Mark Strand’s (1992) poem stories means in terms of the representation Keeping Things Whole, “I move to keep things of ‘Africa’ compared to ‘Europe’. Notably the whole.” I like that, agrees with everything author writes that in Zurich the affect was being mobile and connected. Maybe it’s like one of “a species in concern for one of their a small conversation with a stranger on a own” (p.10), but what does this line mean train, except, not as ambient cool as Jim after reading the Zanzibar story? Jarmusch. I will work on figuring out what …at the least, I do believe the author needs to be much clearer about their intentions it is like long after this paper is finished. I do at the outset and the implications of their this because it preserves the spirit of being writing at the close.1 in-paradox. Because it doesn’t de-danger the tour. Because I’m getting ready to refract. Acknowledgements Because I took the suggestions personally, I would like to thank both referees, even the one just like a local person recommending good that strongly strongly recommended that this essay not be published. I benefited tremendously eats and thing I should take the time to see by the comments after I got over the criticism. when touring an academic journal and the I also want to thank Markús Þór Andrésson discipline of geography. for curating the exhibition Without Destination, and for organizing the museum to perform an Equally the author’s frustrated reaction to the artwork which consisted of calling my sister interior of the plane and being emotionally everyday for three months and wish her a and psychologically overwhelmed at and after happy birthday. That exhibition and project the visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau fit neatly set in motion a hive of ideas, some of which into the category suitably cultivated and were incubated in this essay. I especially want appropriate responses for a certain liberal to thank Gunnþóra Ólafsdóttir, who gave me subjectivity. Imagine instead, for example, a extraordinary editorial advice, and repeatedly child on their first flight, or someone terrified encouraged me to go on, even though she of flying. Imagine instead, for example, did not allow me to use my permanent home someone strongly opposed to the active address as the page number and reference preservation of cites of mass killing, or a footnote for the Doreen Massey quote about stories-so-far. (xo) critic who despairs of the whole so called ‘Holocaust Industry’ seeing the raising of such sites to a secular religious status as a References way of sublimating the logics which led to it Acconci, V. 1969: Following Piece. Oct. 3–25, 1969, in the first place? I should say I hold none of Activity, “Street Works IV” Program, orga- these positions, however that they are possible nized by the Architectural League, New York.

1 The editor has obtained permission from the anonymous referee to publish these comments.

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Landabréfið 25, 2011 75 76 Landabréfið 25, 2011 The destination within Hildigunnur Sverrisdóttir*

ABSTRACT An old saying claims that the soul takes longer to move than the physical body – or at least that it moves according to other laws. This is felt when travelling in a landscape like the Icelandic one, when our frames of reference have not yet broken in and we find ourselves in limbo, not fully understanding our context. Without our familiar social codes, everyday rhythms and points of orientation, we seem to glide in a strange space-time, an “inbetween”. Thus, new freedom of personal interpretation arises, whether we have prepared ourselves for the voyage or not. Nothing would fully prepare us as we glide into this rare state of being. This heterochronic situation seems to give us the peace to find ourselves in an almost pure state of mind. Can it be that the traveller, being faced with a quantum leap of scale - between the miniscule self in the vast landscape and its powers – is not only faced with the dynamics of the landscape as such, but also, and no less, with herself? This paper argues that in the essence of this extraordinary nature lies a rare possibility of meeting with the one thing that is so miraculously ordinary: Being in itself.

Keywords: Travelling being, rhythmanalysis, landscape, nature-based tourism, Iceland.

ÁGRIP Áfangastaður hið innra. Gamalt máltak segir að á ferðalögum sé mikilvægt að staldra reglulega við og bíða eftir sálinni – ferð hennar lúti í öllu falli öðrum lögmálum en ferð líkamans. Íslensk náttúra getur haft sams konar áhrif á ferðalanginn, þegar hversdagsleg viðmiðunargildi hans eru horfin sjónum og hann lendir þannig í einhvers konar millibilsástandi, án getu til að skilja samhengi sitt til fullnustu. Án kunnuglegra áttavita og skilnings á fjarlægðum og samhengi virðist hann svífa í framandi tímarými. Þar með myndast nýtt frelsi til persónulegrar túlkunar, hvort sem við höfum búið okkur undir ferðalagið eða ekki. Ekkert getur að fullu undirbúið manneskjuna undir þetta einstaka og sjaldgæfa ástand. Þessi upplifun virðist jafnframt bera með sér annars konar tíma og frið fyrir hugann. Getur verið að ferðalangurinn – í þessu stórbrotna skalastökki milli sjálfs sín og hinnar óendanlegu víðáttu landslagsins og krafta þess – horfist ekki eingöngu í augu við mátt landslagsins sjálfs, heldur sé ekkert síður knúin til að horfast í augu við sjálfa sig? Í greininni er því haldið fram að í þessari einstöku náttúru liggi fágætt tækifæri til að komast til fundar við það sem virðist svo hversdagslegt að undrum sætir: Sjálfið sjálft. Lykilorð: Sjálfsvera ferðamanns, taktgreining, landslag, náttúrutengd ferðamennska, Ísland.

Introduction According to an old saying, when travelling voyagers – giving them the time needed to from place to place, one has to sit down at enjoy, savour and digest the wonders that crossroads at a given time interval and wait meet them – with the often all too busy for the soul to arrive before continuing or and rigid schedules that they had agreed to settling down. follow prior to arrival. But what did they This saying has repeatedly come to expect to find in this country – and why my mind when travelling as a guide with are they traveling? numerous groups of tourists through the Within the past few decades, the travel tremendously varied sites of Iceland, trying industry has become increasingly important vigorously to balance the satisfaction of the to Iceland’s economy and the spectrum of

* Architect and part-time lecturer at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Email: [email protected]

Landabréfið 25, 2011 77 travel experiences offered seems to be a hypermodern condition. In any case, few ever increasing (Icelandic Travel Industry will deny the impact of the multitude of Association 2010). But this increase in the systems that surrounds us, that seem to take numbers of visitors, and the balance of the primary control of our lives and to which marketing value of their visits versus the im- we must succumb for various reasons – in pact on the fragile land, raises many issues. many cases sacrificing our personal needs, This has sparked a series of debates within making them standardized to benefit the local communities and on the national level, whole as Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison concerning the use and marketing of avail- (2000) intriguingly imply (figure 1). able resources; and to which extent access Since modernity, many thinkers have to resources should be limited due to their touched upon this issue in their works. fragility and/or scarcity. For the travel in- Michel Foucault notably addresses it in his dustry, it is therefore extremely important writings on panopticism and goes further to try to get a deeper understanding of the to imply that modern society is built on a nature of the experience that visitors are complex system of power through knowl- looking to find during their voyage. edge and discipline, stating that the whole I often wonder whether those who invite of society is infiltrated with a ‘carceral outsiders to the collection of experiences continuum’ (Foucault 1975). that we could, for simplicity, unify under the This omnipresent struggle with ‘the sys- brand name “Iceland”, have really grasped tem’ has likewise been extensively treated in its full potential. If we have thoroughly rec- literature and cinema, from Kafka to Pal- ognized the varied spectrum of the travelling lasmaa, Tati to Gilliam. It is for example being, the fundamental elements of the lived humorously illustrated in the introductory experience that will both justify the visitors’ part of Jamie Uys’ (1981) The Gods Must be own voyage and serve as a word-of-mouth Crazy. In the film, the life of an African tribe illustration of its capacities. Working as a is described, with its intimate connection to certified tour guide for different tour ven- the rhythms of nature. Simultaneously, the dors, I often wondered whether we were audience is introduced to the self-inflicted sometimes overlooking, misunderstanding absurdity of everyday life in a modern ‘civi- or misreading the nature of the visitors’ lized’ South-African city: needs, both in terms of the activities and Civilized man refuses to adapt himself goods locals were supplying, but principally to his environment; instead he adapts his none the less in terms of the organization environment to suit him. So he builds cities, of the tours themselves. I will argue in this roads, vehicles, machinery, and puts up power article that far too much emphasis is put lines to run his labour-saving devices. But on the quantitative spatial frame of travel, somehow he doesn’t know when to stop. The neglecting in some cases the core of the more he improves his surroundings to make potential qualitative experience; the essence his life easier the more complicated he makes of travelling being as such. it. So now his children are sentenced to 10- 15 years of school just to learn to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat they were The (post-/hyper-)modern born into. And civilized man, who refuses framework of systems to adapt himself to his natural surroundings, It is debatable whether we still live in mod- now finds that he has to adapt and readapt ern times or whether we have moved on to every day, and every hour of the day to his a postmodern, post-postmodern - or even self-created environment (Uys 1981).

78 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Figure 1 Garden of Selves, from the series The Architect’s Brother. (Source: ParkeHarrison and ParkeHarrison 2000, reproduced with permission).

Arguably, the Western citizen has become (to power). The primacy of the economic tangled up in a web of latent systems, and above all of the political implies the robbed of her autonomy even before she supremacy of space over time (Lefebvre was born. Her continued participation in 1991[1974], 95). society seems somewhat obligatory. The We live in times that claim to celebrate the French sociologist and philosopher Henri diversity of individuals. Yet we normalize Lefebvre supports this notion in his discus- like never before. Everything in our sur- sion on time and space, stating that roundings is quantitatively knit and weaved into standards, regulative frameworks and [w]ith the advent of modernity, time has vanished from the social space. It is recorded schedules. In his writings on rhythmanaly- solely on measuring-instruments, on clocks, sis, Henri Lefebvre (2004 [1992]) goes on that are isolated and functionally specialized to define the linear rhythms of modern as this time itself. Lived time loses its form production frenzy, subordinating the and its social interest with the exception, more natural, personal and social rhythms that is, of time spent working. Economic (circular rhythms) under their reign. Our space subordinates time to itself; political insistence to measure quality of work within space expels it as threatening and dangerous the easily measurable frame of time, and to

Landabréfið 25, 2011 79 directly appropriate that frame of time as metropolis to organize and later optimize money, forms the basis of today’s Western production, consumption and service for society – and all too often its morality as its own citizens; optimal, visual, completely well. A contradiction lies in the striving for definable and measurable. ‘freedom’ as the control of spare time that At the opposing end, we have the realm is in reality merely the left-over intervals of pure nature, unaccountable, haptic, vast, between the measures of rhythms of pro- and useless as a base of systemization. This duction – if we succumb and obey. We hope is the space of the ocean or the sand dune to gain stability, but pay with our autonomy, in the desert that has its horizons rearranged subordinating our bodily rhythms to that of every instant by the blow of the winds. Ob- the system of production. Could it be that viously, this is also the realm of the lava field this loss of control over time might be man- in the fog and the vast glacier, in the Ice- ifesting itself all around us, for example in landic context. This is the realm of intensi- stress and even in more severe physical and ties, a multi-sensory experience, not easily mental illnesses? We seem to be constantly rationalized – of feeling the cold, tasting the trying to reconcile ourselves with time, the snow and hearing the silence; a space of the omnipresent clock continuously reminding haptic, bound through the body, multitudes us of our seemingly hopeless battle for the of possibilities with no clear direction, a promised illusion of freedom. space of the event (figure 2). Let us at least assume that the above The condition of space being smooth mentioned malaise might imply that our or striated is, however, based on the bodies and minds are having difficulty in subject’s context with the environment. coping with the over-structured systems im- The ocean was striated with the help of posed on us by society. Isn’t it then natural the stars (and later GPS) to control com- to feel on some level the urge to protest merce and transport. But it also refers to against the imprisonment of the top-down logical comprehension, the capabilities of generated, omnipresent systems of disci- navigation through whatever field of life. pline and monotonous rhythms based on Conversely, the over-striated urban tissue the capitalist ideology, building its logic on of metropolitan cities can transform itself production and currency? into smooth space from the point of view of a visiting outsider. The two opposing The smoothness of space concepts of space – the smooth and the – and the ever-striating striated – are, however, interdependent and observer one will always coexist with the other, thus The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and giving meaning to the dynamics of shift- psychoanalyst Félix Guattari (1987 [1980]) ing realms, based on the transcendence of described and defined space according to perception of the observer. two conceptual opposites; the smooth and the striated. In their analysis, striated space Why do we travel? is the organized space of, e.g., the city, with We could further put Lefebvre’s (2004 systematic planning and a clear orientational [1992]) thoughts on rhythmanalysis in quality, originally grounded on the city-state context with the above-mentioned oppo- and further developed through modern sites, accepting that the personal and social capitalism. The space very much like any bundles of rhythms manifest themselves in given modern city, the space of a seden- different needs within different societies. tary urbanite, grounded on the wish of the But at the same time we could wonder

80 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Figure 2 Smooth space – a space of multi-sensory experience. (Source: Ágústsson 2007, reproduced with permission). whether the Western urban dweller, being using the very principles that we, as travellers, are partially subordinate to the modern system trying to escape. of discipline and organization, reaches her In this world of production, consump- limit of striation of time and space in the tion and amusement, there seems to be an everyday context and periodically needs a increasing need for liberation, autonomy, break, a smooth space in time, a leave that freedom of choice, and last but not least, allows her to investigate, relax – give in to spirituality. Typically, those of us who are the tempo of her ‘circular’ natural, social privileged enough to travel in an organized and bodily rhythms. fashion in the first place tend to lead a rela- So why do we travel? Arguably some of tively privileged lifestyle, with food on the us – even all, to some extent – travel in or- table and money to spare, but seem to be der to rest; both in the contradictory sense severely lacking the most basic thing that of not moving, but simultaneously in the allows for spatial liberation – namely time. more obvious sense of taking leave from our everyday lives. Could it be that Icelan- The liberation of the now dic tourism often fails in both aspects, by in the context of travel underestimating its own potential and, more Incidentally, we seem to be highly efficient gravely, by misunderstanding the needs of in re-evaluating the past and planning for its visitors? This aspect of the travelling being the future in our system of things, events runs the risk of being neglected or even and social etiquettes, but longing for the suppressed because travel tends to be organized freedom of thought in the peace of the

Landabréfið 25, 2011 81 now, referred to by Lefebvre (2004 [1992], state similar to zero-gravity, the moment of 77) as “appropriated” time: the non-savant, evoking the innocence and obligatory humility towards the surround- The time that we shall provisionally name ings: Where am I – and who am I? Who “appropriated” has its own characteristics. am I without my code of reference, code of Whether normal or exceptional, it is a time that forgets time, during which time no longer language, status, cultural relevance? counts (and is no longer counted). It arrives The traveller has to use her whole body or emerges when an activity brings plenitude, in these new surroundings. One has to open whether this activity be banal (an occupation, one’s ears, one’s taste buds, start hearing a piece of work), subtle (meditation, with the toes and talking with the hands and contemplation), spontaneous (a child’s game, eyes. This multi-sensory and smooth spa- or even one for adults) or sophisticated. This tial experience is just as relevant anywhere. activity is in harmony with itself and with the However, the farther the new situation is world. It has several traits of self-creation or from the everyday, the more substantial is of a gift rather than of an obligation or an the re-orientation that has to take place, pro- imposition comes from without. It is in time: longing the stage of gliding in the temporal it is a time, but does not reflect on it. and spatial state of the question mark. So where does Icelandic tourism fit into The Icelandic artist Sigurður Guðmunds- this? By leaving behind the overly organized son recently published an account of a year field of thequotidien , the everyday rhythm of spent in introspection and of his efforts spatial surroundings, the home, the work, of social striation in the vastly populated the relatives and busy schedule, is it pos- Ho Chi Minh City (Guðmundsson 2010). sible to gain liberty? Interestingly, it often Finding himself in the setting of an enor- seems essential to leave those spatial condi- mous living city where he was unable to tions behind; the grid that is so tightly knit properly orient himself, unable to verbally around us. We have to leave in order to get communicate with other people, and where that precious and much needed breath of his social status was partially undefined, he time, ‘appropriated’ in harmony with itself discovered (what he considered to be) true and with the world. interpersonal communication and a direct route to the self. Gliding in the zero-gravity Very similar to Guðmundsson’s quantum of the now in the leap of leap in scale from his usual domestics to the scales smooth human and urban landscape that To prepare for travel in space, astronauts are met him on his voyage, one can imagine trained to adjust for the state of weightless- that the leap in scale for urban dwellers is ness by flying in specially equipped aircrafts immense in the Icelandic context of end- (NASA 2006). During a parabolic dive of lessly stretching horizons. The profound the aircraft, the astronauts in training get a proportional dynamics of scale between moment of mere 25 seconds in simulated man and the man-made on one hand, and weightlessness. In a similar fashion, in the the vastness of the landscape and its pow- interval between departure from the famil- ers on the other, are instantly experienced iar to the point in time when one’s instincts by the human body. The powers of nature of orientation kick in again in a new setting are not only destructive and sublime, but – before one gets to know the ways around also unpredictable, which adds temporal to the local bar, cathedral or mountain peak uncertainty to the perceived situation. Will – there is a rare moment of gliding in a it snow in the afternoon of a sunlit summer

82 Landabréfið 25, 2011 morning? Will all plans be shattered by a can be of interest, but is it really the size blizzard, fog or even an eruption? of the collection of postcard-places that The quality of this feature of the forms the core value of the traveling expe- landscape is transcultural and immensely rience? Do we really care so much whether personal at the same time, a heterochronic we see that particular mountain or that lake situation that might lead to a wake-up call – taking the thrill of witnessing a specific directed at all the senses to build up a new natural phenomenon for the first time out personal frame of reference and under- of the equation? standing, striating in one’s own manner Should we instead give greater attention the sensing of a place by a multitude of to regard the temporal points of visit, ad- sensory inputs, smelling, hearing, reinvent- dressing other senses than the eyes, where ing a code of language that has nothing the tour frame is intuition-based rather than to do with words or top-down asserted organized around recognizable visual attrac- cultural values. And much like Saigon, the tions? To be sure, in the last twenty years multi-sensory and ever-changing situation we have seen a much more varied spectrum of Icelandic nature may then have a power of travel in Iceland, intertwining culture and to make one linger in that state of limbo nature, even going to the lengths of organ- of self-re-discovery. izing travels and experience around central natural/political discourses. This is impor- Travelling to – without tant, supplementing in varied ways the types moving from – the most of service where the striated visitor simply treasured destination of checks her boxes of predefined must-sees, them all giving more recognition to the other type of As previously mentioned, travellers are traveling that this country undoubtedly has still in many cases kept on a strict pro- great potential to accommodate: A space for gram, leaving very little flexibility between the haptic traveller, the living in the now, the the (sometimes way too many) previously chance to reinstall, re-sense and recollect established ‘points of interests’ and often the inner frames of reference. too little time to explore them properly or Perhaps this should be a point of ref- enjoyably (Veijola & Jokinen 1994). In any erence to a much greater aspect of the given situation, heavily scheduled itinerar- services and offers provided by the travel ies seem to underline the impossibility and industry, giving the collection of experi- irrelevance of deep, holistic, emotional ences more importance in their qualitative experiences as the emphasis is directed to- terms. Obviously, this is more difficult to wards accumulating the maximum number plan and striate in the traditionally accepted of ‘must-see’ destinations and sights. quantitative terms of sale and marketing In my capacity as a guide, I found that the as it cannot easily be calculated, planned most treasured moments of the tours were or prescheduled, but does not make it un- often completely unorganized, unforeseen important. everydayish happenings in the extraordinary setting offered by a random place in nature, The voyage through the when time had the opportunity to win over gate of the now space, and ambiance, mood or chance ‘ap- I hope to have argued the great importance propriated’ a certain moment. Obviously, of acknowledging and embracing the qual- the sublime characteristics and emotional ity of the heterochronic state described impact of certain settings or destinations above, as we plan and map the quality of

Landabréfið 25, 2011 83 local nature-based tourism. We should also Foucault, M. 1975: Surveiller et punir, naissance de be cautious of the alarming and suffocat- la prison, Paris: Gallimard. ing elements in the striated reality of the Guðmundsson, S. 2010: Dýrin í Saigon. Reykja­ marketing scene and the over-exploitation vík: Mál og menning. of fragile ground, and rather understand Icelandic Travel Industry Association 2010: Fer- the multitude of values and qualities that ða-þjónusta/Tourist Industry. Hagtölur/Statistics. can influence each voyage. We must give Reykjavík: The Icelandic Travel Industry the traveller time and space to let her body Association. move with the soul, thereby bringing her NASA 2006: NASA’s “Weightless Wonder” Host through the gates of nature to the destina- Experiments. Release: 06-248, June 26. http: tion that so many seek; to the now – and //www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/jun/ through the gate of now, to herself. HQ_06248_Weightless_Wonder_final.html (accessed October 11, 2011) Acknowledgements Lefebvre, H. 1991 [1974]: The Production of Space. The author wishes to thank Hlynur Helgason, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Anna María Bogadóttir, Gunnþóra Ólafsdóttir Lefebvre, H. 2004 [1992]: Rhythmanalysis. Lon- and the two anonymous referees for their don: Continuum. valuable feedback and comments. Furthermore, she wishes to thank Sólveig Ólafsdóttir for Pallasmaa, J. 2005: The Eyes of the Skin: Archi- her continuous encouragement and Sigrún tecture and the Senses. West Sussex: John Wiley Birgisdóttir for support, fruitful co-operation & Sons. and stimulating discussions. ParkeHarrison, R. & S. ParkeHarrison 2000: Garden of Selves. In: The Architect’s Brother References series. http://www.parkeharrison.com (ac- cessed October 11, 2011) Ágústsson, Ó. S. 2007: ÓSA, Svínadalur_10. http://www.ferlir.is/images/svinadalur__ Uys, J. 1981: The Gods Must be Crazy. South 10_.jpg (accessed October 11, 2011) Africa: CAT films/Mimosa. Deleuze, G., & F. Guattari 1987 [1980]: A Thou- Veijola, S. & Jokinen, E. 1994: The body in sand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Min- tourism. Theory Culture and Society 11(3): neapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 125–151.

84 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Imagine being here now1 Lucy Lippard*

Like any hopeful tourist I had imagined Ice­ What’s significant is the relationship of land for years, but this essay was written imagination to reality and action, especially before I finally got there, so I will address for artists and writers who specialize in act­ my own heavily visited turf – the small ing in the gap between the two, or between city of Santa Fe in northern New Mexico art and life. Lean too far on the imagina­ – hoping that I can cross our increasingly tion side and we risk falling off the edge porous borders, even though Iceland/ into wishful thinking. Lean too far on the New Mexico might seem to be a classic reality side and we risk getting stuck in the case of apples and oranges. (Iceland has status quo. I raise this as a context in which a much more vital art scene, but we do to think about the relationship between im­ share spectacular landscapes and similarly agination and tourism. For instance, tourists marginal and romanticized identities. And are rarely informed that New Mexico is one the US military has occupied both of us.) of the poorest states in the union. Instead I have never taken a nature-based or eco- we are called the ‘Land of Enchantment’, tour, or been a tour operator, except for for our dramatic landscape, and Santa Fe is hiking with small groups around my rural the ‘City Different’. home ground. But whenever I travel, I try Like Reykjavík, Santa Fe is a tourist to get out into the landscape on my own, desti­ ­na­tion embedded in an extraordinary and I always try to remember that ‘nature’ landscape that is a prime attraction, along includes human beings, that seeking out the with its indigenous inhabitants. It beckons nature of urban places is as challenging as to those dashing by, though much of it supposedly ‘pristine’ wildernesses. is private land and decidedly not open to Imagine Being Here Now is a title that I have trespassing, which, I admit, is one of my for years offered up in advance when I am favorite modes of tourism. In order to have still unsure of what I’ll write about, but also any idea of where you are, it’s really neces­ because I enjoy the paradox. Why would sary to take time, to walk and look around. we have to imagine a place if we are right (And that’s not easy if you are guiding a here now? Because we’re always doing it, large group of people with different capaci­ because every day we imagine and then live ties.) ‘Landscape’, like ‘place’, has become a version of our new stories, our histories, a self-conscious rather than an organic which we then disseminate through friends concept. But in the process of following and family…and photography. “Imagine”, the vortex of land and lives, a tantalizing John Lennon exhorted us. And artist David liminal space has opened up between disci­ Wojnarowicz said in the 1980s, “I’m begin­ plines, between the arts, geography, history, ning to think that one of the last frontiers archeology, socio­logy – space occupied by left for radical gestures is the imagination” people like Trevor Paglen, who follows the (Wojnarowicz 1989, 10). black sites of governmental secrecy, and

1 The following text includes some borrowings from my books The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society (1997) and On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art and Place (1999), as well as from lectures I have given in Reykjavik, Iceland; Seville, Spain; and Falmouth, England.

* Galisteo, New Mexico, USA.

Landabréfið 25, 2011 85 Matthew Coolidge of the Los Angeles- capitalized by imagination; at the same time based Center for Land Use Interpretation they’re defined by our own realities (figure (CLUI). Both identify as ‘experimental ge­ 1). Santa Fe, like all places, is many different ographers’, offering photographic and geo­ places, located somewhere between reality graphical analysis of the built environment. and the imagination, depending on one’s CLUI catalogues all kinds of unexpected lived experience and associations. But over vernacular, industrial and military land use the last century – and the celebration of our from deadpan but unconventional perspec­ 400th anniversary in 2010 didn’t help – it’s tives in its data base, trumping cynicism as been commodified far beyond the usual it works on a fine line between invisible expectations. Tourism has the potential to politics, earth science, social science, art put any place in quotation marks. For almost and cultural geography. Sometimes CLUI a century, Santa Fe has been set aside from organizes actual bus tours, showing related normality, highlighted and exaggerated by art videos along the way. these quotation marks. The reality of space is always contestable, J. B. Jackson – the great essayist, cultural whether one is living in it, visiting it, or tour­ geographer, and ‘geohistorian’ of the New ing it. Imagined space, on the other hand, is Mexico landscape – wrote that easily available. Virtually from its inception, no landscape, vernacular or otherwise, can tourism and tourist destinations have been be comprehended unless we perceive it as imagined or re-imagined for us by capital, or an organization of space; unless we ask

Figure 1 This is not a commercial, this is my homeland. (Artist: Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie 1998, reproduced with permission).

86 Landabréfið 25, 2011 ourselves who owns or uses those spaces, Law 1979, 1). It’s kind of depressing that how they were created and how they change it’s still so relevant one hundred and forty (Jackson 1984, 8). years later. Inspired by his writings, fourteen years ago Middle class Americans would rather I wrote a book on the significance of place tour Europe than most places in the and contemporary art – The Lure of the Lo- United States, but when they can’t afford cal: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society to go abroad they often come to New – which has sparked most of my work ever Mexico. It’s as close to a foreign country since. The message was that no matter how as you can get within our national borders, long or short a time we live in a place we and this is a mixed blessing for those who inherit the responsibility for knowing about live there. The state has gained in taxes, it, valuing it, working to keep it viable, and volunteerism, and philanthropy. But it illuminating our dynamic cultural spaces is taken for granted that New Mexicans and their underlying, often invisible mean­ sneer at tourists… even though many of ings and uses. If a local is someone who us were introduced to this place as tourists. gives more than she takes, everybody is a We are ambivalent, as I suspect Icelanders candidate. The book title’s plural – senses are. Yet we’re hugely dependent on tourism, of place – is crucial, since we each have our along with the nuclear industry, the military, own places within shared places. And the mining, and now Hollywood. We are not concocted word ‘multicentered’ reminds alone. Towns, regions, whole states in the us how uprooted our societies are and si­ western U.S. are falling back on tourism as multaneously insists that we can put down their traditional bases crumble – a desperate shallow but tough roots wherever we find ploy in landscapes that have been played out ourselves. In fact it’s downright dangerous by extractive industries – mining, timber, not to do so – both personally and generally gas and oil, and livestock overgrazing. In – for places, for other people, other life, and comparison, tourism is touted as low impact for a planet in the grip of climate chaos. and environmentally correct – ‘the lesser Constructive, critical tourism that is good evil’. Yet more boutiques, more restaurants, for both visitors and visited depends on a more high-end homes, more roads, more real sense of place – a virtual immersion infrastructure – are very hard on the fragile that depends both on lived experience and landscape of the high desert. on topographical, even infrastructural, In the 1980s, the cultural and heritage intimacy, not to mention acquired knowl­ tourism that had sustained Santa Fe for edge on the ground and in the books. Yet decades gave birth to something still more as French Situationist Guy Debord has self-conscious called ‘Santa Fe Style’. The remarked, “Capitalist production has uni­ original city was entirely built of adobes, fied space,” producing “an extensive and or mud bricks. Today only the rich can af­ intensive process of banalization” (Debord ford them because adobe building is very 1970, 165). And more recently it has been labor intensive, and much of the historic observed that globalization compresses district is really constructed of fake adobe time and space. Ludwig Feuerbach, who – stucco over frame, which satisfies those died in 1872, already observed that “With­ more concerned with ‘style’ than substance. out a doubt our epoch prefers the image Santa Fe is a city in disguise. Its Historic to the thing, the copy to the original, the Design Review Board dictates every ar­ representation to the reality. Appearance to chitectural detail in downtown Santa Fe being. Only illusion is sacred” (quoted in so that nothing deviates from the Pueblo

Landabréfið 25, 2011 87 Revival style adopted at statehood in 1912. Wilson advocates “a critical regionalism But the apparent uniformity has actually that harnesses the tourist economy for lo­ given birth to true subtlety, which is what cal social needs and develops housing forms finally makes Santa Fe such an interesting that balance individuality with community” and multi-faceted city. From the outside, the (Wilson 1997, 310). But he warned that this artificial setting – aka Adobe Disneyland – is was for the residents of Santa Fe to decide. overwhelming. But on close scrutiny, each If tourism can’t sustain social justice and apparently similar adobe is truly different, environmental sustainability at the same even those that are part of ‘Santa Fake’ (or time that it brings economic benefits, it’s ‘Fanta Se’). The same can be said of the not worth cultivating. How to offer an ac­ initially monotonous arid landscape that curate, layered, sophisticated but not elitist hides its secrets so well. presentation of this fascinating city and its Santa Fe Style appropriates not only ado­ surrounding landscape, integral to its iden­ be but the material culture of those who can tity, poses a great challenge. no longer afford to buy their own antiques The concept of a ‘critical regionalism’, or arts. Navajo weaving, Pueblo design, often more critical than regional, is popular Hispano wood and tinwork, cowboy art, these days in landscape and architectural aristocratic elegance and plebeian modesty studies. It also offers the possibility of do not come cheap. The owners of Santa redefining tourism, an industry generally Fe Style trophy homes – more California dependent on uncritical regionalism. Santa than New Mexico, far larger than any tra­ Fe itself is a classic example of a powerful ditional ‘haciendas,” often perched on ridge regionalism about to collapse under the tops above the city – often feel compelled weight of its myths. The past has an iron to dress the part in a bizarre pastiche of hold on the urban landscape for once and Navajo, Pueblo and Hispano, loaded with for all. Writer Bill deBuys observed that velvet and silver, designer jeans and upscale those who reinvented this place around cowboy boots never meant to tramp in ma­ 1912 as the City Different might wonder nure. Many of the wealthy part timers have “not that their vision was so successful, bought huge ranches on which they don’t but that it went unrenewed for so long” bother to raise cattle, even when they dress (deBuys 1994, 21). the part – giving rise to the derogatory say­ Tourism removes us from the realities ing ‘he’s all hat, no cows’. of lived space, experienced spaces. The This may sound like a caricature. And view, or the scenic overlook, for instance, it only applies to a small, but very visible is a readymade photograph waiting to be part of the tourist population; of course snapped, a point from which to look at an­ once you own a home in Santa Fe you are other place. It’s also totally removed from no longer strictly a tourist, so I use the term actual experience, even as it may move us Second Home Tourists for those who own deeply for a moment. Do we really travel large houses but live in them only a few only to stare off into another place where weeks a year. Cultural historian Chris Wil­ we can’t go? Nature beckons you in, but just son, in his groundbreaking book The Myth so far. This is comforting to many tourists. of Santa Fe, rightly condemns the “shallow No need to climb that mountain, struggle gratification” of Santa Fe style, which has, down that slope, get muddy shoes on that he says, “provided a marketing image for train, stand in the rain. Selective tourism is the tourist economy” (Wilson 1997, 310). a protective strategy. Veteran tourists learn

88 Landabréfið 25, 2011 to distinguish their spaces. There’s nothing the Spanish colonized it in 1598. The Villa quaint about the commercial strip running Real de Santa Fe, founded around 1607, is north south in Santa Fe. So tourists may the oldest capital city in the U.S. and the go there to fill up on fuel or do some quick only one that remains practically bilingual. non-souvenir shopping but they will soon Spanish is still the first language for many forget it as they keep their minds firmly on older New Mexicans. Of course there are the ‘historic downtown’, the reason for their the ruins of huge stone towns built by presence. Tourists in Santa Fe are usually indigenous people many centuries before happy with what they get – a small palat­ that, but Indian cultures are not counted able dose of otherness embedded in exactly in American history. They are called pre-his­ the same consumerism as the commercial tory, as though there was no history until strip, but visually disguised. Europeans came to write it down. In the process of emphasizing its dif­ Tourist brochures make a big deal of ference, Santa Fe has separated itself not Santa Fe’s unique ‘tricultural’ heritage. Its only from the rest of the U.S. but from selling points are shared by Navajo and much of New Mexico, not least because of Apaches and the supposedly mysterious its newcomers from elsewhere in the U.S. Anasazi Indians (ancestors of today’s Pue­ whose incomes far exceed those of most blo peoples), by the Conquistadores and Native Santa Feans. Thanks to a certain Franciscan friars of the seventeenth centu­ snobbery and to the competition that is ry, by Billy the Kid, outlaw hero of the Old an earmark of capitalism, New Mexicans West, and by Georgia O’Keeffe, heroine of who trace their ancestry back to the 17th high modernism (figure 2). The arid land­ or 18th century, some of whom consider scape plays a significant role as the dramatic themselves Spanish and unrelated to in­ backdrop for all this romance. Indigenous, digenous peoples, are threatened by the Hispano and Anglo cultures do live side by influx of their poorer, often mestizo cous­ side, though not necessarily together. In a ins from Mexico, driven over the border by complex history of mixing and separation, economic forces, in search of a better life their stories are intertwined. There are also or in some cases of life itself. Native New subcurrents of African, Moorish, and Jew­ Mexicans do not welcome change, because ish cultures as well, but these have never they feel strongly, and, alas, justifiably, that succeeded in rising to the touristic surface. change always seems to work against them. However Arabic words form a major part Newcomers to New Mexico discover that of the New Mexico’s place names and vo­ resettling there can be a downright surrealist cabulary in Spanish or English – arid, acequia, experience, like tourism itself, in which peo­ adobe, Los Alamos, and so forth. The influx ple coming from very different places find in the 1850s of the so-called Americans, themselves juxtaposed and superimposed or Anglos – everyone who is not Hispano to create a new reality, a collage, that’s not or Indian – exacerbated the divisions of entirely real to anyone. wealth, culture, class, and especially ethnic History and nostalgia for an often mum­ identity that fuel local antagonisms today, mified past make Santa Fe appealing. And though these are generally ignored when of course, history, created and recreated, the city is presented to strangers. is the mother lode of tourism. Iceland­ Some travel agents break nature-based ers would have to adjust their historical tourism into categories. Basic ecotourism watches, because by American standards, is learning about the interrelationship of New Mexico is very ancient, which means living organisms in different natural areas

Landabréfið 25, 2011 89 Figure 2 O’Keeffe (Photo: Lucy Lippard). and about scientific research being per­ residents. Ordinary people’s lives are seldom formed in the field. ‘Soft’ natural history, commemorated unless their remains have or a vague outdoorsy focus might include become quaint, as in Rancho de las Goland­ short nature trails, usually including signs rinas – a ‘living history museum’ near Santa that can be both informative and annoy­ Fe that is a successful and mostly respect­ ing. ‘Hard’ natural history is interest specific, ful marketing of memory. Some cities, like like birding. And Adventure Tourism would New York or London, can be mapped as be rock climbing, whitewater rafting – an global cities. Santa Fe has been forced to eco-stretch. Most of these run the risk of remain regional in order to profit from tour­ becoming eco-colonialism, especially if ism and the film industry, even as it prices they ignore the role of humans in their itself out of the local market. Towns like ecosystems. Santa Fe are severed from the present in a Tourism is too often discussed solely hyped up, idealized no-place or ‘privatopia’ from the viewpoint of the visitors rather that no longer belongs to the people who than that of the visited, which in a broad belong there. sense includes wildlife, rivers, forests, and In the American west, nature is politics so forth, though other species have very and politics has a profound effect on nature. little to say about what becomes of them A decade or so ago there was a popular and their habitats. Preservationist Jonathan bumper sticker in Santa Fe that read “More Daniels (quoted in Jakle 1987) observes Mining, Less Tourism.” Mining was consid­ that poverty “will keep old things as they ered more acceptably macho, more ‘natu­ are”. That is, until taxes are so high that ral’, more ‘Western’, as in the ‘Wild West’. no original family can survive them, as in Now oil and gas development threatens Santa Fe’s gentrified east side, where Ang­ the landscape that makes our state a tourist los have displaced most longtime Hispanic destination. Northwestern New Mexico has

90 Landabréfið 25, 2011 become a national sacrifice area in favor of gas and oil development. The election of a Republican governor hell-bent on banning all environmental regulations that might discourage big business is exacerbating the situation. As is now pretty obvious, a history un­ moored, a history that serves up events and places out of context, refusing or unable to share its real story, is transformed by capital into commerce. Dean MacCannell (1992) even concludes that “cultural tour­ ism blocks our access to cultural origins.” I assume he means that the real stories remain hidden or become secret, like Pueblo reli­ gion in New Mexico during Spanish colo­ nialism. He recommends that we cultivate “respect for the gap” between tourists and the toured, “a gap that can be narrowed but never closed.” In Santa Fe that same gap exists between many Hispano natives and almost any Anglo, even those whose Figure 3 Tourist terrorist, Barcelona families have been in the area for genera­ (Photo: Lucy Lippard). tions, because Santa Fe at heart is a Hispano city, though built over ancient indigenous the way they do. You say you want diversity,” pueblo ruins. she says with some exasperation, “but the If you’re a longtime local, and you’re the more you want diversity the more you are object of the casual touristic glance; if your destroying it”. lives and histories are made relevant only by I’m always asking myself exactly what an the leisurization of your places, you have to intelligent local tourism would be, how to take the tourist industry pretty damn seri­ forge a communicable form of local history ously (figure 3). In New Mexico this often that longtime residents would be able to em­ tragic role is played by Native Americans, brace. I keep hoping that both Native peo­ whose homes are perceived as existing ples and artists will begin to create new tour­ solely for scrutiny. Pueblo Indians live isms, to help the rest of us divest ourselves on small Indian reservations, constricted, of cultural expectations we’ve been fed by fragmented, and modernized versions of the blanding or blanching out of western the great towns they lived in centuries ago, history, so we don’t get rushed along the Taos Pueblo being the only one that still beaten track of lowest common denomi­ resembles the original centers. Santa Clara nators, herded by vast oversimplifications Pueblo scholar Rina Swentzell (quoted in of the complexities and contradictions of Flinn 1992, E-5) asks how people there place, which can end up erasing the multiple can “live a normal life when 20 people a truths of real history. What we have now is day come into their communities asking what geographer Edward Soja (1989) calls a them why they dress like that, why they ‘thirdspace’ or ‘Landscape Three’ created by build their houses like that, why they live constant border crossings between the real

Landabréfið 25, 2011 91 and the imagined, the local and the global. own memories are embedded in the adobe New Mexico is that place in many ways. Our surface – plastic toys, jewelry, letters, coins thirdspace is tourism itself, a consumption of – each with specific meaning to the artist other places, other cultures, or the digestion and perhaps to other Indian people. But she of their powers. The advantage of region­ also encouraged visitors to help themselves alism is that outside influences get sifted to these objects, in the long honored tradi­ through a local filter, instead of a global tion of the giveaway. The public began to one. I advocate for the juxtaposition of the leave things around the obelisk in return. big picture and the little picture, producing For over two years, Teters’ adobe obelisk a porous, decentered landscape with holes stood in a very visible spot outside the New where tourists can creep in and out. Mexico State Capitol. If it had remained In New Mexico, cross-cultural tour­ long enough, it would have melted back ism is inevitably cultural trespassing. This into the earth from which it came, as many landscape by which we are all so enchanted Pueblo villages have. -- no matter how claimed, how exploited, A clear sense of how we are manipu­ how desecrated, how contested – remains lated by representation is a necessary tool the homeplace of Native Americans. We’d for surviving postmodern life, pointing up understand our own psychic landscapes aspects of the contemporary experience. far better if we always began with indig­ If the beholding eye or the tourist gaze is enous occupation and built from it. In the inevitably socially constructed, who would Southwest, Native peoples share the photo­ be better at framing it than artists? We graphic firing line with the landscape. The public tends to conflate all the complex Indian cultures with either nature itself, an anachronistic fantasy, or with the beige and turquoise-decorated art galleries, in which one can find various examples of shameless theft of Native imagery. A multi-centered public art can chal­ lenge communities to construct their own narratives. For instance, in 1999 the SITE Santa Fe biennial commissioned Charlene Teters, who’s a Spokane Indian, and she made Obelisk: To the Heroes, an adobe rep­ lica of the Soldier’s Monument, a stone obelisk in the center of the Santa Fe plaza, erected in 1867 and inscribed “To heroes that fought in various battles against the savage Indians” (figure 4). Around 20 years ago, in broad daylight, a man dressed as a workman climbed the iron fence around the monument and chiseled out the word savage. Nobody paid much attention to him. That single lost word – SAVAGE – reap­ Figure 4 Obelisk; For the Heroes. pears on Teter’s sculpture, to reverse the (Artist: Charlene Teters, 1999. Photo victim status of Native peoples. Teter’s reproduced with her permission.)

92 Landabréfið 25, 2011 can’t trust eyes that lack peripheral vision. expressive place. This would encourage a I think of Rebecca Solnit’s (2010) beauti­ two-way street, a way of thinking about ful book Infinite City, an innovative atlas of tourism as an exchange between visitors San Francisco, in collaboration with artists and visited. We could deconstruct and and cartographers, which crosses invisible reconstruct existing tourist literature. The interdisciplinary borders and opens the real bland travel magazines could be revamped city to the intelligent gaze. Just as much as to allow for some debates, some critical been written about the tourist’s complic­ thinking, some responses from those who ity in situations tourists simultaneously are stared at, some double-edged images. deplore, so artists are complicitous in the An exhibition catalogue could double as a way the world is seen, since teaching peo­ guidebook, telling us some of the stories ple how to see is the artist’s business. The buried in the places we pass, helping us to dialectical relationship of the real past to re-imagine them. Performance artists might the simulacra or cosmetized versions that roam the city as random tour guides (rather nourish conventional tourism should be than the wonderful but passive ‘statues’ so grist for a cantankerous art. common in European cities). Collaboration I was interested to see Icelandic art­ is the social extension of the collage that is ist Ragnar Kjartansson quoted in Art in every place. Collaboration with those who America, saying that the recent financial are of the place, including scientists who collapse had “energized the local art know it close-up, in excruciating detail, scene and become an opportunity” (Wei would make the whole enterprise far more 2010, 99). I wondered how, and what role complex and more layered. Local maps, representation and tourism played in this booklets, brochures could be collectively process. Since Santa Fe is deeply dependent created by the residents with local artists on tourism, I once suggested that its most and writers. Artists and their local collabo­ high-profile avant garde venue, Site Santa rators could consult with various agencies Fe, might want to take the bull by the horns and non- profits to discover the root issues and do an exhibition on tourism that took in the location. One shared by Iceland and place all over town, presenting views from New Mexico might be the preservation of the varied perspectives of visitors, visitees, ‘countryside’ (also spelled with a c instead longtime residents, newcomers, etc., which of an s, as in genocide and suicide) and could spark a multivalent and socially neces­ sustainable agriculture. The further afield a sary dialogue. (They were not interested.) tour or a literally ‘traveling exhibition’ could Tourism imposes a disguise on locals, be spread, the more interesting it would be, whether they like it or not. I have a poster and the more people it would reach. There’s on my wall that reads “Nothing About Us always the danger that it could get too scat­ Without Us is For Us.” One of the prob­ tered, too diluted, but it might be worth it lems local people have with tourism is that to trade off coherence for broader acces­ they are rarely included except as poorly sibility. A tour concentrated entirely on a paid service workers. We who live in any bioregion, or on the ecology of a single place have inherited the responsibility of site (or perhaps multiple places) would also valuing the landscape and communicat­ be provocative, especially if it emphasized ing the meanings of our dynamic cultural problem solving, landscape restoration, spaces to those who don’t. Local artists can preservation of ecosystems and endan­ be facilitators or better yet animators rather gered species. Visiting photographers (and than the trickle-down interpreters of an I’m sure Iceland gets a lot of them, as we

Landabréfið 25, 2011 93 do in New Mexico) could team up with local tion of place. people to participate in the tourism process When all is said and done, the heart of all from both sides of the mirror, helping to experience of place lies in the journey, time shape the way our places are seen. I like to spent – more in the process than the prod­ think in terms of ripple effects moving out uct, as we proclaimed in the 1960s. That from consciously lived experience – how said, can artists really help reform tourism? those ripples affect your center and where The art world is as captive to Capital and other rings intercede to affect you and the globalization as any other business. Even environment, and so forth. artists who have the most radical politics It might be interesting to work with and a powerful desire to transcend their giv­ tourist agencies to create a series of village en context work within the circumscribed initiatives, something that may exist in other territory doled out to them. If artists frame parts of the world. ‘Community Tours’ led what we see and how we see, the ultimate by residents could subvert conventional frame we need to address is the limitations knowledge. I live in a tiny rural village imposed by society itself and by exhausted – population under 300. It is beautiful and notions of art and its functions. For all our silent, but I like to contradict that initial problems, I think New Mexicans have been impression when I show friends around by internally pretty successful in passing living telling stories that support a local saying: history on to the next generations. How­ Pueblo chico, infierno grande (Small town, big ever, the past can only sustain a vital urban hell). And I fantasize about how we would landscape for so long. Tourism brings us present ourselves to outsiders, given our the outside world, and will continue to be a rich and diverse history. It would definitely crucial part of the story. And a vibrant small be a learning process for all concerned, and city needs to be in touch with the world. the emerging stories would be multiple and Insularity is no longer an option. contradictory, like the village itself. Discussions of tourism are always fraught with contradictions. And con­ References tradictions are what define a diverse and multicentered society, the kind of place I Debord, G. 1970: Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: want my community to be. I keep look­ Black and Red. ing for art forms that are buried in social energies not yet recognized as art. I could deBuys, W. 1994: Threads of Time and Place. imagine a ‘multicentered’ tour that focused El Palacio 99(1–2): 18–21. on the many dissimilar parts of one place Flinn, J. 1996: Travelers might be ruining what – an on-site collage acknowledging disloca­ they love. The New Mexican May 19: E-5. tion and displacement, centers brought to Jackson, J. B. 1984: Discovering the Vernacular Land­ peripheries, communicating from one place scape. New Haven: Yale University Press. to another. The transcultural collaborative work of Andrea Robbins and Max Becher Jakle, J. A. 1987: The Visual Elements of Land- considers displacement – what they have scape. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. called transportation of place, like the remains of a German colonial manager’s Law, L. 1979: Spectacular Times 1 & 2: Images and home in Namibia. Their work produces everyday life. London: Spectacular Times. a surreal disconnection from place at the Lippard, L. 1997: The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place same time that it informs the general no­ in a Multicentered Society. New York: New Press.

94 Landabréfið 25, 2011 Lippard, L. 1999: On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art Wei, L. 2010: Reykjavik Report. Under the vol­ and Place. New York: New Press. cano. Art in America October 2010: 99–104. MacCannell, D. 1992: Empty Meeting Grounds: Wilson, C. 1997: The Myth of Santa Fe: Creat- The Tourist Papers. London & New York: ing a Modern Regional Tradition. Albuquerque: Routledge. University of New Mexico Press. Soja, E. 1989: Postmodern Geographies. New York: Wojnarowicz, D. 1989: Postcards from America: Verso. X-Rays from Hell. In: The art exhibition Wit- Solnit, R. 2010: Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. nesses: Against Our Vanishing. November 16 Berkeley: University of California Press. – January 6, New York. Artists Space.

Landabréfið 25, 2011 95 Responsible Geographies 5th Nordic Geographers Meeting 2013 Reykjavík

Dagana 11.–14. júní 2013 verður haldin í fyrsta sinn á Íslandi ráðstefna norrænna landfræðinga, NGM. Þetta er í fimmta sinn sem ráðstefnan er haldin og búast má við fjölda gesta, bæði frá Norðurlöndum og víðar. Yfirskrift ráðstefnunnar vísar til þeirrar margþættu ábyrgðar sem landfræðingar bera gagnvart samfélagi og náttúru (sbr. kynningartexta hér að neðan).

Geographers are constantly reminded of the responsibilities that come with the task of ‘earth- writing’. Accounting for diversity in nature and culture, exploring the dynamics of change, and comprehending relations between humans and nonhumans are the core tasks of geography. The resulting geographical knowledges are vital, not only for providing a more comprehensive understanding of earth’s intricacies, but also for revealing the complexity of cultural understandings of these, and for formulating responses to cope with their changing. Recent and ongoing events have indeed given geographers much to think about. The world’s financial system has shown itself to be without any earthly sensibilities. Political, social and environmental transformations in many parts of the globe have wide-ranging ramifications, and questions of human welfare and social justice are starkly present. Similarly, non-human nature behaves in ways which makes the vulnerability of human societies all too obvious. A key concern is the resilience of both ecosystems and social formations in the face of increasing mobility of people and profits, and escalating risks and uncertainties, at different scales. Perhaps we could do well in revisiting and rephrasing a familiar question – what kinds of geographies are needed in order to inform public policies so as to deal with the many challenges in just and responsible ways? New, innovative and progressive ideas, perspectives, and solutions are certainly needed. Are critical concepts, theories and methods being articulated in the Nordic geographical community for this end? Under the broad heading of ‘Responsible Geographies’, the organizing committee invites geographers to attend the 5th Nordic Geographers’ Meeting at the University of Iceland, in Reykjavík.

Kallað verður eftir tillögum að lotum og erindum þegar nær dregur. Nánari upplýsingar fást með að senda póst á netfangið [email protected] Leiðbeiningar fyrir höfunda Instructions for authors writing in English can be found at www.landfraedi.is/landabrefid

Landabréfið er tímarit Félags landfræðinga. Það kemur út árlega. Í því eru birtar lengri fræði- legar greinar (allt að 8000 orð að lengd), styttri greinar (sjónarhorn og umræður), ritdómar og annað efni sem snertir landfræði efni og störf landfræðinga. Lengri fræðilegar greinar eru ritrýndar. Tungumál Efni má vera á íslensku eða ensku. Fræðilegum greinum skal fylgja ágrip á bæði íslensku og ensku, ásamt 4–6 lykilorðum og titli á báðum málum. Skil efnis Efni skal skilað til ritstjóra á disklingi eða sem viðhengi í tölvupósti. Myndir skulu annað hvort settar á sinn stað í textanum eða auðkenndar þannig að ekki fari á milli mála hvar þær eiga að birtast. Frumskrár stafrænna mynda þurfa að fylgja. Töflur Töflur ber að hafa svo einfaldar sem mögulegt er og forðast skal mjög stórar töflur. Númera skal töflurnar „Tafla 1“ o.s.frv. og láta titil eða stuttan skýringartexta fylgja. Númer og texti standi ofan töflunnar. Skýringarmyndir, kort og ljósmyndir Skila má skýringarmyndum eða kortum á pappír eða á stafrænu formi, og sé þess þá gætt að upplausn sé viðunandi. Gæta ber þess að nota letur sem er læsilegt í þeirri stærð sem myndin skal birtast í. Ljósmyndir sem birta á skulu vera skarpar. Skila má skyggnu, pappírseintaki, filmu eða stafrænni ljósmynd. Númera skal allt myndefni, „Mynd 1“ o.s.frv., og láta titil eða stuttan skýringartexta fylgja hverri mynd. Númer og texti standi neðan myndarinnar. Tilvísanir til heimilda í texta Í fræðilegum greinum skal vísað til heimilda samkvæmt almen- num kröfum í landfræði. Í texta skal getið nafns höfundar og ártals greinar, ásamt blaðsíðutali ef ástæða er til. Sé höfundur sem vitnað er til íslenskur skal birta bæði fornafn og eftirnafn. Sé höfundurinn erlendur skal einungis birta eftirnafn. Séu höfundar tveir skal beggja getið, en séu þeir fleiri skal einungis fyrsti höfundur nefndur og síðan ritað „o.fl.“ á eftir. Dæmi um tilvísanir í texta: (Guðrún M. Ólafsdóttir 1994, 21) (Skúlason og Hayter 2001) (Sigfús Jónsson 1984) (Cloke o.fl. 1991) Frágangur heimildaskrár Fræðilegum greinum skal fylgja heimildaskrá sem gengið er frá í samræmi við dæmin hér að neðan. Heimildum er raðað í stafrófsröð eftir nafni höfunda; for- nafni Íslendinga en eftirnafni ef um erlendan höfund er að ræða. Dæmi um röðun og frágang í heimildaskrá: Cloke, P., C. Philo & D. Sadler 1991: Approaching Human Geography: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Debates. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Guðrún M. Ólafsdóttir 1994: Frúin frá Vín og Íslendingar á miðri 19. öld. Í: Elín Bára Magnús- dóttir og Úlfar Bragason (ritstj.), Ímynd Íslands: Ráðstefna um miðlun íslenskrar sögu og menningar erlendis. Reykjavík: Stofnun Sigurðar Nordals. Bls. 19–33. Skúlason, J. B. & R. Hayter 1998: Industrial location as a bargain: Iceland and the aluminium multinationals 1962–1994. Geografiska Annaler, 80 B(1): 29–48. Sigfús Jónsson 1984: Sjávarútvegur Íslendinga á tuttugustu öld. Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmennta- félag. Neðanmálsgreinar Nota má neðanmálsgreinar til frekari skýringa eða útlistana, en þeim skal stillt í hóf. Ekki skal nota neðanmálsgreinar til að vísa til heimilda. Efnisyfirlit / Contents

Frá ritstjóra / Editor’s comment 2

Special Issue: Practicing Nature-based Tourism Edited by Gunnthora Olafsdottir

Greinar / Articles

Practicing (nature-based) tourism: introduction 3–14 Gunnthora Olafsdottir

‘Praying the Keeills’. Rhythm, meaning and experience on pilgrimage journeys in the Isle of Man 15–29 Avril Maddrell

Multi-sensory tourism in the Great Bear Rainforest 31–49 Bettina van Hoven

Mobile in a mobile element 51–75 Eric Ellingsen

The destination within 77–84 Hildigunnur Sverrisdóttir

Umræður / Discussion

Imagine being here now 85–95 Lucy Lippard