places we loved:Narratives of environmental rediscovery

CCBY Jon-erik Lappano, 2012

I let the steering wheel slide slowly through my hands as I made the turn into the sheltered boulevard, watching the spring sun flicker through the trees; a flare in the corner of the windshield casting shadowy projections across the dash. Scanning the terrain, I took in the activity of the neighbourhood. In a laughing flash of colour, a line of children ran in front of the car in gleeful pursuit of an old basketball while two men stood on the corner in conversation, their young chil-dren circling tricycles at their feet. I crawled the car slowly forward around the neighbourhood as I tried to get my bearings. My only map was one drawn by nostalgia, the memory of the urban neighbourhood etched somewhere deep within my grey matter, but this rudimentary mental car-tography somehow guided me in the right direction, as a water dowser is pulled by the mysterious twitching of a forked willow branch. Finally, I arrived at a cul-de-sac of redbrick townhouses, and while the place had aged, I knew it instantly and slowed the car to a stop. With the whirr of the en-gine now silent, I could hear the subtle sounds of my childhood: the faraway laughter of children, the evocative song of mourning doves, the distant traffic noise, and the low rumble of the wind. I stared at the small, rectangular, and minimal buildings that stood in front of me, each fitted with a solitary window and a door. This was the place, the exact house where I was born. I rolled down the windows, letting the cool air spill into the car, hoping the smell of the street would spark some faded memory, a primordial pull from my early childhood to welcome me home. I sat in the car for a moment, suddenly aware of myself, of my hands that held the steering wheel, of my adult frame.

Prologue:

Homecoming

Photo CCBY: J.E. Lappano (2012) Places We Loved: The Sidewalk Block

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I caught the reflection of my eyes in the rearview mirror, and they looked like my father’s, cast in the arcing shadow of my brow. A wave of existential angst washed over me as I mulled over the steady and inevitable passage of time and the joyful and tragic absurdity of being born. I looked up. The chirping of periodic birdsong rang out from the canopies of trees overhead, which painted intricate fractal pat-terns against the blue sky, their branches still bare from the recent winter. It had been twenty-six years since I had left, and so the trees must have been much larger now, but they appeared to me the same size. I too, had grown. It was the houses instead that now seemed so small. The entire depth of this place appeared to be severely truncated; what I once perceived as expansive terrain now lay before me as only a few yards of lawn. Despite this spatial distortion, the environment around me was intimately familiar. I wanted to explore it further, and remembering that I had come here for exactly that purpose, I stepped outside of the car and into the past.

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Physically returning to a childhood place can be a powerful sensory experience. It demands your complete attention, filling you up at a cellular level, each compartment brimming with the full-ness of a life lived. Of course we revisit these places often in our minds, through memories, stories and dreams, traveling through the ethereal reflections of our mysterious and ungraspable pasts. But actu-ally setting foot inside the spaces you occupied in the imaginitive states of childhood can unexpectedly re-light those long-sleeping neural pathways and call you into the dreamlike state of childhood nos-talgia, as you move through the landscape that once cradled you. In this bodily rediscovery of place, new metaphors and insights can emerge and create resonance between old and new stories in a union of past experience and current knowledge. However, interpreting these experiences for broader envi-ronmental learning requires some context and is dependent on an ability to attune one’s senses to the breathing environment. My own journey through this process began with simple reflection. Before I was able to inter-pret the meaning underlying the nostalgia I felt for these places, I had to rediscover inner landscapes of deeply embedded ecological metaphors they had inspired. I had to open myself up to autobiography as a valuable mode of inquiry for environmental education, and I had to trust the tacit environmental knowledge I held. Traditionally, the inclination in ecological education is to look to scientific and edu-cational authorities for knowledge transfer. This authoritative approach is undeniably valuable, espe-cially in an age where the complexities of the challenge must be fleshed out with careful and cogent analysis to uncover sound and effective environmental solutions. However, from a popular education perspective and for the purposes of shifting behaviours in the broader society, we need to engender an emotional and psychosocial connection to the problems we face for a working understanding of and action towards the environmental dilemma. Hall and Clover (1992) discuss environmental popular education as that which is “grown out of an experience or analysis of daily lived experience with an emphasis on social, cultural and political frameworks by ordinary people, often using participatory

a process of rediscovery1

Photo: J.E. Lappano (2012) Place Map, “Platts Lane” (Detail).

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approaches to analysis and action” (p. 742). In other words, environmental popular education uses the everyday experiences of everyday people as entry points for environmental learning. Through par-ticipation and engagement with environments and the resultant stories of individuals, such an “inside out” mode of environmental education seeks to make the environmental dilemma emotionally rele-vant to the population. I began this process for myself by first reflecting on my own ecological iden-tity (Thomashow, 2010) using an autobiographical methodology of narrative inquiry. As a research methodology, it seeks to bring “theoretical ideas about the nature of human life as lived to bear on educational experience as lived” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 3). Essentially, through the telling and careful interpretation of stories, narrative inquiry attaches quality and meaning to lived experi-ences so we might understand them in relation to greater forces. Clandinin et al. (2006) have offered a definition of narrative inquiry as a methodology that has “come out of a view of human experiences in which humans, individually and socially, lead storied lives” (p. 477). They describe story as a “portal through which a person enters the world and by which their experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful” (p. 477). I delved into the fathoms memory to recapture my own formative environmental experiences. My rationale for doing so was to uncover tacit environmental knowledge and to explore methodolo-gies for environmental rediscovery that could be applied using theories of environmental popular edu-cation. What first emerged were snippets of landscapes that were incomplete and mysterious. In order to qualify them as significant, I began a list of childhood environments, jotting down the fragments of nuanced memory.

The sidewalk block. The tunnel. The dam. The river. The two white pines. The pond. The transformer. The rose garden.

At this point, the places were void of depth. They were fragmented, frayed, and ghostlike, hovering in my cognitive space like rough pencil sketches of exquisite and colourful paintings. In an attempt to solidify them, I began to chart these places out, scrawling down basic linear maps of the environments in question. These were useful for the purposes of basic information, but were largely unsatisfying, and did little to uncover any deeper levels of meaning. It was only in the act of writing stories that the places began to take full qualitative form, re-embedding themselves in my awareness, reconnecting pathways in my cortex, and reviving phantom sensations. In this way, I recall Bateson (2000) who beautifully states, “writing forces me to recycle experience, harvesting the learning in what I already know” (p. 229). When I wrote of these spaces, the environments richly filled my con-sciousness, sprouting from latent memories I thought had long since escaped me. They poured in from cracks in the plaster, cast their shadows on the ceiling and floor, and crawled up through the grain of the wooden desk, stretching themselves across my aluminum laptop. With a conscious focus on the lucid experience of the written narrative, the stories were altering my memory and affecting my cur-rent awareness, creating new metaphors. I acknowledge this process creates somewhat of a dubious fictionalization, but for the sake of argument, it can also be thought of as a kind of enhancement of

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memory. After all, the new metaphors I had created in narrative were born from the pangs of nostalgia and from emotions and intuitions that were my own, woven together with current sensibilities, aware-nesses, insights, and reflections of the collective unconscious. In this way, narrative inquiry is not so much a fictionalization of one’s life history, but rather a pastiche of autobiographies — a poetry of the inner landscape that can lead the individual back to the states of mind they once occupied. Examining oneself through the subjective and distorted lens of memory is to understand there is no absolute truth in autobiography, there are only stories. Regardless of their integrity or accuracy, I was now looking at these places in a richer sensory depth, approaching the state in which I previously interpreted them. In a narrative sense, I was once again inhabiting them.

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I remember the day we moved in. Or at least I remember one fleeting moment. I am three years old. There is a green carpet and a big window that casts a large rectangle of light into the empty room. The house is red and leading up to it there is a long, freshly tarred driveway that curves slightly into a carport. There are concrete steps leading up to the front door oddly carpeted in a forest-green Astroturf that glisten in the sun. We have arrived ahead of my father who is driving with the furniture truck and so my mother has thrown bedsheets onto the floor so my sisters and I can sleep in the warm, dozy sun. I remember how it feels to drift off into a deep and comforting slumber in this new place. I fixate on the printed yellow daffodils on the cool, white sheet, smelling the fresh aroma of laundry detergent. Peeking out from a fold in the sheet, I can see my mother’s feet near the door, which is propped open, letting in the summer air. My baby sister, Kiersten, lays with her mouth open and short arms across her closed eyes, completely asleep. My older sister Sarah is lying on her back and looking up at the ceiling, which has great swirls of plaster culminating in the centre into one smooth white circle. In this place, I close my eyes and turn my head to the window, there’s a red glow behind my eyelids, and I strain to watch the dancing colours and shadows as the buzz of excitement turns into the slow and steady vibration of sleep. And then nothing. Then, the vacant space of memory, the gap between neurons, the space as large as space itself, where it’s not clear who I am, where I’ve been, or if I’ve even been here at all. (Lappano, 2012b)

Places we loved:

157 Henry st.

Photo CCBY: J.E. Lappano (2012) Places We Loved: The Dam

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In the context of environmentalism, why turn to autobiography, especially when the issues brought to light by this field of study are largely concerned with interconnection, community, and a sense of urgency? How can dwelling in a self-reflective arena possibly help in advocating for issues that require a significant, urgent, and collective effort from diverse political, social, cultural, and economic interests? While autobiography can be useful from a popular perspective, do we have the time to “navel gaze” while the atmosphere approaches or surpasses critical CO2 levels, or the groundwater is poisoned and depleted by the exploits of industry? These are questions that continue to emerge for me as I struggle with the integrity of looking within. Still, there is a richness of valu-able learning that is uncovered through autobiographical inquiry that can effectively help us to move forward as educators in a mindful and reflective manner. Moreover, this self-reflection is helpful for environmental educators, if only for the purposes of psychological maintenance, as we are constant-ly navigating an emotional terrain that moves between extremes of hope and despair. Reconnecting and better understanding the meaning that lies beneath our choices to advocate for our environments in the face of massive decline is important to consider in order to ensure we can sustain the critical environmental effort. Consider, for example, the context of my own environmental development:

As a child I was surrounded by “environmentalists”. My mother started the local environment group in our county and advocated passionately for environmental issues from the municipal to the federal level. My father, a family doctor, was central to the regional fight against pesti-cides. At monthly potlucks I would overhear discussions of renewable energy, organic farm-

autobiographies of the wild: A RATIONALE

2Photo: CCBY J.E. Lappano (2012)

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Photo: CCBY J.E. Lappano (2012)

ing, the greenhouse effect, and acid rain. At home, we saved water by brushing our teeth from a cup. We planted trees along local watersheds. It seemed to me as a child that the fate of our planet was in our hands. I was aware of the potentially dark future that lay ahead if humanity continued to squander our resources and neglect our environment in the name of profit. But at the same time, I was immersed in the positivity and hope of community coming together to work for the greater good. We always enjoyed planting trees and going on hikes and week-long canoe trips; the connection I felt for the environment around me was most often an experience of joy. Yet the environmental awareness fostered in me from childhood onwards created an undulating mental topography of hope and despair. As I moved through time and began to see environmental issues as increasingly complex and endemic, I found myself lin-gering in the valleys of pessimism more than resting atop the peaks of optimism. (Lappano, 2012a. p. 3-4)

Throughout my childhood, I experienced a largely positive feeling towards environment-alism. As I aged, I became more cynical and jaded (and rightly so, given the harsh and daunting realities of which I have become aware throughout my education). Yet I believe it is important to not lose sight of the initial attraction that first drew me to environmental work. Part of this was parental guidance to be sure, but a large part of it was an isolated result of my individual relationship with the environment, paramount to which was a sensory and emotional affinity I held for “wilderness”. I am hesitant to use this word, becuase many of the places I identified as significant in my narrative reflections were certainly not “natural” spaces. The electric transformer, the dam, the built environ-ment of the cul-de-sac; each of these places are far removed from a typical understanding of wil-derness. Nevertheless, through the spirit and imagination of a child, they exuded characteristics of “wild” places. As Thomashow (2010) reminds us in a reflection of Thoreau’s (1979) seminal work Walden:

Walden (…) reminds us that wilderness is a state of mind. It is not necessary to ascend a dangerous peak or take a long backpacking trip to practice the wild. It is a matter of how you see the world, how you perceive the artifacts of everyday life, whether you notice the sky and hear the birds. (p. 33)

As a child, I inhabited space differently. Though I was completely unaware of it at the time, I was engaged in conversation with the world around me. This is a practice Orr (1992) has noted as a key tenet of the “ecological literacy” needed in order to foster meaningful and transformative environ-mental education (p. 91). Abram (2010) believes that being in dialogue with the environment is something that occurs naturally in the child, but that it is slowly forgotten, downplayed, and dis-couraged by the culture, following a more developed grasp of “human language”. In childhood I absorbed the spaces I inhabited in a more integrated way; this is apparent in that my memories from this time are almost always rooted in place. I am unable to separate a story from my past from the

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qualities of the world around me. I remember the sand and grit of the sidewalk where I grew up. I can see the dappled shadow cast by overhead leaves upon the fresh, cut grass of our backyard. I remember the glint of daylight reflecting from the steel railing of my elementary school steps. It is, I believe, because of this sensory conversation that I have grown into an individual that places great emphasis on fostering care for our environments. As an adult, as I have mentioned, I had lost much of that ability to converse with my environment (without great focus and attention). Yet through the self-reflective, narrative rediscovery of childhood places, I have been able to recapture the sense of wonder and belonging I once felt towards places I loved. And through new metaphors, I have at-tached a deeper sense of meaning to these memories in the present moment. This has been useful to curb some of the pessimism that tends to crop up along the journey through sustainability. Still, it is clearly not sufficient nor productive to the cause of environmentalism to remain trapped in a reverberating cycle of self-reflection. At some point, the insights gleaned from such ecological identity work must be translated into key learning moments that can facilitate a shift in environmental behaviours. Moreover, they must be shared in community to attain this in greater society. Thomashow emphasizes the value of autobiography when it is used to connect learners’ experiences together through resonance and what he calls “collective interpretation”. He writes:

Through autobiography, learners can experiment with their life stories, seeing how they fit with the experiences of others, understanding how their lives have a broader context … The collective interpretation of autobiographical experience enables people to construct a com-mon story as their lives become linked through their mutual interest in ecological or political identity. (p. 188)

The sharing of autobiographical narratives is, in this way, another entry point for environmental education. By connecting the unique stories of individuals and uncovering what resonates in the group, we can begin to create a new set of collective metaphors that will anchor the learning to unique personal meaning. In this way, I have come to recognize the value in self-reflection and coming to understand one’s “ecological identity” in relation to the stories and experiences of others. As a next step in my inquiry and in an attempt to experiment with Thomashow’s ideas of collective interpretation, I decided to interview the members of my family to get an idea of their respective ecological development.

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Places we loved:

THE DAM

Our rubber tires skid in the gravel as we race our bicycles down the rugged riverside path, kicking pebbles into the bullrushes, which teeter back and forth in the wind. Above us, boughs of crooked willows creak ominously, threatening to snap under their ancient weight. We pedal fast. We pass a small bend in the river, where grassy thatches over-hang sandy banks where the meandering current has slowly eroded them from underfoot, carving out a new watercourse. Haphazard patches of chain-link fence filled with stones attempt to hold back the banks’ inevitable erosion. A pair of Canada geese hiss at us as we approach, fanning out their wings in a display of aggression. We shriek giddily and whoop at them to clear the way, watching them waddle begrudgingly back towards the river bank, hissing with contempt. Our fishing rods balance on our handlebars, the red and white floats bouncing up and down, our silver lures spinning and twisting on the lines, glinting the sun into my eyes. My younger brother struggles to keep up, his big blue bike helmet is partially covering his eyes. He is only five years old, and I am twelve, and so I slow my pace. In the heat of the sun, my backpack has started to smell of sweet corn — I have a bag of it to use as bait for the carp. I take off my baseball cap to wipe some sweat from my brow. I fish out two bottles of some warming Dr. Pepper from my knap-sack, and twist open their plastic lids, offering him one. He smiles up at me and unclips his helmet, bringing the bottle to his grinning teeth. I take the other bottle and drink it quickly back in gulps. It is hardly satisfying and only makes me thirstier. I decide to save the rest until we get to the dam.

Photo CCBY: J.E. Lappano (2012) Places We Loved: The Dam

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I have been coming here years before my brother was born. With friends, sometimes, but often alone, catching one thing or another: minnows, frogs, carp if I’m lucky. But the slow, lumbering fish are so big I’m truthfully afraid to catch one, and cast my line well away from their shadowy figures. I prefer watching the swans and the ducks, the musk-rats, snapping turtles and geese. I can smell the sweet and pungent aroma of the algae baking in the sun, as I gaze at the bubbling froth at the base of the spillway, at the water-logged sticks and bundles of grass that swirl and bob together in a raft of debris, trapped against the concrete wall by the unrelenting current. I don’t know why I come so often to this place; what it is about the river that calls me here — perhaps it reminds me of the camping trips we take in the summer to rivers, lakes, and creeks. Where we dangle our legs with pants rolled up over the clear water, our clothes smelling of last night’s camp-fire, our bellies full of sandwiches, our feet and hands blackened by the ashen sand of the campsite. There are no bits of paper and plastic undulating at the river’s edge; no traffic noise.

Coming here has always been somewhat of an adventure, and now, with a brother half my age, I am able to relive fantasies I used to carry out as a younger child, free from judgement. We spin games of imagination and all around us, the landscape comes alive. The dam becomes a raging waterfall, us poised dangerously at its edge, walking across a rickety bridge deep in the rainforest, explorers of a forgotten tribe. A snapping turtle, sunning itself on a slab of concrete below us becomes a massive crocodile. I show off to my brother, clambering down the edge of the dam, scaling the cliff face of the waterfall, and then hopping from stone to stone towards the fearsome beast. My brother is holding the metal railing on the platform above, peering over the edge. His eyes are wide with delight. (Lappano, 2012b)

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ECOLOGICAL resonance3

I interviewed my immediate family members in an attempt to better understand my own en-vironmental story in relation to the stories of those I hold most dear. The family can be understood for many of us as the first circle of community through which we experience the world. I cannot therefore separate my social experience and familial upbringing from my political and environmen-tal beliefs; any attempt to extricate these processes would be an incomplete analysis of self. Arriv-ing at a better understanding of how my parents and siblings experience the environmental stories of their past and weaving these into my own understandings has helped me to further conceptualize my own ecological identity. My parents come from very different environmental paradigms than I do, in part because of their socio-economic status during childhood. I was raised in an upper-middle class household, with the privileges and courtesies that follow from this. Growing up in a small town, I had a size-able back-yard with “wild places” at my doorstep. My parents, on the other hand, both came from working class immigrant families in the densely populated urban environments of Toronto, and their interaction with the wild was therefore quite different. Indeed, my father identifies his signifi-cant places as largely urban in nature: the library where he spent much of his time and the court-yard of the local boys club. My mother, in contrast, identified the local city park and a church camp she attended for many summers outside of the city as places of her environmental development. For both, these places were “escapes” from crowded homes and the dense environments of the city. They were refuges, and most importantly, places they would often venture through alone, without parental guidance. In this way, their environmental journeys were developed largely from within, their ethics and ideologies shaped and formed over a lifetime, whereas my own environmental development was set in motion much earlier with parents who were environmentally aware and en-gaged. This has put me in a unique position, as I mentioned above, and is important to consider in

Photo CCBY: J.E. Lappano (2012) Places We Loved: The Dam

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the context of ecological identity work. Understanding that we all come from unique family histo-ries is obvious, but much of the education behind the environmental movement seems to make the assumption that everyone should care about environmental issues, simply because we are all crea-tures of the Earth. This is a dangerous assumption, because our specific and unique histories imply that we all arrive at the environmental discussion at different times and from very different places, both literally and figuratively. As educators, these intergenerational discussions and reflections are important to facilitate as we venture forth into shaping the policies and action that require collec-tive efforts. It is also important to consider the diverse environmental experiences and interpretations that exist within generations. What I found most striking initially in interviews with my siblings was the similarity of significant environmental places from our collective pasts and the described qualities of these places. While I won’t go into great detail in terms of our conversations in this analysis, there were certain “characteristics of place” that continued to come up in the sharing of stories. Feelings of safety, connection, a sense of belonging, sense of play, and imagination were universal characteristics of place. Yet our current sensibilities are all different in terms of envi-ronmental activism and ideologies. While we shared many of the feelings that were invoked by childhood nostalgia, our current interpretations of this nostalgia were quite different. For some of my siblings, there was a profound sense of loss associated with childhood, especially when we discussed the transformation of these places, their impermanence, and in some cases, their destruc-tion. Other siblings saw their childhood reflections as only fond memories of a time in life that was easier and fun. This divergence was partly due to circumstance; for example, my sister’s identified place of significance (a small grove of trees near our home) had long been demolished — in it’s place now stands a low-rise condominium development. When we discussed this, she expressed a strong feeling of personal violation. By contrast, other places I remembered had been almost per-fectly preserved but for the passage and weathering of time. These current realities undoubtedly impact the manner in which we reflect on them, whether through the tragedy of environmental loss or the bittersweet nostalgia of growth. Storytelling is an effective way to have a conversation that creates a relational sense of meaning and understanding, and this act is therefore critical to environmental education. At the heart of popular educationis dialogue, which as illuminated by Friere (1979) is the crucial act through which we may “name the world”, subsequently transform it, and achieve significance as human beings (p. 88). At the heart of dialogue, he places the concept of love, stating, “dialogue cannot exist (…) in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people” (p. 89). Friere lays the foundation for dialogue as a critical, humanizing, and transformative approach to educa-tion as liberation versus domination, embedding education with strong tenets of humility, hope, and trust. In addition, Bateson (2000) eludes to the participatory nature of stories and the deepening op-portunities for reflection in storytelling, stating “wisdom … is born of the overlapping of lives, the resonance between stories” (p. 243). In this way, sharing our autobiographical reflections through conversation can be an appropriate and effective entry point for environmental education.

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Places we loved:

The stoneI stood on our red wooden deck and felt the warm cracking paint under the soles of my bare feet. In my right hand, I held a stone I had pulled from the garden while digging for worms. The small valleys of the stone’s rough edges were still cool from the loamy soil, and they held onto clumps of damp earth. I assessed the weight of the rock, holding it in my hand like a baseball and the familiar mass presented itself as perfect for throwing. I coddled it in a semi closed fist, bouncing my forearm slightly, allowing it to lift out of my palm and jostle back into place, the stone warming slowly to the heat of my skin. I looked out beyond the spruces that lined the end of our deck and into the back yard. The canopies of maple trees rustled in the slow, summer breeze, brandishing the pale underbellies of their leaves to the sky. Birds whistled back and forth to one another. The shingles of the neighbours’ roofs glinted in the sun, peeking out from behind the row of trees at our property line.

It would feel good to throw this stone. There is something in the spirit of a nine year old child that strongly yearns to throw things. A need to have an impact, perhaps. To set some-thing in motion, watch it rise and fall, its curved trajectory solid proof of your strength and your will. Yet a crisis of conscience arose in me in as soon as I had resolved to throw it. Once in the air, stones fall, and often have great consequences. I had to be sure not to throw it too far and risk breaking a neighbour’s window, or worse, cracking a skull. I had once thrown a walnut in the schoolyard, and its destiny was to bounce off the scowling head of my second grade teacher, Mrs. Flynn. Her eyes immediately locked onto me, the lone boy standing with his mouth open, in horror. A firm scolding and a trip to the Principal’s office

Photo CCBY: J.E. Lappano (2012) Places We Loved: The Sidewalk Block

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was enough to discourage me from throwing anything ever again without first assessing the situation. With this in mind, I glanced around the perimeter of our yard, noting all plausible landing points. My sisters were inside. My mother was busy in the kitchen. My father was mowing the lawn in the front yard, I could hear the drone of the mower cycling around the corner at a safe distance. I was alone.

My fist tightened around the stone, responding to it’s desire to soar through the air, and my arm raised, behind my right ear, poised like a catapult primed for launch. As it rolled off the tips of my index and middle fingers, leaping with eager force into it’s sealed fate, a terrible thought flashed before me, a premonition of doom, a clear picture of the one variable I had neglected to consider. And then, a simultaneous and dreadful outcome presented itself. First came the “swish, swish-swish, swish” of the stone tearing through leaves — then a cracking and snapping, as it obliterated twigs and brittle branches of a faraway maple — then worst of all, a brief shriek of birdsong, an ear-piercing flute of distress, followed by a terrible, final, thump. And feeling a stone dropping into the pit of my stomach, I knew what I had done.

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly like cotton, a lump forming at the cleft of my collarbone and rising up into the middle of my throat, choking me. My skin tingled with heat, and my eyes winced. Had I killed it? In an instant, I ran down the stairs of the deck, leapt from the last step over the concrete pad, and landed on the grass. I knew which tree the stone had struck. I scrambled under the canopy, scanning around the base of the trunk. I didn’t have to look for long before I found it. A robin, its head twisted to the side, beak open, the feath-ers on its rusted downy chest ruffled. It was still alive, but badly hurt. My stone lay beside it. I crouched above it for a while, the lump in my throat growing bigger, as I watched the stillness of its little body, but for its fluttering heart and tiny black eyes peering into mine. And then I did all that I could do. I ran inside to get my mother. She was washing the dishes at the window. I told her I had found a badly injured bird. I told her I thought it must have fallen out of the tree. She came with me outside, and we knelt beside the tragic scene. She looked at me, and I thought she must have known I was the one who had done it. She had probably seen me throw the stone, run suddenly into the back yard and then quickly back inside, flushing with the crimson colour of guilt.

“Run inside and get a shoe box and a tea towel,” she said.

I was gone in an instant, my heart beating with intention. I ran into my room, opened my

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closet, picked up a blue and white shoebox, and dumped my baseball cards onto the floor. I ran into the kitchen, and pulled a tea-towel off the handle of our stove, and bolted back outside, leaving the sliding glass door open. When I got to my mom, she was holding the robin in her hands, cupping them softly around it’s fragile body. Her eyes were closed, and she was concentrating. When I sat down beside her, she opened her eyes and looked at me.

“I think she’s been stunned,” she said.

My mother looked at me. It seemed she was waiting for me to own up.

“Will she be ok?” I choked.

“Put some grass and leaves in the box. We’ll make her a little bed. I’m going to try and relax her.”

As I ripped clumps of grass from the ground, and gathered some pine needles, my mother held the feathered creature with one hand, holding her other hand palmside down just above the little bird, caressing the air as though she was petting an invisible cat. Every now and then she would rotate her fingers, as though gathering up string, and then flick them away, as you would rid your hands of some crumbs. She called it “therapeutic touch”. She was gathering up the bird’s pain, unravelling it, restoring the healthy flow of energy. The bird lay still. I prayed it would work.

My bed of tea towel, grass, and pine needles was ready. I presented it to my mother. She placed the bird softly in the box.

“We’ll bring her inside,” she said. “To keep her safe from the cats.”

Sitting inside, perched on the arm of our couch, I watched my mother. She sat in the rock-ing chair, pitching slowly back and forth while her hand hovered above the bird. I grew more and more relieved, as now, the life of the tiny bird was in my mother’s hands. I felt the bird would survive. I could feel my guilt rushing out of me.

My mother continued rocking, her hand gathering an invisible thread of string. Suddenly, the bird’s tiny neck straightened.

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“I think she’s getting better,” my mother said. “See? She wants to be let go.”

We walked out to the deck and my mom put the bird carefully down on the red boards. It shook itself, and ruffled it’s wings. It cocked its head to one side, then the other, and paused. And promptly, the bird flew away, disappearing into our poplar tree.

In the front yard, the drone of the lawn mower shut off as the engine chortled and choked. And looking into the poplar tree, I could hear that the birds were singing.

(Lappano, 2012b)

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Understanding the meaning behind our experiences in the environment requires a careful attention of the senses to the world around us. As a part of my autobiographical inquiry of “sense of place” I have been experimenting with different ways of “being” in place, attempting to mind-fully explore my immediate environments. A key reference along my journey through environmen-tal rediscovery has been a text by David Abram entitled Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (2010). This book is essentially a sensory field guide to inhabiting place holistically and reflectively and it illustrates the mysterious “conversations” and environmental learning such an effort evokes. As mentioned, Orr (1992) emphasizes conversation with other people, species, and environments as a requirement of ecological literacy. Fostering ecological literacy is necessary for an environmental education that is transformative and sustainable, where individuals are better equipped to interpret the world and their actions in the world through an environmentally critical and interconnected lens. Abram’s text embodies such conversation, particularly in his relationships with other species and the biosphere. But the term “conversation” is worth clarifying in this environmental context of sensory exploration. Orr has defined such natural dialogue as follows:

The language of nature includes the sounds of animals, whales, birds, insects, wind, and wa-ter— a language more ancient and basic than human speech. Its books are the etchings of life on the face of the land. To hear this language requires patient, disciplined study of the natural world. But it is a language for which we have an affinity. (1992, p. 91)

I have been witnessing this human affinity for natural conversation first hand over the past eight months, watching my infant daughter Maia interact with the world around her. Without a grasp of

Methods of sensory exploration

4Photo CCBY: J.E. Lappano (2012) Places We Loved: The Sidewalk Block

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human language but for guttural grunts and consonant repetition (ba-ba, da-da, na-na, etc.), she has been experiencing the world through myriad sounds. The meow and purr of a cat, the chortle of a horse, the birdsong ringing out from the woodlot, the rumble of the wind in her ear, the language of her mother and father, the rushing water of the kitchen tap — each sound is something to explore and interact with. As she begins to recognize patterns in our language, she has learned to respond in kind, engaging with her eyes and hands, responding to us with squeals and babbles. But she is equally enraptured with the euphony of the natural world. I was fascinated recently with her notable change of temperament when immersed in the sounds and textures of pastoral nature during a trip to her grandparent’s farm. Maia has always required her mother Stephanie or I to rock her gently to sleep, finding comfort in the bend and warmth of our arms, soothed by the quiet melody of a song, by the beating hearts behind our chests. However, on the farm, she is able to will herself to sleep, but only on condition if she is outside. Resting her under a tree, she is wooed to sleep by the singing birds, the gentle breeze, the strobing of light and shadow, and the richness of smells and textures of the outdoors. I have heard it is a common thing for infants to need to go for a walk in order to fall asleep — at first I thought nothing of this. But on further reflection and in observing our daughter, knowing her idiosyncrasies intimately, I realized Maia was finding great comfort in the environ-ment. The sensuous forces of nature were taking the place of a parent’s arms, rocking her to sleep in a language and manner all its own, in which she was completely immersed, and totally at ease. Abram eludes to this childhood affinity for conversation with nature in Becoming Animal, stressing that it is through allowing this relationship to deepen as the child ages that they come to understand how they are different from other species, but also how they are similar. Preserving this sense of belonging is necessary to foster empathy for our environments through an awareness of in-terconnection that will lead to more ethical and responsible treatment of them. He writes of his own daughter, Hannah:

If Hannah’s fascination and friendship with an apple tree quietly growing in the old orchard is encouraged, and allowed to develop (…) [it] will gradually deepen into a discovery that the apple tree’s rootedness — its inability to move across the ground — must grant it a range of sensations very different from those that she experiences. Later, an awareness of the way its roots draw water from the soil, and the way its leaves metabolize sunlight, will lead her to acknowledge the tree’s still deeper difference from herself. (…) Only after such an unimped-ed childhood does a grown woman know in her bones that she inhabits a breathing cosmos, that her life is embedded in a wild community of dynamically intertwined and yet weirdly different lives. (p. 42)

However, the cultural emphasis on anthropocentric sentience and a civilization that gives value pri-marily to human interests and relationships often ends this dialogue of understanding before it can embed an integrated and lasting sense of belonging into adulthood. It would be a ludicrous thing to witness full grown humans speaking to trees, after all. In this way, learning to re-tune my senses in

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order to be in conversation once again with the natural world was a difficult and often contrived en-deavour. Again, I found that investigating childhood memory in a narrative sense was an effective way to put myself in the psychological state needed to venture forth in this sensory terrain. In writing from memory using descriptive metaphor, I believe we can recapture the sentiments of childhood (albeit in a fleeting sense and in a context of adulthood). Entering into an environment in this state then lends itself to a more mindful and imaginative exploration of place. In this state we are best able to create new met-aphors of identity that link ourselves to the dynamic processes of nature. We must temporarily suspend our disbelief in order to uncover new meanings. Returning to childhood places can uncover this state of mind in a more direct and visceral way. In my revisitations of significant environments, I was surprised to find myself occupying a different state of mind. I walked differently there, I stopped to explore places that would otherwise blend into the surroundings. To an outside observer, I likely appeared to be under the influence of some mind-altering drug, stooping down to touch the gravel that collected at the curb, running my hands over a link of chain, gazing up at the trees, lying on my back in the grass, and so on. Becoming aware of how ridiculous I must have looked, I would soon collect myself and try to look inconspicuous, remember-ing my adult identity. But the memory of the place somehow draws this childhood wonder out of the individual. In the revisitation of place, they are reminded of the conversation they once had here; the ground and the trees and the sky are again speaking to them. This is what I believe we broadly refer to as the feeling of childhood nostalgia — it is the re-inhabitation of a state of mind where we once knew the world in a more basic, intimate, and ancient way. Of course one does not need to revisit childhood places to have transformative experiences in place. As I have said, reflective writing beforehand and occupying a mental state of mindful exploration can have a similar effect. Moreover, the places occupied do not need to be wild places at all. Practicing sensory attuning in one’s own home or while walking down the street can be surprisingly effective in opening up to critical awareness of the relationship we hold to our environments. By taking note of the qualities of environments and the things within them, it is possible to conceptualize the meaning behind them, and from there formulate a critical awareness of their environmental interconnection. Recapturing this sense of place and immediately reflecting on it through writing can effectively re-embed it into our consciousness in a new and meaningful way. Essentially, we are creating new metaphors that will contribute to shaping our worldview. It was not enough for me to frolic through the landscapes of my past gleefully; I had to engage in critical and reflective writing, reading, or discussion afterwards in order to conceptualize the experience and solidify it for the purposes of education. Only then would it translate into future action or a change in behaviours (no matter how slight). In this way, the methodology of sensory exploration can fit nicely into Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle of Experience, Reflection, Conceptualization, and Action. Sensory exploration is an entry point, not an end, to broader critical contexts and conversations of environment. As educators, we must act as facilitators or guides to this process, and our pedagogies must tap into the deeply embedded and individual identities of the population if they are going to be lasting and effective.

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Places we loved:

the sidewalk block

I remember the bright sun on the sidewalk. And the smell of the gravel and grit heating up in the summer afternoon. I’m three years old. I ride my bike. The training wheels rattle and bounce as I sway from one side to the other. My legs are moving fast. The older kids are standing on the corner ahead of me around their bikes. They are talking with my sister. I slow my pedalling down, controlling my movements, feeling the resistance of the ground. I glance back to my house and my mother stands at the doorway. She smiles and waves. Her hair is golden, straight, and long. When she holds me I like to twirl it around my finger.

We live in a block of houses, arranged in a square. The sidewalk runs on the inside of the square, raised up from the road. The white concrete curb is dangerous, something I could fall from if I bike too close to the edge. We play, contained in this row of houses, wild and brimming with eager imagination. My sister Sarah plays with Felicity, the tall girl with long, brown braids. My friend is William, but he’s a few years older than me. He has a Pterodactyl in his room that flaps its great paper wings when you pull on a weight at the end of a string. William doesn’t use training wheels. He can even jump his bike down the curb, and make the back tire skid. He can climb higher up the trees, disappearing in their cano-pies, as the wind moves the wispy branches I can see he is grinning down at me. I stand at the trunk and look up, wondering when I will be big enough to try. When I will be as brave. (Lappano, 2012b)

Photo CCBY: J.E. Lappano (2012) Places We Loved: The Sidewalk Block

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video inquiry:creating new metaphors

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As an added arts-based mode of inquiry in environmental rediscovery, I experimented with the use of videography as a tool for the sensory exploration of place. I perceive the video frame as an effec-tive representation of sensory attention, because it is consciously chosen based on a visual affinity (or loving gaze) one has for the environment. In addition, the video frame is a simulation of place that can exist largely outside of context; it negates much of the peripheral surroundings of the environment, and so the images become universal touchstones of place— they could be anywhere. Because of this, there is a greater chance for multiple interpretations of place in the sharing of autobiographical stories. In other words, video may resonate with a greater audience who are able to reinterpret the context and ap-ply it to their own unique life histories. Moreover, it holds the potential for a participatory exploration of environment in an arts-based methodology that is more accessible to the broader population than a purely academic text or theoretical tome. One does not need to bother too much with the clarification of language when representing their experience in place if equipped with a video camera; the images speak for themselves, and often in a polyphony of meanings, resonating in different ways with differ-ent individuals. In this way, it is the perfect tool for the rediscovery of place and for interacting with the stories and memories of one’s past, because video produces a product that is in itself a nuanced experi-ence of place, best reflecting the mysterious nature of nostalgia.

In order to adequately explore environments for the purposes of reflective inquiry with video, I had to create a set of guidelines to ensure the process was genuine, autobiographical, and engaging with the environment in an honest and spontaneous way. This was important in order for the exercise to be used as an opportunity for further reflection and analysis. In essence, I was creating new artifacts or touchstones of place that could be examined, reflected on, and further conceptualized. The process was

Photo CCBY: J.E. Lappano (2012) Places We Loved: The Sidewalk Block

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personal, and not conducted for a broader audience as a finished product, but was rather intended as a methodology that could be expanded into practices of participatory environmental education. It was critical to first ground myself in place in an attempt to tune my senses to the world around me. I then meandered with the camera recording, allowing myself to be guided “passively” to the places I found alluring, without questioning the reasons why. Frames were chosen intuitively, and hovered on for as long as my gaze would permit. As a filmmaker, I struggled to resist choosing the frame that looked the best, ignoring for the most part composition, symmetry, lighting, etc. I wanted the process to create images that were guided by instinct and sensory exploration rather than by knowledge of the craft or attention to aesthetic form.

A few things were noteworthy in my experimentation with this methodology. First, filming an environment in its various dimensions allowed for unique perspectives and vantage points not pos-sible with the human eye. I was able to place myself, through the zoom of the lens, in the minute forks of faraway branches twenty or thirty feet above the ground, telescoping my perception down to that of a bird. Using the macro function, I could project myself into the depths of the soil, making the millimetre high peaks and valleys appear as though they were ten feet tall, perceptible as they might be to an insect. I could direct my gaze into the bubbling froth at the bottom of a spillway, immersing myself in the swirling vortices, drowning in the current. I could focus on pure texture, or shoot from a wide and static vantage point. In this way, I was inhabiting spaces in different mindsets, similar to what is possible when one is immersed in the imaginative identities of childhood. Each visual choice held a unique potential for the emergence of a new metaphor. Second, I found it was possible, through the frame of the camera, to inhabit the identity but also the physical stature of my childhood self. By holding the camera at hip level, I haphazardly explored the environments in which I once played, capturing them as I once might have perceived them. In this way, I was able to reconnect with former perceptions and perspectives, if only visually. The camera allowed for a sense of play, inquisition, curiousity, and wonder in place that was participatory and visceral. No longer the abstractions of nar-rative inquiry, I was creating new artifacts of experience that were making permanent the evocative mindsets of nostalgia, allowing the experience to be effortlessly recalled. The recollection and reinterpretation of the videos I captured also produced interesting and thought-provoking results. Again, this was done with careful attention to process. In terms of edit-ing the video together for the purposes of storytelling, I assembled them loosely in a narrative arc of exploration. I then recorded a reading of the narrative reflections I had written of these places before visiting them. By weaving these stories in with the visuals in an incongrous way, I further attempted to assemble a nuanced and somewhat ambiguous portrayal of the experience of rediscovery (see Ap-pendix A). In this process, striking visual metaphors were uncovered. For example, in a narrative re-flection I spoke about the memory of being held by my mother as a young child, specifically remem-bering twirling her long, straight hair around my finger. In dubbing this recording over the captured video of my birthplace, the narration occurred simultaneously with a close-up of the wispy needles of a white pine, backlit by the golden flares of the afternoon sun. This juxtaposition created another

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layer of analysis that was serendipitously unplanned. In my mind, it created an ethereal suggestion of the white pine as a representation of the mother figure, drawing strong connection to the sense of belonging I felt in that place. There were other frequent instances of such emergent metaphors. Yet for others, this image may not resonate at all. While the process would be useful regardless for autobiographical inquiry, it would only remain an effective method for participatory environmental education if it had the ability to resonate with other individual’s life histories. Only then would it be a viable entry point for greater environmental learning in community. I couldn’t predict how these visual artifacts would be perceived by a broader audience. Would their personal relevance and intimacy create a barrier to learning? Were they too self-indulgent? As this was an experiment, when it came time to share these videos with other practitioners I was quite nervous that they would be ill-received or worse, totally irrelevant. Luckily, a screening of two videos sparked valuable discussion about the significance of place and environmental connection. In addition, comments of fellow practitioners made it clear that they resonated with the stories told and the visuals depicted. Despite having no connection with their life histories, the visuals of moving down a riverside path nevertheless sparked their own memories of riding bikes, or going to the lake when they were children. In this way, the stories overlap and lives intertwine, creating the entry point for broader learning and critical environmental discussion. In this, I am reminded of a passage by Bateson (2000), wherein she writes:

Hope for a sustainable future depends on reshaping the life cycle — not the individual life cycle alone but the overlapping and intersecting cycles of individuals and generations, reaf-firming both the past and the future, not only in families but in the institutions we build and share (p. 81)

Nevertheless, I still struggle with the value of these highly self-reflective videos outside of the context of the academy, and am working now to conceptualize how the methodology could be adapted to collaborative environmental popular education in groups, to work through collective environmental issues. For example, they could be an educational tool for exploring the multiple stories and identities of a population around a local watershed; or a way of raising awareness of the stories of environmental and personal loss suffered by a community impacted by the environmental degradation of industry; or a means of cataloguing the transition of an environmental identities in the crux of climate change. The ability of videography to evoke the resonance of environmental nos-talgia, especially if produced by everyday people rather than by non-profits or companies, I believe holds a lot of potential for the proliferation of environmental advocacy. Especially in times where the autobiographical is already so readily embraced by the participatory structures of social media. In this way, we can use a technology with which the popular culture is already equipped (smartphones almost all have video cameras now) and transcend digital/natural boundaries to create new narratives of environmental belonging and awareness. In this way, we can perhaps make environmental advo-cacy more personally relevant and front of mind in the popular culture, less reliant on the complex

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and almost debilitating abstractions of so many environmental messages today. As Bateson (2000) remarks, “the choices we face today are so complex that they must be rehearsed and woven together in narrative” (p. 247). The inquiry I have been so engaged with recently is an attempt to explore how this might be carried out and communicated to the culture in a way that causes a fundamental shift in how we perceive and live in the environments of our shared pasts and our collective futures.

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findings

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If reflected on with critical intention, the nostalgia of place has a powerful ability to be trans-formative, because the learning that occurs has emerged from within and is therefore embedded in one’s psyche. Through the narrative inquiry of my own significant environmental experiences, I have been able to create new and poignant metaphors that have shaped my current ecological identi-ty. In this way, the insights gained from reflective analysis have become embedded in my life histo-ry, been illuminated meaningfully by stories, and are readily retrievable for further analysis and re-flection. Rooted in theories of participatory environmental popular education and arts-based inquiry, such an autobiographical exploration of our environments can be a useful method for environmental practitioners. Either for themselves, in order to better navigate the terrains of hope and despair that emerge in the journey through sustainability, or in a group setting to empower individuals to move through the cycles of experiential environmental learning. Crucial to the process is the ability to share and discuss the autobiographical processes and discoveries in conversation and dialogue with others to create a collective interpretation of meaning and experience, thus forming a shared story of environmental understanding and ecological identity. In such a way, the process becomes an entry point into the dialogues that need to be had in order to create a relevant attachment to the complex and daunting environmental issues we face today. The focus on personal narratives in the environ-mental conversation is highly useful because it allows for the varying degrees of environmental competencies and awarenesses that are at the table. It is best if environmental education can work within the multiple identities of the collective population, so a more diverse range of people will be open to learning about environmental change. As the many stories of the popular culture are em-braced because of their ability to resonate with the identities, values, and desires of the majority, so too must the stories of the environmental movement resonate with the nostalgic places and identities that rest within us. The use of environmentally autobiographical video diaries is an interesting participatory methodology to explore in the context of environmental advocacy because of digital media’s preva-lence in the popular culture. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other social media sites have

been built on the power of autobiography and “networked individualism” (Wellman et al., 2003) and their cultural saturation points to a possible entry point for reflective learning and collective interpreta-tion of environmental education. Equipped with smartphones, tablets, or highly portable digital photo and video cameras, we are able to instantly share the meaningful experiences of everyday (no matter how mundane) with the world. We embed them in a space ripe with reinterpretation and what Wesch (2008) has termed “context collapse”, eluding to the notion that once a user publishes content, they immediately lose control of the context in which it may be viewed, shared, or re-purposed. This lends itself to the nuanced and mysterious nature of nostalgic resonance I have discussed above. In this way, not only does environmental video inquiry offer a process of rediscovery in a media in which the popu-lar culture is well-versed and active, the sharing of these explorations can be effective tools for collec-tive interpretation of a complex issue. What is needed to best facilitate this are educators and practitio-ners that can help guide the process and participatory digital frameworks that can house such projects on social media for environmental popular education. It occurs to me, however, that critical to all of these efforts is the dedication to the sensory attun-ing to and mindful interaction with “wild places”. Being in place with careful attention to the senses, engaging in ongoing reflection of the meaning behind such experiences, and drawing broader connec-tions to social, political, and cultural contexts is at the heart of why such reflective analysis is useful. Moving through our environments and our lives without moments of significant reflection is to move forward haphazardly, even vacantly. By re-engaging in “conversation” with the world around us, we can recapture, if only for a brief moment, the instinctive connections we all hold to the environment. Regardless of the paradigms we exhibit or the identities we construct, at the base of our animal selves, we are breathing, living creatures. This does not mean reverting to an earlier age, nor does it mean denouncing the technologies and systems we have built. It only implies that in all our technological and cultural revelry, we are nevertheless alive and totally interdependent with the environments that support such a civilization. Perhaps in our early childhoods, before we learned the ways of the world, we were in touch with this interdependence in a visceral language of sensation and imagination. To become aware of this once again, it may be necessary to revisit these stories and rework the narratives into our current identities. It may be necessary to embark on journeys of rediscovery as we chart forward into the mysterious and dynamic terrains of the future.

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Appendix A:

places we loved/video diariesclick on thumBnails to view videos

the sidewalk block

Running time: 0:04:48Video by: Jon-Erik Lappano. (2012)Adapted from: Lappano, J.E. (2012) “The Dam”. Places We Loved: Narrative Reflec-tions of Childhood Environments. Unpub-lished. Original footage captured on location in Mitchell, Ontario, March 2012.

Running time: 0:02:43Video by: Jon-Erik Lappano. (2012)Adapted from: Lappano, J.E. (2012) “The Sidewalk Block”. Places We Loved: Narra-tive Reflections of Childhood Environments. Unpublished. Original footage captured on location in London, Ontario, March 2012.

the dam

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