to know the land

It’s easy, pretty accessible and turns out to be a lot of fun and often full of learning. A sit spot, or magic spot, or secret spot or whatever else you might call it is simple. Just go find your sit spot, close to home, accessible and easy and then sit there, quietly.

That’s it. The act, or lack of acting really, really pays off. I have a ton of stories of exciting encounters with the world beyond the human. Perhaps it was noticing the infinite detail in Goldenrod (Solidago spp.) flowers, or the diversity of life found within 30cm square of ground just in front of me, or maybe it was a small herd of White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginiana) in a local urban park. It is because of the practice of  going to a Sit Spot that I have been able to observe so much, learn so much and become acquainted with the land around me.

Nature is everywhere, and we can notice it in all sorts of ways. Be it our balcony, backyard or a bench at the park. Find a spot you can go to reliably and find a nice place to sit. Bring something to sit on if need be (a piece of an old blue foam bed roll is great), but you can use anything. Most people report that it takes about 30 minutes for things to get back to “baseline”, meaning half an hour for the birds to sing as they would if we weren’t there. This gets shorter as we spend more and more time at our sit spots as the birds and wildlife come to know and expect us. As baseline comes sooner, and the animals return to routine behaviour patterns, then we tend to see and experience more.

Doesn’t really matter where you are even. Friends have done sit spots from their kitchen windows, from their prison cells, from balconies 9 stories up. It is an extremely valuable practice that I would wholly endorse to anyone seeking to learn more about the land.

To learn more :

After a delay of a week, Justin Kestler and I got to talk about his new book The Hair Scale Identification Guide to Terrestrial Mammalian Carnivores of Canada. This concise book is a quick guide to interpreting the origin of hairs based on the morphology of scales along the cuticle (outer side) of the hair. It’s not like a fingerprint per se, which attempts to identify an individual human, but instead may help to identify a species. This is because the scale structure is different across species but not so much individuals of that species. Make sense?

We talked about the process of documenting the hair scales, acquiring the hairs, and a bit about ecological traits which might be indicated through the characteristics of the hairs. It was really fun to nerd out about the finer details of hairs. The book, and the interview have really pushed me to keep a hair journal and begin looking for a microscope. Maybe in the future…

To learn more :

The Hair Scale Identification Guide to Terrestrial Mammalian Carnivores of Canada

Gallformers.org has been referred to me by a few friends over the past few months as they helped me to identify some unknown galls I have found in the field. I have written about galls on the toknowtheland.com website many times as well (1)(2)(3), usually having to refer back to gallformers.org finally figure out who made them.

I got to ask a ton of questions and we got to talk about why Jeff and Adam started gallformers.org, what a gall is, gall research resources, individuation between gall forms based on the inducer and the host, do they harm the host plant, and so much more.

My appreciation and curiosity surrounding galls and their ecologies could just go nowhere if I didn’t have tools and resources to help me find answers to my curiosities, but because of Adam and Jeff at gallformers.org I have been able to keep going down the gall makers emergence hole and am consistently learning so much as I go.

I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did.

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“It was a clear night, and the stars were as visible as they get around this area within the city. I made out Polaris and the Big Dipper earlier while looking for a place to record. I noticed a faint breeze, coming from my neighbourhood blowing down towards the river…”

Just over a year ago I went for a walk along the river by my house and I pressed record and put my recorder down. I walked away for while and came back with a score written by millions of years of evolution and speciation coupled with the few dozen that colonization and industry has occupied the same territories.

The first recording was successful in sharing a piece of the night with a broader audience. It captured the Summer with the beauty I was truly hoping for, and so, I tried it again. This time with a little more magic…

Sit back, relax and enjoy the sounds of the night.

I am overwhelmed sometimes by the sheer diversity and quantity of Spider species I encounter. So many! I take a ton of photos and bring them up on my computer hoping to try and identify a couple, and maybe write about who I am seeing out there, but the precious few who I have been successful in identifying are just that, the precious few. Not many at all.

It has been hard to find a good field guide to Spiders. A friend at the University of Guelph Arboretum was/is? working on one, and there is a pamphlet put out by the City of Toronto, but I was having trouble finding one with good images, and a good glossary (I need these things - I do not know the nomenclature yet).

When I recently I received a copy of Spiders of North America by Sarah Rose I got stoked. It is a hefty book. 624 pages of high quality images from differing angles, details Spider life histories, species profiles of just over 500 species, and range maps. It’s full, and a bit of weight which may inhibit some from bringing it into the field with them, but I do like how many species it covers and the information it offers. One of my main critiques though, is that it is not larger. I don’t know if anyone has ever made a part 1 and part 2 of a field guide before, but Spiders would be a good topic to try that with someday.

Sarah Rose and I spoke about her work as chair of the American Arachnological Society’s Common Names Committee, about Spider behaviours such as molting and ballooning, Spider diets, how to photograph Spiders so we can later identify them and bit on range expansion due to climate change.

If you haven’t already, check out Princeton University Press’ other field guides in their series. The titles include guides to Caterpillars, Dragonflies and Damselflies, Bees, Flower flies and so many more.

To learn more :

Spiders of North America (Princeton University Press website)

Daniella Roze lives this stuff. Seriously. She has spent years living off grid in a small community of folks learning how to live in closer connection with their land base out West. She has done month long adventures with a crew of women living with only the hides on their backs and whatever they could harvest from the land. She is also the founder, and was the former director and lead instructor at the Thriving Roots Wilderness School. Land based learner, educator, ecopsychologist, and PhD candidate, Daniella is well acquainted with the healing and possibility in the work of helping folks connect with the land, but she is also aware of the harms.

Together we discuss how can our nature based organizations work towards “justice” when we have blinders imposed by the dominant culture? When we replicate racist hiring practices, when we speak of the land in ways that erase the indigenous histories of the places where we work? How can we do the work to be more equitable, inclusive and welcoming to black, indigenous and other folks of colour?

When Daniella approaches these questions she seems to keep ever present her own goals of working towards “fostering resilient culture on the courageous journey of whole hearted living”. A goal I believe we should all be striving for.

This is the second interview in an ongoing series. Check out the first interview with Jenna Rudolph here.

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What is scat? Well, in the great words of a creative crew of naturalists*,

Starts with “S” and it ends with a “T”

Why would someone write a book about scat? Why would someone need a book about scat? What’s so special about scat?

Finding and identifying scat is definitely part of a trackers repertoire as scat is a gateway into the natural history of the animal who left it. It highlights which species the animal is in relationship with, can help identify where the animal has been, and more generally can teach us more about our land base, which really is the point of this show.

The book highlights more than just scat though. It also connects the skulls and teeth to the digestive tract. It details who eats what and where the scat might be found. It includes detailed measurements and rulers for checking your finds in the field. It is beyond thorough, and all information is provided in an easily digestible framework.

Dorcas Miller has been authoring books on natural history for many years, including Track Finder (1981), Berry Finder (1986), Winter Weed Finder (1989), Constellation Finder (2005), and most recently Scat Finder (2022). She is also one of the founders of the amazing and inspiring Maine Master Naturalist Program, which has been training new naturalists for the past 10 years, a program which has really inspired my work.

Dorcas and I share stories while I ask questions about her awesome new book. It was an honour to get to talk with Dorcas.

*The Scat Rap was first created in 1988 at a “Music and the Environment” workshop at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, Tennessee by a group of naturalists, including Andy Bennett, Mary Keebler, and, Rodd Pemble.

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Jenna Rudolph has been running an nature school on unceded territories on the West coat of the continent. What does it mean to support students in developing connections to a land base that is stolen from indigenous people? It would be easy to shy away from the question, as many have for so long, but Jenna and her colleagues at Soaring Eagle Nature School are trying to explore this question directly, with humility, patience and deep care.

Some of these questions got examined in our conversation, while some weren’t. That’s ok though. My hope is that this is going to be the first in a series of conversations with other folks doing “nature connection” kind of work. Keep an eye on this site, and an ear to the broadcasts. My hope is that these talks reach far and wide and new conversations can be had between new friends, and accomplices, motivating and inspiring us to better relationship with each other, and the land we now live on.

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On July 24, 2017, Jessica Reznicek admitted to engaging in acts of sabotage to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,886 km long (1,172 miles) underground oil pipeline running through indigenous territories, crossing beneath the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as well as under part of Lake Oahe near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Her actions resulted in 4-month delay in pipeline construction. Despite the fact that the pipelines were not running at the time so there was no chance of a spill and no one was hurt during the acts of sabotage U.S. federal Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger later applied a domestic terrorism enhancement to Jessica’s sentences doubling her prison term to 8 years locked up, followed by 3 years supervised probation.

Last week, Reznicek's attorneys argued an appeal that the district court had inappropriately decided that her actions constituted a federal crime of terrorism. They are now awaiting a decision concerning the appeal.

I have been following this case for a couple of years now and to get to highlight it again was important to me, especially now with the looming decision in regards to the appeal.

For this show I got to talk with Charlotte from the Support Jessica Reznicek Network about Jessica’s case.

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Baptiste Morizot has changed the way I look at the world. He has offered a depth to the nuance of my relationships by giving them words and concepts to draw from. He examines in great detail how we relate (in the familial/ancestral sense, and the geopolitical sense) to other life forms with whom we share the planet.

In anxious times we need to hold each other closer, and that motion is still alive when I think of my encounters with the more-than-human. I draw solace and comfort, safety and a sense of resilience when I interact with others beyond my form. But sometimes we forget about these encounters, we forget that we are a part (constituent) and only feel apart (separate).

Using the examples of interspecies communication through strategic deposits of wolf and weasel scat along human trails through a mountain pass, to the ancestral connections and ritual through seasoning our food with salt, Baptiste looks to many varied experiences and ways of being alive to distill an ethic, maybe new, but likely older than we can remember, of being in community with, instead of having dominion over.

I was going to be joined by my firend Julian Fisher for this one, similar to how we discussed Baptiste Morizot’s previous book “On The Animal Trail” a couple of months ago, but as he needed to finish his own work, I was instead joined by American Toads (Anaxyrus americanus), Crack Willow (Salix fragilis), Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) and many others in the field (or at the ephemeral pond rather) to record this reflection on the book. I hope you enjoy it.

To learn more :

Ways of Being Alive @ PolityBooks.com