The T.S. Eliot quotation is one of my all-time favorite quotations. These days, I wonder if he would add the line, "Where is the information we have lost in data?"
I appreciated this: "The funny thing about this is that neither of us would likely have been able to identify most of the invasive species we encountered—especially the plants." This is a point rarely made that I'd like to help make more widespread: In a place we don't know, we would not be able to identify what is native or "invasive" because "invasives" don't have unique traits that set them apart. I think a lot of people might be surprised to learn this.
Thanks, Kollibri. I was glad to be able to highlight your work. I hope the footnote doesn't feel like a diminishment--I just realized that if I'd put it in the main text it would have taken the essay in an entirely new direction! I like the footnotes function for that purpose--they are like placeholders for my tangential ideas I hope to write more about later. I find writing to be much like a web, that can often be difficult to wrangle into a linear structure. Is that your experience?
I didn't feel like it was a diminishment at all. More like "bonus material."
As for the challenge of wrangling writing into a linear structure, yes I totally experience that, all the time. The biggest challenge that Nikki Hill and I are facing with putting our book project is trying to put a web into a linear form.
When hypertext (links) were first introduced in the '90s, some writers (myself amongst them) were super excited that the form could liberate us from linear presentation. I actually wrote a work of fiction at that time that I distributed on a disc instead of as a book. The table of contents was arranged graphically in a figure 8 -- or the infinity symbol -- on the first screen, so that there was no clear beginning or end, and it was up to the reader to start where they wanted. I'm still surprised that more writers have not taken advantage of this potential.
Thank you, Andrea, for threading my work into this excellent essay. You do a great job of exploring the nuances between knowledge and experience as we reintroduce ourselves to the living world. As with so many things, there are students' learning styles and teachers' intuition at play here. And then those of us figuring it out as we go need to be both student and teacher, toggling between embracing and learning. Happy to have found your work.
You're so welcome, Jason. I was happy to have recently found your work, and was amazed that your post fit so perfectly into this one while I was working on it. Substack seems to have a kind of serendipity like that in my experience. Thanks for offering more insight into the pedagogical piece, and I really appreciate the toggling concept. So true--in many areas of life.
So much to love in this essay! The urge to name goes back way before Linneaus. I think of naming as a form of claiming; think of all the names that white Europeans imposed on places and beings here in North America that already had perfectly good names. Sometimes I experiment with meeting a non-human being on their terms, rather than imposing my own preconceived name for them. Curiosity, attention and patience go a long way.
On the point about invasives, many years ago I read an essay by Michael Pollan, "Weeds Are Us," which completely rewired how I thought about my relationship with plants. Wineberry and garlic mustard are just minding their own business, who am I to label them as weeds?
I appreciate your point that there are multiple ways to experience and understand, something I play with in Talking Back to Walden.
Thanks, Julie. I love the way you framed it as meeting a non-human “on their own terms.” Such valuable humility in that approach. Re: weeds/invasives, it’s almost like a toggle switch, as I go back and forth between my ecological training—which tells me what “belongs” and what doesn’t—and the being-ness beyond thought, which says something my similar to what you offered: who am I to decide what belongs and what doesn’t? I’m trying to take a page from Rumi and live in the field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing.
Weeds and invasives aren't synonymous, though. Many people consider most native plants to be weeds. Which is an important distinction. And wineberry and garlic mustard aren't minding their own business if they are displacing species and altering ecosystems. It's a very human centric viewpoint, which is where we run into trouble when we start thinking about invasives as not being a problem. It's honestly frustrating this idea is catching on in ecological circles. A counterpoint I recently wrote: https://thegardenpathpodcast.substack.com/p/why-you-should-care-about-invasive
First of all, I want to emphasize that I resonate with almost everything your wrote in this post. And I appreciate your reply to my comment, your recasting problem-solving as healing and harm reversal. Absolutely. I am writing only to clarify that I wasn't intending to characterize "problem-solving" as linear, extractive, etc., although I know it can be that. And I agree 100% that it is fundamental to sit honestly with what is present. But here's where we don't agree: that problem-solving is necessarily an outcome or even characteristic of "expansive-mindedness". I was attempting to lift the entire endeavor of "problem-solving" into question, to refer to it as something we (generalizing here) are trained to do, a way we are acculturated to engage with our world. A mode of perception that is limited, maybe, by unconscious instrumentalism. I am speaking from experience of my professional field -- broadly, urban and regional planning -- in which there is the opportunity to admit to the overwhelm of unintended consequences that ensue from "problem-solving." I could go on, ad infinitum (or maybe nauseum), about "wicked" problems, how "solutions" are limited by funding availability, how professional expertise often squelches local knowledge, the tyranny of scheduling, and so forth. (I went through a period of almost-hopelessness.) This is all to say that I know I am referring to a thorny subject. There are many stories and opportunities of wisdom being applied and I've seen that happen in the most mundane decision-making situations, so I know it is a true thing and much to be encouraged (thank you for that!). But here is what I am trying to say, or ask: in what places or situations or conditions might a perceived problem be also understood as not a problem that begs a solution? That seems to me to be the lesson of the up-a-creek-without-a-paddle/go with the flow metaphor. Oh crap, I don't have what I need to change my fate in this natural course/what a beautiful ride. In my mind, this transcends the problem/solution lens. Anyway, enough from me! If any of this seeds some thoughts in you, I'll be glad to read about them when they're ready to share.
Ah, thank you for clarifying. What an incredibly insightful question, and this kind of exchange is precisely why I started writing on Substack, so thank you for offering all of this. Your question does run much deeper than I had originally understood. I will sit with and write on this with the intention of allowing something post-worthy to emerge. There are so many layers to this, I hope I do your question justice.
This is a comment about further creative work in this vein. Problem-solving as a "perhaps most important[ly]" outcome of "expansive-mindedness" is an idea that would benefit from thoughtful questioning. In my experience, when you identify as a problem-solver or define success in terms of problems solved, you look for problems everywhere to find opportunities for solutions. You apply your knowledge, expertise, skill mastery. It's a cultural characteristic, of course, of industrial capitalism, contemporary academia, etc., etc., so may be contributing to our overall disharmony with our natural world. There could be some contradictions between knowledge and wisdom when problem-solving is the goal -- for example, the thoroughly enjoyable metaphor of abandoning one's paddle-free self to the flow of the creek. Is this "problem-solving" or the opposite? You see what I mean -- it is interesting to think about and I would love to read your thoughts about this in future.
Thanks for this thought-provoking comment, Jana, and for the invitation to offer more in this vein. For now, I'll offer the following until I can sit with these questions more deeply. Perhaps the perceived difference in our perspectives is borne of the limits of language (as is often the case). I can see what you are saying about "problem-solving" being a linear, extractive, perhaps oppressive, self-defeating endeavor. This seems counterintuitive when the desired outcome is healing or harm reversal. For example, I often see well-intentioned "problem-solvers" trying to get at problems with the same level of understanding that created the problems in the first place. This is exactly something I am trying to shed more light on in Hopecology. Healing and harm reversal are what I mean when I say "problem solving," and I don't think this can be accomplished without looking squarely at what the harms/problems are. I don't think this is looking for problems; I think it is about sitting honestly with what is present, however uncomfortable that may be. As you note, there are ways to approach problems with a state of mind that only worsens them. What I'm aiming to do in Hopecology--including this post--is offer an invitation to consider shifting the mind states so that solutions come from a place of wisdom, rather than solely from knowledge. So perhaps we are saying the same thing, but using the term "problem" much differently?
This is great! My first trip to the Neotropics I had a bird guide, but nothing else (because they didn't exist and still mostly do not). It was a fun challenge to come up with some sort of functional taxonomy for all the herps (what I was studying) so that my notes and catalog would make any sense later (when I eventually was able to back-fill the names). It forced me to pay more attention to the creature---in the case of frogs that often meant their voice. So I had "boing" frogs, "chuk-chuk-chuk" frogs, etc. In your piece here I really appreciated the quote from Jason Anthony about encouraging students to experience the organism before stuffing a name down their throat. I am putting that great idea into my teaching folder for future classes.
This quote also really affected me: "In the Information Age—when the answer to nearly any question is as close as our pocket—curiosity takes work. To refrain from indulging in instant information can feel like a kind of fast, something that increases the hunger pangs for knowledge." I am generally following this line in my courses already. My Vert Bio course is not a traditional approach, it is much more a "Vert Natural History" course, but (sadly) without the field trips. But, to the point, I essentially use vertebrates (more familiar to most Bio students than are other organisms) as a central theme of discussion to masquerade a course that really is about the comparative method and the explanatory power of phylogeny, "tree thinking", and parsimony. Thanks for yet another edition of Hopecology!
What a cool story about your personalized functional taxonomy! Wow, you really were on the frontier at that time. I also really like the pedagogical approach to give students the space to lead with their curiosity. It's funny, because my first thought is, "We don't have enough time for that!" LOL. But if you think about it: if individual learning styles do not align with "stuffing names down throats", then isn't the time doing the stuffing wasted, too? Nature exposure for students, as we've talked about before, is the major key to having a future where any of it remains. Thanks for the work that you do!
Thanks for the really great post, Andrea, about (among other topics) going into the wild with our senses open as compared to peering into our bins and/or guidebooks and/or Merlin app. I love learning the names of various species and then studying them in natural history guides or WDFW sites. I also love wandering the trails or paddling the shoreline and making sure to stop and smell, taste, look up, face the wind, the sun, the rain. As you say, the both/and. Love your writing.
And YES to the TSE quote, a favourite of mine, which I refer to on a regular basis - in conversation with my more academic friends, and in my own heart, to keep myself oriented towards wisdom in this age of information-overload.
It IS a bit of a 'sore tooth' isn't it - a conundrum we circle around and probe from time to time...has to be done though, as we seek to live authentically. A bit like our desire to explore and appreciate the natural world set 'against' our knowledge of what damage our travel might be doing to the natural world 🌎
Interesting perspective! Mine would be not iNatting things when I can! I recently went to an area with some rare plants in east Texas and my reflex is to iNat and log most of my finds. But logging rare orchids that are incredibly close to road access is a no-no, even obscuring. Being able to be in place and not need to log it and say "I've seen it" in that manner changed the day around to how I used to wander in the woods.
Thanks for including me in a footnote!
The T.S. Eliot quotation is one of my all-time favorite quotations. These days, I wonder if he would add the line, "Where is the information we have lost in data?"
I appreciated this: "The funny thing about this is that neither of us would likely have been able to identify most of the invasive species we encountered—especially the plants." This is a point rarely made that I'd like to help make more widespread: In a place we don't know, we would not be able to identify what is native or "invasive" because "invasives" don't have unique traits that set them apart. I think a lot of people might be surprised to learn this.
Thanks, Kollibri. I was glad to be able to highlight your work. I hope the footnote doesn't feel like a diminishment--I just realized that if I'd put it in the main text it would have taken the essay in an entirely new direction! I like the footnotes function for that purpose--they are like placeholders for my tangential ideas I hope to write more about later. I find writing to be much like a web, that can often be difficult to wrangle into a linear structure. Is that your experience?
I didn't feel like it was a diminishment at all. More like "bonus material."
As for the challenge of wrangling writing into a linear structure, yes I totally experience that, all the time. The biggest challenge that Nikki Hill and I are facing with putting our book project is trying to put a web into a linear form.
When hypertext (links) were first introduced in the '90s, some writers (myself amongst them) were super excited that the form could liberate us from linear presentation. I actually wrote a work of fiction at that time that I distributed on a disc instead of as a book. The table of contents was arranged graphically in a figure 8 -- or the infinity symbol -- on the first screen, so that there was no clear beginning or end, and it was up to the reader to start where they wanted. I'm still surprised that more writers have not taken advantage of this potential.
Bonus material—I like that! Your infinity TOC is fascinating. Yes, being able to hyperlink relieves a lot of the linear pressure for me too.
Thank you, Andrea, for threading my work into this excellent essay. You do a great job of exploring the nuances between knowledge and experience as we reintroduce ourselves to the living world. As with so many things, there are students' learning styles and teachers' intuition at play here. And then those of us figuring it out as we go need to be both student and teacher, toggling between embracing and learning. Happy to have found your work.
You're so welcome, Jason. I was happy to have recently found your work, and was amazed that your post fit so perfectly into this one while I was working on it. Substack seems to have a kind of serendipity like that in my experience. Thanks for offering more insight into the pedagogical piece, and I really appreciate the toggling concept. So true--in many areas of life.
So much to love in this essay! The urge to name goes back way before Linneaus. I think of naming as a form of claiming; think of all the names that white Europeans imposed on places and beings here in North America that already had perfectly good names. Sometimes I experiment with meeting a non-human being on their terms, rather than imposing my own preconceived name for them. Curiosity, attention and patience go a long way.
On the point about invasives, many years ago I read an essay by Michael Pollan, "Weeds Are Us," which completely rewired how I thought about my relationship with plants. Wineberry and garlic mustard are just minding their own business, who am I to label them as weeds?
I appreciate your point that there are multiple ways to experience and understand, something I play with in Talking Back to Walden.
Thanks, Julie. I love the way you framed it as meeting a non-human “on their own terms.” Such valuable humility in that approach. Re: weeds/invasives, it’s almost like a toggle switch, as I go back and forth between my ecological training—which tells me what “belongs” and what doesn’t—and the being-ness beyond thought, which says something my similar to what you offered: who am I to decide what belongs and what doesn’t? I’m trying to take a page from Rumi and live in the field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing.
Also, thanks for the intro to Adam Mastroianni. His writing is brilliant.
Isn’t his writing amazing? His work inspired me to start my own Substack.
Weeds and invasives aren't synonymous, though. Many people consider most native plants to be weeds. Which is an important distinction. And wineberry and garlic mustard aren't minding their own business if they are displacing species and altering ecosystems. It's a very human centric viewpoint, which is where we run into trouble when we start thinking about invasives as not being a problem. It's honestly frustrating this idea is catching on in ecological circles. A counterpoint I recently wrote: https://thegardenpathpodcast.substack.com/p/why-you-should-care-about-invasive
Ah! Many thanks for this clarification. It makes perfect sense.
First of all, I want to emphasize that I resonate with almost everything your wrote in this post. And I appreciate your reply to my comment, your recasting problem-solving as healing and harm reversal. Absolutely. I am writing only to clarify that I wasn't intending to characterize "problem-solving" as linear, extractive, etc., although I know it can be that. And I agree 100% that it is fundamental to sit honestly with what is present. But here's where we don't agree: that problem-solving is necessarily an outcome or even characteristic of "expansive-mindedness". I was attempting to lift the entire endeavor of "problem-solving" into question, to refer to it as something we (generalizing here) are trained to do, a way we are acculturated to engage with our world. A mode of perception that is limited, maybe, by unconscious instrumentalism. I am speaking from experience of my professional field -- broadly, urban and regional planning -- in which there is the opportunity to admit to the overwhelm of unintended consequences that ensue from "problem-solving." I could go on, ad infinitum (or maybe nauseum), about "wicked" problems, how "solutions" are limited by funding availability, how professional expertise often squelches local knowledge, the tyranny of scheduling, and so forth. (I went through a period of almost-hopelessness.) This is all to say that I know I am referring to a thorny subject. There are many stories and opportunities of wisdom being applied and I've seen that happen in the most mundane decision-making situations, so I know it is a true thing and much to be encouraged (thank you for that!). But here is what I am trying to say, or ask: in what places or situations or conditions might a perceived problem be also understood as not a problem that begs a solution? That seems to me to be the lesson of the up-a-creek-without-a-paddle/go with the flow metaphor. Oh crap, I don't have what I need to change my fate in this natural course/what a beautiful ride. In my mind, this transcends the problem/solution lens. Anyway, enough from me! If any of this seeds some thoughts in you, I'll be glad to read about them when they're ready to share.
Ah, thank you for clarifying. What an incredibly insightful question, and this kind of exchange is precisely why I started writing on Substack, so thank you for offering all of this. Your question does run much deeper than I had originally understood. I will sit with and write on this with the intention of allowing something post-worthy to emerge. There are so many layers to this, I hope I do your question justice.
This is a comment about further creative work in this vein. Problem-solving as a "perhaps most important[ly]" outcome of "expansive-mindedness" is an idea that would benefit from thoughtful questioning. In my experience, when you identify as a problem-solver or define success in terms of problems solved, you look for problems everywhere to find opportunities for solutions. You apply your knowledge, expertise, skill mastery. It's a cultural characteristic, of course, of industrial capitalism, contemporary academia, etc., etc., so may be contributing to our overall disharmony with our natural world. There could be some contradictions between knowledge and wisdom when problem-solving is the goal -- for example, the thoroughly enjoyable metaphor of abandoning one's paddle-free self to the flow of the creek. Is this "problem-solving" or the opposite? You see what I mean -- it is interesting to think about and I would love to read your thoughts about this in future.
Thanks for this thought-provoking comment, Jana, and for the invitation to offer more in this vein. For now, I'll offer the following until I can sit with these questions more deeply. Perhaps the perceived difference in our perspectives is borne of the limits of language (as is often the case). I can see what you are saying about "problem-solving" being a linear, extractive, perhaps oppressive, self-defeating endeavor. This seems counterintuitive when the desired outcome is healing or harm reversal. For example, I often see well-intentioned "problem-solvers" trying to get at problems with the same level of understanding that created the problems in the first place. This is exactly something I am trying to shed more light on in Hopecology. Healing and harm reversal are what I mean when I say "problem solving," and I don't think this can be accomplished without looking squarely at what the harms/problems are. I don't think this is looking for problems; I think it is about sitting honestly with what is present, however uncomfortable that may be. As you note, there are ways to approach problems with a state of mind that only worsens them. What I'm aiming to do in Hopecology--including this post--is offer an invitation to consider shifting the mind states so that solutions come from a place of wisdom, rather than solely from knowledge. So perhaps we are saying the same thing, but using the term "problem" much differently?
This is great! My first trip to the Neotropics I had a bird guide, but nothing else (because they didn't exist and still mostly do not). It was a fun challenge to come up with some sort of functional taxonomy for all the herps (what I was studying) so that my notes and catalog would make any sense later (when I eventually was able to back-fill the names). It forced me to pay more attention to the creature---in the case of frogs that often meant their voice. So I had "boing" frogs, "chuk-chuk-chuk" frogs, etc. In your piece here I really appreciated the quote from Jason Anthony about encouraging students to experience the organism before stuffing a name down their throat. I am putting that great idea into my teaching folder for future classes.
This quote also really affected me: "In the Information Age—when the answer to nearly any question is as close as our pocket—curiosity takes work. To refrain from indulging in instant information can feel like a kind of fast, something that increases the hunger pangs for knowledge." I am generally following this line in my courses already. My Vert Bio course is not a traditional approach, it is much more a "Vert Natural History" course, but (sadly) without the field trips. But, to the point, I essentially use vertebrates (more familiar to most Bio students than are other organisms) as a central theme of discussion to masquerade a course that really is about the comparative method and the explanatory power of phylogeny, "tree thinking", and parsimony. Thanks for yet another edition of Hopecology!
What a cool story about your personalized functional taxonomy! Wow, you really were on the frontier at that time. I also really like the pedagogical approach to give students the space to lead with their curiosity. It's funny, because my first thought is, "We don't have enough time for that!" LOL. But if you think about it: if individual learning styles do not align with "stuffing names down throats", then isn't the time doing the stuffing wasted, too? Nature exposure for students, as we've talked about before, is the major key to having a future where any of it remains. Thanks for the work that you do!
Thanks for the really great post, Andrea, about (among other topics) going into the wild with our senses open as compared to peering into our bins and/or guidebooks and/or Merlin app. I love learning the names of various species and then studying them in natural history guides or WDFW sites. I also love wandering the trails or paddling the shoreline and making sure to stop and smell, taste, look up, face the wind, the sun, the rain. As you say, the both/and. Love your writing.
Thank you, Kirie.
Oh, very interesting, thank you!
And YES to the TSE quote, a favourite of mine, which I refer to on a regular basis - in conversation with my more academic friends, and in my own heart, to keep myself oriented towards wisdom in this age of information-overload.
It IS a bit of a 'sore tooth' isn't it - a conundrum we circle around and probe from time to time...has to be done though, as we seek to live authentically. A bit like our desire to explore and appreciate the natural world set 'against' our knowledge of what damage our travel might be doing to the natural world 🌎
Thanks, Janey, and I agree--it's quite a shift to aim to navigate by wisdom as with the North Star.
Interesting perspective! Mine would be not iNatting things when I can! I recently went to an area with some rare plants in east Texas and my reflex is to iNat and log most of my finds. But logging rare orchids that are incredibly close to road access is a no-no, even obscuring. Being able to be in place and not need to log it and say "I've seen it" in that manner changed the day around to how I used to wander in the woods.