A show about relationships with the land
There are many ways to listen to the show: Listen live on CFRU 93.3 fm broadcasting from the University of Guelph Mondays at 6pm EST or listen to the podcast via Spotify, Apple, or just follow the rss feed.
Ep. 194 : Song of the Night ii
“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. 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.
Ep. 193 : Spiders of North America with Sarah Rose
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.
It has been hard to find a good field guide to Spiders. When I recently I got a copy of Spiders of North America by Sarah Rose I was stoked.
Ep. 192 : Daniella Roze on the harm in our work
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?
Ep. 191 : Scat Finder with Dorcas Miller
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.
Dorcas and I share stories while I ask questions about her awesome new book. It was an honour to get to talk with Dorcas.
Ep. 190 : Jenna Rudolph on the harm in our work
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.
Ep. 189 : Jessica Reznicek Is Not A Terrorist
On July 24, 2017, Jessica Reznicek admitted to engaging in acts of sabotage to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. 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.
For this show I got to talk with Charlotte from the Support Jessica Reznicek Network about Jessica’s case.
Ep. 188 : Ways of Being Alive by Baptiste Morizot
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.
Ep 187 : Listening to the Spring Frogs and Birds
The other-than-human world is alive and breathing. They sing and mate and eat and die, just like us. We honour all the varied stages of our human lives through words and song, of which we record, archive, teach and celebrate, so why not them? Sure we use our languages to speak to their lives, but wouldn’t it be nice to allow them to sing their own songs and for us to pay attention as we would our own? I certainly think so.
Ep. 186 : Squirrel Life Project with Elizabeth Porter
Birdwatching is obviously a thing as birds are everywhere, loud, demonstrate interesting behaviours, and they are often brightly coloured. Squirrels too are everywhere, loud, and demonstrate interesting behaviours. They aren’t brightly coloured, but their brindled, black, red, brown, grey, or even white in the case of some albino individuals at Trinity Bellwoods downtown Toronto, are still a joy to observe. So why not take up Squirrelwatching?
Elizabeth Porter is the project coordinator for the Squirrel Life project which is developing an app to collect community sourced observations of Squirrels and their varied, interesting and often comical behaviour and then enables future researchers to access the shared collected data for their research. It’s a project with many aims including getting folks outside to observe wild life close to home while encouraging a closer look at varied Squirrel behviours which are happening all around, all the time. Along the way, Elizabeth is looking at how to communicate scientific research and findings with broad diverse communities. A great goal.
Ep. 185 : In conversation with Lorraine Roy, and Greg Kennedy SJ.
By calling, Greg is a Jesuit priest. Lorraine, a textile artist. Both have a keen eye for observation, and translation. Learning to see the wonder and awe embedded in the guardians of the air we collectively breathe, the trees, they render the arboreal grace and might into earthly transmissions which allow us to know the land a little better.
On Earth Day weekend, April 22-24, Greg Kennedy, Lorraine Roy and I will be facilitating a retreat at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre with the theme of Trees. In this conversation we share some of why we are involved in this project, and to reflect on what brought us to this work, who has inspired us, and what we hope to bring to this emergent weekend.
Ep. 184 : Nature Guelph
Nature Guelph was established in 1966 and since then has been promoting connection with the lands in and around the city I now call home. I have been attending their events for years, always drawn in by their knowledgeable speakers and presenters and great community. It has been a hub for naturalists in Guelph and I have been so lucky to get to know the broader community of humans and non-humans through their efforts.
Ep. 183 : Follow The Food
Knowing the plants who are in relationship with the animals we track can help us find the animals we want to learn about. They can point in the direction of where the animals are going or where they will be going. They can show us if we are in the right environment or if we need to keep looking.
This episode is pretty much a story of a recent afternoon spent tracking in the Lake of Bays region, just South West of Algonquin Park, where we spent a few hours following the food and then finding the animal.
Ep. 182 : Deer Mouse and Song Sparrow
I have been tracking Deer Mice a lot lately, and trying to learn a little bit more about them through their tracks and all the questions that come up. What are they eating right now? How can I tell them apart from Voles and Shrews? How many live together in the Winter? Who ate this one’s brains? You know, the usual. I have also been looking at bird tracks a bunch, especially in this past week, when I noticed a Song Sparrow feeding on the withered stalk of an uncertain forb on the side of a new gravel road near where I work. It was fun to go and see the work the Song Sparrow had done, and wonder at all the debris that remained. Who knew there’d be so much to look at and wonder about?
Ep. 181 : Buckthorn Phenology and Possible Management Strategies with Mike J. Schuster
I have seen and been part of a lot of Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) removal efforts, and while initially hopeful, often there is a inevitable return of the non-native to once again take over the forest understory in short time. What if there were strategies, without herbicides or biocontrols to reduce or prevent the likeliness of Buckthorn’s recolonization?
Mike J. Schuster from the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota recently co-authored a paper looking into native phenological competitors to Buckthorn which can be planted after Buckthorn removal to help keep R. cathartica out. Luckily for me, one of the suggestions was a (fairly simple) practice I have been learning about and working on for the past 5 years! Plant more Elderberry! Sambucus canadensis and perhaps even more so S. racemosa can help block out the light essential to early Buckthorn growth. By planting these two shrubs , who have similar phenological timelines to the Buckthorn, we can help restore native biodiversity in forests experiencing Buckthorn invasions.
Ep. 180 : Winter of the Fisher
It has been the Winter of the Fisher indeed with long tracking missions following three different Fishers at three locations in Southern Ontario between November 27, 2021 - January 16, 2022. I had only written of one of the experiences and hadn’t really told the story of the second and third, I thought I could detail some of what happened, and some of what I had been learning about for this episode.
Ep. 179 : Northern River Otter
A friend told me that someone in their small village had spotted a Northern River Otter (Lontra canadensis) in the same river the passes through the city where I live. This is the closest sighting of a River Otter to my neck of the woods I have ever heard of. I was so excited that I ran to my desk where I had all of my mammal books out anyways, and flipped to the River Otter entries and started learning.
Ep. 178 : A discussion of On the Animal Trail by Baptiste Morizot with Julian Fisher
My friend Julian Fisher recommended a book to me he thought I would enjoy. It was Baptiste Morizot’s On the Animal Trail. I got it and I asked him if he would like to do a “book report, not a review” with me, where we could just have a good conversation about what we were thinking and learning about through reading the work. Julian is a philosopher, and I am a tracker. Why not share in the feast of ideas that is On the Animal Trail together?
Baptiste writes beautiful accounts of tracking non-human animals, and describes some lessons he/we have been offered by these cohabitants. He also asks us to look a little deeper into these lessons and into our relationships with these communities. Can tracking change how we see the world by changing the way we interact with the world? Can following animal trails help us find a deeper sense of belonging to place because we are more in tune to the relationships happening around us? Julian and I get into it.
Ep. 177 : Greenbelt Foundation with Shelley Petrie
2,100,000 acres protected within not only the most populous area in Canada, but one of the most important economic areas, the struggle between development and sprawl vs protection and conservation of farms, forests and fragile wetlands is a very real undertaking, and one very much beyond me. Getting to talk to Shelley Petrie of The Greenbelt Foundation was helpful in understanding some of the details of what exactly the Greenbelt is and who the Greenbelt Foundation are.
With a local council North of Toronto recently voting in favour of a developer’s request to redesignate 1,400 acres of Greenbelt farmland into developable lands I got to wondering if the Greenbelt can hold up against this and possible future impingements? Where do folks allow development and where do folks protect lands?
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