OF CYCLES AND DISTURBANCES

by

Justin Foster
B.A., University of Northern British Columbia, 2008

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
IN
ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
December 2012

© Justin Foster, 2012

1+1

Library and Archives
Canada

Bibliotheque et
Archives Canada

Published Heritage
Branch

Direction du
Patrimoine de I'edition

395 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON K1A0N4
Canada

395, rue Wellington
Ottawa ON K1A 0N4
Canada
Your file Votre reference
ISBN:

978-0-494-94101-0

Our file Notre reference
ISBN:

978-0-494-94101-0

NOTICE:

AVIS:

The author has granted a non­
exclusive license allowing Library and
Archives Canada to reproduce,
publish, archive, preserve, conserve,
communicate to the public by
telecommunication or on the Internet,
loan, distrbute and sell theses
worldwide, for commercial or non­
commercial purposes, in microform,
paper, electronic and/or any other
formats.

L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive
permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives
Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver,
sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public
par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter,
distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le
monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur
support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou
autres formats.

The author retains copyright
ownership and moral rights in this
thesis. Neither the thesis nor
substantial extracts from it may be
printed or otherwise reproduced
without the author's permission.

L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur
et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni
la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci
ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement
reproduits sans son autorisation.

In compliance with the Canadian
Privacy Act some supporting forms
may have been removed from this
thesis.

Conform em ent a la loi canadienne sur la
protection de la vie privee, quelques
formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de
cette these.

W hile these forms may be included
in the document page count, their
removal does not represent any loss
of content from the thesis.

Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans
la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu
manquant.

Canada

11

Abstract

As a hybrid text, O f Cycles and Disturbances is blend of creative and theoretical writing that
explores the complex and sometimes destructive relationship humans have with nonhuman
environments. While writing towards an apprenticeship of the land, my creative and
theoretical texts explore: language and story; memory and things remembered; connection to
place and a rooted sense of place; the relationship between home and the wild; the negative
effects of resource extraction and processing on nonhuman environments; and my
complicated relationship with resource extraction. By combining lined poetry, prose poems,
experiential creative non-fiction, photographs and a theoretical framework, my thesis
surrounds and works towards an understanding of nature and my own involvement in the
cycles and disturbances o f the wild. The forces that work to transform and destroy nature and
the ways in which poetry can work against those forces as both a form of activism and a
didactic tool is the focus of this project.

iii

Table of Contents
Abstract

ii

Table of Contents

iii

List of Figures

iv

Acknowledgements

v

Introduction

Creative and Theoretical Choices: A Rationale

1

Section 1

Language and Story

12

Section 2

Nature, Wilderness, and The Wild

23

Section 3

Things Remembered

34

Section 4

A Rooted Sense of Place

49

Section 5

Places Home

59

Section 6

Violence at Home

72

Section 7

A Resource Town Raised Me

82

Section 8

Writing Activism

89

Section 9

Becoming Birch:
Metamorphosis and Environmental Change

105

A Moment o f Reflection

119

Conclusion
Works Cited

1122

List of Figures
The Wild: A Northern Raven

18

Baker Creek: The Bridge at Marsh Drive

22

The Wild: White Indian Pipe Flower

33

Near The Skatepark: Hung

41

Baker Creek: Moffat Bridge in the Distance

45

Baker Creek: All Smashed Up

48

Baker Creek: Tracks After The Flood

58

The Wild: Decompositions

67

The Wild: A Frozen Lake

71

Shadows of an Industrial Park

81

Baker Creek: Graffiti Under The Bridge

88

The Wild: Indian Paintbrush

104

The Wild: The Persistence o f Birch

118

The Wild: Reflections

121

Acknowledgements
Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advising professor Dr. Rob
Budde and committee members Dr. Kevin Hutchings and Dr. Si Transken as well as my
external examiner Dr. Greg Halseth. I would like to thank Ken Belford for his influence on
my writing and Jessica Blewett for her ideas, guidance and support. I would also like to thank
my parents, Diane and Robin Foster, and my brothers, Nolan and Andrew Foster. Once again,
I would like to acknowledge Stuart Alec and the Nazko First Nation for there continued
support. Without my family, friends and colleagues this project would not have been
possible.

1

Creative and Theoretical Choices:
A Rationale

There are places we carry with us wherever we go; environments we know with such
intimacy and acceptance they cannot be forgotten. For me, it is the land - a natural
environment of complex truths - that I am rooted in. My attunement is with the wild. It is
where I grew up, where I spent my days. It is in nature, in the wilderness, in the creeks and
stands, the mountains and waterways, the soil and air; it is in the sub-boreal forest in the
Cariboo north-central region of British Columbia. There are others who feel, much like I do,
that the wild, the land that begins at the edge of the city, the rancher’s field, the cutblock, or
the bush-road, is something to be a part of. Viewed from the inside, with an ecology of
perspective, I see a diversity o f environments with natural cycles and disturbances, and the
possibility o f a reciprocal non-human/human relationship. I desire to take care o f the wild, to
live with respect alongside nature with a continued use perspective. The concept of continued
use is a way of looking at nonhuman environments with a focus on sustainability. If we take
resources from the land - weather they be plants, animals or water - in a respectful,
nonviolent way while trying to mitigate disturbances and reduce our environmental impact,
we can approach a continued use perspective, thereby supporting long-term ecological
balance. Some have encountered the wild in a different way. Those who do not share a
connection with the living land, who do not practice the wild (Snyder), view it from the
outside, from a safe distance. They see wilderness as a commodity, an affluence o f natural
resources, an adversarial wilderness, a landscape, the other, rather than places that can let you
in.
The nature of the sub-boreal forest in the Cariboo north-central region of BC is in a

continual state of change. For the past one hundred years, settlement and industrial
development have drastically impacted the natural environment of this region and disrupted
the process of cycles and disturbances. The industrialization of resource extraction and
processing has transformed the nature of the Cariboo north-central region; it has affected the
health of the wild and its many ecosystems and in turn affected the health of those who
inhabit its human communities. It has irrevocably altered the land and I too feel the force of
these changes. This is cause for concern, and the question remains: what can be done?
I first began exploring and experiencing the wilderness in and around Quesnel, BC as
a young boy. I can trace my memories of being in nature, of smelling rotting logs and
stagnant pools, of touching leaves, needles and the bark of trees, of tasting fresh mountain
water and wild strawberries, almost as far back as I can remember. Even then, as a child, I
knew there was a territory, a place in the wild that I was connected to. I have been away, but I
always return to this land; I carry it with me. It is deep rooted, but I know that if I don’t live
with attention and responsibility to the land, if I don’t continue to “take in the genius of the
place ... the place will throw [me] out” (Lilbum, Thinking and Singing 173). Until recently, I
had no way of explaining the connection I felt to a particular land. The feeling was persistent
but I didn’t have the words to express it or the theory to explore it. This project and the
process of writing towards an apprenticeship of the land have firmly established in me an
environmental consciousness that is foundational to my identity.
From an anthropocentric perspective, the value of nature is subjective; it depends on
who you are and where you are from as well as your exposure to and experiences with the
wild. The idea of objective value occurs when nature is viewed as a commodity rather than a

complex living organism. An anthropocentric perspective1, however, is by no means the only
approach to understanding the relationship between humans and nonhuman environments.
Proponents of deep ecology, for example, assert an ecocentric perspective, which suggests
that nonhuman organisms are inherently valuable regardless o f their utility to human needs
(Morton 2). My writing does not attempt to define the wild, nor does it aim to arrive at some
conclusive accord - rather, it surrounds and works toward an understanding of nature and my
own involvement in the cycles and disturbances of the wild. I am exploring the forces that
work to transform and destroy nature and the ways in which poetry can work against those
forces as both a form of activism and a pedagogical tool. Like Ken Belford, my goal is to
“take on a type of [writing] that pushes outward, into the resistant, or into the unknown, or
into the ideas and philosophical questions about how we might not just live, but live better,
and with more attunement and responsibility to the complexity of it all” (Notes on
Lan(d)guage), striving for, as Tim Lilbum suggests, a way of knowing the land and “a course
of contemplative inquiry” (Guest Lecturer). I work towards living here, as a resident of
natural environments, “with a particular attention to the land” (Guest Lecturer). For me, this
way of life, and by extension this type of writing, values the land and lives with it. A
coexistence that is firmly rooted in respect, that looks to understand rather then destroy
nonhuman environments, is what I am trying to embody here.
Cycles and disturbances is an ecological phrase that refers to a repeating series of
occurrences within an ecosystem and the distinct changes within that ecosystem which upset
the recurrent process. The idea of cycles and disturbances is at the root of this undertaking.
Both my creative and theoretical texts work toward an understanding of the human impact on
1 Anthropocentrism is discussed in detail in Section 8: Writing Activism .

4

natural ecosystems. The human impact can be described as an aberrant disturbance to the
natural cycle of things. All natural environments and nonhuman ecosystems have cycles.
Within these cycles, there are stages2 and there are naturally occurring disturbances. A
disturbance is any temporary change in the environment that produces a distinct change in
the ecosystem (Rykiel). The key here is temporary, suggesting that eventually the ecosystem
can return to a healthy equivalent of its pre-disturbance condition. Natural disturbances are
those which have not been induced by human intervention - such as fires, floods,
windstorms, and insect outbreaks.3 Unnatural disturbances take many forms and are often
more destructive. Practices such as logging, resource road-building, mining, damming, and
introducing non-native species into ecosystems are unnatural breaks in the cycle. When an
aberrant disturbance occurs, the ecosystem often does not return to its pre-disturbance state;
what was there is forever lost. I am not, however, advocating for the complete removal o f
humans from natural environments but rather a reconstruction of our understanding of and
approach towards nature.
As a hybrid text, my work is a blend o f creative and theoretical writing, a fusion of
poetry and methodology. While writing towards an apprenticeship of the land, my creative
and theoretical texts will explore language, memory, place, home, ecological poetry and
activism. By combining lined poetry, prose poems, experiential creative non-fiction,
photographs and theoretical frameworks, my thesis emerges as an environmentally conscious
hybrid text. I have come across several authors who have used the creative and theoretical

2
3

Every cycle has multiple reoccurring stages. The poem titles that begin with Stage are in reference to the
many stages o f cycles and disturbances, natural or otherwise.
It should be noted that all o f the aforementioned disturbances can be a direct result of, or accentuated by,
human activity.

hybrid text approach to writing (Jan Zwicky, Tim Lilbum, and Don McKay). Although there
are authors before me who have written in this form, my approach is somewhat unique in its
method and structure. The blended form I am using throughout my texts allows for a
complex presentation of information and ideas and the possibility of adoption within the
subsequent acceptance of those ideas. My approach to language and diction shifts between
poetic, academic/theoretical and self-reflexive. In this way, the expectation of traditional
sequence and narrative is thrown out. Although many o f the subjects and ideas that I am
engaging with have been addressed by others, I have largely come to them independently,
and in my own way. I have approached each subject carefully through theoretical discourse
and experiential reflection. The research method I have used for much of my work is based in
personal experience and observation (informed by critical/theoretical research). This has
resulted in a self-reflexive, autobiographical tone intertwined with theoretical analysis.
Each section contains, first, a theoretical discussion that presents my ideas on a
particular subject or subjects, followed by several creative texts and interspersed
photographs. The creative texts work to further explore the theoretical ideas being presented
in the section while at the same time engaging with some of the overarching themes. The
theoretical components of each section vary in length and scope and are written in both
academic and autobiographical diction. Some sections explore the theories of others at great
length while others do not. This is a conscious choice based on the relative weight and
importance of the subject in relation to the overall work and the scope of exploration and
engagement being employed within the creative texts. There are sections that warrant only a
brief theoretical presentation and discussion of the subject and its relevance, while other
sections require thorough academic research and documentation. The function of creative

6
texts as a form of theory is an important distinction. Many of the theories and ideas that I am

presenting in this thesis are explored at great length within the creative texts themselves. I
believe that poetry in particular has the possibility of opening a dialogue between ideas and
meaning, presenting questions and revealing cultural cues that are unique to its form. Poetry
as a pedagogical tool can inform and uncover certain ideas and feelings that no other
discourse can, a position I explore (theoretically rather then poetically) in Sections 8 and 9.
The photographs serve to further explore a personal connection to the living land with a
particular focus on my perceptions and permeative gaze.
Photography has allowed me to examine my cultural positioning and physical
perspective on a particular environment at a certain time. My choice to use photography as a
supplementary “text” is methodologically informed by a subgenre of participant-employed
photography (PEP) known as Photovoice (Castleden 1395). Photovoice is often understood
as a participatory approach to conceptualizing an individual’s circumstance with the aim of
giving voice to marginalized groups or perspectives (Hay 383). Although I do not consider
myself a marginalized individual, the basic principles of Photovoice are relevant to my work.
My decision to use photography is reflected within the three goals of Photovoice as identified
by Caroline Wang: (1) assisting individuals with recording and reflecting on selected issues;
(2) encouraging a dialogue surrounding these issues; and (3) creating change and/or
influencing policy-makers. Each of my photographs endeavours to record and reflect upon
certain issues while at the same time questioning and promoting a discussion of possible
outcomes and forms of action. In an increasingly visual culture, I argue that visual data
should be recognized as an effective method for exploring position and perspective. The
issues I am presenting within my thesis are culturally contextualized and questioned within

the accompanying photographs. My intent is to create an engaging dialogue with the
viewer/reader and to offer visual texts that contribute to the overall meaning.
As a requirement for many humanities texts within the academic sphere, a positioning
of the author is necessary. I have found this to be perhaps one of the most challenging aspects
of the thesis-writing process. I struggle with the idea of a clearly articulated gender and
identity. What’s clear on the surface, though, is that I am of mostly white European heritage,
I am male, I am able bodied, I am privileged and university educated. Below the surface
things are not so straightforward. I do not identify myself as a traditional white man who is a
part of the academy; I define myself in different terms. Throughout the creative and
theoretical texts herein, I explore who I am, who I might be, and what influences have
allowed me to be here today. In this way, my positioning of self is a part of all my writing; it
is within the whole body of work itself. Particularly, Section 7: A Resource Town Raised Me
examines my relationship with the land and how my views of the land are conditioned by my
position. Many of my creative texts - stage 9 and stage 14, in particular - work to culturally
position myself and my writing.
There are certain themes that are present throughout the breadth of my creative texts.
The six key themes I am working with, all of which are explored to some degree within the
theoretical sections, are as follows: (1) language and story; (2) the effect of memory and
things remembered; (3) my connection to place and a rooted sense of place; (4) the
relationship between home and the wild; (5) the negative effects o f resource extraction and
processing on natural environments; and (6) my complicated relationship with resource
extraction. The thematic settings of my creative texts are located in a certain region: the subboreal forest in the Cariboo north-central region of BC. The narrative of my poems is often

set, physically or viscerally, in the wild, on the land or in the city nearby. Waterways find
environments located in and around Quesnel and Prince George are the focal settings of
many of my creative and theoretical texts. The Baker Creek watershed is the most significant
location throughout.
My childhood house in West Quesnel backed onto a network of trails that led into the
unroaded forests beyond Uplands. From there, it was only a short hike to the Baker Creek
watershed. Running east from Punchesakut Lake draining into the Fraser River, Baker Creek
flows both through the city and the wild. I have spent many days negotiating this waterway. I
learned how to be in this place and it was here that I began to understand the way of cycles
and disturbances. Much of my current writing is interested in Baker Creek as it is now and as
it was then. Remembering my childhood experiences, those moments in place I carry with
me, and finding ways to contextualize them within my current understanding of the wild, is
part of what I am trying to do in my creative texts and elsewhere.
Like tributaries flowing into a main stem, the distinct sections of my thesis coalesce,
developing a strong current of ideas. Each section builds upon the theories and concepts of
the last. From one to another, my thesis incorporates both theoretical and creative writing
while employing a balance of experiential and research components. My hybrid thesis
comprises nine sections. The following is a brief introduction to each of the sections.
Section 1. Language and Story: A discussion of the relationship between language,
stories and words is presented here. The ways in which stories educate and create meaning is
explored as is the relationship between poetry and story. Robert Bringhurst’s theory of
linguistics, as presented in The Tree o f Meaning and the Work o f Ecological Linguistics, is
foundational to my understanding of language. Baker Creek is introduced as an area of

particular interest in the creative texts of this section.
Section 2. Nature, Wilderness, and The Wild: In this section, I examine the
similarities and differences between the various terms used to discuss nonhuman
environments. The problematic nature of defining and labeling nonhuman environments is
discussed within a framework of ecocritical discourse. My own understanding and rationale
of nature, wilderness, and the wild is presented alongside the work of various ecocritics such
as Timothy Morton and William Cronen, and poets Gary Snyder and Ken Belford.
Section 3. Things Remembered: Much of my writing involves digging back, peeling
away, and drawing on memories. This process allows me to begin again at the source and
find meaning in the now. For me, remembering is a series of overlapping, blurred and
unspoken indices, an arrangement of emotive materials towards a feeling. As such, these
memories are skewed by my own evolving perceptions and affected by the limitations of
language. In this section, I discuss the nature of things remembered and how the remembered
experiences are distant, and the words are carefully considered, but the feelings are, as far as
I can tell, honest. The way things change over time within memory is also an area of
consideration.
Section 4. A Rooted Sense of Place: To write from place, to understand its subtleties
and nuances, and to capture the feeling, memory, and identity o f a particular environment, a
rooted sense ofplace is necessary. In this section, I discuss the concepts of place, rootedness
and sense o f place as they pertain to writing in particular. The distinction between space and
place is examined as is the difference between landscape and place. The importance of
writing from place is explored within the context of my creative work.
Section 5. Places Home: For me, home is a place in nature that I am a part of. Here,

10
I posit that there are two types of home: home as it resides in people and home that is a form

of residence. Home as place and my rationale for a home in the wild is the focus of this
section. My connection to the living land is further established in both the creative and
theoretical texts of this section. The limits of language in relation to describing an
individual’s connection to home is an important distinction.
Section 6. Violence at Home: A discussion of how resource extraction and
processing can be viewed as a form of violence that poisons my home is presented in this
section. My experiences doing silviculture work and my perceptions of corporate logging
practices versus small woodlot management are examined. Here, I offer a critique of resource
capitalism as the source of irrevocable disturbance to my home. The personal struggle and
lingering effects of working in a pulp and paper mill are questioned in both section 6 and 7.
Section 7. A Resource Town Raised Me: Section 7 addresses my complex
relationship with the resource extraction and processing industry and the ways in which I
have benefited from being a part of the “problem.” The possibility of complicity is exposed
with respect to my critique and involvement in the resource extraction and processing
industry. A positioning of self in relation to violence against the land is explored along with a
detailing o f my various levels of involvement, both past and present.
Section 8. W riting Activism: Creative writing, and particularly poetry, as a form of
activism, is the primary focus of this section. The way in which a poem can go beyond the
page and advocate for real-world change is examined. The adoption of ideas through poetry
is also explained. A discussion of ecological poetry or ecopoetry, and those writing that form
of poetics —such as Don McKay and Ken Belford - is presented. Writing from a
anthropocentric position and the potential dangers of anthropomorphizing nature are

addressed. The concept of the inappellable and that which goes on between the lines in
poetry is further examined.
Section 9. Becoming Birch: Metamorphosis and Environmental Change: In this
final section I attempt to show the pedagogical nature o f poetry that employs a specific
literary trope as a means to inform the reading or listening audience. As a literary motif,
metamorphosis has the potential to shed needed light on the correlation between
environmental degradation and the health of a community. In this section, I argue that the
imagined process of metamorphosis from an of-nature, organic form such as a birch tree, to a
body with reflexive human awareness, can be used as a vehicle to explore the impact of
environmental change in a specific transitional region. Focusing on air quality, I explore the
ways in which the health of the land and natural environment is directly linked to the health
of the people who inhabit that region. In some ways, this section is a culmination of the
themes and ideas that have been presented throughout the previous sections.

12

-Section 1Language and Story

...the text is just the map; the story is the territory. The story however is also a map —
a map o f the land, a map o f the mind, a map o f the heart, a map o f the language in
which the story is told.
-Robert Bringhurst The Tree o f Meaning (175)

Language is alive; it is living, breathing, moving and changing within environments.
Language is substance, content and reason. Language is what we are. Among other things,
my writing is concerned with language as a theoretical construct and the perceptions of
meaning inherent therein. In some cases, my creative texts are self-consciously aware o f thenown language, while at the same time questioning and challenging the meaning o f the words
themselves - the poem as self-reflexive. Language can be looked at from many perspectives,
approached from many angles. There are two aspects of language that will be examined
further here: words and stories. Both are particularly relevant to my work, and in many ways,
to all writing.
A word is defined as a unit of language, “consisting of one or more spoken sounds or
their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning” (Collins English
Dictionary). By themselves, however, words carry little weight. They are only as relevant as
the other words which surround them. Context is everything. Each word has its referents, has
its own story. Take, for example, the word resource. On its own, resource means “a source of
supply” {Collins English Dictionary). Combine it with one or more words though, and
additional meaning is created, an image is evoked: resource extraction; non-renewable
resource', a resource town', or human resources. Meaning is dependent upon the position of
the selected word and what it signifies within the string of words which precede and follow

13

it. When words are used to describe a succession of incidents that explore an idea, stories
emerges. Although stories are often thought to reside within the boundaries of traditional
narrative techniques, stories can take many forms and can exist within many mediums. As
long as there is purpose, a retelling of any encounter with the world can be a story. Whether it
is designed to entertain, interest or instruct its reading or listening audience, a story creates
meaning through language.
In his collection of essays, The Tree o f Meaning, Robert Bringhurst explains the
relationship between language, story and literature through an ecological metaphor:
A story is to the sentence as a tree is to the twig. And literature is to a story
as the forest is to the tree. Language - that metaphor - is the wood the tree is
made of, an engineer might say, but a biologist would notice something else.
The wood the tree is made of is created by the tree. Stories make the language
they are made of. They make it and keep it alive. (169)
I am neither an engineer nor a biologist; I am a poet who sees the tree and the wood as
inseparable, as co-creators and architects of a self-informed, self-defined connectedness.
Stories are the keepers of language and ideas. By this measure, stories serve an important
function of language. They are the plot and the narrative of all incidents and events; they are
at the pulse of life. Poetry, I would argue, can be understood as a kind of story: not
necessarily a traditional narrative, however, but a dialogue that questions and explores the
meanings and ideas of that which can be felt in either a physical or visceral capacity. In this
way, the poem tells a story: the story o f life and experience.
In order to truly understand a place we must intimately know the language of that
environment. This can be achieved over time through a deep investigation o f the stories of
that particular place. The relationship between place and language is complex and not easily
defined. In his ecological metaphor, Bringhurst approaches an understanding of the value of

14
stories and the ways in which we can come to understand the meaning o f those stories within

the context of place:
You can kill the tree and take the wood, kill the story and take the language,
kill the earth and take the ore, kill the river and take the water - but if you
really want to understand the wood, the water, the minerals, and the rocks, you
have to visit them at home, in the living trees, the rivers, the earth. And if you
really want to understand the language, you have to encounter it in the stories
by which it was made.
What’s more, if you really want to understand the tree, you have to encounter
it in the forest. If you want to understand the river, you have to explore the
watershed. If you want to understand the story, you have to go beyond it, into
the ecosystem of stories. (169)
My rooted sense ofplace (see Section 4: A Rooted Sense o f Place) which connects me to my
home has something to do with language and the stories which create that language. I try to
write with a curiosity that is rooted in an “ecosystem of stories” (Bringhurst 169). Through
this curious gaze, the poem becomes both the tree and the wood the tree is made of; the
language and the story. As Ken Belford notes, this way of looking at the world, being both
open and questioning, in writing or otherwise, is healthy: “the growth of curiosity must be a
quality that takes the vulnerable soul by the hand and guides one forward into knowing, and
that knowing appears to be something that leads forever onward” {Notes on Lan(d)guage).
The tree as a metaphor is successful in exploring the relationship between language
and story. The tissues of interconnection that exist between these two things are similar to the
relationship between wood and tree. They are at once different and the same. They are
inseparable, each creating the other and existing simultaneously therein. The function o f the
story, like the poem, is guidance, is to better understand the environments we live and the
complex relationships we have:
Those trees, the trees of meaning we call stories, grow in your brain and the
rest of your body. And there seems to be a symbiotic relation between those

15
trees of meaning and ourselves. What the stories get out of it is that they get to
exist. What we get out o f it is guidance. Stories are one of the fundamental
ways in which we understand the world - and we may yet come to learn that
the reason for this is that stories are some of the basic constituents of the
world. (Bringhurst 172)

Although it is not directly stated here, my understanding of how a poem, or any other
creative text, can be understood as a story is explained through an associative reading of the
above quotation. The function of a poem is to explore, to inform, and to surround with
questions, that which helps us “understand the world” (172). Pedagogic poetry guides its
reader or listener through ways of looking at the world; “it teaches / is instructional” (Belford
Notes on Lan(d)guage).
In poetry, the process o f word selection should not be taken lightly; it should be given
the same weight and consideration as the ideas which inform the text itself. In my creative
work, I try to make complex use of language while simultaneously going beyond the words
and into the realm of feelings. As Belford suggests in Notes on Lan(d)guage, poetry does go
beyond the complexity of language - it speaks to the bigger strands of interconnection:
“Languages are indexes of belonging - and the matter of concern is not so much where the
poet comes from but what the poet is” {Notes on Lan(d)guage'). When exploring a particular
environment, if you spend enough time there, being in that place (figuratively or literally
speaking), a language will emerge. When stories develop from language, when they come to
life in the air or on the page, a literature is building; real work is being done. My writing is
grounded in the stories and language of experience; it looks to question and inform; it speaks
to what I am and how I think. More importantly, language allows me to take what I see in the
world, its beauty and its tragedy, and share it with others.

16
stage 2

a contrast is
there looking back to the trail
without pretence or translation
the northern raven, smooth, thoughtful, still
against the frost covered cottonwood
black and white
baker creek below, heavy, flickers
hardens where the water meets the air
the story exists at any point
where the ideas surface
they do not need to be heard
these stories creatures are4
where there is meaning and recognition
beyond the constraints and values
of our colonial language
this, a grain of thought
before it sounds like anything
silence/language
the words are only markers
to something bigger
a poetry of life
when standing there on the trail, in exchange
a discourse is far from necessary
the balance and the measure
like freezing water
stories creatures are is an idea I borrowed from Robert Bringhurst’s essay The Tree o f M eanin g an d The
Work o f E cological Linguistics, (2008).

there is a literature of contact
a dialogue with the moisture o f the creek
the falling air and the raven in the cottonwood

V

Figure 1. The Wild: A Northern Raven

19
stage 5

the northern raven slows
dips and lands on a lodgepole pine
the bow bends under the weight
releases a cone to the underbrush
a logging truck takes a comer near the sign at km 88
its tires grind, slide and regain position
a narrative builds
requiring complex linguistics
experience is
without such constraint
the black bear steps heavy into the creek
breaking the water’s course
the creek swells slightly with the heft of exchange
while an eddy forms and quickly fades
a cigarette butt hits the ditch
bounces twice and chokes out in the dust
a language is to a story
as the forest is to the tree
but what happens, happens either way
the brook trout startles
darting smoothly upstream
small rocks carom into the current
reeling and rumbling until settled again
the weight of the words shifts
the wind changes course
a tree falls in the woods
and the question goes on without me

20
stage 11

the value of such
a place for every poem
and every poem in its place
investment opportunity
in geographies of language
and the product, in its accumulation
is made on paper still
followed only by its ego, the poem slips away
unnoticed into the wild which outlines this place
the intention begins to evolve
a culmination of peripheries
afterthoughts and pre-emptives
a reflection of assemblage
tributaries o f language flowing into a main stem
the linguistics of favour
are sad to see me go
without food or water, using only its formal reserves
the poem can last a staggering twenty-one days
resource arteries form the centre
between subject and proposition
the poem in its place, bereft
this product, having little to do with values
and more to do with utility, pushes and shapes
offers us into existence
for the benefit of the poem
the latitude of northern

21

no, further...5
as a last ditch effort for survival
the poem will begin to consume its own language
a sort of cannibalism
at this time the value of a poem
will begin to unfurl
taking back the sense of agency
from the land, of the land, as you are
there’s a story here, a mournful coming of age
frankly, I wish I’d thought of it first
in its final days, the poem is a fragment of its former self
worn and weakened by thirst all that remains
is a memory of becoming

5

the latitude o f northern / no, further... is borrowed from Hardy Friedrich’s and Rob Budde’s blog the culture
mill, where Friedrich writes: bored? /d r i v e north; / no, further...

Figure 2. Baker Creek: The Bridge at Marsh Drive

23

-Section 2Nature, Wilderness, and The Wild

...the term Dao. the wav o f Great Nature: eluding analysis, beyond categories, self­
organizing, self-informing, playful, surprising, impermanent, insubstantial, independent,
complete, orderly, unmediated, freely manifesting, self-authenticating, self-willed, complex,
quite simple.
-Gary Snyder The Practice o f the Wild (10)

Throughout my writing there are several terms that I make use of to either reference,
engage with, or connect to, nonhuman environments. In each instance, the words and terms I
have chosen when exploring these environments are carefully considered. As in most creative
texts, and mine is no exception, the diction and word choice is integral to the meaning. My
connection to the nonhuman, along with my reflections and self-conscious ruminations on
the human impact on natural environments, requires well thought out terminology. As to
better understand how and why I have chosen to use these terms, nature, wilderness, and the
wild, will be examined here. The similarities and subtle differences between these terms are
important within both my creative and theoretical texts.
Within the broad fields of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities
considerable debate surrounds the discussion of labeling and defining nonhuman
environments. Nature, wilderness, and the wild, in particular, have been widely criticised as
problematic. It is not the terms themselves, however, that most critics take issue with; it is
how they have been defined and what they are supposed to represent within the
human/nonhuman dichotomy that is being questioned.
Traditionally, nature has been understood as the physical world which is outside
civilization and human intention and which includes all nonhuman beings, living or

otherwise. Gary Snyder is an advocate of this view, suggesting that nature is the “material
world or its collective objects and phenomena” that are apart from human action (Snyder 8).
In this view, human and nonhuman environments are entirely separate from one another they are diametrically opposed. An acceptance of this position begs the question: how can
one write about being in nature? Are we not a part of what we experience in nature? And
further, how can our connection to the nonhuman be explored without human-constructed
language and modes of knowing? In his book Ecology Without Nature, Timothy Morton
identifies the problem with the binary oppositional definition of nature. Morton posits that
the term “nature” should be altogether abandoned; “in all its confusing, ideological intensity,
nature ironically impedes a proper relationship with the earth and its life-forms” (2); it is “a
term that holds us back from meaningful engagements with what, in essence, nature is all
about: things that are not identical to us or our preformed concepts” (7). Unlike Snyder,
Morton argues that nature cannot be apart from human intention. In attempting to achieve
this end we are essentially ‘othering’ nature itself; “[pjutting something called Nature on a
pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the
figure of Women. It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration” (Morton 5). When writing
about nature, Morton suggests that the subject/object binary comes into play, and that by
“setting up nature as an object “over there”—a pristine wilderness beyond all trace of human
contact—it re-establishes the very separation it seeks to abolish” (125). I agree with
Morton’s assertion that in nature writing the subject/object binary can be detrimental. An
acknowledgement that nature and culture reflect one another can provide a starting point
from which meaningful ecocritical investigations can be undertaken. Although I support
Morton’s position on the problematic binary oppositional, subject/object idea of nature, I do

25

not agree with his “down with nature” (13) suggestion that we altogether abandon the term.
Rather then resting on the dismissive idea that “nature is getting in the way” (Morton 1), can
we not find a better way to understand the term within the complexity of human/nonhuman
relationships? I argue there is a place for nature in culture, philosophy, art and politics.
Human and nonhuman environments are connected; this is especially apparent when
considering the ways in which humans write and talk about their experiences with the
nonhuman. Nature is an idea that we constructed as to better understand and articulate our
relationship with the nonhuman. In the idea of nature, there is an understanding o f
environments as having a range of possibilities with a complexity of potential relationships.
As Belford explains: “Nature is about an acceptance o f individuation and diversity” (Notes
on Lan(d)guage). Humans, then, are very much a part of nature.
Wilderness and the wild, like nature, are often described as being apart from human
action and intention, as a place of cycles and disturbances all their own. In his book of
essays, The Practice o f the Wild, Snyder describes how he understands the wild:
Of animals - free agents, each with its own endowments, living within natural
systems.
O f plants - self-propagating, self-maintaining, flourishing in accord with
innate qualities.
Of land - a place where the original and potential vegetation and fauna are
intact and in full interaction and the landforms are entirely the result of
nonhuman forces. Pristine. (9-10)
Again, Snyder’s definition is problematic. The absence of humans in the wild, when
considering our place in the writing o f wilderness and our unavoidable presence in the natural
world, seems contradictory. William Cronen discusses this paradox in his essay “The Trouble
with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature;” “wilderness embodies a dualistic

26
vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural. If we allow ourselves to believe that

nature, to be true, must also be wild, then our very presence in nature represents its fall. The
place where we are is the place where nature is not” (17). If one is to write about a wilderness
environment how can it be believed that they are not a part of that environment? Snyder
describes the wilderness as a natural environment “where the wild potential is fully
expressed, a diversity of living and nonliving beings flourishing according to their own sorts
of order” (12). I would argue, (as many others have), that humans are one of many living
beings present in the wild.
Another significant point that contradicts the binary oppositional idea of nature,
wilderness, and the wild is that of traditional lands. Because an environment appears
“unharmed” by human interaction it should not be concluded that land has always been
uninhabited by humans. Aboriginal peoples have been a part of the land for time
immemorial. To suggest that a place is untouched by human interaction is naive and
particularly insulting to those whose traditional land it is. Because aboriginal people have
been largely removed from their traditional territories, and have been “rounded up and
moved onto reservations,” it should not be forgotten that they are the “prior human
inhabitants of these [wilderness] areas” (Cronen 15). Cronen argues that “[t]he removal of
Indians to create an “uninhabited wilderness”—uninhabited as never before in the human
history of the place—reminds us just how invented, just how constructed, the ... wilderness
really is” (15-16). Historically speaking, we have always been a part of the wilderness
(however destructive our relationship has been over time). The terms we use to describe and
define nonhuman environments are constructed through human intentions. This is something
we cannot escape.

27
In my work, when I refer to nature, wilderness, or the wild, I am exploring that which

cannot be defined; that which is beyond the city, the streets, the bush-roads and the
cutblocks; but also, the forest that starts at the end of the street, the creek that runs through
the city, the trail that begins behind my house, and the grove o f trees that grows at the edge o f
the highway. I am exploring environments that have not been cleared or significantly altered
by humans and environments that have; anywhere the nonhuman can do its thing; almost
everywhere. Belford describes it as the “unroaded land that begins at the edge of the
rancher’s field, wherever that is. It is that territory that exists beyond the colonizer’s restless,
ongoing and most recent efforts to clear and commodify, to make land safe...” (Notes on
Lan(d)guage). For Belford, the wild is an idea more then a location. When I write about
places in nature, the wilderness, or the wild I am acknowledging my own aberrant presence; I
am positioning myself within the idea of that environment.
There is a great deal of overlap within my understanding o f these three terms.
Particularly, a focus on the nonhuman and the cycles and disturbances of natural
environments is central to each. A straight-forward definition, however, is seemingly
unattainable. What is clear though, is that nonhuman environments and their various terms
should be treated as “a discursive construction, something whose ‘reality’ derives from the
ways we write, speak, and think about it” (Mazel xii).
In some cases, the terms nature, wilderness, and the wild can be used
interchangeably. However, each evokes a slightly different image. Depending on the context,
tone and subject engagement, I maintain that there is a need for multiple terms to describe the
human relationship with nonhuman environments. Both my creative and theoretical texts
question, explore and are concerned with issues of nature, wilderness, and the wild.

28
stage 16

belief in a name and the power of its action
the brook trout charges upstream
the paper birch and its fluttering dances
the act of saying it and considering it as true
is the way we learn to believe6
linguistics as the science of language
informs various cues and inconsistencies
not as the object of control but as the subject of necessity
a deep and resonant prruk-prruk
and kraa-kraa
the steady thrum of writing
the sound o f water
the languages of the nonhuman are considered less
operating in one dimension fewer
and still we can’t make sense of them
the indian paintbrush and its methods
the northern ravens’ careful eye
the act of naming is, in its own way, a form of oppression
while at the same time a courtesy
communication is a function o f survival
and the pleasure of humanity
languages have come and gone
and the names have changed
fort george
6

the act o f saying it and considering it as true / is the w a y we learn to b elieve is based on an idea I borrowed
from French author and critic Michel de Certeau (1 9 2 5 -1 9 8 6 ), in his highly influential The P ra ctice o f
E veryday Life (1974).

quesnellemouth
as a species we aim to control
respect is learned and given priority
in a hierarchical structure
this poem will not serve its purpose
having surrounded itself with questions
not to lie, but to take the words and languages the world has spoken
and to say, in one way or another, what-is is7

7 Robert Bringhurst explores the idea o f what-is is in his essay The Persistence o f P oetry (2008).

30
stage 3

the wild is not a theory
but rather, an idea at the centre of things
in the wild poetics do not measure
like a pack-frame, they carry
thinking back to the image after so many years
to the creek, the fireweed, the spruce and fallen pine
everything in its place
the reduction of memory to an earlier form
the wild is about cycles and disturbances
it is not about truth
there are trails that would lead us back
back to the thread of ideas
a rooted sense of place is being there
is stepping in with the wild
the wild does not apologize for anything
like the water does not chose its course
as such, the language of the wild is innate
the wild thought moves slowly
through the grass and over the arc of the rock
to revisit the wild there is a returning again in thought
to the particulars of a place as it was
even though the creek has moved
the water still flows
in the wild there is a cadence
a thread of musicality
every memory has its dance
like every story has its language

the wild, like the poem, then
has away with words

old growth rhetoric

1.
here it’s a stream of intake

words that are not language
but sequential metaphors for things which lack
and it’s not something trees can take back
but the images hang
2.

ecologies of discourse
and seeing the pattern
awe that takes us
and the exploit of watching
tiny monsters with inkjet fingers
casting lines, setting traps
swinging with intention
or taking back the sense of clarity
3.
etching our names into imagined histories
and finding a smoothness that lets us be
throwing ourselves at one another
until we crash like too many facts
giving ideas their place in the wild
or that last feeling
that informs what you know about home

33

mmmsmmmm

Figure 3. The Wild: White Indian Pipe Flower

34

-Section 3Things Remembered

I remember the heat, the burlap and the cotton,
and the blood spreading like a sunset, the sturgeon
a black chapelfo r flies. But the air o f memory
is cloth. I press my eyes against it
and the bones in my face make a different person.
-Tim Bowling, Fathom (52)

Time and memory have a unique and transformative relationship. There seems to be a
certain level of distortion that distends within the longevity of their union. They act both as a
balance and measure. All the factors are unclear. And yet the value of things remembered,
with respect to self-identification and positioning, has no equivalent. What’s more, truth and
objectivity become in-determinants within the reanimation of our past.
Is it not curious, the way a place is remembered? Not the memory itself, but the facts
of existence, the truth of a place, when returned to. This is the trigger, the pump in a vein of
ideas that flows through this investigation. In memory, what-is is. Things look and feel a
certain way, everything appears where it should be. When drifting back to a location of
particular significance, we try to revisit the feeling, and tell it a certain way. The story is
yours - to visit, to detail, to remember - but things change. Truth becomes a slippery slope.
We can vocalize or internalize these stories. Either way they are lived experiences. Telling
the memory aloud, or writing it down (as the case may be), does seem to have an effect. The
details have a greater significance when being passed along. A poem, then, can be a sort of
retrieval of memory traces and a sharing of lived experience.
Memory is central to the development of home and a rooted sense o f place (see
Section 4: A Rooted Sense o f Place). Forming memories of a location temporally connects us

35
to that place and evokes a sense of being-in-the-world; “repeated encounters with places, and

complex associations with them, serve to build up memory and affection for those places,
thereby rendering the places themselves deepened by time and qualified by memory” (Cloke
and Jones 651). The act of remembering further establishes our emotional ties to a particular
location. Memory, then, creates meaning and acts as a visceral link to the value o f home.
My creative process involves a great deal of remembering. Going back to certain
environments at particular times has had a major effect on my writing in terms of subjectivity
and identity formation. When returning to an environment after some years away, it often
appears different, changed from how you remember it. Wasn’t the bridge longer, the water
faster, the trail somewhere over there? What was the truth of this place? Truth - that elusive
term - maintains that certain environments do transform physically over time, while others
transform temporally through memory. Either way, change is constant. The memory of a
place, though, is as real and meaningful as the reality or truth of the place itself. Although
being present is important, the past is what constitutes our sense of identity. Writing in the
moment is worthy, but even the moment itself is situated within a temporal understanding of
the world. Histories inform our present ruminations; this is a truth that cannot be avoided.
Writing from the environments of my childhood, whether real or imagined, is part o f
what I am trying to do here. Realizing what has changed upon returning is equally important.
Childhood connectedness to place, to nonhuman and urban environments, as it exists in
memory, is central to my current understanding of my position in the world. Many of my
creative texts further explore the relationship between memory and time as it pertains to
place, rootedness and cultural positioning. For the purpose of this thesis, a theoretical
understanding of memory seems less significant than a creative exploration. When

considering the ways in which poetry can plumb the depths of theory and approach the
unspeakable feelings that surround a subject, I argue that the topic of memory can be let
stand here. The poems can speak for themselves.

stage 4
fo r Andrew Foster

remember your 92 blue jays world series baseball cap
and your white reebok pumps
that green shirt you brought back from mexico
when you went to stay with your grandma that summer
remember our clothes flung on rocks
shoelaces tied in knots
the sound o f water breaking as we jumped
remember the words we used to use
and the wind through the tall-grass
remember walking upstream, calling out to the wild
as the water flared around us and the chickadees chattered
sitting on the shore with fish stories in our eyes
throwing rocks at a flicker in the water
remember getting in, arms stretched out
letting the lazy current float us away
the freedom to be
with and without
sand in our socks
home by dinner
baker creek has changed since then
a lot happened and it seems different now
the bark beetles came and the trucks came later
a quick cut wood salvage prescription
and an increased risk o f flooding
people have done good work too
mitigation, adaptation and education
certain habitats are being restored

the creek continues to be a wild
vivid, place in our memories
but we live in different environments now
and the water is getting higher
soon, even our clothes will be swept downstream

39
stage 8

in a parking lot behind the mall
watching the water move
a confluence of provocation
and a conflict of theories
the subject of value
there are many places on baker creek I carry with me
most are locations of no particular interest
to those who do not practice the wild8
the other ways of knowing
outside this, there is a rope swing
gliding out over a sharp bend in the suburbs
a pair of shoes hung on telephone wire
near the skatepark
there is a smashed-up truck in the water
having been pushed down from the cut-bank
there is a walking path and a modem bridge
a half dozen, maybe more
shopping carts caught on logs or in the shallows
there is asphalt and cement blocks
challenging the water’s course
there is evidence of our proximity
beyond all this, heading west toward punchesakut
where contact declines, the wild appears different
there are bush-roads in and that which follows
natural, but in a way less so
8

The idea o f the practice o f the w ild w as borrow ed from Gary Snyder’s b o o k by th e sa m e nam e: The
P ractice o f the Wild, (1 9 9 0 ).

where access occurs
ecologies are
and the value remains even here

41

Figure 4. Near the Skatepark: Hung

42

At Baker Creek

Where the water moves. East from Punchesakut draining into the Fraser. Its many tributaries
accumulating. I have learned to read this place, its cycles, with attention. The many days I’ve
spent negotiating this waterway. From its spring high-water to its slowly summer currents,
from its warm pull to its icy casing, padded with snow.

Listening attentively. Watching the water move, the roll and drag as it navigates the rocks.
Each ripple and swash, an exchange, a discourse with that which is beyond my gaze. I know
this place, its movement, its evocative story. I expect the smells, anticipate the sounds, the
cycle. It listens, hears everything and remembers. I listen back. Our allusive discussion
resonates. The Chinook and the Brook Trout, the Otter, the Tailed Frog and Long-Toed
Salamander, the Yellow-Rumped Warbler, Dark-Eyed Junco, and Black-Capped Chickadee,
the Bald Eagle and the Northern Raven, the Red Fox and White-Tailed Deer, the
Cottonwood, the Indian Pipe Flower and the Lodgepole Pine - all know this place, depend on
it as home. And what more? What else? The ecology speaks to everything in its place.

Feeling so alive at Baker Creek. I shed my socks and shoes. A sandbar below cutbank walls.
Laces tied together, slung over shoulders, an easy carry upstream, with hands free. Rolling
pants to thighs, high as I can get them, I walk out into the current. Just standing there feeling
the water against my shins, breaking and curling. The push and pull, a churning. Its life a
welcome pressure, a familiar tension. Digging my toes into the soft silt bars, feeling the worn
rocks under foot. Deeply present. Knowing each bend and where the fallen logs have
gathered, where the current is too strong to stand upright and where the water pools, deep
enough to strip down and dive in. I'll spend the day here, and many to follow, wandering up
and downstream. Baker Creek sings to me, sounds with a particular cadence, and I too feel
alive here.

43

Flooding

The shopping cart is now completely submerged. Only a small wake tells of its underwater
whereabouts. Three weeks ago it was half in and half out. Baker Creek is flooding and the
melt is still flowing. I imagine what could be holding the shopping cart in its place with such
promise under these conditions. Wedged there indefinitely it would seem. Immovable by
forces, fixed, fused into rock. Now a part of the ecosystem. Going further I imagine fish,
weary from travel, resting against the cold steel on their way upstream. Late in the summer,
an otter catching rays on its tight weave grate. Leaves collecting in its catch. A raven
feasting on stolen goods, alighted safely out of reach.

Thin plastic caught between the grate in early spring, has since been washed away. Debris is
pushed along, spinning in the back-eddies and washing up where the water is shallow and the
current stagnant. Many logjams have been broken and channelled into the Fraser, while
others gather us here. Under the bridge on Marsh Drive, the jam is of particular concern.
Access is considered. The mucky water edges toward the skate park, the walking path and the
houses nearby. A warning is in effect. For now, my gumboots will do just fine.

I remember one year, in the early 90s, the year of the flood. It must have rained a hell of a lot
that spring. And fast heat. This was before the skate park and some of the houses. Water
levels where so high, so swollen, they exceeded the embankment, burst through sandbags,
flooding the parking lot at West Park Mall. I’m sure the damage was costly and the
experience scary for some. But for me it was a beautiful thing, a water world. I was a sailor.
Everything connected. I dreamt of paddling. The streets lit by iridescence. I swear there were
fish in that parking lot. Big fish, all kinds, resting in the still water. Although this cannot be
verified by anyone.

At the bridge on Marsh there is a scene. People have stopped, left their vehicles running,
children in the back seat, mouths open, fingers pointing. One kid dropped his bike in the
street. An older gentleman, on his way back from the grocery store, left his bags on the
sidewalk. Someone in a hurry lays into their horn, outraged by the single lane delay. At this,

44

most don’t look away, transfixed by the possibility. Seems like the sort o f situation where
someone should be yelling “the end is nigh, the END IS NIGH!” But everyone just stands
there, shifts from one foot to the other, observing the curiosity. An outbuilding of some sort,
maybe it’s a tool shed or a playhouse, is floating down Baker Creek. Some of the structure is
submerged, but at least half is sticking up out of the water. Bobbing and reaching. From here,
it looks like it will be crushed against the cement bridge, further disrupting the water’s
course. I imagine the possibilities: perhaps it’s a very small house and somebody is still
sleeping inside, dreaming of wet shoes. What an unpleasant surprise as it comes into contact.
Maybe it’s a luxury dog house, one with a view, built by a pampering owner. Maybe it’s a
boat house - wouldn’t that be ironic?

The flood and all its reasons, traceable or otherwise. Many are affected and frequency is an
issue. I watch the mucky water break against my gumboots. There is pressure. There is
disturbance. There is a log-truck pulling through. I think of my childhood. This I am sure of:
floods are reckless, I’m a good swimmer, some will continue to fight against it, and the silt
will linger long after the water has dropped. This I have seen.

Figure 5. Baker Creek: Moffat Bridge in the Distance

46

When Returned To

We began at the confluence. It seemed like the right place to start. A natural beginning and a
point of significant access. It was muggy and bright with a warm breeze from the north. We
arrived just before noon, having hustled over after a late breakfast at the Caribou. I parked
the van in the lot behind the mall. With the sun rainbowing off pools on the concrete and the
smell of recyclables lingering I began my story. A raven hopped hesitantly as I fiddled with
the settings on my camera and took flight when the sliding door slammed shut. We walked
down to the water. The shopping cart wasn't there and the cement blocks were fewer then I
remembered. The water rippled over the rocks as it merged with the faster current. I snapped
a photo of Moffat Bridge as a log-truck shifted gears mid-crossing. A familiar sound,
echoing off water. Baker Creek looked smaller, the current flowed a different way.

From the confluence we walked along a dark sand bar - still wet from this year’s late high
water - heading west towards the bridge on Marsh Drive. The River Front Trail spans this
section of the creek, from the Fraser River to the bridge. Between the parking lot and the
apartment building there is a grassy area with massive cottonwoods here and there. I watch a
couple, about my age, sitting close on a bench overlooking the creek. A lone soldier is
drinking beer from a Gatorade bottle near the skatepark. The skatepark is still here, right
where it always was, but the features appear changed. Perhaps, I consider, the perspective is
different from water level, from where I’m standing. I thought there was another box, a
tabletop, and a few more rails? As I remember it, the telephone wire ran across the comer of
the skatepark, over the stairs, towards what used to be a Moviemart. There are still shoes albeit different styles - hung from the telephone wire, but the wire itself runs parallel to the
skatepark boundary. At no point does it cross above the smooth cement. And the Moviemart
is long gone.

On the north side of the creek, after crossing the yellow bridge, there is a trail. The trail is
well used and publicly maintained. In one section, crushed rock has been added for increased
footing. You can walk three abreast here. We pass one o f my closest early childhood friends
who now has a son of his own. His son looks about four. He is learning bike etiquette on the

47

trail; they pull off to the side as we walk by. We acknowledge each other in passing with a
nod and a half-smile, but don’t stop to chat. I’m pretty sure he recognizes me but I can’t be
certain. He has put on a little weight since then and so have I. The trail leads to a rock beach.
Someone has made a sort of inuksuk. When I was young, I always approached Baker Creek
from the south; the paths I knew were all on that side. Back then, they where single track
trails, always walking one behind the other.

Past the streets and houses, with our water shoes on, Jesse and I amble upstream. Some spots
I remember and others I do not. The rope swing isn’t there anymore, or it’s possible that I just
can’t find it. I’ve lost count of the cars, trucks and tractors dumped into the creek. Further
upstream, the evidence of human contact is less and the nonhuman environment appears
healthy. We strip down and swim in a familiar pool. The water is as cold as it ever was. The
fish are still here, flourishing it would seem and there are just as many cottonwoods as I
remember.

Figure 6. Baker Creek: All Smashed Up

49

-Section 4A Rooted Sense of Place

Place, as a theoretical construct, is “a portion of geographical space” wherein social
relations, meaning, memory, and identity are constituted (Johnston et al. 582). When a
particular environment becomes meaningful, when complex human connections are attached
to it, and subjective value and temporal significance establish an emotional or memorial
connection to the specifics of that location, it becomes place. Writing that explores, engages
with, or is a result of, this connection to a particular environment is described as place-based
writing or writing from place. There seem to be varying degrees to which individuals write
from place; naming and detailing physical attributes of an environment is one such way.
These are, however, only surface attributes of place; it can go much further. If the connection
to place is deep rooted, the writing becomes a part of the environment itself. How, then, does
one write more or less from place? The significance of this question cannot be understated; it
is one of the most foundational themes that thread through the breadth of my creative work.
A feeling of rootedness and a sense o f place are integral elements that delineate depth
in place-based writing. The phrase sense o f place describes the physical qualities and
characteristics of specific geographical locations in relation to the character of a place: “a
localized, bounded and material geographical entity, and the sentiments of attachment and
detachment that human beings experience, express and contest in relation to specific places”
(Johnston et al. 731). Rootedness, although similar to sense o f place, describes the “feeling of
unself-conscious dwelling” in place that is firmly established, settled or entrenched (Hay
245). To further clarify the difference between the two: rootedness is a state of “being at
home in an unself-conscious way,” whereas sense o f place describes a “certain distance

50

between self and place that allows the self to appreciate a place” (Tuan 4). To write from
place, to understand its subtleties and nuances,'and to capture the feeling, memory, and
identity of a particular environment, a rooted sense o f place is necessary. To achieve this, the
writer must embody both a visceral and material sense of belonging that connects their words
to the physical location from which they are writing. Thus, the ability to produce meaningful
literature that is o f place hinges on the writer’s rooted sense o f place and his or her ability to
engage, in writing, with the feeling and subject of a place. O f course it should be noted that
the feeling of a particular environment is entirely subjective. Although there are
commonalities between places, experience and connection to a place can be both individual
and/or collective.
For many, the most notable location of connectivity and rooted sense o f place is to
home. My writing is largely interested in constructions of home as place. For me, home is a
land I am connected to. The sub-boreal forest in the Cariboo north-central region of BC is my
home. Before going further into this discussion of home and how I have come to understand
it within the context of place, it is necessary to have a further understanding of what place is
and is not.
The way in which space and place differ is an important distinction. As Tim
Cresswell explains in Place: a short introduction, “[sjpace... has been seen in distinction to
place as a realm without meaning - as a ‘fact of life’ which, like time, produces the basic
coordinates for human life. When humans invest meaning in a portion of space and then
become attached to it in some way, it becomes a place” (10). Place is about the way we
engage with a space, the interaction and the signifiers; “[pjlace is how we make the world
meaningful and the way we experience the world” (Cresswell 12). All things start as space

51

and only become place once we have invested a system of value and meaning into it.9
One can have a better understanding of what place means when it is examined alongside that
which it is not.
In some cases, place has been confused with the idea of landscape. They are,
however, quite different. Landscape is something that is gazed upon; it is a visual concept.
Regardless of your intention, landscape is something you can see and cannot help but see; it
is “a portion of territory that the eye can comprehend in a single view” (Silko 32). In this
understanding of landscape, the viewer is outside or separate from “any immediate encounter
with the world” (Eyles and Litva 258); whereas places are “constructed in our memories and
affections through repeated encounters and complex associations” (Eyles and Litva 258). As
Cresswell notes, “in most definitions of landscape the viewer is outside o f it. This is the
primary way in which it differs from place. Places are very much things to be inside o f ’ (10).
This is not to say that place isn’t located in a specific geography; it very often is. The
difference though, is that landscape is viewed from the outside, it is framed from a safe
distance, whereas place is something within you or something you are within.

n

Conversely, it has been suggested that all things start as p la c e and only becom e space through an imposed
process o f abstraction or mathematics (Kevin Hutchings). This possible analysis, however, does not change
the distinction between space and p la ce significantly. In either case, p la c e is where the meaning is, and that
is the focus o f my work.

52
culture

1

d
e
i
n
d it
e d i
n e t
a t i n y f ungus growing from a f allen p i n e
id t
te i
yn t
t y
i
t
y

53
stage 14

the slap of wings, the echo
as I pass under moffat bridge
toward a place of meeting
of history and many names
chuntezn’ai, ndazhot’en, ndazkoh
quesnellemouth
my home
but not mine to give
and I remember this place has tradition
when these streets were trails and stories were spoken
currents solder and momentum builds
conflicts rise and fall
with the times as water levels do
at the confluence of the quesnel river, the ffaser river
and baker creek is
a point of interest
of slippery truths
reflections of axe and blanket
an old wooden bridge, a steam shovel
a noose remembering
precious metals, horse drawn, gunslinger
green gold
it was a sawmilling site at the turn of the century
and a sign tells you so
even truth has its cycles
the chilcotin war ended here
white men have written

with the hanging of two chiefs and four others
under the pretence of negotiations
trust, an echo of wings
I am a white man
but not as some would understand it
and they called this place
the last frontier

55
stage 10

without ownership, without the dangers and pitfalls
of the traditional anthropocentric view
the persistence of place and the search for distinctiveness
that singularity does not fit in to this awareness
is one reason why we must return again to that spot
when locales become layers on a map
that sequentially define us
to arrive again at the source
it demands more than this, the many views
varied, an ecology o f perspective10
thus it is rooted in our nature
default coordinates shift
and the contours place us here
to adopt a way of living with, in and o f a land
brings us to the edge of benign consciousness
where the grind halts
much like groundwater
it goes on beneath the surface
not as overt as its related channels, but always there
diverting and subverting what goes on above
a love of place
and sense of identity
to become educated of a particular land there is a necessary returning
again and again to the places and ideas that have produced those sensibilities
the command of the north arrow
10 an ecology o f perspective is an idea that cam e out o f an extensive dialogue with poet Josh M assey during
the editing process o f our poetry film Vice Versa: P rince G eorge P oetry On Screen (2012).

56

measuring the loss
while approaching the page
as a field fo r tactical skirmishes11

11

a f ie ld fo r tactical skirmishes is a line I borrowed from Jonathan Skinner’s Small Fish B ig P ond; Lines on
Some Ecopoetic, (2009).

57
stage 15

Jesse and I are raising a tent in heavy wind
the orange fly acts like a sail
tries to take off, animate our soft bodies
toward the northern raven, above an ancient balsam fir
the tallest in its stand at this bend in the crooked river
looking down this environment appears map-like
the contour lines and tiny waterways
running into larger bodies
summit lake, bear lake, train tracks, highway
and land cleared for harvest
bush roads work the shape of the land
nonhuman trails crisscross
nature grows in symmetry
and the wild appears organized
thousands of mountain white fish breach
so it looks like rain
a hatch of mayflies
the slow current fill
ripples out in all directions
below, Jesse catches a fish and cuts it open
squirming parasites spill out from its belly
the sound of semi’s gearing in the distance
flies landing, birds
there’s a sickness here
a disturbance
natural or unnatural
it’s hard to say

58

Figure 7. Baker Creek: Tracks After The Flood

59

-Section 5Places Home

We need to find our own way to take this place into our mouth;
we must re-say our past in such a way that it will gather us here.
-Tim Lilbum, Going Home

The place I call home is a meaningful location in which I have invested a great deal of
time, value and significance. A rooted sense o f place describes my connection to home. One
of the most significant factors which contributes to the development of a rooted sense o f
place is feeling at home. An extended period of residence along with a degree of personal
involvement and commitment to a particular location enhances the development o f
connectivity to home (Hay 246). Divergent from Lilbum’s notion of “homelessness”
(“Guest”), which posits a societal and interpersonal disconnection as a result of immigration
and migration, I feel a deep connection to the place I call home. Although I may be
somewhat removed from my ancestral roots, there is something that gives me meaning, a
point of contact, for which I have no better term. Home is a feeling; it is both a physical and
visceral connection. My relationship to home is admittedly positive. However, this is not
always the case. It should be noted that for some, home can be a place of terror and abuse, a
place of violence, victimization and captivity. Mine takes a different path.
Home, as a child, meant two things for me, two kinds of residence. It is a complex
connection that is blurry and unspoken; it is an arrangement of temporal and emotive
elements towards a feeling. Although I may not have been able to articulate it then, I have
always known what home is and how it functions. Home is both inside and outside me at the
same time. A land I am connected to and a place in the wild. It is a visceral connection to the

60

things that have moved and continue to move me. It is a conversation, a dialogue between
things tangible and intangible. It exists both in language and in silence. We can approach an
understanding, a definition of home with words, but there is a silence, that which cannot be
said, that connects us to the place we call home. It is a physical reaction, a sensory
experience. It is what goes on behind the words, between the lines.
Despite the limitations of language, I will attempt to define home as it has come to
me, in both its capacities. There is a great deal of overlap between the two places I call home.
The lines that divide my impression of home are blurry and intertwined. An ecological map
comes to mind when envisioning this area o f intersection. Keeping with this analogy, an
ecotone seems fitting when describing these areas of overlap: “a transitional zone between
adjacent biotic communities, as between a forest and grassland or a river and its estuary. An
ecotone has its own characteristics in addition to sharing certain characteristics of the two
communities” (The American Heritage Science Dictionary). Ecotones are similar, different
and unique all at the same time. There are certain ecotonal qualities to the positioning of self
at home. My identity has developed from within a transitional zone, from a place of
intersection. It is informed by both my senses of home as it resides in people and my sense of
home as a place of residence. Fitting, but not precise, this quotation leans towards the
distinction of home as place: “[t]o ecologists, a place is rooted in a distinctive ecology - as a
bioregion. To a Philosopher, place is a way of being-in-the-world” (Cresswell 12). I see
reflections of my own rendering within both of these ideas.
First, home resides in people: our immediate family and closest friends, those who we
trust and love. This impression of home moves with us wherever we go. It is a feeling of
connectivity with a group of people who are essential to our understanding of the world and

61
how we define ourselves within that world. This sense of home is not localized to a specific

geography. No matter where I am in the world, I will always be at home with these people or
with my thoughts of these people. As Don McKay notes, “[h]ome, we may say, is the action
of the inner life finding outer form; it is the settling of self into the world” ( Vis a Vis 22).
Home is movable, transcendent, and always with me. Based on and steeped in the traditions
we share, the time we’ve spent, the intimacies and secrets we carry, and the intrinsic value
we place on those things, home is home when it moves you (Wigmore). We establish this
notion over time, through conversations and ongoing dialogues with our core group of
people. This core group for me, as it likely is for you, is made up of parents, siblings,
children, partners and those few friends who we love truly. This sense of home, as I have
come to understand it, is neither localized nor bonded in the particulars of a place; it is from
within, based on human relationships and connectivity.
There is, however, an impression of home that is of a specific environment, a fixed
location. A place - as small or large as it needs to be —that one feels at home in; the
geographical home. My definition, in this sense, is very much akin to the ideas of the “three
fundamental aspects of place as a ‘meaningful location’” (Cresswell 7) outlined by John
Agnew (1987): 1. Location: “They have fixed objective co-ordinates on the Earth's
surface...” 2. Locale: “... the actual shape of place within which people conduct their lives as
individuals...” and 3. Sense of Place: “...the subjective and emotional attachment people have
to place”(7).
For many, a geographical home would be linked to their place of residence, (given
that they had been living at that location for an extended period). Although I do feel at home
in my residence, there is another place I feel an even stronger rooted sense o f place towards.

62

For me, it is a land that I am connected to. It is where I grew up, in nature, where I spent so
many days. It is the wild beyond the houses and streets; it is Baker Creek and the Quesnel
and Fraser Rivers; it is the cottonwood, the birch stand and the trail that runs beneath; it is an
area of the sub-boreal forest in the Cariboo north-central region o f BC.
Much like my understanding of home as it resides in people, home in nature is
developed over time, through many conversations and ongoing dialogues. These
conversations, however, cannot be recreated - they are ineffable. The dialogue is silent,
insomuch as there are no words available to express that which is inexpressible. The
limitations of language are present. I am playing here with the idea of the “inappellable” (4)
which is presented by McKay in the introduction to Open Wide a Wilderness. According to
McKay, the constraints of language limit our ability to present certain ideas, feelings and
possibilities, especially when attempting to discuss nature. As McCaslin suggests in her essay
on McKay “[t]o use words without labeling or fixing is ... ‘a deliberate chastening of noetic
hubris,’ that tendency of language to grow too big for its boots and consume what it
signifies” (68). The limits of language to explore nature should not be viewed as a hindrance,
but rather an inevitable outcome of any attempt to capture and define the complexity of the
living land.
I remember exploring the forests and waterways around Quesnel BC when I was
young. Some areas in particular have stuck with me all my life. M y connection to the land as
a child was simple and easy, but also naive. I practised then what I have just begun to
understand now as “simply looking,” a notion from Lilbum's ideas of apprenticeship and
“contemplative courtesy” {Going Home 12). Being there was enough, paying attention,
spending time engaged in a conversation with nature, a conversation with home. There was

63

no reason to over think it, to intellectualize it in any way. I didn't have to try, just to be,
present. In his book, Going Home, Lilbum unpacks the method of simply looking:
Being in a place demands a practice: it isn't tourism or Romanticism: things
aren't laid on, nor are they occultly given: here the practice is putting yourself
out there and walking...
The walking, though, is not an instrument, not a means to arrive at some
chthonic accord; as you walk, you are already as there as you're going to get,
though you hardly feel this... (190-191)
In this way, walking is a sort of meditative state of connectedness and vulnerability - of
being-in-the-world. For Lilbum, the destination is insignificant, it is the process and the time
spent getting there that is meaningful. Simply looking is to be simply present in the world
and in the wild as a part of the cycle.
Even then, before I had the words to express it, I knew that this territory was in me.
I’ve been away, but I always return to this land, I carry it with me. It is deep rooted and I
know that if I don’t live with attention and responsibility to the land, if I don’t continue to
“take in the genius of the place ... the place will throw [me] out” (Lilbum, Thinking and
Singing 173). When I was young I had no way of explaining the connection I felt to a
particular land. It was an ever-present feeling, but I didn’t have the language or theory to
explore it outward.
And then I found poetry.
I am interested in further exploring my sense of home in nature and how it has
affected my sensibilities as a writer and as an environmentally concise12 and concerned
individual. Memory of experience is key to the writing of home. Having a territory you are a

12 For me, environmental consciousness denotes a certain level o f commitment to the protection, conservation
and restoration o f wilderness environments as w ell as an active voice in ecocritical and environmental
discourse.

64

part of requires a reading of place - a give and take, a reciprocity of awareness. As
Bringhurst put it: “walking in the forest or sitting by the stream, we know it works both ways:
being fed and feeding, reading and being read” (9).

65
stage 12

under the ice, thoughts correlate
intentions mingle where currents merge
the mouth of the creek
a watershed deposit in mid-winter
each with its own practice and language
a speaking of the interchange
northern dialectics
and the shifty laws of truth
poetry up here is not unlike poetry of position
or elsewhere
rootedness plus a sense of place
and home is
the weight of snow on slopes and conifers
the names and paths we know
without needing to descant
a frozen trail
months after city snows have melted
the taste of fall
the moan of air trapped under ice
and the squeak of 30 below
a wild raspberry in the snag of a crow
logjams and ice jams - either way thoughts collect
and ideas emerge at the site of impact
where the poems meet
a moment of reflection
breaking up the ice
looking back from the melt

a dialogue between the lines
where the wild thought occurs
at the confluence
a few dozen poems swirl in an eddy
the words have many voices
take on many shapes
the politics of being northern
spring is coming and the ice is getting thin
still, I am heavy on my feet

67

Figure 8. The Wild: Decompositions

68

Beyond Uplands

In the distance, where I'm going, the trees sway without me, the leaves flutter, a murmur, the
water rushes, and the berries ripen on shrub. My house in West Quesnel backs onto a network
of trails that leads into the unroaded forest beyond Uplands. I woke up early this morning,
and while the rest of my family sleeps, I ready my things for the day ahead. Today, at eight
years old, I will explore the wild again. At 6:30 my mother wanders into the shop where I've
been packing my supplies for the hike, sleepy eyed but not surprised. My knives are sharp,
boots ready, survival equipment carefully checked, rechecked and neatly organized into a day
bag. She tells me it’s still too early and that I'll have to wait until after breakfast. So I wait,
thinking about the places I intend to learn, the wild strawberries to be eaten, the Coyote and
the Moose I might chance to see, the smell of fireweed and the taste of pine needle tea.

I start out on a well trekked trail, heading up into the forest. Once I've gone far enough, an
hour or so on short legs in quick stride, I break off and head into the untrailed wilderness.
Now I'm where I need to be, in the wild, in the thick of it. I'm not surprised but delighted to
find a small patch of Saskatoon berries, their sweet, nutty taste a welcome favour. I gather
just enough, knowing the value of continuance. The tips of my fingers and tongue stained
with the evidence of our conversation. Dripping sweat, the late summer sun straight above, I
find shade under the quaking leaves of an Aspen stand. On my hands and knees, I dig into the
dirt here, just to see what I might find. A beetle shell, a broken wing full of holes,
decomposing sticks and leaves make up the litter layer, and below that I find roots and more
roots. I use my thumb nail to cut open a sap pocket on a nearby aspen. The sap smells more
pleasing than it tastes, its bitterness fitting. I use dirt to remove the stickiness from my skin,
rolling it through my thumb and index finger. I watch as a group of ants carries away a fallen
beetle, while a crow west of the murder circles overhead. From there, I carry on, keep
looking, talking, and taking it in. Later, as I walk back towards the trail that will lead me to
my home, to my people, there is a glimmer o f unselfconsciousness. In that moment, I know
this place is in me, this too is home.

69

A View

On this morning clouds hang low, the height of my intention, held afloat on the tops of White
Spruce and Lodgepole pine. A collection of water droplets suspended. There is a noted
difference between temperature and dew point, the result of which clings to my body, collects
on the needles, lichen and leaves. I see fog peeling off a ridge-line in the distance. My boots
are damp from the walk in, pants soaked to the knees. I wait to watch drops form in the veins
and angles, pool in the cuppings and low spots where the earth has reached its saturation. I’m
looking for no place in particular and the view is everywhere. Already here, I navigate the
groundwork with a given awareness. I rest my body against the land, listen to the moisture,
feel it in me. My back pressed firmly against the rocks and soil and flora, a young body,
nearly motionless, on the surface, pulling apart, then back together again. The weight of my
legs leaves indents; nothing is forgotten. I breathe heavy, the smell tingles, earthy tones,
awakens in me a feeling of being. Looking out over the features o f this land: a lake in the
distance, moss at my feet, a copse of aspen here, a solitary White Spruce there, all the fauna,
everything in its place.

Some months later, I’m back at the same spot, in the heat of mid-summer, bolstering on its
hot surface. The Fireweed fills in the gaps now. The paintbrush low and the Wild Roses
prickle. I imagine how the sun pulls the plants up from beneath soil, dirt and rock, just a tiny
seed hunkered down, coaxed out with the promise of exchange. The up and down cycle the
seasons carry. Thinking about how my steps could effect this cycle, I walk lightly, tread
cautiously, each move a meaningful placement. I take care, a speaking of the interchange.

When the snow falls here it seems to linger, just above the surface of the rock bluff, for a few
seconds longer than it needs to. My boots are higher than when last I was here. My tracks
intersect a trail of many hooves. Longer moments with the shorter days, I note the way the
snow hangs about the bows. They look thinner now and at the same time dense with contrast.
The evergreens are still, looking out over this land. I bump a young pine; it sloughs off its
winter coat, down the back of my jacket onto bare skin. The ridge-line is powdered, the lake
long since frozen. In the distance, a solitary someone hopes for fish beneath the ice,

motionless and waiting. I too am waiting, not for anything in particular, not this, but to see
what happens. I brush snow off a fallen log, sit, watch a Northern Raven preening on the
White Spruce. I breath in deep, lungs tighten against the cold mountain air. This is a place to
wait, to watch, to be.

Figure 9. The Wild: A Frozen Lake

72

-Section 6Violence at Home

Institutional indices are the measure o f success or failure in today’s society. ...Human
institutions manage forests fo r narrow institutional values. ...Forest communities, on
the other hand, exist for all values. There are no indices o f success or failure in a
forest. The quality o f air, water, sunlight, and soil shapes the diversity o f life in the
forest community. Institutional indices are meaningless to a forest. ...People can only
see this index if they are part o f the forest, because the whole is greater than the sum
o f any indices—economic, societal, or ecological.
Herb Hammond Seeing the Forest Among the Trees (46)

Wondering off the trail into the wild, picking up sticks and rocks, watching the
squirrel collect or the fish jump - these are some of my earliest childhood memories. As far
back as I can remember the sub-boreal forest in the Cariboo north-central region of BC is a
place I belong to, a land I am a part of. In many ways it raised me and taught me to be. My
environmental awareness and sensibilities developed from and with this land. It is my home.
I learned to see the wild as a complex living organism, an ecology with many branches.
“Nature is about an acceptance of individuation and diversity” (Belford), Belford explains,
and this rings true for me. When I was young, it was easy to enjoy nature, to simply look and
be, to accept. As I got older, what I saw happening in nature was not so easily accepted. My
connection to the land has transformed over the years. My awareness and understanding of
the human impact on our forests has challenged my perceptions. The wild is still a part of me
and I’m as connected to the land as I have ever been; but I see changes happening all around
me, the results of which are overtly negative. When I head out along the trail to find myself
at home, there grows in me a sense wonderment and curiosity. I find solace in the forests of
my home and sadness there as well. In places that should be wilderness, where the trails run
and the creatures are, there is beauty, there is surprise and there is sickness.

73

When I was 20 years old, after working two summers in a pulp and paper mill, I
found work in the forests as a treeplanter. Although it was not evident to me at the onset, this
decision would have a significant and lasting effect on my understanding of my home in the
wild. When I began treeplanting my primary goal was to work hard and make good money. I
was focused and driven to be the top rookie planter in the company’s employ. Working
outdoors, in the elements, near the undisturbed wilderness, with creatures all around me, was
a pleasure for the most part. I was successful as a bush worker, fitting in, living the dream, as
they say. But as I spent time on the cutblocks, as I opened my eyes to the situation around
me, I became intensely aware of the scope of the problems. I began to realize how serious a
disturbance we were creating. In the seven field seasons that followed, my perceptions of the
human impact on nature changed significantly. The effect of resource extraction on wild
environments, when you’re out there in the thick of it, is heavy. All ecosystems go through
cycles and disturbances; this is natural, balanced, but what the resource extraction industry is
doing to my home and so many others like it is beyond unnatural.
There is something dangerous at work, an abusive, non-reciprocal relationship. The
result of aggressive resource extraction, of transport road building and clearcut logging is
overtly transformative. The cut and process policies enacted by regressive land-base
management have radically changed the forests here. This transformation appears aggressive
and destructive - irreverence towards the health of the land. In describing how humans use
and exploit the wild an act of violence comes to mind. The wild is scarred and too often
abused. Over time I came to understand that the land was sick. A sickness that has come
about as a result of human efforts to clear and commodify, to extract only what is valuable
from the land.

74

Violence takes many forms. Often violence is committed by men against women,
children or other men.13 There is a certain type of violence that affects both men and women
alike: violence against the land. As with most forms of violence, aggressive resource
extraction is perpetuated by a male-dominated industry and perspective. That is not to say
that women are not involved in the destruction of the wild, as they certainly are. Although it
is not the focus of this thesis it should be noted that the exploitation and domination o f the
environment is akin to the exploitation and domination of women via patriarchal values.
Within the sphere of ecofeminism there are a number o f theorists who have made a case for
the masculinist oppression of nature (Vandana Shiva, Maria Mies, and Fran?oise
d'Eaubonne). Because my focus is on the effects of violence against the land and not
ecofeminism (although I believe it is an important and invaluable field of study), and because
I am limited by space within this body o f work, I will leave this topic to rest here.
As a silviculture worker it was apparent to me that replanting a clearcut cutblock was
a meagre attempt at rectifying a dire situation. I witnessed many ecosystems that where
beyond disturbed; they were destroyed. The cycles of the wild had been permanently altered.
The waste was excessive and the process was violent. Everything I saw while on the cutblock
was unnatural and out of place. As Bringhurst notes “when you clearcut a forest and leave a
strip of trees along the edge, to hide the clearcut from the highway. ...something will
eventually grow back - but what was there before is gone forever” (162). The consequences
of this transformation of the land forebode a scary future. In Section 7: A Resource Town
Raised Me I discuss more specifically my perspective on the inadequacies o f the silviculture
industry.

13 It should be noted that women are som etim es violent as well.

75

It should be noted here that I am not criticizing all logging practices, nor am I
advocating for the complete abandonment of logging as a means to fulfil human needs. It is
the way in which it is being done by most, the motives and intentions of those big businesses
whose primary concern is money, that is irreversibly harming the land. I am speaking here to
heavy industrialized extraction, clearcut logging, monoculture reforestation, big business,
profit-driven commodification of the land: resource capitalism. From my perspective, there
are ways to use the land with continuance and care, to live with the land.
There are many small woodlots in the Cariboo north-central region of BC and
elsewhere that are being managed properly, where cutting happens selectively and there is
consideration and responsibility towards the future health of the forest. Which trees should be
cut, how they will they be extracted so as not to damage the saplings, and what impact this
will have - both short term and long term - on this particular bioregion, is something that
many woodlot owners take care to consider. The vast majority of logging is driven by
different motivations - profit above all else - and happens without due care and attention to
the land. It is by these hands that the wild is being violated. That said, my own connection to
the resource extraction and processing industry should be noted (see Section 7: A Resource
Town Raised Me). I am part of the problem but I advocate for change.
This is what I didn't know as a child, what I could not see then - that my home was
sick, it was being taken advantage of. When a form of violence is being perpetrated against
your home, it stands to reason that you too would be adversely affected by these acts. When
Tim Lilbum gave a presentation at the University of Northern British Columbia in Early
2011, he discussed what he called the collective sickness. This idea resonates with me. My
understanding of his notion came from a sense o f dislocation and disconnection from our

76

environment and its cycles, being non-aboriginal North Americans, removed from our
ancestral lands. For me, the concept of a collective sickness does not result from a feeling of
disconnection, but rather, as a result of a close bond with the land rind the way it is being
treated by our capitalist culture. I believe there are many others like me who are, in some
way, facing a sort of sickness that is brought on by environmental and ecological disregard.
For me, the result is clear: The health of the individual affects the health of the community
and is directly linked to the health of the land.
In understanding that the place I call home was being transformed, in ways so
damaging it may never recover, it became clear to me that something had to be done. As a
treeplanter, my impact was minimal but necessary: a band-aid solution of sorts. Rallies,
petitions, marches, road blocks, joining environmentalist groups; these are some of the ways
in which people can be involved, can make a difference and start to heal themselves. Without
discrediting any of these methods (although I support some more than others), there is for me
another way. Writing it down: poetry with an ecocritical ear, the words, the poem as a form of
both healing and activism as I move towards a method of exploration and advocacy.

77
stage 6

the working forest
in the way dust collects on the bark of fallen trees
in the way lending seems to outweigh return
the swing of economies
to extract and make ready
waiting for the language
to fall, to be weighed out
caulks and leather hands on chain and teeth
diesel smoke climbs and steel cables skid
prescription and outcome
are of different realities
and the contexts move
politics of the nonhuman
washed out by the sound of economics
stumpage left lingering
as subtle violence
and they don’t get time at the bargaining table
when our wants out-weigh our needs
consumption becomes a marker of status
the nexus of parts
as we work towards some tragic end
non-reciprocal relationships emerge
and debt is at the tip of every tongue
on paper it suggests otherwise
but still the forest remains
unemployed

78
stage 7

cycle indigenous
absorb and release
a filter sponge
pending energy cast
and a storm storming
the forest canopy shelters everything understory
slows the force of it, finds the balance
tensions in flux and gyre
buffering effects lost and the literature displaced
rain water building momentum
the land slides
a broken network of fluency
the sodden ground
near a creek, a lake, a link
running tributaries of a watershed swell
bridges and banks break, silt streams
and the groundwater rises
inorganic soil and mineral depletion
the long and short term effects
are high marks rising
disturbances take many forms
many paths in
and progress is knowing
what’s in the water is in everything

79
stage 13

a slight cough given context by way of words
and you can feel it in your lungs filling
hoof prints by the settling pound
and the mighty fraser is a pump line
capital and balance are diametrically engaged
and the stories are our only constant
a contrast is here too
far from the trail and the greased pig
gender is not a factor in this machine
steam like veins power and hiss
hand caught in a purling belt
the loss
the oppression and domination
the unlikely factors of a melt-down
clear with a 190km radius
and what would this town be without extraction
we came for gold, then settled for trees
and what could be done differently
the tallest building in the city is the digester tower
with a belly full of brown stock and black liquor
eating wood chips and shitting fibre
24/7 through and through
an ecosystem was severely altered
but there was food on the table and books on the shelves
the measure is a greased pig
and this is the product of our actions
living here

a collection of words, pages and stories
observations of possible outcomes
and it must be noted
the book is made of paper
in this way, the balance is thrown
health studies have shown that pm 10 and pm2.5 particles
can have extensive and serious human health impacts
including: decreased lung function, worsening respiratory symptoms
asthma, cancer, lung disease
and staying in it for your family

81

Figure 10. Shadows of An Industrial Park

82

-Section 7A Resource Town Raised Me

My town is a resource town and in many ways I am product of my environment. I am
critical of the methods and practices, and yet the industry that disrupts and destroys the wild
that is my home has given me opportunity; it has shaped the way I engage with the world. It
has brought me here, to this place of privilege, to these words and ruminations. Resource
extraction and processing are foundational elements of the culture I grew up in. My personal
connection to the industry is both deeply rooted and conflicted. It is a part of me that I
acknowledge and respect while at the same time challenge and condemn. It is easy to
establish the negative, but there is no denying the positive effects and outcomes that the
industry has had on my life. Despite my critical outlook, I have a financial and cultural
connection to the resource extraction and processing industry in Quesnel. A resource town
raised me.
When I was ten my family visited Cuba. At that age, travelling in a poverty-stricken,
developing nation and observing another way of life —the struggles and successes of that
culture - was revealing. It was there that I began to understand the world as a diversity of
relationships with varied and complex needs. I saw the beauty of the other. I was able to
compare the natural wild, the flora and fauna, of the Caribbean against the wild of my home
in the Cariboo. Experiencing the exotic, as I did in Cuba, helped establish my rooted sense o f
place. The jungles there were so unfamiliar, so mysterious. I began to understand that I know
the land in my home intimately, and that we as humans should “know what we know, and
know what we do not know” (Belford Notes on Lan(d)guage). Being there evoked a feeling
of connection to the land I was a part of.

83
My father, a journeyman steamfitter, worked most of his adult life in a pulp and paper

mill. His well-earned income afforded my family the luxury of travel, education, mobility
and option. In this way, I directly benefited from the resource extraction and processing
industry. Most of my friends where I grew up also had similar experiences as a result of
financial ties to the industry. My family travelled all over Canada and the western United
States. During these trips I was exposed to wild environments that were different from my
own, to forests of many shapes, textures and colours, and to rivers and lakes of many sizes. I
hiked, skied, canoed, and camped all over BC. I read books and was exposed to art and
music. I had time to study and lessons when I needed them. I played sports, went to
wilderness survival camps, joined theatre, and played in the mountains. I chose to pursue a
university education and was supported by my family. Because we lived in Quesnel and
because my family was involved in the forest industry, I was able to have these experiences.
In one way or another, my post-secondary education has been largely funded by the
resource extraction and processing industry. In this way, I am a part of the very system I am
condemning. After high school, I worked at a pulp and paper mill for two summers. During
this time, I began to understand the depth and inner workings of the processing/transforming
side of the resource industry: the chemicals used, the dangers, damages and environmental
outcomes, the way of life, the culture, and the money. There is almost no other summer job
that offers earnings as high as I received working at the mill. This healthy wage put me
through the first few years of my undergraduate degree, after which time I began working in
the silviculture industry. Although tree-planting is often viewed as a response to treeextraction, and in some ways it is, in this line of work money comes from the same source.
And further, the intention of most industry corporations is to plant harvestable forests for the

84
future, improve public relations/image, and fulfil govemmentally imposed regulations, not to

plant diverse and healthy ecosystems. I would argue that much, even most, silviculture work
is carried out under the profit-driven motives of resource capitalism.
The rest o f my undergraduate and graduate degree was partially financed by work in
the siliviculture field and the occasional inter-mill shutdown.14 Most recently, I received
significant contributions to my graduate work from scholarships funded by large resource
industry corporations. The resource extraction industry helped pay my way through a
university education. As such, I am directly involved in the destruction of my home and the
disturbance of so many ecosystems.
From a certain perspective, it can be suggested that I am living a contradiction. This
view, however, does not hold true from my perspective. Nor do I believe that my
involvement in the resource extraction industry detracts from my critique. If anything, it
brings me closer to the issues and allows me to consider the various perspectives and
possibilities based on theoretical understanding and research as well as personal experience.
Perhaps it offers me the potential for a balanced perspective with a degree o f self-reflection.
As is so often the case, balance is the key. To suggest that one must abstain entirely
from all things with which they take issue is unrealistic and impractical. Furthermore,
without an experiential understanding of the problems themselves, critiques often lack a
strong foundation. That said, I have harboured some level of guilt and at certain points in my
life have experienced pure anger about my willing participation in that which sickens my
home. With a long duration of reflection, though, I find I do not have a taste for extremism or

14A shutdown is an annual production line break wherein maintenance and upgrade work is carried out. A
shutdown runs for anywhere from a few days to four or five w eeks depending on the scope o f the work
needing to be done.

hardline outlooks. The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know very much at all; every
issue has so many positions and factors. A younger, angrier me had a hard time accepting my
involvement in things I was ideologically opposed to. Through a process of self-conscious
evaluation I have come to understand balance as the measure. The theme of balance is
evident in certain areas of my creative work, trying to capture that moment of equilibrium.

86
stage 9

the ones that stand for something
and the ones that make decisions
it’s a complexity of cycles
where nothing remains the same
to just wait and see what happens
leaning against a forklift in the early light of summer
warm in wom-out coveralls, rock in hand
a resource town raised me
my father worked in a pulp mill
my mother worked
something about persistence and cycles
the ones who get the jobs
and the ones who don’t
the settling pounds settle
and beyond that a heavy mist
hangs coy over the quesnel river
there is a problem with the methods
a gap, a heavy disturbance
in the water, ripples spread evenly
naturally dissolve
a future as far as it can be thrown
like a rock and the splash thereafter
being connected means we have an impact
the land as commodity
where continuance is that which remains important
without use there is nothing

the ones who are a part of it
and the ones who think they are apart from it
I have been afforded the luxury of option
had the time to think, to read, write and measure
not to worry about the next meal or the fight
I had time to consider the impact
of extraction and processing
of the wild, the language and home
I had time to work in a pulp mill
and watch the mist rise from the river
to be there at that moment when walking became the destination
the one who writes the poem
and the one who lives it honestly
I had it easy
while still looking for a way to get it right

88

Figure 11. Baker Creek: Graffiti Under The Bridge

89

-Section 8Writing Activism

As fo r the poet himself
we can find no record
o f his having traversed
the land/in either direction
no trace o f his coming
or going/only a scarred
page, a spoor o f wording
-Robert Kroetsch Seed Catalogue (18)

There is a certain type of writing that I am drawn to: writing that is concerned with
the state of the natural environment, the land and its cycles, the balance of the wild (in all its
natural chaos), and the ways in which humans effect that balance. I am most inclined to
create and most likely to engage with writing that has a position on and considers the
nonhuman. There are certain poets/theorists whose philosophy I value greatly, whose
methods and processes have been influential in my own development (Ken Belford, Robert
Bringhurst, Tim Bowling, Tim Lilbum, Don McKay, Erin Moure, and Jan Zwicky to name a
few).15Among other things, these authors are writing about the wild, about nature in its many
forms. Ecological poetry or ecopoetry is the most fitting description of the field or genre
wherein my work, and the work of those writers who I am most interested in, is situated.
The ways in which nature is represented by poets as a defined literary genre has
undergone multiple transformations in terms of definition and label over the years. First, it
fell under the umbrella of nature writing which, as John Elder explains in The Poetry o f
15 The line between poetry and theory is often unclear. At times, the two are interchangeable. M ost o f these
poets also publish essays or theoretical documents that explore some o f the themes they engage with in their
poetry. My connection to the “theory,” though, is often through their poetry.

90

Experience, was grounded in an appreciation of, or a desire to reconnect with, the living earth
(1). Because nature writing was associated with the personal, or self-reflexive, engagement
with the living earth, and because it was said to be a form “largely practised by white
writers” (Buell qtd. in Elder 1), the more inclusive term environmental literature was adopted
(Elder 1), Later, to avoid the negative connotation that was/is sometimes associated with
environmentalism (particularly extreme environmentalism), scholars began to use the term
ecocriticism, which “initiates a dialogue between literature and the science o f ecology”
(Elder 2). According to Buell, ecocriticism is to be “conducted in a spirit of commitment to
environmentalist praxis” (35), thus suggesting a certain level o f action and presence with a
commitment to environmental discourse. Ecocriticism is a wide-reaching
literary/philosophical field, encompassing many types of writing.
Ecopoetry or ecological poetry, which falls into the broad sphere of ecocriticism, is
“a poetics full of systematic analysis and critique that questions the divisions between nature
and culture while also acknowledging that humans use up too much of the world” (Spahr 29).
In Small Fish Big Pond; Lines on Some Ecopoetics, Jonathan Skinner offers the reader ways
to define the term: “Ecopoetics sounds the environmental unconsciousness ... Ecopoetics is
impelled by the stress humans and their stuff place on the lives of other species ... Ecopoetics
is as much about culture as it is about nature ... Ecopoetics approaches the page as a field for
tactical skirmishes” (1-2). Like Skinner, there are a number of writers who have suggested
that ecopoetics is, or can be, a form of activism (Forester; McKay; Phillips; Belford;
Bringhurst) and that it presupposes “activist attention to the looming fragility of the
environment” (Dickinson 34). While reflecting on the purpose and motivations of my own
work, it has become clear to me that by bringing awareness to the subject o f environmental

91

health while exploring my connection to the land (rather than attempting to “capture” it) and
discussing the overtly negative impact that resource capitalism has on wild environments, my
poetry can be a form of activism.
Poetry as a form of activism is much like groundwater; it goes on beneath the surface,
it’s not as overt as its related channels, but it’s always there, diverting and sometimes
subverting what goes on above. In a discussion of what poetry can do, the way it can function
as a didactic tool, Belford explains: “[t]his method of delivery [the poem itself] allows
messages to be subtly given to reading audiences, and then gives readers the control to pass
that message along to their friends” {Notes on Lan(d)guage). Poetry is a form o f action, a
means to evoke change, both internally and externally, but it is not necessarily as overt as
some other modes. When done right, the subtleties and complexities of poetry can evoke
emotions and feelings, while at the same time asking questions and presenting possible
outcomes. Over time, this can result in an altered perspective and ultimately an adoption of
new ways of looking at the world.
To become educated of a particular land, there is a necessary returning, again and
again, to the locations and ideas that have produced those sensibilities, in addition to the
reading and studying of that place. Before one can write about a wilderness one must become
a part of that wild. Through what Lilbum calls “contemplative attention” {Going Home 12)
and McKay calls “poetic attention” {Vis d Vis 26), one can become more attuned to his or her
environment, live with more responsibility to and respect for the complexity of the wild.
Further, the poet must adopt a way of being with, in, and of the land, and must “keep coming
back, figuratively speaking, to the trail —to the grain o f the experience” {Vis a Vis 27), to the
curious thought that leads forever forward. Through this process and with a deep

92

understanding of the location I call home, my writing is beginning to ask the right questions,
rather than assert the supposed answers. In this way, poetry allows me first to acknowledge,
and secondly to diagnose the causes of transformation in my home, while at the same time
working towards something better.
A re-evaluation of the current practices and methods used for resource extraction and
processing is necessary. Poems are a powerful medium for the transferring o f ideas, orally or
on the page, through cyberspace, across cultural boundaries, borders and languages, into the
curious minds of others. Environmental activism, then, can be an important function of
poetry. In order for a poem to be activist in nature it must result in some degree of action. The
adoption of ideas, I would argue, is often the form of action poetry takes - especially when
those ideas result in an altered way of viewing or interacting with real or imagined
environments. It is necessary here to have a closer look at how a reading or listening
audience can appropriate or be influenced by a poem.
As Belford suggests, pedagogic poetry, poetry that takes a position and is
instructional, “should be constructed in such a way that the reader can come to their own
understanding through the process o f determining whether or not they will adopt the writing
ideas based on the meanings and consequences of other decisions” {Notes on Lan(d)guage).
This process of adoption goes through a number of stages, which include “reading or hearing
a poem, making an analysis of it, deciding the available courses of action, taking action, and
then accepting the consequences of those decisions” {Notes on Lan(d)guage). Once a reader
or listener has gone through these stages the poem itself becomes active and is a form of
action.
Ecological poetry can plumb environmental consciouseness in a number o f ways and

93

can position itself within a variety of political possibilities. It explores the interconnection
humans can have with wild environments and the ways in which we suffer through its
destruction or revel in its simple beauty. It can be overtly condemning or prescriptive,
subtlety suggestive, exploratory, or simply engaging. My writing tries to cover the breadth of
these possibilities. Evoking a feeling or creating awareness, however, is most often the intent.
There are certain poets whose attention to the land is helping to give voice to that
which has been silenced. In his poem Stumpage, Don McKay challenges the easy view, and
makes a case for the land. Like much of my own work, McKay’s work in this poem
addresses a concern for current clearcut logging practices:
How the slash looks: not
ruin, abattoir, atrocity; not
harvest, regen, working
forest. How it looks. The way it
keeps on looking when we look away,
embarrassed. How it gawks,
with no nuance or subterfuge
or shadow. How it seems to see us now
as we see it. Not quick.
Not dead. {Strike/Slip 22)
Here, McKay facilitates a conversation with the damaged wilderness. There is a voice and a
view being presented here that is advocating for a rethinking of current methods. This voice,
and its gaze as situated in the land and directed back at us, can be viewed as a sort of
anthropocentric positioning, a way of attributing human perceptions and modes of knowing
to the natural environment. This tendency for writers to make human the wild and its voices
is possibly dangerous, damaging even. But as McKay notes in Vis a Vis: Field Notes on
Poetry and Wilderness, “nature poetry should not be taken to be avoiding anthropocentrism,
but to be enacting it, thoughtfully.... When ownership is set aside, appropriation can turn

94

inside out, an opening...” (29-31).16 Some authors, however, have suggested that
anthropocentrism is at the root of our current environmental crises (Foreman, Naess) and that
we must overcome anthropocentrism and acknowledge that “‘Man’ is not the centre o f the
universe or the measure of all things” (Hayward 50). Other authors have suggested that
humans are incapable of being anything but human-centered (Murdy, Morito) and that
anthropocentrism should not be rejected but accepted “as a starting point for
environmentalism” (Morito 33) wherein the human desire to protect the natural environment
is motivated by factors intrinsic to human preservation (Hargrove, Norton). One is reminded
here of Kate Soper’s assertion that
it is inevitable that our attitudes to nature will be ‘anthropocentric’ in certain
respects since there is no way of conceiving our relations to it other than
through the mediation of ideas about ourselves. To suggest otherwise is to be
insensitive to those ways in which the rest of nature is different, and should be
respected as being so. (13)
Although anthropocentrism is problematic, it is an unavoidable fact of our human existence.
We cannot remove ourselves completely from the subject of ecological writing. I maintain
that there is a place for anthropocentrism in poetry as long as the hierarchy o f ownership and
domination of nature is avoided. Conscious anthropocentric poetry has the potential to open
the door to other kinds of knowledge - for instance, knowledge that is characterised by an
“empathetic imagining” of what it could be like to be a part o f the nonhuman world
(Hayward 61). If one lives with contemplative and/or poetic attention to the land, it is
possible to write with an environmental consciousness that is situated from the wild, without
ownership, without the dangers and pitfalls of the traditional anthropocentric view. What

16 It should be noted here, that what McKay calls ‘nature poetry’ is very much akin to ecopoetry or ecological
poetry; they are interchangeable terms in this case.

95

McKay achieves in Stumpage is exactly what I am trying to do in my own writing: an
expression of respect for the nonhuman.
My connection to the land, even as it manifests in poetry, is limited by language. Yet,
one of poetry's greatest pleasures is its ability to explore that which cannot be said. In
discussing the work of McKay and Lilbum (and I would include many other writers in this
discussion), McCaslin notes that “these poets are intensely aware o f the limits of language to
contain the divine, and by extension, the numinosity of nature within the ciphers of
language” (68). The term numinosity describes a sublime connection suggesting a spiritually
enlightened or elevated understanding of nature. Although this is more of a theological
examination of ecopoetic praxis than a scientifically based approach (with respect to the
previously posited dialogue between literature and science), I would argue that there is room
for both in the discussion of ecopoetic language. Although the poet cannot speak for nature,
the poem can, if it’s lucky, open itself to the reader in way that no other type of writing can.
Further along that thought, in response to the question ‘what can poetry do that other forms
of literature cannot?’ poet Rob Budde explains:
Poetry allows for the acknowledgement that it fails: to communicate, to make
sense, to be logical, to mean anything. It privileges process over product so
that ‘meaning’ at the end of the process is de-emphasized. Because of this,
poetry can convey the un-expressible edges of human experience that no other
discourse can. It approaches the unsaid. Surrounds it with questions. (Budde)
What underlies the poem, what goes on behind the words, between the lines, is what sets
poetry apart. A poem can evoke a feeling; it can give voice to that moment o f thought, that
first silence, before it sounds like anything. Approaching the unsaid, that which is ineffable,
is both wondrous and challenging at the same time. McKay acknowledges the difficulty; “A
mystic who is not a poet can answer the inappellable with silence, but a poet is in the

96

paradoxical, unenviable position of simultaneously recognizing that it can't be said and
saying something” (Open Wide a Wilderness 4). From a different position, Lilbum expresses
a similar sentiment: “And what we must learn is not geography, not an environmental ethics,
not a land-benign economics, not a history, not respect, but a style that is so much ear, so
attentive, it cannot step away from its listening to give a report of itself’ {Thinking and
Singing 180).
For me, this is a welcome challenge. It is a part of the process that allows me to grow,
to move forward. Through ecological poetry, I can explore the unspeakable connection that
we have to the land, the value of this, and why and how it must continue. In his book
lan(d)guage, Belford hints at the complexity of poetry to express the unsaid, engaging
through poetics, what I am trying to convey here:
Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference
between a word and a decision.
Understandings accumulate.
There are bindings between words,
a kind o f retrieval of memory traces.
There’s something beyond what can be grasped
even in poetry, beyond the list of words
that do not appear. Subjects discriminate,
and there's an infinite variety of forms
in the background feedback cycle of cues. (37)
In this section, Belford is opening up the possibility of a poetic exploration into the
complexity of what exists between the lines. Language and silence, that which appears on the
page and that which does not - these are the cues of poetry. In the background, within the
silence, there are understandings and ideas linked to “memory traces.” Connections are made
and something meaningful occurs.
My understanding of how I connect with nature has become clear to me via writing,

97

reading and studying ecological poetry and other forms of environmentally concise
literature. I am working towards a new field of poetics (new for me, that is), where the
audience and the writer is from the land/of the land, conscious of our impact and concerned
for the future health of the natural environment. I am striving for, as Belford calls it, a
“northern poetic,” a genre of ecopoetry that is of a different convention, a different
awareness and responsibility; “A new area of studies is in this term ‘northern’ as applied to
poetics. Almost always that gaze looks from the urban centers to the forest. In this writing,
when I say the word “northern”, I’m talking about what it is to see these issues from the
forest, looking out” (Notes on Lan(d)guage). I am part o f the collective sickness, my home is
in danger, the land is being broken, but there are ways to fight back. Attentive contemplation,
recognition, attunement, awareness, being here and now, being present, simply looking, and
later writing it down, passing it along.

A landscape without poets is a culture that is suppressed...
Finally we have a land poetics that isn’t naive.
-Ken Belford, Notes on Lan(d)guage

98

stage 1
fo r Ken Belford17

the stories sound different and truths shift
depending on where you’re standing
there by the well
a perfectly round stone
over the years, how many feet
have packed-down the trail this deep
it’s a matter of ownership when ownership is loss
and use has always been the measure
he lifted his head and pointed to a spot on the mountain
about halfway up where the round stones would collect
the distance between ways of knowing
after that, permission and language —
everything in life is negotiation
this place is in you and you will resonate here
long after you’re gone
when walking becomes the destination
and the names drip from trees
the subtleties and nuances of this northern dialectic
to clear and commodify, the hand that drew the map
and the developers restless lines
an ongoing dialogue between place and its colonizer
the inadequacy of language to be
to hold, to mean anything
in that moment he knew there was more to this ‘indian’ story
17

This poem is for my friend Ken Belford. It evolved out o f many conversations about his life at the
headwaters o f the N ass. Walter Blackwater, a respected bushman and dear friend o f Ken Belford, is
present within many lines o f this poem.

then brown skin and brown eyes
what it means to settle, the way snow does
or sand in a body of water, to arrange and come to rest
and we called them settlers as though they’re not expanding still
the names have never changed
and the translation is lost in the cycle
the shape of tsekwit mountian, the colour o f balsam fir
the temperature of blackwater lake is only what it intends to be
you are welcome here
your name in this territory
the trails are all that would go anywhere
and we aim to see the whole of it
hear the names and stories as we pass through
a conversation with the living land

Continued Use

1.
still a days’ work in the pines

winter down some back-road just north of quesnel
no one for miles stopping here
the heft of fresh snow
on needles and bare branches
a land in waiting
with leather gloves and steady hands
a lumberman like his father fells another tree
there is a moment
between sound and impact
a moment
on edge, looking up, knee deep
the wind and his eyes follow
down
that toppling feeling
2.

from this wood he longs to build a home
shape a cane for when his knee has weakened
a chair to sit in
a table to work from
carve a birdhouse from the smooth heartwood
of these trees
whittle a family
in perfect proportions
3.

he is careful not to crush
the saplings and young pine

a lumberman
thinking of his father
while limbing the wood
by hand

The Indian Paintbrush

is regional and methodical
considers the spatial a furtive matter
she reaches out below ground
at the open woods near tree-line
and it smells like a poem
pilfering from grasses
populus and other perennials
she appears freshly dipped
edging the drip-line of an aspen stand
the dangers of anthropomorphism
and the slippery nature of language
cloistered, indistinct flowers
clandestine by reason
o f large fiery-bright, petal-like bracts
nonhuman and its methods
the words and stories are silenced
her leaves alternate, narrowly-lance-like
three lobed and linear
smooth-margined
revealing three parallel veins
and an honest hue of green
in nature the rhetoric is so far from relevant
she finds it tasteless
a thief under soil
roots fasten to neighbouring aspen
a little sucker of juices
already partially assimilated

her tiny hands gripping

just enough, not more than a taste
an agreement of sorts
or it would be known
marked by a loss of foliage, o f green matter
a loss of self

104

Figure 12. The Wild: Indian Paintbrush

105

-Section 9Becoming Birch:
Metamorphosis and Environmental Change

All the poets o f all times can only say one thing. They can say that what-is is. When
he sees his people destroying the world, the poet can say, “we ’re destroying the
world. ” He can say it in narrative or lyric or dramatic or meditative form, tragic or
ironicform, short form or long form, in verse or prose. But he cannot lie, as a poet,
and offer himself as the Savior. He can believe or not believe that salvation is
possible. ...But he finally cannot say anything more than the world has told him.
Robert Bringhurst The Persistence o f Poetry (44)

Didactic poetry, as Belford notes, “takes a position from the start. It teaches / is
instructional” (Notes on Lan(d)guage). There are many ways in which a poem can inform or
educate its reader or listener. Likewise, there are many literary tropes that can be used to
achieve this end. One such method is metamorphic writing: writing that engages with the
process of transformation. The following attempts to show the didactic nature o f poetry that
employs a specific literary trope as a means to inform the reading or listening audience, with
respect to a particular environmental concern. Metamorphosis has not been widely used as a
didactic tool (if at all), and certainly not within the realm of ecological poetry (to the best of
my knowledge). As such, this particular literary trope is well suited to exemplify the possible
educational capacity of poetry and the activist potential therein.
Although the wild is, and should be, in a continual state o f change via cycles and
disturbances, the negative effects of resource capitalism, of industrialized extraction and
processing, are beyond the scope of sustainability. If continued use is not at the root of policy
and intent, heavy disturbances will continue to irreversibly alter the land. The
industrialization of resource extraction has transformed the nature of the Cariboo north-

106

central region; it has affected the health of our forests and waterways and, in turn, affected
the health of those who inhabit its communities. As Marina Warner suggests in Fantastic
Metamorphosis, Other Worlds, metamorphic writing often appears in transitional places and
at the confluence of change (18). The transformations of both human and natural
environments in this region can be viewed as forms of metamorphosis. In my review of
literature on the subject, I have identified a gap in using metamorphosis as a didactic tool to
illuminate environmental change.
I am proposing that the correlation between the health of the wild and the health of an
individual or a community can be explored through creative writing employing tropes of
metamorphosis. Region-specific health issues, such as those related to air quality, can be
directly linked to the extraction and processing of natural resources. The changing forests and
declining health of the environment in the Cariboo north-central region, and the health
problems that have resulted from those human-imposed changes, reflect one another. The
mirroring effect of these mutually inclusive transformations can be exemplified through
creative representations of metamorphosis in literature.
I intend to show that the figural process of metamorphosis from an of-nature, organic
form such as a tree, fungus or flower, to a body with reflexive human awareness, can be used
as a vehicle to explore the impact of environmental change in a specific transitional region.
Through this mode and with a focus on difficult processes of transformation, I hope to create
an empathetic experience for the reader. Focusing on an area where resource extraction and
processing is the defining factor, central to the history of the region, where logging practices
have produced rapid environmental change, I will explore the ways in which the health of the
land and natural environment is directly linked to the health of the people who inhabit that

107

region. The merits of employing tropes of metamorphosis as a mode to mirror our
transforming environment will be the focus of this section. My creative work will exemplify
the revealing possibilities of this mode.
Tropes of metamorphosis represent the transformation in appearance, condition,
function or circumstance of one form to another. This concept of stated change has been
used in literature to parallel cultural change or transition (as in Dante’s Inferno and Ovid’s
The Metamorphoses), to explore permutations of personal identity (as in Stevenson’s Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis), and to give voice or make voiceless
(as in Collodi’s Pinocchio and Anderson’s Little Mermaid). Representations of
metamorphosis are complex and multifaceted in terms of effect and intent. Often depicted
and understood as an external change manifested as a visible transformation of form, many
representations of metamorphosis also include an internal identity shift, mirroring the
external transformation.
In theoretical approaches to the study of metamorphic literature, there are certain
strands of analysis that thread through a breadth of texts. Although there is overlap in some
areas, theorists have examined metamorphosis through a multiplicity of literary lenses and
have come to a variety of analytic conclusions. Some authors have suggested that
metamorphosis can be allegorical in the sense that it explores transformations of identity as a
figure for change in the character of the writer (Mikkonen; Clarke). Others have understood
metamorphosis as a form of allegory or metaphor for creative inquiries in art, especially
writing (Tymieniecka; Warner; Mikkonen). The search for, or loss of, identity through
representations of metamorphosis is another area that some authors have engaged with
(Bynum; Massey). Within the wide variety of theoretical approaches to metamorphic

108

literature, there appears to be no mention of metamorphosis as a didactic trope in writing.
Nor has the potential of metamorphosis as a means to explore environmentalism been
addressed.
In her book, Fantastic Metamorphosis, Other Worlds, Warner interprets metamorphic
writing as a device with which expressions of artistic creativity can be presented:
“metamorphosis is the principle of organic vitality as well as the pulse in the body of art” (2).
For Warner, metamorphic writing is more a tradition then a literary genre. Similarly, in
Metamorphosis: Creative Imagination in Fine Arts Between Life Projects and Human
Aesthetics, Anna Teresa Tymieniecka describes metamorphosis as a device rather than a
literary genre. Situated within the framework of metamorphosis-as-device, Tymieniecka
explains that “in this continuity within discontinuity - a passage from old to new, from the
past to the future - there resides the constructive power of metamorphosis to interpret for us
the dynamics of the phenomena of nature and of creativity in the arts and literature” (xi).
Tymieniecka describes metamorphosis as a revealing trope, expressing the transformative
possibilities of art and literature as a condition of human desire for “unrestricted freedom”
(xii). The aesthetic mechanics of metamorphoses are often discussed in terms of
anthropomorphism in art, as art - while not recognizing the educational potential for stories
of metamorphosis to go beyond the page and function as a form of activism, advocating for
real-world change. By examining environmental transformation and degradation through
stories of metamorphosis, and by positing a potential for positive changes within those
stories, creative texts can become a form of education and activism.
To exemplify the way in which metamorphosis can function as both a story of
creative transformation and as an ecocritical tool to expose environmental degradation and

109

explore possible corrective gestures to the issues of declining forest health, I will address the
current problems surrounding air quality in Prince George, BC. In this particular narrative
long poem, I have attempted to write a story of transformation that employs my own
theoretical approach to metamorphosis. First, I set the stage for metamorphic change:

extraction/1
slash-piles and skidder tracks
a stretching expanse peeled back
banks erode and land slides
muddied streams flow
into larger watersheds
inorganic particles mingle
in the air and water
the smell of wood cutting
the sound of chains pulling
tones of progress
in the grumbling o f a fellerbuncher
the promise of value
in the cackle of a skidder
a resonance of dislocation
when dust up from a nearby logging road settles
this place is a fragment of its former self
a transformation
a new aesthetic

from the melt/2
a northern cutblock
nestled into folds of old growth treeline
economies of extraction
separated from the din o f a northern city
by mountains and waterways
by caulk boots and the hum
of machines off rock and wood
here the tailings of last winter
shift and linger, finding solace

110

in the shade of seasons
the ground is soft, forgiving from the melt
having never been subject
to a direct force wind
these trees let stand are feeble
against coming storms
newly exposed timber
pushes back against the wind
pulling at gnarled roots below
there is a shift in soil, a heaving
of the boreal landscape inward
neither trucked nor milled
old-growth windthrow
slash-pile stacked and burned
when the ground is hard
and the stumpage left
padded with snow
along with the blowdown
those that get in the way
birch, balsam and young pine
floored by default, pushed aside
to the company of inconvenient trees
at times, a well disguised birch
will slip in among the pine
take the dirt road
back to the city
with the thought
of permanence dangling
loosely at the forest’s edge
there is a shift in awareness

By delineating some of the methods and practices of clearcut logging in a
conspicuously negative tone, the poem informs the reader of both the content and context
that underlies the pulse o f the poem. Although the narrative of metamorphosis has not yet

I ll

begun, the mention of a shifting awareness, serves to adumbrate the coming change. From
here, the transformation can begin.

from the make/3
a curious birch now finds its way
having been hoisted onto the back
of a loaded eighteen wheeler
wedged between stately pines
barrelling down the Finlay
load shifting slightly
with every curve
birch imagines the angles
and lines that form
an unknown destination
romanticizes the product
and feels the rush of wind
as it moves through her
thinking there is space between
the margins of these pine
her coughs muffled
by the sound of many tires
on blasted rock
the log truck ends up in the centre
a self-proclaimed northern capital
with clearcut tendencies
and a means to process
assimilation
is chain and teeth
still spinning
the unnatural landscape daunting
there is tension in her lungs
she lacks the context
from which this place
and others like it
find narrative to exist

pulling into the lumber mill, the smell
of sawdust nipping
birch leams quickly
there is no place for her here
no use
she moves toward the confluence
awkwardly stepping, her feet
attempt to dig in slowly
they won’t take
a physical presence
never occurred to her like this
the grind of chipping, limbs unfurled
her fingers the bare branches
she sleeps in a culvert by the railroad tracks
goes unnoticed watching chip trucks pass
each night she wakes wheezing
a dream billowing from smokestacks
where the rivers convene
a sense of dislocation
she peels in thin papery layers
the loss of self
breathes heavy, the smell
of something unfamiliar
hanging dank and cumbrous in the air
birch ambles through the streets
concrete underfoot
a constant light lingers
while nothing moves with the wind
the natural continence of place
appears neglected and overgrown
a wild, wild space
the ground is hard, unforgiving from the make

roots/4

113

a despondent birch
curled into thin pointed sticks and shredded paper
near the underpass where log trucks slow
and rumble overhead
she spends her time watching bodies
machines and the shapes they pursue
hears the sound of rail-cars pushing off
in the distance siren and tire spin
blend voices into a rhythmic hum
there is a loneliness
waiting, a deliquescence
in the shadow of a northern city
weeks in she wanders further
a row of houses with clipped grass
trees kempt and nothing understory
birch feels homeless for the first time
some days the inversion is so heavy
she finds it hard to breathe
struggles with the ins and outs
at the core on a busy street
a woman calls out
with a kindness and curiosity about her
seeing birch with a disparate gaze
the freshness, a palimpsestic form
she wants to be there with her
for her
beginning
they walk together
sharing a thorny view
of the new aesthetic
their meeting is corporal, bonded
a likeness
their bodies growing close
she welcomes birch into
the smell of bannock frying

114

to feel a part of something
roots and fingered branches spread
into hands held firm
a circle, a stand
birch is seduced by the centre
shaped into angles and lines
a product that fits, her arborous self
now softened
she finds work sweeping nights
the dust from the process
and spends Saturdays
at the farmers market
her thin fingers spreading
jam to the knuckles
the sticky thrum of laughter
in time they rent an apartment
with a pine bookshelf to fill
prudence with a view
reading on a hardwood floor
near an open window
the pages come alive
their small library
of shifting pathways
birch volunteers at the shelter
twice a week, rescues feral cats
from the neighbourhood
takes up skating in the winter
community gardens in the warmer months
growing into this place
even still she struggles
her tight lungs, the sound
of settling in

With the process of metamorphosis now fully underway, the poem begins to identify

115

one of the many negative health affects that can be linked to resource extraction and
processing; poor air quality is a reality in the Cariboo north-central region o f BC. Without
being overly direct, the poem points to a possible link between the declining health of the
forest and birch’s respiratory problems. Some authors have suggested that in metamorphic
writing, despite the visible transformations that have produced the other form, there is most
often a lingering likeness to the original form; thus, metamorphosis is never absolute
(Warner; Bynum). Situating my own methodology within that credence, I attempted to create
a duality of awareness in birch, an intimate knowledge and understanding of the wild
intertwined with humanistic sympathies and ego, a balanced pith.

agency/5
birch thinks back to when she was young
a sapling among elders
remembering the air as it was
in the days of selective logging
she coughs and wheezes
in the centre knowing
the result of excess
aware of the impact, birch tries to write it down
feels the weight of the pen in her pliable hand
the paper against her outstretched fingers
her body having shifted slightly with the load
the cause and effect of a northern industry
her lungs ablaze
a product of extraction and recreation
birch, so often short of breath
struggles with the pressure
a narrowing in her chest
she is tested for respiratory illness
a diagnoses of asthma

she administers various fast acting
and long term control medications
she is smooth and close-grained
at school birch reads closely
of history, progress
and the working forest
an unnecessary presence
learned, necessarily
in this place
she digs deeper, finds the origins
of knowing, stories of change
and traditional ecological knowledge
she knows this place
is sapping the life out of her
a drat drastically
a problem in the air

wind/6
birch walks toward the city’s edge
where contras collide
and the constant light
begins to melt away
she finds a footpath heading
towards the mountains
within the breathing boreal
birch becomes conscious of her own
aberrant presence, an unsettling awareness
she meanders past an old cutblock
replanted with monoculture
intentions of reharvesting
a hundred years of uniformity
there is a breeze, faint and level
slipping in among the pine

117

the trail leads past a stand of birch
she waits a moment, watching
the trees sway, the leaves flutter
peeling off a section o f bark
she runs the papery thinness
through her tempered fingers
feels the rush of wind
as it moves through her
knowing this
is where she begins

The story of birch personified through metamorphic changes carries with it
environmental sensibilities. The poem intends to inform, and in doing so question, current
logging and milling practices in the Cariboo north-central region. Although the story is
regional, the tone is, I hope, universal. I tried to avoid being overtly political in the positing
of corrective gestures for clearcut logging. Being subtle, although not entirely, was my intent
with the underlying message: a plea for change. Excessive resource extraction and processing
has adversely transformed the health of both forest and human communities in this region
and elsewhere. In Becoming Birch I have made use of metamorphosis as a mode to mirror the
transforming environment. This type of transformation can serve as a didactic tool in creative
writing, as a revealing literary device that goes beyond the page and functions as a form of
activism, encouraging real-world change. The approach I used is one of the ways that we as
writers, as activists, as scholars and as citizens, can address the damaging effects of humanimposed changes in nature, but there are many other ways.

Figure 13. The Wild: The Persistence of Birch

119

A Moment of Reflections

There is always more work to be done. The ideas presented here are part of an
ongoing body of work - a lifelong poem. I will continue to write from the wild with an
environmental consciousness and an ear and eye to the nonhuman. The way humans affect
the natural process of cycles and disturbances is a subject of inquiry that I carry with me.
Although this particular piece of writing is finished, the work is not complete. There is much
to learn and more to practice as I write towards an apprenticeship of the land.
The ideas being presented within my creative and theoretical texts are as much about
me as they are about the land. I chose to write about nature and the wild not because it
interests me, but because it is so much a part of me that I cannot turn away from it. In many
ways, the land chose me. I write because if I didn’t, I would not know who or what I would
be. I am a writer and I am concerned with the current and future health o f the wild. There are
many possibilities for dealing with these concerns, but writing is what I have come to.
Writing is as much a part of me as the wild is a part of me. The process is healing and the
result is meaning.
For me, the poem is an act of resistance. It is a way to question that which begs my
attention, to consider that which troubles me. It is a method of exploration. It is activism. It is
education. It is a way to be curious about the world. And I have learned to research and
reflect on things that I am curious about. It is not about truths or answers; it is about the
question. The poem is where I am most comfortable, as is evident in the preceding pages.
Each o f my creative texts has been written, rewritten, and transformed several times over. In
some instances, the poems are a fragment of their former selves. This is the process of

120

writing for me. I start with an idea on a page and I carve away at it and surround it with
possibilities and questions until something meaningful occurs.
This project has gone through multiple transformations before arriving at its current
state. My intention for O f Cycles and Disturbance has evolved over time and the finished
product is nothing like the proposed project. Not only has the project’s aim been altered, but
the scope of my understanding has changed as well. A metamorphosis of ideas took place.
My personal transformation, though, is not yet absolute. Humans, like ecosystems, are
always subject to cycles and disturbances. When I began writing about the wild and its cycles
I was angry about how humans were treating the land. My views were hardline and my
writing was dead set on criticizing and condemning. There was little room in my creative
process for self-reflection. The more I wrote my way into the wild, however, the more
intensely aware I became of the need for a balanced perspective. Reflecting on this has given
my work new depth and positioning. I am as passionate about the issues as I have ever been
but I have come to under stand that balance is the measure.

Figure 14. The Wild: Reflections

122

-Works Cited-

Belford, Ken. Lan(d)guage. Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2008. Print.

Belford, Ken. Notes on Lan(d)guage. (Unpublished) Prince George: Winter/Spring, 2011.
Print.

Birch, Thomas H. “The Incarceration of Wilderness: Wilderness Areas as Prisons.” The Great
New Wilderness Debate, ed. J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson. Athens, GA:
University o f Georgia P, 1998. Print.

Bowling, Tim. Fathom. Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2006. Print.

Bringhurst, Robert. The Tree o f Meaning. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2008. Print.

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the
Formation o f American Culture. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard U,
1995. Print.

Budde, Rob. Response to ‘whatpoetry does.' (Unpublished) Prince George: Winter/Spring,
2011. Print.

Castleden, Heather and Theresa Garvin. Huu-ay-aht First Nation. “Modifying Photovoice for
community-based participatory Indigenous research.” Social Science and Medicine 66
(2008): 1395-1405. Print.

Clarke, Bruce. Allegories o f Writing: The Subject o f Metamorphosis. New York, NY: State
University of New York P, 1995. Print.

Cresswell, Tim. Place: a short introduction. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
Print.

Cronen, William. “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.”

123

Environmental History 1.1 (1996): 7-28. JSTORE. 15, Oct. 2012. Web.

Dickinson, Adam. “Myric Ethics: Ecocriticism, Material Metaphoricity, and the Poetics of
Don McKay and Jan Zwicky.” Canadian Poetry 55 (2004): 34-52. 3 Sept. 2012. Web.

“ecotone.” The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Company. 07
Apr. 2011. Web.

Elder, John. “The Poetry of Experience.” New Literary History 30.3 (1999): 649-659. Project
Muse. 22 March 2011. Web.

Eyles, John and Andrea Litva. “Place, Participation, and Policy.” Putting Health into Place:
Landscape, Identity, and Well-Being. Eds. R. Kerns and W. Gesler. New York:
Syracuse UP, 1998. 249-269. Print.

Foreman, David. Confessions o f an Eco-Warrior. New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 1991.
Print.

Forster, Sophia. “Don McKay's Comic Anthropocentrism: Ecocentrism Meets 'Mr. Nature
Poet'.” Essays on Canadian Writing 77 (2002): 107-135. Academic Search Premier.
6 Oct. 2010. Web.

Gilcrest, David W. Greening the Lyre: Environmental Poetics and Ethics. Reno, NV: U
of Nevada P, 2002. Print.

Hargrove, Eugene C. Foundations fo r Environmental Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall Inc., 1989. Print.

Hay, Iain. Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography. Toronto, ON: Oxford UP,
2010. Print.

Hay, Robert. “A Rooted Sense of Place In Cross-Cultural Perspective Source.” The Canadian
Geographer 42.3 (1998): 245-266. Print.

124

Hayward, Tim. “Anthropocentrism: A Misunderstood Problem.” Environmental Values 6.1
(1997): 49-63. JSTORE. 16 Oct. 2012. Web.

Johnston, R.J. et al. ed. The Dictionary o f Human Geography. Malden, MA: Blackwell
Publishing, 2000. Print.

Lilbum, Tim. Going Home. Toronto, ON: House of Anansi Press, 2008. Print.

Lilbum, Tim, ed. Thinking And Singing. Toronto, ON: Cormorant Books, 2002. Print.

Lilbum, Tim. “Guest Lecturer in ENGL 700 - Literature, Culture and Place.” University of
Northern British Columbia, Prince George. 22 March 2011. Lecture.

Massey, Irving. The Gaping Pig: Literature and Metamorphosis. Berkeley, CA: University of
California P, 1976. Print.

Mazel, David. American Literary Environmentalism. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 2000.
Print.

McCaslin, Susan. “Facing the Environmental Crisis with Contemplative Attention: The
Ecopoetics of Don McKay, Tim Lilbum, and Russell Thornton.” The University o f
the Fraser Valley Research Review 3.1 (2011). Academic Search Premier. 24 March
2011. Web.

McKay, Don and Nancy Holmes, eds. Open Wide a Wilderness. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid
Laurier UP, 2009. Print.

McKay, Don. Strike/Slip. Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart, 2006. Print.

McKay, Don. Vis a Vis: Field Notes on Poetry and Wilderness. WolfVille, NS: Gaspereau P,
2001. Print.

Mies, Maria and Vandana Shiva. Ecofeminism. Halifax, NS: Femwood Publications, 1993.
Print.

125

Mikkenon, Kia. “Theories of Metamorphosis: from metatrope to textual revision - Rhetoric
and Poetics.” Style 30.2 (1996): 309-340. 14 Nov. 2010. Web.

Morito, Bruce. “Value, Metaphysics, and Anthropocentrism.” Environmental Values 4.1
(1995): 31-47. JSTORE. 15 Oct. 2012. Web.

Morton, Timothy. Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Print.

Murdy, W.H. “Anthropocentrism: A Modern Version.” Science, New Series 187 (1975): 11681172. JSTORE. 16 Oct. 2012. Web.

Naess, A. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement.” Inquiry 16 (1973):
95-100. 16 Oct. 2012. Web.

Norton, Bryan. “Environmental ethics and weak anthropocentrism.” Environmental Ethics 6
(1984): 131-148. JSTORE. 15 Oct. 2012. Web.

Phillips, Dana. “Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology.” New Literary
History 30.3 (1999): 577-602. Project Muse. 11 Oct. 2010. Web.

“resource.” Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition.
HarperCollins Publishers. 7 Sep. 2012. Web.

Scigaj, Leonard M. Sustainable Poetry: Four American Ecopoets. Lexington, KY: U
of Kentucky P, 1999. Print.

Shiva, Vandana. Staying Alive: women, ecology and development. London: Zed Books, 1988.
Print.

Silko, Leslie Marmon. “Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination.” A t Home on the
Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place. Ed. David Landis Barnhill. U of California P,
1999. Web.

126

Skinner, Jonathan. “Small Fish Big Pond.” Angelaki: Journal o f the Theoretical Humanities
14.2 (2009): 111-113. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. 22 March 2011. Web.

Spahr, Juliana, things o f each possible relation hashing against one another. Newfield, NY:
Palm Press, 2003. Print.

Tuan, Y.F. “Rootedness and Sense of Place.” Landscape 24 (1980): 3-8. Print.

Tymieniecka, Anna Teresa. Metamorphosis: Creative Imagination in Fine Arts Between Life
Projects and Human Aesthetics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004. Print.

Walker, Caroline Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity. New York, NY: Zone Books, 2001.
Print

Warner, Marina. Fantastic Metamorphosis, Other Worlds: Ways o f Telling the Self. New
York, NY: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.

Wigmore, Gillian, home when it moves you. Prince George: Creekstone Press, 2008. Print.

“words.” Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins
Publishers. 7 Sep. 2012. Web.