Ecological Thinking and Jean Sprackland 'Strands'

Timothy Morton suggests in his introduction to The Ecological Thought that ecological thinking is seeing "that everything is interconnected."[1] This interconnectedness is what he terms the mesh. But what does this mean? Essentially it is about coexisting and how our encounters with the world around us and other beings hold significance. Morton goes on to say that this form of thinking is a "practise and a process of becoming fully aware of how human beings are connected with other beings - animal, vegetable, or mineral."[2]

This is a process Jean Sprackland demonstrates in Strands, a year's worth of reflections on the discoveries she makes when walking along the Ainsdale Sands. These beaches are familiar to Sprackland; she has walked them numerous times. Yet in Strands she seeks to see them anew, as she states in her preface: 

I'm setting out, armed with curiosity rather than expertise, to pay a different kind of attention to what I see. I hope to cut through the blur of familiarity, and explore this place as if for the first time. Some of my finds may be real surprises, and others more predictable; but I shall pick them up and hold them to the light, regardless.[3]

Through this "different kind of attention" Sprackland highlights the interconnection between humans, beaches, and the creatures that inhabit them. In the chapter 'Prozac' Sprackland discusses the implications on the environment of taking Prozac: with thirty-million prescriptions of Prozac issued a year, it eventually ends up as fluoxetine in our drinking water, rivers, and the sea by passing through our systems. Shrimp, as explained in Strands, have been affected by this and, as a result, their populations are declining. This impacts on the lives of fisherman: "It would take more than a few doses of Prozac to cheer up the people who once made a good honest living from these waters."[4] Here, Sprackland exhibits the interconnection of our relationship with the world and its cyclical nature by suggesting that humans taking Prozac has caused the shrimp to decline, and thus causing instability in humans' livelihoods, which could induce them to take Prozac.

Strands does not just look at interconnection negatively, but hints at how we might learn from nature and the world around us. Or rather, how nature can often do things better than we can. When discussing her discovery of a sea mouse, Sprackland comments: 

It is sobering to realise that one of our most complex and impressive human achievements - the developments of high-tech communications technology - is outdone by an obscure mud-dwelling worm, a creature which shares the ocean floor with the fibre optic cables we've laid there. [5]

Nature often offers greater solutions than we have, and often displays the interconnection and co-existence of our world that Morton describes as the mesh. Trees, as Suzanne Simard has discovered, communicate and help each other to co-exist by sending nutrients that the other tree needs via their roots and mycorrhiza.[6] Such processes are not apparent in the world we see and were only discovered after numerous studies. Simard's thinking, a curiosity into the interconnection of trees, displays Morton's theory that such ecological thinking is a practise. 

An extension of this form of ecological thinking is learning from nature; biomimicry presents a way we can learn from, as biomimicry expert Maria O’Farrell suggests, the "genius" that "surround[s]" us.[7] Such thinking, from both Simard and O'Farrell embodies what Morton suggests about the mesh and strange strangers: "The more we know about life forms, the more we recognise our connection with them and the stranger they become."[8]

However, as Morton suggests ecological thinking is not just for scientists, but for the humanities and the arts as well. Indeed, it is their "responsibility to examine, participate in, support, and criticise scientific experiments."[9] This is what Strands does: it links together real experiences of the beach; science and discovery; and the humanities and arts. It presents a thought-process, or even a thought-experiment, that tracks the 'strands' of thoughts and ideas that arise from simple walks on the beach. This shows how interconnected the world is not just in the thinking process, but also through the physical.

Strands asks us to think ecologically about the physical mesh of our world and, for me, this makes Sprackland's book successful and effective in changing the way we approach not just beaches, but nature; it also alters our behaviour that ultimately affects these environments.

[1] Timothy Morton, Ecological Thinking (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2010), p.1.

[2] Ibid, p.7.

[3] Jean Sprackland, Strands (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012), p.xiii.

[4] Ibid, p.32.

[5] Ibid, p.97.

[6]  TED Talks, How trees talk to each other | Suzanne Simard, online video, Youtube, 30th August 2016, <https://youtu.be/Un2yBgIAxYs> [accessed 3rd December 2016].

[7] Great Big Story, Surrounded by Genius: Nature's Take on Engineering, online video, Youtube, 21st November 2016, <https://youtu.be/TU9qh8vPryU> [accessed 5th December 2016].

[8] Morton, Ecological Thinking, p.17.

[9] Ibid, p.13.

Bibliography

Great Big Story, Surrounded by Genius: Nature's Take on Engineering, online video, Youtube, 21st November 2016, <https://youtu.be/TU9qh8vPryU> [accessed 5th December 2016].

Morton, Timothy, Ecological Thinking (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2010).

Sprackland, Jean Strands (London: Jonathan Cape, 2012).

TED Talks, How trees talk to each other | Suzanne Simard, online video, Youtube, 30th August 2016, <https://youtu.be/Un2yBgIAxYs> [accessed 3rd December 2016].

Photo by Daniel Palmer, previously unpublished.

The Beach and the Pastoral Tradition

I grew up by the coast. That probably prompts visions of soft sand, smooth pebbles and blue sea. There was none of that. Instead I grew up in a busy town with docks where the sound of ship's horns were heard more than the sound of the waves. The beaches nearby were all stones or marshes. Definitely not idyllic, especially when plastic bottles and carrier bags were strewn across it. But it still had that slight salty tang to the air and the water was still bitter cold, as it is on any British beach. On a fine day the sea is bright blue, but most of the time it is a murky grey. When I look at this beach I see how humans have interacted with it.

But why don't I think this when I see golden sand, sharp cliffs, and clear blue sea? Lyme Regis, where the photo above was taken, had French sand, Norwegian rocks, and shingle from the Isle of Wight brought in as part of their coastal protection project. This project seeks to actively reduce the damage caused by coastal erosion and land slipping and prevent it in the future. The coastal erosion is natural, but has been especially damaging in the last 100 years as the construction of certain buildings has heightened the damaging effect of the erosion. My question is: what is it that make me see Lyme Regis as more 'natural' and idyllic than the coastlines I grew up with? 

There is little aesthetic evidence of human interaction with the Lyme Regis coastal landscape other than the obvious houses, paths, and boats. Furthermore, Lyme Regis captures the notion of the pastoral, a mode of writing that celebrates nature as Eden-esque. As a holiday destination to retreat to, particularly in the summer months, it encompasses the key features of retreat and return, and idealisation common to the pastoral tradition. The quaint and colourful buildings tell of times gone by, giving Lyme Regis a sense of nostalgia, another trope of the pastoral. 

The beaches I frequented when growing up, however, were bleak landscapes evoking the anti-pastoral tradition in literature. Emphasising reality; showing the problems nature presents; and demythologising the literary (and in this case, cultural) idea of the paradise, the anti-pastoral is the antithesis of the pastoral tradition. Scattered with bottles and plastic bags the beaches, with the Fawley oil refinery rising in the background, display the reality of human interaction with nature: taking without concern and only giving back pollution and litter. Just as the landscape itself is bleak, the view of our interaction with nature is equally bleak. 

How can we reconcile these two views? 

While our cultural view of Lyme Regis does not match the reality of the landscape and our interaction with it, the coastal protection project could be seen as including aspects of what Terry Gifford terms the post-pastoral. This seeks to create a balance between the pastoral and anti-pastoral tradition, allowing us to connect emotionally with nature while recognising the flaws we have created within it. The appreciation of the beauty that the Dorset coast has to offer has inspired its protection and preservation. Although this does not necessarily suggest a movement from awe to humility that reduces our hubris, it does recognise the fact that humans are a part of nature's creative-destructive processes. Furthermore, it offers an answer to Gifford's question 'if nature is culture, is culture nature?' The answer being that the beach, or the summer retreat of the beach (embodied by Lyme Regis), has become embedded in the English tradition. Needless to say, the coastal protection project does not fully answer all the questions Gifford suggests that the post-pastoral should raise, but it does begin to offer answers to some.

Will our cultural opinion of Lyme Regis, traditionally pastoral, inch into the post-pastoral? Only time will tell. 

Bibliograpy

Dorestforyou.com Lyme Regis Coast protection Works, 2016. [Online] Available from: https://www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk/lyme [Accessed: 10/10/2016].

Gifford, Terry 'Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral and Post-Pastoral as Reading Strategies', 2012. [Online] Available from: http://www.terrygifford.co.uk/Pastoral%20reading.pdf [Accessed: 17/10/2016]. 

Photo by Daniel Palmer, previously unpublished.