This year I have been engaging in the most exciting
undertaking of my life so far, exploring the concept of attunement as a writer
in natural environments. Over the course of the year I have sat in the branches
of trees, swam through frigid waters, climbed sandstone ledges and narrow
trails, all within the brief stretch of Bellingham coast that is the Chuckanut
Bay Estuary.
I like to think of the writing I’m doing as part environmentalism, part adventure, part rhetorical and ontological theory. As I trek and traverse through beautiful spaces, I am developing new ideas about the nature of, well, being in nature. This starts with attunement, which has been at the center of all of my interactions with the environment. How do we open our awareness to the world around us? How do we come into contact with our surroundings, and what comes of those varying and combined points of contact? |
Through attunement, metaphors come about as we try to take that which is not human into our experience. Subsequently, these metaphors get stitched together into cohesive narratives, and the environment begins to have a voice. Or rather, it always had a voice, and I have been learning how to listen to it, how to attune myself to it, and thus how to enter into a dialogue with the environment.
In this exploration of attunement in the estuary, I’ll be experimenting with a lot of ways to enter into that environmental dialogue. I’ll draw, photograph, write essays, write poetry, argue with trees, interview the landscape, all in pursuit of a revised conversation and relationship with the environment. And in a historical moment when we truly need to shift our understanding of our place in the world and our environmental impacts, the time has never been more right to go about this work.
In this exploration of attunement in the estuary, I’ll be experimenting with a lot of ways to enter into that environmental dialogue. I’ll draw, photograph, write essays, write poetry, argue with trees, interview the landscape, all in pursuit of a revised conversation and relationship with the environment. And in a historical moment when we truly need to shift our understanding of our place in the world and our environmental impacts, the time has never been more right to go about this work.