by Denny Olson
In the last issue of the Post, I tried to point out the human tendency to frame our thinking about our relationship to the land that sustains us as “self-absorbed”. It is looking at nature in the framework of “what good is nature to me?” The range of responses to that question is wide – from extracting minerals and petroleum, seeing land without a house on it as a waste of a money-making opportunity, or clearing land of trees, selling them and plowing it for an agricultural monoculture – to silent walking and observing birds on the other end of that scale. That entire range of attitude about land is still in the context of “how can I get my personal enjoyment from that land?”
The danger there is that the intrinsic value of wild land is devalued and often lost. Nature is, first and foremost, our life-support supply for air to breathe, water to drink and materials for shelter from its nastier elements. (It is a cultural tragedy that many people are actually afraid of our own life support system.) Even more obscure are the incalculable intricacies of an ecosystem that supplies all of that to us. That vast system is based on relationships, not just living things. It has been honed to perfection over literally billions of years. And we have barely scratched the surface of understanding those complexities.
The need to pretend that we control any of that has landed us in deep trouble. The herd of humans is likely already too big for the pasture. You needn’t look any farther than our own Valley for evidence. And collectively, we are abusing the intricacies of nature on a global scale that may not be reversible. Changing the global weather patterns and warming the planetary climate is but one example.
Enter: Owen Sowerwine Area. Here we have a relatively natural system virtually on our doorstep. It offers a chance to experience the natural world in ways that are not consumptive, without the self-absorption of “it’s for my enjoyment”. In Owen Sowerwine, wildlife/bird habitat comes first. It is the primary reason that Flathead Audubon, Flathead Land Trust and Flathead Lakers are working toward a conservation easement. It is not a recreation easement. It is not a playground or a park. It has been managed by Flathead Audubon for over 20 years as a place to observe how nature takes its course – and as much as is possible, without altering this place for our uses. (The exception to that unwritten rule is expelling invasive plants, another effect of human use, and promoting restoration toward native river bottom ecosystems.) Here, education activities have been, and should be, compatible with much lower impact on those systems than humans are accustomed to.
If we are to learn how natural systems work, then it is only logical that, as much as possible, we minimize our impact. Collecting, gathering, making crafts, playing active games, trail running, mountain biking, loose dogs, noisy activities that would be disruptive to wild animals – these activities can be done anywhere – and nearly everywhere – else. Group use multiplies those effects by the number of students in the group. There are many, many playgrounds and other un-wild areas where these activities work just fine.
“Uses” are on a broad scale, of course. Just being there and moving quietly can have effects on some wildlife, plants and soils, but our educational objective at FAS is to minimize those effects and learn from those natural processes around us, not to make use of them, and thereby alter them. I’m hoping that this will remain Owen Sowerwine Area’s “prime directive”. This area IS different. It is a place of refuge for humans as well as wildlife. Psychological centering, quiet observation, peace based on solitude, learning about wildlife where they are relatively undisturbed by noise and rapid human movement – this is a place for that. And it is right next to us.
How does the river bottom world operate without us moderating it to fit our needs? This might be the only place where that kind of question can be answered. “We are part of nature too” is true in the context of nature forming our total life support system, but those systems don’t belong to us – we belong to them. BIG difference. Owen Sowerwine may well be one of the only local places where we can be “part of” and not “dominant to”.
Our cultural paradigm is that the world is here for only us and our enjoyment. Playing in a place is a far cry from learning from a place. For that, students will be asked to (quietly) observe natural happenings instead of using the place for our own fun quotient. That is an attitude lesson that can be taught no other way than by modeling. Coming away from an experience where we learned without altering, is a rare lesson that we humans will have to learn if we intend to continue as a species.
Our education efforts in Owen Sowerine will be intended to increase observation skills and be as invisible as is possible – cataloging observations, sitting and teaching kids how to do rudimentary breeding bird surveys (to find out whose “living room” we are sitting in), being motionless and silent and somewhat alone (safety considerations determining the degree), quiet, even silent walking – things that kids literally never experience in our crowded, noisy, virtual, screen-infested world.
I’m convinced that these kinds of lessons will prove to be key to our survival. Ironically, our survival is intricately and universally dependent on the health and survival of nature, which (so far) does include us. The unfortunate fact is that nature does not need us to be just fine. That is the critical humility lesson that starts with quiet observation of the way it really is, not the way we would like it to be.
Given our framework for thinking, students may never, ever, get this lesson anywhere else, and it might be the most important lesson our species may ever have the chance to learn. That’s why our next educational step in Owen Sowerwine Area will hopefully be turning our Flathead fifth-graders into observant Woods Detectives – clandestine hunters for the really cool stories. Perhaps we can replace fear of the wild with awe, and the “me” with “we”.