Forest Bathing at the End of the World

Stormy Crossing

Hailing from Australia, Glenn Albrecht recently wrote on his FB page, “From Earth Emotions” (2019):

"I am fully supportive of experiences such as "forest bathing" (Shinrin-yoku) that give back to the body the elements it needs for physical health, for example, enhanced oxygen levels. I do this at my property at Duns Creek. The subtle combination of trees, running water, wind and birdsong, all combine to give my body what it needs to rest and recuperate its energy."

I wrote Glenn back. “Maybe that’s why I feel so peaceful again here in Maine.”

After more than two decades of travel and time in New York City, I have returned to the Ghost Nets (1990-2000) site https://www.avivarahmani.com/ghostnets.  The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA) asked me to reflect on observations at and updates about the site, where I am now. My last paragraph for them was,

After years living off-island, I’ve returned to live full-time on Ghost Nets. My next steps will be informed by what the site teaches me. Climate change has effected further transformation. I expect new insights to emerge and intend to position evidence of what I see in new forms, created for the boisterous virtual world.

Ghost Nets directly and indirectly restored 30 acres of degraded coastal wetlands habitat as works of art. Those restorations inspired my original transdisciplinary theoretical approach to land management (trigger point theory) as a series of rules for change in a complex adaptive model that might resist ecocide. The Blued Trees project evolved from Ghost Nets as an expression of trigger point theory and continues to evolve in this opera as an expression of resistance to ecocide. My approach expressed as legal theory was adjudicated in a mock trial (The Blued Trees Symphony), giving lawyers a new tool in our environmental wars.

The staging I plan to develop now will culminate my history of visual experiments to create a hybrid presentation (virtually and at a physical venue) to compliment the composition and libretto of the opera. The final opera will be performed with a phone app and in physical venues. I hope that returning to live full time on the original site will allow my observations of the site to inform how to stage the opera across platforms. My experiences of the delicate coastal habitat as it struggles to adapt to climate change and sea level rise will inflect the project’s outcome for a broad public audience.

I am committed to this research. Following the threads of this project has engaged me and has continued to evolve from my relationship with the site since 1989, when I began Safety, my first work on Vinalhaven Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinalhaven,_Maine, the site of Ghost Nets. Safety was a short project to understand what protection and security could mean. At the time, I imagined the island as a destination at the end of the United States and the last place that ecocide would touch. As Putin’s abominable war rages across Eastern Europe and the Radical Right gains international power, I wonder if we can ever imagine safety again fully reflect my premise that my life must reflect my philosophy. My finances are only a small part of my complicated story. My philosophy is that most of us must pull in our traces to live more sustainably with the Earth. Returning to Vinalhaven to bear witness to the inexorable effects of self-centered greed is also a way to embrace a lighter footprint on this besieged planet.

I would have thought the disaster in Ukraine might have focused greater attention on connections between categories of consequences, like fossil fuel hegemonies and fascist totalitarianism from the Koch brothers to Putin to the RNC to ecocide, floods, fires and drought. Evidently, motivations for denial, passivity and enabling are legion.

Still, I confess, if adequate funding came my way, I’d return to New York City at least part-time in a heartbeat. It is still art Mecca and where my intellectual community lives. Meanwhile, I will bathe in the peace of our Boreal Forest, ironically named Taiga, after Russian habitat, as I watch the waves lap ever higher at my shore.