Last week, Heather and I went to check out the new encampment by Extinction Rebellion. It was September 2020 when we camped with them to protest against clearcutting and spraying parcels of forest off the Rifle Range road in West Inglisville (see Anatomy of a Protest).
The protest was deemed a success. Here we are, fifteen months later, facing the same issue in the Beal’s Meadow area, closer to Trout Lake. Obviously, nothing has changed in terms of Clearcutting on Crown Land in Annapolis County.
On both occasions, we discovered old derelict school buses, like this one shown, lost in the woods. It is our assumption that these buses were used as administrative vehicles for harvest crews or tree planters.
The buses are a poignant reminder that this landscape has been used (abused) for several decades. Imagine the stories that could be told about the relationship between the communities, the people, the wildlife and the land.
We have a literature that recognizes this relationship. It could be the writing of Ernest Buckler, or Dave Whitman writing about Roxbury, or the work of Mike Parker, or go back further to the Tent Dwellers. The lakes and wetlands have been given names: Eel Weir Lake, Beal’s Meadows, Crispe Bog. Where do they come from?
This week, we see two events.
- Strategic Tourism for Areas and Regions (STAR). STAR is an industry led regional tourism development planning process to help grow the tourism economy in the Annapolis Valley. Imagine the stories which could be told about this landscape.
- Community of Bridgetown meeting. December 8,2021. In September 2020 the then warden Timothy Habinsky and Larry Powell came out to the camp and expressed support for Sustainable Forestry and against Glyphosate spraying and its potential impact on our water supply. What is the position of the new Council?
Finally, from Emergence Magazine, Amitav Ghosh, in “Beings Seen and Unseen” (listen to the interview), ’discusses how the widespread silencing of nonhuman voices deeply entangled in capitalism and the geopolitical structure that sustains it, and calls on storytellers to lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining: decentering human narrative and re-centering stories of the land. (photo by Sumit Dayal via Emergence Magazine)
Acknowledgements
Heather shared in our discovery of the landscape and wildlife on South Mountain, whether by bicycle, ski or on foot. Nina Newington has provided an inspiration. Edward contributed the graphics.
References
STAR meeting. Tuesday December 7th MacDonald Museum, Middleton. 2 pm
County of Annapolis meeting. Wednesday December 8th. The Legion, Bridgetown. 7 pm.
Postscript
Today (Sunday) we went to find the ’blue bus’. There was fresh snow on the ground. Unfortunately, we ran out of light. I will find it, and share in a future blog.
Ernest Blair Experiment 