Cymatics: How Frequency Changes the Very Nature of Matter and Energy

September 12, 2020September 13, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 5 Comments

Reeds in Otonabee River (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Music can help recover damaged brain function by activating parts of the brain that are nearby—Oliver Sacks

If, indeed God moves us to express that within us which is divine, then poetry is the language of the heart and music is the language of the soul—Nina Munteanu

We are creatures of rhythm; circadian, diurnal, seasonal. Let’s face it; our environment—light especially—affects our behavior, psychologically, physiologically and even socially. For instance, mood-altering chemicals generated in the pineal gland in our brain, are partially affected by the light received from our retina. In an earlier post, entitled “The Mozart Effect: The Power of Music” I discussed how music can heal the body, strengthen the mind and unlock the creative spirit. For instance, music with a pulse of about sixty beats per minute can shift consciousness from the beta wave (ordinary consciousness at 14-20 Hz) toward the alpha range (heightened awareness at 8-13 Hz), enhancing alertness and general well-being.

Our world is composed of energy, light, sound and matter, all expressed at different frequencies.

The study of cymatics, coined by Hans Jenny from the Greek word kyma (wave), explores how sound affects gases, liquids, plasmas and solids and how vibrations, in the broad sense, generate and influence patterns, shapes and moving processes. When sound travels through non-solids it moves in longitudinal waves called compression waves. In matter, the medium is displaced by sound waves, causing it to oscillate at a frequency relative to the sound, and visible patterns emerge.

Water drops in rainfall on Otanabee River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Robert Hooke, and Ernst Chladni investigated this phenomenon in the 1400s, 1500s, 1700s, and 1800s, respectively. In 1967, Hans Jenny, a Swiss doctor, artist, and researcher, published Kymatik-Wellen und Schwingungen mit ihrer Struktur und Dynamik/ Cymatics (The Structure and Dynamics of Waves and Vibrations). Like Chladni two hundred years earlier, Jenny showed what happened when one took various materials like sand, spores, iron filings, water, and viscous substances, and placed them on vibrating metal plates and membranes. What then appeared were shapes and motion-patterns which varied from the nearly perfectly ordered and stationary to those that were turbulently developing, organic, and constantly in motion.

Using crystal oscillators and his invention called a “tonoscope” to set plates and membranes vibrating, Jenny controlled frequency and amplitude/volume to demonstrate that simple frequencies and songs could rearrange the essential molecular structure of water and other materials.

Raindrops falling among reeds in Otonabee River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Jenny was convinced that biological evolution was a result of vibrations, and that their nature determined the ultimate outcome. He speculated that every cell has its own frequency and that a number of cells with the same frequency create a new frequency which is harmonious with the original, which in its turn possibly formed an organ that also created a new frequency in harmony with the two preceding ones. Jenny was saying that the key to understanding how we can heal the body with the help of tones lies in our understanding of how different frequencies influence genes, cells and various structures in the body.

Boldly extended his tonoscope research into voice and language, Jenny discovered that when the vowels of ancient Hebrew and Sanskrit were pronounced, the sand took the shape of the written symbols for these vowels, while modern languages didn’t generate the same result. This has led spiritual philosophers to ponder if “sacred languages” (including Tibetan and Egyptian) have the power to influence and transform physical reality, to create things through their inherent power, or through the recitation or singing of sacred texts, to heal a person who has gone “out of tune”?

Cymatics photographer and author Alexander Lauterwasser showed that:

Higher frequencies created more intricate and complex patterns
Typical line types were radial and spherical or elliptical lines that repeated the outer form of the perimeter
When asymmetrical shapes developed at certain frequencies, symmetrical shapes always formed in between

In a controversial movie called “Water”, Rustum Roy, professor at the State University of Pennsylvania and Member of the International Academy of Sciences, suggested that water has “memory”, based on the structure it takes on as a result of electromagnetic fields and various frequencies to which it is exposed.

Rain falling among reeds in Otonabee River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

I’m a practicing aquatic scientist and this is what I find fascinating: noting that the human brain is 75% water, it is not surprising that we can be affected by the shape and form of water itself—and, in turn, may shape water with our minds. This is in itself a startling admission and opens up a myriad of controversial topics, which many scientists find hard to reconcile and refuse to investigate, let alone entertain. And, yes, I am edging into the area of metaphysics, of “science fiction”, of “fanciful thinking”. A place populated by heretics who do “questionable science”, those rogue mavericks who dare step outside the realm of traditional science to imagine, to dare ask the unaskable, to dare pursue a truth using unconventional means.

Here’s my point: water is important to us in ways science can’t even begin to explain. Because science can’t yet explain it, should we abandon the potential and its investigation? All good science was once perceived as magic before it was understood.

Let me take it one step further:

I posit that our entire bodies are sending and receiving vibrations at different frequencies with our environment, other people, other animals around us, inanimate objects, even the seemingly ‘empty’ space. Our intimate relationship with frequency and waves has permeated our culture more than you may realize, including the metaphors we have seamlessly adopted in our common language: terms like “bad vibes”, “making waves”, “you can feel the tension”, and “you could cut the air in here with a knife”.

If you think this is all too weird, consider the weirdness of quantum mechanics, which shows us that not only is “solid” matter made up mostly of energy and “empty” space but what makes a solid a chair vs. you sitting on it is the vibration of its energy. Quantum science has demonstrated that light and matter are made of both particles and waves (New Scientist, May 6, 2010) and can exist in two simultaneous states. Let’s consider, for instance, “entanglement” (quantum non-local connection), the notion that particles can be linked in such a way that changing the quantum state of one instantaneously affects the other, even if they are light years apart. And what does it mean when solid flows, ghost-like, through itself under certain conditions? Or parallel universes created by splitting realities? Check out my historical fantasy novel The Last Summoner for a unique take on this popular notion.

Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feyman says of the paradoxes presented by quantum mechanics, “the ‘paradox’ is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be.”

Magic, again… The mind is powerful and graceful in its unanswerable and infinite beauty.

Near shore of Otonabee River early evening, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Writing in Sync

September 5, 2020August 14, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 1 Comment

Ostrich ferns, Little Rouge forest, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

“At the heart of the universe is a steady, insistent beat: the sound of cycles in sync,” says Steven Strogatz in the opening to his compelling book, Sync: the emerging science of spontaneous order. He then describes how every night along the tidal rivers of Malaysia, thousands of fireflies congregate in the mangroves and flash in unison, without any leader or cue from the environment. “Even our bodies are symphonies of rhythm, kept alive by the relentless, coordinated firing of thousands of pacemaker cells in our hearts…almost as if nature has an eerie yearning for order,” adds Strogatz. The tendency to synchronize pervades the universe, from atoms to animals, and people to planets.

To be in sync is to intuitively connect (which is what spontaneous order is) and “know”… Each of you has felt that “knowing” that otherworldly, euphoric wave of resonating with something that is more than the visible world: when the hairs on the back of your neck tingle as you write that significant scene or trembling with giddy energy as you create that perfect line on a painting … or glowing with a deep abiding warmth when you defend a principle … or the surging frisson you share with fellow musicians on that exquisite set piece.

These are all what I call “God moments”. And they don’t happen by chasing after them; they sneak up on us when we’re not looking. They come to us when we focus outward and embrace our wonder for this world. When we quiet our minds and nurture our souls with beauty. It is then that what we had been seeking naturally comes to us. Like a gift.

It’s the blue pill to a new world of synchrony.

This teaches us above all else that we are all journeying together and part of something greater.

Wood ferns in Jackson Creek park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

I want to share with you my own experience of synchronicity in art. When I’m working on a story, I find that events, opportunities, actions and resources directly germane to my project present themselves: watching an applicable movie that a friend chose for us to see; picking up a newspaper (which I seldom do) and reading a relevant article; looking for something on the internet and finding something totally different (ok; that happens to me all the time); a friend out of the blue introduces a pertinent topic, or someone you haven’t seen in a long time bumps into you with significant news. As though the universe was providing me with what I needed. Of course, my mind was focused on anything to do with my current piece. It was as though I had donned a concentrating filter, one that would amplify relevant details. I’ll go further: I was unconsciously acting in a way that was bringing me more information relevant to my project. Ask and you shall receive.

Ostrich fern, Little Rouge River woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Jake Kotze says it this way: “Synchronicity happens when we notice the bleed-through from one seemingly separate thing into another—or when we for a brief moment move beyond the mind’s divisions of the world.” Swiss psychologist Carl Jung introduced synchrony in the 1920s as “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” The idea of seemingly unrelated events intersecting to produce meaningful patterns has spawned new notions of thought from the scientific study of spontaneous order in the universe (synchrony), to Synchromysticism — the discovery of convergent archetypal symbols in pop culture (e.g., books, music and film). Author Sibyl Hunter tells us that “Sync operates as an undercurrent of divine awareness personified through the myriad processes and symbols that make up the building blocks of our reality. Within that current, we spin our modern-day myths into books, fairy tales and movies, subconsciously retelling ourselves the same story over and over.”

As the myth builders of today, authors tap in to the synchronicity of ancient story, of resonating archetypes and metaphor and the “mythic journey”. To write in sync.

Joseph Campbell reminds us that, “Anyone writing a creative work knows that you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself … you become the carrier of something that is given to you from the Muses or God. What the shaman or seer [or artist] brings forth is something that is waiting to be brought forth in everyone.” It’s sync in action.

Oak tree amid Ostrich fern, Little Rouge River woodland, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Forest path blackwalnut virginia creeper warm Pb

Path through profusion of Black walnut and locust forest, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

The Mozart Effect & the Power of Music

August 29, 2020August 29, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 2 Comments

Joe-Pye weed, Jackson Creek, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Music is a holy place, a cathedral so majestic that we can sense the magnificence of the universe, and also a hovel so simple and private that none of us can plumb its deepest secrets—Don Campbell

Don Campbell calls it the “Mozart Effect” in his book of the same name: the ability of music to heal the body, strengthen the mind and unlock the creative spirit.

You’ve all felt it—its rhythm resonating with your throbbing heart, soothing your mind, calming your breath. Or you’ve felt the reverse— depending on the music. Whatever your response, says Campbell, music produces mental and physical effects in you; and—I would venture to add—in all things animate and inanimate (see my next post on Cymatics). Therapeutic uses of music are many:

Music can slow down and equalize brain waves: music with a pulse of about sixty beats per minute can shift consciousness from the beta wave (ordinary consciousness at 14-20 Hz) toward the alpha range (heightened awareness at 8-13 Hz), enhancing alertness and general well-being
Music affects the heartbeat, pulse rate and blood pressure: a study of expectant mothers at the College of Nursing at Haohsiung Medical University (Taiwan) demonstrated significant reductions in stress, anxiety and depression after two weeks of listening to Brahms lullaby, Beethoven and Debussy and traditional Chinese children’s songs
Music can regulate stress-related hormones: Anesthesiologists reported that levels of stress hormones like ACTH, prolactic and HGH all declined in those listening to relaxing music
Music and sound can boost the immune function: A Michigan State University study demonstrated that listening to music for fifteen minutes increased levels of interlukin-1 in the blood from 12.5 to 14 percent (interlukin is involved in the immune system, protecting against AIDS, cancer and other diseases)
Music improves productivity: a University of Wisconsin study of ninety people copyediting a manuscript found that accuracy in those listening to light classical music improved 21.3% compared with those listening to a popular commercial radio format at 2.4%
Music can strengthen memory and learning: studies have shown that music increases stamina during exercise in addition to the ability to concentrate.

Joe-Pye Weed, Jackson Creek, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

When I was pregnant with my son, I felt an overwhelming urge to listen to classical music (mostly Beethoven, Debussy, Ravel and Mozart) and soft “new age” Celtic music (mostly Enya). What I’d intuitively felt is now known: music calms or stimulates the movement and heart rate of a baby in the womb. It has also been shown that children who receive regular music training demonstrate better motor skills, math ability, and reading performance than those who don’t. High school students who sing or play an instrument score up to fifty points higher on SAT scores than those who don’t.

These observations are borne out by another observation: that adult musician’s brains generally exhibit more EEG (brainwave) coherence than those of non-musicians.

Music is a language understood instinctively by all peoples because it communicates directly to the soul. Darwin suggested that music may have played a role in the evolution of language, comparing the sounds of speech to the way birdsong is used in courtship, reports Caroline Green in the Jan/Feb 2010 Issue of BBC Knowledge. “Some have referred to this as a ‘musical proto-language’.”

In an article in the Fall 2009 Issue of Super Consciousness Campbell eloquently described music as, “the sounds of earth and sky, of tides and storms. It is the echo of a train in the distance, the pounding reverberations of a carpenter at work. From the first cry of life to the last sigh of death, from the beating of our hearts to the soaring of our imaginations, we are enveloped by sound and vibration every moment of our lives. It is the primal breath of creation itself, the speech of angels and atoms, the stuff of which life and dreams, souls and stars, are ultimately fashioned.”

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Joe-Pye Weed, Jackson Creek, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Age of Water Podcast: Interview with The Water Brothers

August 22, 2020March 17, 2022 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

We are now living in the Age of Water. Water is the new “gold”, with individuals, corporations and countries positioning themselves around this precious resource. Water is changing everything. The Age of Water Podcast covers anything of interest from breaking environmental news to evergreen material. This also includes human interest stories, readings of eco-literature, discussion of film and other media productions of interest.

Join the discussion!

In Episode six of Age of Water, we join Canadian film educators The Water Brothers—Alex and Tyler Mifflin—in Toronto, Ontario, where they discuss their eco-adventure TV series and other documentary initiatives to educate, entertain and connect people with water and environmental issues. Alex and Tyler are two young eco-adventurer brothers who travel the world to explore our relationship with water. What are the problems and where will the solutions come from? The next generation takes us on the search.

The Water Brothers

The Water Brothers is an eco-adventure documentary series that follows brothers, Alex and Tyler Mifflin, as they explore the world, uncover the planet’s most important and leading-edge water stories and interview top scientists and experts on solutions to help overcome the many and diverse environmental challenges we all face. There is nowhere they won’t go from high mountain peaks to the bottom of the ocean.

Alex and Tyler are passionate about the subject of water conservation and use their respective educations in film and environmental studies to create this award-winning series. Alex is the lead researcher, co-writer and co-host and Tyler is the co-host, director, videographer and co-producer. They share a love of travel and adventure, a passion for the subject and a powerful desire to communicate their passion to audiences, especially their own generation.

Water Brothers

Age of Water talked to the Water Brothers about their adventures from the Kumbh Mela on the Ganges River—largest gathering of humans on earth—to diving into dead zones to sailing into the middle of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. The Water Brothers circle the globe to bring back stories that affect, inspire and educate viewers.

The Water Brothers airs in Canada on TVO, Knowledge Network, and Radio – Canada in Quebec, as well as in over 50 countries worldwide.

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in May 2020.

To the Mystic Forest by Bev Gorbet–an Ekphrastic Poem

August 15, 2020August 26, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 3 Comments

Trail through mixed birch-pine forest at Petroglyph Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Since moving temporarily to Peterborough during COVID-19, I have been on an adventure with Nature in the Kawartha region, north of Toronto. The region contains a chain of lakes that form the upper watershed of the Trent River; the lakes are situated on the boundary between the Paleozoic limestone region of the Golden Horseshoe and the Precambrian granite Canadian Shield of northern and central Ontario.

I’ve explored several local parks and lakes with wonderful swamp cedar on the Otonabee River and Jackson Creek and uphill beech-maple forest in the Trent Nature Sanctuary.

Farther afield, I wandered through the pine forests of Petroglyph Park, north of Peterborough, with its intriguing meromictic McGinnis Lake.

When I shared some of my Petroglyph Park photos with Toronto poet and friend Bev Gorbet, she was inspired to write this poem. I am overjoyed to share her ekphrastic poem with you here:

Trail through pine forest, Petroglyph Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

To the Mystic Forest: Reflections on Natural Beauty

Forests of the mind, wild forests of the heart…
The ethereal sounds: windstorm and echo
On a spring day…
The wind’s fierce flight through bended bough,
Through swaying treetop

High high above, the windswept call, the cry,
All the beauty in a wilderness forest…
The whispering grasses, below,
Song all bend, all flow in a cathedral clearing…

Aging white trillium, Petroglyph Park, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Radiant beams, sunlight and shadow peppering
The moving boughs overhead…
Azure and lavender, sky-swept cloud
And mystic glow…

Oh! great forests of the mind,
Great forest of the heart…
A deepest beauty along an existential meridian:
The heart passionately centred, deeply into reflection:
Haunted days and alone

Wind call and cry, whisper and sigh
Great wilderness lands, wide forested plains
All the wondrous beauty, all the holy mystery:
Windswept, wind-tossed skies, the great forests
Mystery glorious, mystic days beyond time.

Bev Gorbet, June 2020

Bev Gorbet is a Toronto poet and retired school teacher. She has published several poems with the Retired Teachers Organization and most recently in “Literary Connection IV: Then and Now” (In Our Words Inc., 2019), edited by Cheryl Antao Xavier.

Petroglyph Park pine forest trail (artwork by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Age Of Water Podcast: Nina Reads from “The Overstory”

August 8, 2020March 17, 2022 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

We are now living in the Age of Water. Water is the new “gold”, with individuals, corporations and countries positioning themselves around this precious resource. Water is changing everything. The Age of Water Podcast covers anything of interest from breaking environmental news to evergreen material. This also includes human interest stories, readings of eco-literature, discussion of film and other media productions of interest.

In this episode of Age of Water, Nina reads from the eco-fiction book “Overstory” by Richard Powers, an exploration of the relationship of trees and humanity…

At the heart of Richard Powers’s The Overstory are the pivotal lives of two women, botanist Patricia Westerford and college student Olivia Vandergriff. Both will inspire a movement against the destruction of forests.

Patricia Westerford—whose work resembles that of Diana Beresford-Kroeger (author of The Global Forest) and UBC’s Suzanne Simard—is a shy introvert who discovers that trees communicate, learn, trade goods and services, and have intelligence. When she shares her discovery, she is ridiculed by her peers and loses her position. But, just as with Lynn Margulis and her theory of endosymbiosis, Westerford is finally validated. She is the archetypal ‘mother tree’, the metaphoric Tachigali versicolor, who ultimately brings the tangle of narratives together through meaning. Westerford writes in her book The Secret Forest:

“There are no individuals in a forest, no separable events. The bird and the branch it sits on are a joint thing. A third or more of the food a big tree makes may go to feed other organisms. Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch, and a nearby Douglas fir may suffer…Fungi mine stone to supply their trees with minerals. They hunt springtails, which they feed to their hosts. Trees, for their part, store extra sugar in their fungi’s synapses, to dole out to the sick and shaded and wounded. A forest takes care of itself, even as it builds the local climate it needs to survive…A tree is a wondrous thing that shelters, feeds, and protects all living things. It even offers shade to the axmen who destroy it.”

Olivia Vandergriff miraculously survives an electrocution to become an ecowarrior after she begins to hear the voices of the trees. She rallies others to embrace the urgency of activism in fighting the destruction of California’s redwoods and even camps in the canopy of one of the trees to deter the logging. When the ancient tree she has unsuccessfully protected is felled, the sound is “like an artillery shell hitting a cathedral.” Vandergriff weeps for this magnificent thousand-year old tree. So do I. Perhaps the real heroes of this novel are the ancient trees.

In his review of Overstory in The Guardian, Banjamin Markovits wrote, “ There is something exhilarating…in reading a novel whose context is wider than human life. Like Moby-Dick, The Overstory leaves you with a slightly adjusted frame of reference… And I found, while reading, that some of what was happening to his characters passed into my conscience, like alcohol into the bloodstream, and left a feeling behind of grief or guilt, even after I put it down.”

I further explore the use of metaphor and other storytelling devices used by Richard Powers in his strongly symbolic novel in my writing guidebook “Ecology of Story: World as Character.”

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Talking with Author Lucia Monica Gorea about “Yukon, the Polar Bear”

August 1, 2020July 27, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / 1 Comment

I met my fellow Romanian author friend Lucia Monica Gorea several years ago at a writer’s function in Vancouver and our (Romanian) passion for writing and storytelling made us fast friends. At the time Lucia was teaching writing at UBC and was co-hosting a radio show on Vancouver Coop Radio. She interviewed me several times about my science fiction publications, about water, my limnology and my eco-fiction.

Co-host Lucia with Nina and Coop Radio team, Vancouver, BC

Nina Munteanu and Lucia Monica Gorea at Gaudeamus Book Fair, Bucharest, Romania

We also together attended the launch of our books with Romanian publisher Editura Paralela 45 in Bucharest Romania at the Gaudeamus Book Fair. I was launching my translated book on fiction writing, “Manual de Scriere Creativa” (The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now!) and Lucia was launching her English / Romanian translation of Petre Ispirescu’s fairy tale “The Morning Star and the Evening Star.”

I’ve since moved to Ontario and teach writing at the University of Toronto and Lucia moved to Nanaimo, BC, where she teaches at Vancouver Island University.

I recently interviewed Lucia, who just reissued her most recent children’s book “Yukon,” a wonderfully illustrated story about a young polar bear who loses his mother and goes on a perilous adventure:

You recently republished your children’s climate fiction book “Yukon” through Bestsellers Publishing Academy. Tell us about the book.

Yukon, the Polar Bear is a story that brings awareness about global warming and climate change and teaches children how important our planet is. The reader is not only drawn into the story, but he or she learns how climate change affects polar bear habitat, and how polar bears will eventually become extinct if we don’t take action now.

Yukon and his mom

Since younger children can’t easily grasp concepts such as, glaciers and sea ice melting, or ocean acidification, they can better understand the issues our planet faces at the moment, through stories that are age appropriate.

What inspired you to write “Yukon”?

I have always been fascinated by polar bears. I believe that they are so cool.

Seeing that their habitat is in huge danger, I wanted to bring my small apport to educate children, by letting them know how important our planet is through this children’s book.

Yukon alone on a melting ice float after losing his mother

Who do you hope will read “Yukon”?

“Yukon” is intended for grade school children, ages 7+, for parents, and teachers alike. The topic of climate change can initiate interesting discussions and debates at school or home, during circle time, book clubs, or science classes. Teachers can assign research topics and invite children to further explore polar bear habitat, and learn how the Arctic animals are being affected by global warming.

What does the polar bear represent in our awareness and fight against climate change?

Polar bears represent a “healthy planet.” As climate change forces polar bears to spend longer time offshore, they come in contact with Arctic coastal communities. Unfortunately, these interactions sometimes end badly for both humans and bears. At the same time, the melting of the ice is resulting in more polar bears spending longer periods on land.

The expansion of offshore petroleum installations and operations in the Arctic are expected to increase in number. This expansion would affect polar bears and their habitat in many negative ways. As oil tankers and cargo ships in Arctic waters increase, so do the risks of polar bear disturbance. It is our responsibility to protect these iconic creatures. It is no wonder that the polar bear is of great cultural significance to the Canadian people. For the Inuit and many northern communities, polar bears are especially significant culturally, spiritually, and economically.

Jasper teaches Yukon how to survive on terra firma

In your book, Yukon meets a brown bear named Jasper and Jasper’s family teaches Yukon how to feed and take care of himself in his new environment. How close do you think this matches what is already happening in our northern regions as melting sea ice is forcing polar bears onto dry land into northern communities and the Inuvialuit Game Council reports that more and more grizzly bears are moving into Canada’s High Arctic? Is this heralding a future written by climate change?

Experts say that interbreeding is happening more frequently now due to climate change.

With climate change, grizzly bears are moving further north, so there is more overlap between grizzly bears and polar bears in terms of their range. A hybrid bear is unofficially called a grolar bear if the sire is a grizzly bear, and a pizzly bear if the sire is a polar bear. A third potential name is nanurlak — a word combining the Inuit-language words for polar bear and grizzly, nanuk and aklak.

Grizzly bear + Polar bear = Pizzly or Grolar (depending on who the mother bear is)

Grizzly bears in Alaska and Canada are moving north as their environment warms, bringing them into contact with polar bears located on the coastline

“…predicting that far into the future is a challenge and it really depends on what we do about global warming as a whole,” says Andrew Derocher, bear biologist.

Will you do an educational tour with the book?

Absolutely! As soon as COVID- 19 will not pose a threat to BC schools, and to schools around the country, and when the students are safe to return to class, I plan a reading and educational tour on Vancouver Island, then I will visit various schools within the province.

Where can individuals and schools purchase “Yukon”?

“Yukon” can be purchased in both paperback and electronic format on Amazon, Draft to Digital, Smashwords, Ingram, and Barnes and Noble.

What projects are you working on next?

I have already started working on two projects. One is a How-to book titled, “Write! Publish! Sell!” – and the second book is a collection of supernatural short stories that take place in my native Transylvania, “The Hills of Magherani.”

On the podcast “Age of Water”, co-host Claudiu Murgan and I interviewed Lucia about her book, about young readers and climate change, and about writing in general. The podcast episode with Lucia will air in December, 2020.

More about Lucia Monica Gorea

Lucia Monica Gorea

Lucia Monica Gorea, is a Canadian poet and award-winning author of fifteen books spanning multiple genres including poetry, short stories, a historical novel, ESL texts, children’s books, fairy tales, and translations.

The Transylvanian province of Romania, which filled Lucia with literary passion inspired her to write at a young age. She graduated from the University of Bucharest with degrees in English, French and Linguistics then earned her PhD in English and Education in the USA.

Her interest in history inspired The Impaler, her debut novel, which tells the captivating and intriguing story of Vlad the Impaler. She has also written Journey Through My Soul—a collection of love and mystical poems, Welcome to America! ESL Games and Classroom Activities, and Speak English for Success. Lucia also wrote several children’s stories that were inspired by her son, Alex: How Alex Saved Christmas, The Crow That Swallowed a Pearl, Halloween in Transylvania, and Yukon, the Polar Bear.

Lucia with young girl, reading her translated book at Gaudeamus

Lucia translated several fairy tales and poetry books from Romanian into English: The Enchanted Turtle, Aleodor the Emperor, The Morning Star and the Evening Star, and The Enchanted Pig, fairy tales authored by Petre Ispirescu.

Lucia was the keynote speaker at the 8^th International Symposium on Translation, Interpretation, and Terminology in Havana (2013). Lucia currently teaches English courses at Vancouver Island University in British Columbia, and graduate studies at Atlantic International University in the United States.

Lucia founded BestSellers Publishing Academy – Your Story Must Be Told in 2019. She also founded Poetry Around the World, Monica’s Writers’ Café and Poets and Writers’ Café, online groups. She hosted radio (World Poetry Café Radio Show) and television poetry shows (Poetry Around the World) in Portland, Oregon, Vancouver, and Nanaimo, BC.

More about the Polar Bear

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at least twice as fast as the global average and sea ice cover is diminishing by nearly four per cent per decade.

The primary habitat of the polar bear is sea ice, which they use to hunt seals. Polar bears live in the Arctic regions of Canada, Greenland/Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States. The primary habitat of the polar bear is sea ice, which they use to hunt seals. Polar bears feed on ringed seals that live at the ice edge; the bears get two thirds of the energy they need for the entire year in late spring and early summer. Sea ice loss due to climate change poses the single largest threat to polar bear numbers according to a recent comprehensive review. As the ice retreats earlier in spring and forms later in winter, the bears have less time to hunt prey. Consequences mean that the bears average weight declines and fewer cubs survive; the ones that do are smaller. Warming has also caused bear dens to collapse, trapping a female’s young.

Scientists’ best estimate is that there’s a 70% chance the global population of polar bears will fall by more than a third within the next three generations.

Polar bear cubs in their den

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Reconciling Yesterday’s Future with Today’s Past

July 25, 2020June 20, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

A worker tied to “the machine” in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

Our predictions and visions of the future are certainly predicated on our perceptions of the present and the past. So, what happens when yesterday’s “future” collides with today’s past? Well, retro-fiction, alternate history and steam-punk, you quip, eyes askance with mischief: edgy sociopathic Sherlock Holmes with bipolar or obsessive /compulsive tendencies; flying aircraft carriers in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, robot-like workers of Metropolis…

But what of the vision itself? History provides us with a panoply of realized predictions in speculative fiction:

In 1961, Stanislaw Lem’s novel Return From the Stars predicted the invention of the touch pad, iPhone, iPad and Kindle. The telescreens that monitored the citizens of George Orwell’s Oceania in his dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was reflected, twenty years later, in the first closed circuit TV (CCTV) installed in the United Kingdom. Almost a century before the Internet was conceived, Mark Twain alluded to the future of a global, pervasive information network. In his 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke discussed a future where people scanned headlines online and got their news through RSS feeds. In his 1888 novel Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy describes a “future” society in 2000 where money is eliminated due to the proliferation of plastic credit cards. Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report accurately predicted personalized ads, voice-controled homes, facial and optical recognition, and gesture-based computing. Other advances and usage of technology have been predicted in speculative literature, including body scans, RFIDs, spy-surveillance, and touch screen interfaces.

Tom Cruise’s character using gesture-based computing in the film “Minority Report”

1950s ad for flying car of future

But there have been many speculations not realized. Where are the flying cars? Where are the moon colonies, rotating space stations and space elevator? What of the envisioned totalitarian states not realized; civilizations not demolished; utopias not developed?

Are those past dystopian or utopian visions failed attempts at predicting a future that eluded their writers? Or is it a question more of defining vision in speculative writing?

Ray Bradbury suggested that “the function of science fiction is not only to predict the future but to prevent it.”

There are, in most cases, no technological impediments to the flying car, the jetpack, and moon-bases; only cultural ones. “These SF predictions ought to be viewed as visions of where we could be, as opposed to where we will be, or, keeping Bradbury in mind, visions of where we don’t want to go and, thankfully, have mostly managed to avoid to date,” says Steve Davidson of Grasping for the Wind. “Perhaps it’s all cultural,” he adds.

How and why is it that our contemporary view of dystopian and utopian speculative fiction has shifted from an open-minded imaginative acceptance of “predictions” nested within a cautionary or visionary tale to a knowledge-based demand for largely unattainable predictive accuracy?

George Orwell wrote his dystopian satire in 1949 about a mind-controlled society in response to the Cold War. The book was a metaphor “against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism,” said Orwell in his 1947 essay Why I Write, adding, “Good prose is like a windowpane.” Was Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four a failed novel because the real 1984 didn’t turn out quite like his 1984? Hugo Award-winning novelist Robert J. Sawyer suggests that we consider it a success, “because it helped us avoid that future. So just be happy that the damn dirty apes haven’t taken over yet.”

Dystopian and utopian literature, like all good allegory, provides us with scenarios predicated on a concrete premise. What if we kept doing this?…What if that went on unchecked?… What if we decided to end this?…

A hundred years before 1984, Edward Bellamy published Looking Backward, “a romance of an ideal world”. It tells the story of a young man who falls into a hypnotic sleep in 1887, waking up in 2000 when the world has evolved into a great socialist paradise. It sold over a million copies and ranked only behind Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ as the top best-seller of the era. Looking Backward laid out a futuristic socialism, or was it a socialistic future?

At any rate, it influenced a large number of intellectuals and generated an unprecedented political mass movement. The book spawned experiments in communal living and fed socialist movements that promoted the nationalization of all industry and the elimination of class distinctions. Bellamy’s book was cited in many Marxist polemic works. Groups all over the world praised and embraced its ideals: Crusading Protestant ministers, American feminists, Australian trade unionists, British town planners, Bolshevik propagandists, French technocrats, German Zionists, and Dutch welfare-state advocates.

Bellamy’s conviction that cooperation among humans is healthier than competition formed the basis of Looking Backward. He predicted a revolution in retail that resembled today’s warehouse clubs and big-box stores. He also predicted a card system much like a modern debit card and people using enhanced telephone lines to listen to shows and music.

“Socialism, of course, had different connotations in the 19th century when it rose, principally as a backlash to the brutalities of industrialization and the exploitation of the workers by the ruling class,” says Tony Long of Wired Magazine. Bellamy’s socialism is perhaps best described as a syndicalism than what most of us think of as socialism today. Long somberly adds, “Were he alive today, Bellamy might note, with interest, that while the worst excesses of the industrial age are gone, the exploitation continues. Had Bellamy lived to the ripe old age of 150, he no doubt would have been disappointed to find capitalism running amok, and his fellow man no less greedy and self-serving than in his own time. But he didn’t live to be 150. In fact, Bellamy was still a relatively young man when he died of tuberculosis in 1898.”

So, what happens when history catches up to the vision?

In a foreward to a later printing of Brave New World years after it was first published, Aldous Huxley explained why, when given the chance to revise the later edition, he left it exactly as it was initially written twenty years earlier:

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is almost an undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

Art also has its morality, and many of the rules of this morality are the same as, or at least analogous to, the rules of ordinary ethics. Remorse, for example is as undesirable in relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behavior. The badness should be hunted out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed at its first execution, to spend one’s middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth–all this is surely vain and futile. And that is why this new Brave New World is the same as the old one. Its defects as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them I should have to rewrite the book–and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I should probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of such merits as it originally possessed. And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone and to think about something else.

And with that, I leave you with a quote:

“…the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions.”–Eckhart Tolle

Snowing in New York City (photo by Nina Munteanu)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

The Legacy of Trees: Purposefully Wandering Vancouver’s Stanley Park

July 18, 2020July 5, 2020 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

Winter on the sea wall (Heritage House)

“In the gorgeously colourful fall of 2017, I had a sudden thought: “I live next to Stanley Park, one of the world’s most beloved and best parks. How have I not noticed? Of course I had noticed, but I hadn’t taken that awareness inside. I barely knew the park. I have lived beside this park for twenty-five years. I first saw the crescent beach of English Bay and the storytelling totems in the park in 1961, fifty-nine years ago. Have I been asleep? Can I wake up? Is it time?

If I am going to get to know this park—this Stanley Park—and call it “my park,” I will have to wander it purposefully, path by path, plaque by plaque, monument by monument, rock by rock, tree by tree, blossom by flowering blossom, through every season, and allow its layers of history to seep into me as though it were a living, breathing being.

Actually, it is.

This is how Nina Shoroplova begins her book “The Legacy of Trees” by Heritage House, 2020, a book all about “Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.”

The beautifully laid out 288-page book with colour photos is a feast for the mind and the heart. Although the book provides an excellent human and natural history of the park—from its pre-colonial existence, and logging history, to its creation and uses and description—at its root is an expression of wonder for this natural gem in the middle of a bustling city and a true love of trees.

Shoroplova approaches the forest with the heart of a poet. Her passion for nature—and trees, particularly—lights each page with joyful discovery. Shoroplova brings this passion to Stanley Park, one of Canada’s iconic parks, and one worth both visiting and knowing through many aspects from history to ecology and from forest ecosystem to legacy tree.

Each year, Stanley Park welcomes more than eight million visitors from around the world. In the summer of 2013, Travel & Leisure magazine ranked Stanley Park second among the world’s twenty-eight most beautiful city parks in the world. In 2014, TripAdvisor named Stanley Park the best park in the world. The park features 400-hectares of natural coastal temperate rainforest with 27 km of trails and scenic views of water, mountains, and truly majestic trees. The rainforest holds an old-growth forest of +400-year old Douglas-firs and some of the largest grand firs in the world. The park also features an 8.8 km seawall, totem poles and six beautiful gardens.

Map of Stanley Park, Vancouver

Early in the book, Shoroplova describes a particular experience with a weeping beech in Shakespeare Garden with something close to reverence:

“When I first walked under its canopy of falling dark green drapery, tears came to my eyes. Somehow, the generosity of that tree, offering its shade and comfort to all who stand, walk, and drive underneath its south-facing leaves, opened my heart.” She then added, “As a friend says, ‘trees are divine beings.’”

Shoroplova shares why she feels calmed, centred, and connected in a forest, particularly in Stanley Park:

Hemlock growing on cedar stump (Heritage House)

Maybe it’s because the change in a forest is constant yet unobservable, unobtrusive. Maybe it’s because I, as a human being, am so insignificant in size compared with the giants around me. Or because I, as a human being, have lived for such a short time compared with the ancient living beings around me. Or the green and the tree pheromones are so calming…

I used to feel this way when I skied downhill and when I breastfed my babies. I feel this way when I stand in the ocean and await the next wave and the next. I feel this way with my grandchildren. That’s what being in the forest does for us…It brings us to the present moment. That’s the gift.”

Woman wanders among the Seven Sisters giants, 1901 (Heritage House)

There is an abiding quality about trees and a living forest that is reassuring. “Trees are supportive, yet ambitious,” writes Shoropova. They are “quiet yet communicative, flexible yet strong, adaptive yet true to type.” They connect us to a larger world in a way that is both awe-inspiring and familiar.

“Learning the histories of the legacy trees in Stanley Park deepens our knowledge of the people of Vancouver—our history, our origins, our values,” Shoroplova explains in her opening chapter. These stories also show how Vancouver is maturing and evolving alongside its park forests and gardens. “We are shaking off the colonial identity that the park exhibited for so many decades and embracing the values of reconciliation with the first inhabitants of this land, the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh. We are also reclaiming what we can of the original nature of this land while honouring our communal history.”

Loggers springboard system Douglas-fir-1890s

Loggers using springboards to chop down a Douglas-fir giant, Stanley Park, 1890s (Heritage House)

Shoroplova arranged her tree stories into three parts: Part 1: The Trees Were Always There—trees that were already growing on the peninsula headland that became the federal reserve and then Stanley Park; Part 2: The First Trees Are Planted—those that were planted during the colonial and imperial years of the park (up to 1960); Part 3: The Park Grows Up—the years of growing independence.

Complete with old photos and original maps, Shoroplova offers several well-described and mapped routes to learn about and appreciate the beauty of the park. Her accurate science and historical accounts are dispensed in easily-digested and understood parcels through the language of conversation. The narrative is both charming and intriguing from the sad tale of the sentinel big Douglas-fir at the entrance to Stanley Park in 1894 to the princess-poet Pauline Johnson’s naming of Lost Lagoon and stories of historic events.

GeorgiaSt Entrance StanleyPark-bigfir-1894

Georgia Street entrance to Stanley Park in 1894 (Heritage House)

In a particularly engaging chapter of the book (Chapter 8), Shoroplova compares humans to trees and, through some interesting observations on tree physiology and behaviour, she draws some interesting conclusions. One example is her description of a tree’s heartbeat: how trunk and branches use a very slow pulse of contraction and expansion to send water up and out to every branchlet and leaf. Or how trees essentially breathe in more oxygen during the day (during active photosynthesis) and breathe out more carbon dioxide at night (during respiration without photosynthesis). Shoroplova likens it to “one slow breath for every twenty-four hours.” Shoroplova extends this fractal idea to the “suggestion that the northern hemisphere of Earth breathes in every summer and breathes out every winter. One slow planetary breath for every twelve months.”

Shoroplova also discusses two theories that explain the phenomenon of crown shyness, only seen in deciduous trees: “One is that trees of the same species avoid both being shaded by and shading each other. They take up space that is not already filled, allowing each other space to grow and breathe and capture the sun’s rays. The opposing theory is that stormy weather breaks off branches that are very close to each other. I suspect a mixture of both theories is at work.”

Decaying log provides nutrients and substrate for other life (Heritage House)

Shoroplova continues her comparison in describing the life and death of a tree. “The death of a tree is a very drawn-out affair, taking years and even decades, as the tree changes from being healthy to having its health impinged on in some way, to losing more of its branches … to becoming a standing snag, and finally to falling to the forest floor. The decomposition—the composting—of one tree provides the soil for the birth and regeneration of many others. When a tree falls in the forest, its fallen form—minerals, fibre, and glucose—nourishes all the other life forms in its environment…Fallen trees become nurse logs for seedling trees, especially for western hemlocks.” In Chapter 9, Shoroplova shares how the forest—like the ocean—releases negative ions that help in general feelings of wellness as these ions “neutralize all the free radicals that result from our natural body processes or that exist as environmental toxins.”

Western red cedar with burl, remaining Seven Sister in Stanley Park (Heritage House)

In Chapter 12, Shoroplova describes the cathedral-like grandeur of the Seven Sisters grove of western redcedars and Douglas-firs as witnessed by Mohawk poet E. Pauline Johnson in 1911 and the sad narrative that followed. The fame of this stately grove of giants became their undoing—in the early 1950s the Park Board cut them down, citing safety reasons. The seven stately trees became seven sad stumps—with just one western redcedar with a large burl of the originals remaining. In 1988 the Park Board planted seven young Douglas-fir trees to replace the Seven Sisters. It will take time but eventually they may rival the Seven Sisters in majestic height. The single original sister still stands, prompting Shoroplova to “return to feel the history embedded in this single sibling.”

E. Pauline Johnson

“But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles that team with the sap and blood of life. There is no fresco that can rival the delicacy of lace-work they have festooned between you and the far skies. No tiles, no mosaic or inlaid marbles are as fascinating as the bare, russet, fragrant floor outspreading about their feet. They are the acme of Nature’s architecture, and in building them she has outrivalled all her erstwhile conceptions. She will never originate a more faultless design, never erect a more perfect edifice. But the divinely moulded trees and the man-made cathedral have one exquisite characteristic in common. It is the atmosphere of holiness.”—E. Pauline Johnson, Legends of Vancouver, 1911.

Prospect Point, Stanley Park, 1891 (Heritage House)

Subsequent chapters are devoted to singular trees and charming stories throughout the various gardens and paths of Stanley Park. Shoroplova brings them all to life with an animated history that weaves through the park to the present day.

Nina Munteanu looks up at giant Douglas-fir in Lighthouse Park, BC (photo by M. Ross)

She ends on a high note for me by invoking the wisdom of UBC ecologist and forester Suzanne Simard, who parses out four simple solutions to forest managers. They include: 1) know the local region and ecology and act accordingly; 2) stop or at least curtail most logging of the old-growth forests; 3) save the legacies, the mother trees and networks so they can pass their wisdom onto the next generation of trees; 4) help regenerate the biodiversity of forest ecosystems by planting and allowing natural regeneration. “Forests aren’t just a bunch of trees competing with each other; they’re super-cooperators,” says Simard in a TED talk in June 2016. From Simard’s message I travelled to Ira Sutherland’s TEDx talk in October 2019, about the giant trees in Vancouver, which include Stanley Park; his message was also direct: 1) this is our story; and 2) Nature proves resilient.

I give Shoroplova a top score for ending her wonderful exposé on Stanley Park trees with action. Once we have connected with a forest and with a particular tree, we have walked through a door into awareness and ultimately responsibility. The wisdom and actionable message is clear. It isn’t enough to be a bystander. Just as E. Pauline Johnson raised the flag of awareness a hundred years ago for indigenous peoples and Nature by association, we must do the same. Or it will disappear. Sutherland points out that many of the sites where he has documented giant mother trees are not protected.

Bill Stephen, superintendent of urban forestry (retired), in his foreword to the book, wisely suggests how to use the book:

Read it first in a leisurely manner at home, and internalize the park’s history since its dedication in 1888. Then tuck it into your backpack and take it with you as a companion on your park wanderings. Take it on your smartphone or tablet as an ebook. Follow the maps, and use a maps app to enter the latitude/longitude coordinates of your place of interest for the day. Re-read its tales in the presence of the very trees about which it speaks, time travel with them, and return to the city with a richer sense of the connections between the trees of this great park and its human and animal actors. Then repeat…”

North side of Sea Wall with view of north shore and Lion’s Gate Bridge, Stanley Park, BC (photo by Nina Munteanu)

References:

Johnson, E. Pauline 1911. “Legends of Vancouver.” Library of Alexandria. 196pp. E. Pauline Johnson (Takehionwake) was a daughter of a Mohawk Chief and a white mother. She was one of Canada’s most famous performers, poet, feminist and indigenous activist of the Victorian era. Pauline Johnson documented legends, told to her by her great friend, Squamish Chief Joe Capilano, in the Vancouver newspaper, The Daily Province, and then a book, ‘Legends of Vancouver’, in print now for over 100 years.

Nombre, Antonio Donato. 2010. “The Magic of the Amazon: A river that flows invisibly all around us.” TEDx Talk, 21:27 min. November, 2010. The Amazon River is like a heart, pumping water from the seas through it, and up into the atmosphere through 600 billion trees, which act like lungs. Clouds form, rain falls and the forest thrives. In a lyrical talk, Antonio Donato Nobre talks us through the interconnected systems of this region, and how they provide environmental services to the entire world. A parable for the extraordinary symphony that is nature.

Simard, Suzanne. 2016. “How Trees Talk to Each Other.” TED Talk, 18:20 min. June, 2016. “A forest is much more than what you see,” says ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery — trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes.

Shoroplova, Nina. 2020. “Legacy of Trees: Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver’s Stanley Park.” Heritage House Publishing Co.Ltd., Vancouver. 288pp.

Sutherland, Ira. 2019. “The Great Vancouver Forest: A Story of Place.” TEDx Talk, 21:04 min. Oct. 2019. Growing up among the tall forests near UBC, Ira Sutherland developed an appreciation and curiosity for forests early on. This talk invites his audience to explore Vancouver’s extensive forests and to hopefully see trees in a new light (for more information, see http://www.vancouversbigtrees.com)

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

Age of Water Podcast: Nina Reads from “Barkskins”

July 11, 2020March 17, 2022 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

We are now living in the Age of Water. Water is the new “gold”, with individuals, corporations and countries positioning themselves around this precious resource. Water is changing everything. The Age of Water Podcast covers anything of interest from breaking environmental news to evergreen material. This also includes human interest stories, readings of eco-literature, discussion of film and other media productions of interest.

In this episode of Age of Water, Nina reads from the novel “Barkskins” by Annie Proulx a poignant exploration of the forest industry in Canada and North America.

Annie Proulx’s Barkskins chronicles two immigrants who arrive in Canada in 1693 (Rene Sel and Charles Duquet) and their descendants over 300 years of deforestation of North America starting with the arrival of the Europeans to contemporary global warming. “Barkskins” (woodcutters) are, in fact indentured servants who were brought from the Paris slums to the wilds of New France “to clear the land, to subdue this evil wilderness,” says their seigneur. Sel is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures; Duquet runs away to become a fur trader and build a timber empire.

Proulx immerses the reader in rich sensory detail of a place and time, equally comfortable describing a white pine stand in Michigan and logging camp in Upper Gatineau to a Mi’kmaq village on the Nova Scotia coast or the stately Boston home of Charles Duquet. The foreshadowing of doom for the magnificent forests is cast by the shadow of how settlers treat the Mi’kmaq people. The fate of the forests and the Mi’kmaq are inextricably linked through settler disrespect and a fierce hunger for “more.”

The novel rolls out events in a relentless stream of life and death; no character is safe from the ravages of nature or the notions of that time period. While most of the book flows like a great amoral river—filled with feckless, unheroic and at times miserable characters—there are moments of emotional shoring. They act like exclamation marks for their rarity.

“The reader comes to realize that the novel isn’t really about the human characters so much as it is about the forests,” Gus Powell of The National Post concludes of Barkskins. “As [the forests] disappear, the narrative seems to recede in importance, revealing a crucial interdependence between the human and the natural world previously handled almost entirely as subtext. This is especially true in the novel’s closing, where the anger and despair that have characterized the novel shift into an outspoken environmental advocacy.”

I further explore the use of metaphor and other storytelling devices used by Annie Proulx in this strongly symbolic novel in my writing guidebook “Ecology of Story: World as Character.”

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press(Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.