“Manifold Gifts of Place”

John Cameron is a lovely man. You know it to look at him, you know it when you read his work, you know it to hear him, and you know it to talk to him.

I’d first heard of John when I went to Bruny Island with Pete and Anna, just after I arrived in Tasmania. Pete told the story about their neighbours, John, a retired academic and his artist partner Vicki, who had bought a shack on Bruny just down the road from theirs after visiting them for a few days. It was a story about serendipity – which involved a canoe, a photograph, and a heron that kept moving – which I stored somewhere deep in my memory bank. Later when Pete gave me a copy of a book John edited, called changing places: re-imagining australia, I sort of made the connection with John and Bruny, but not quite. Even after I met John, at Linn Millar’s Friday Forum on “Telling Places in Country,” and we’d had a wonderful conversation about islands and place, it didn’t click. But it was during our conversation that he told me about the essays he’s writing for an American academic journal devoted to phenomenology. His Letters from Far South are imaginative pieces that chronicle his explorations into Goethean science but which are firmly grounded in his and Vicki’s experience of living on Bruny Island. It was in his first letter that I read the story of the canoe and the photograph and the heron that kept moving. And the penny, as they say, dropped.

So when I heard that John was slated to speak at Friday Forum on October 29, I knew I had to spend some time with his letters, to get to know more about this man and his story. It was the most enjoyable reading about place and attachment to place that I’ve done to date. If all my background theoretical reading could be like that, this PhD business will be a breeze. (But I already know it’s not!) 

John is a storyteller and a scientist, a poet and a philosopher… a keen observer of his surroundings using all his senses, including the sixth one which science doesn’t usually allow a place for. Formerly a senior lecturer in Social Ecology at the University of Western Sydney, he taught place theory grounded in experiential learning and field trips, and founded a series of five national "Sense of Place” colloquia (which, unfortunately, are no longer running). I urge you to check out his letters - elegant in style and generous in spirit.

Letter from Far South: the story of how a canoe and a photograph and a heron allowed him and Vicki to make Bruny Island their permanent residence;

The house on Bruny Island (photo by Jenny Scott)

 Second Letter from Far South: “seeing with the heart” the geomorphology of Bruny’s Blackstone Bay;

Third Letter from Far South: Inhabiting Intercultural History: how, in a manner bordering on the surreal, they acquired "Blackstone," a beautiful and historically significant piece of prime waterfront land adjacent to theirs when it was meant to be sold for big bucks at auction; on it they had discovered a sod hut dating back to 1829 when George Augustus Robinson was beginning his “Friendly Mission” on Bruny Island;

Fourth Letter from Far South: how they’ve learned to reduce their ecological footprint without falling victim to what environmental critics call the “mentality of lack” – eloquently described through the learning curve they undertook when they decided to generate their own electricity; and

Fifth Letter from Far South: A Question of Action: The Grasstree Story: what they’ve learned about the fragilities of life and the complexities of ecological systems through applying Goethean science to the grasstrees on their land, some of which are dying.

John’s talk on Friday, then, was entitled “The Manifold Gifts of Place: Stories from Blackstone, Bruny Island.” With Vicki’s photographs, paintings, drawings, and sculptures playing out on the screen over his shoulder, he talked about the abundant gifts he’s received since moving to Bruny – starting with what the heron gave them: life on Bruny itself, as well as the gift of attentiveness. (But he admitted, like most of us, he often needs to remind himself to put down his pen and pay attention.)

“The gift of Bruny is a daily reminder of a way of being,” he said. “We are learning to live within our ecological means. The more I accept these gifts and the limitations that come with them, the more I accept the sense of abundance in life.”

Basing his talk on gift theory as presented in Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Vintage Books, 1999), John said that to receive these gifts is not a passive act; it must be reciprocated, or passed on, because the gift that does not move loses its property. Each time a gift is passed on, it increases in value: physical, social (creating community and connectivity), and spiritual. It becomes, then, a “labour of gratitude.” He said that the sense of indebtedness is part of the labour of gratitude, as is the need to communicate what they have experienced through their creative work: John’s writing, which helps him to make sense of their life on Bruny, and has become an integral part of his life there; Vicki’s sculptures, paintings, photography and illustrated poetry which are a direct response to Blackstone's natural environment and the traumatic post-colonial history of Bruny; their petition to the Tasmanian Heritage Council to protect the remains of Robinson’s sod hut; and their involvement in the Bruny Island community. Indeed, one of their acts has been to regenerate their 55 acres of degraded paddocks by replanting it with thousands of trees with the aim of creating sanctuary for wildlife. He said, “When we first came, there was a feeling of melancholy that permeated the land, through the story of Robinson and Truganini, and the loss of habitat for the animals [through land clearance and sheep grazing]. Aboriginal friends have told us that the land here is quieter now.”

 He ended with the thought that "gift exchange with place is a wonderful way to bring practical expression to philosophical ideas such as the need to develop reciprocity with the more-than-human world.”

Partway through the talk, I wrote the word “grace” in the margin of my notebook. This fits John to a “t.” His writing made me think of some of my friends who try to live lightly on the earth; indeed, on Friday afternoon, before the talk, I’d sent links to John’s letters to some of them, hoping that their gift might provide some kind of affirmation that what they’re doing is a good thing – just in case they ever need it. And it makes me aware – before “mental turbulence” takes over – of the gift I’ve been given: to be here on this beautiful island, to be learning new things and to be making new friends. I realize that I am privileged at this stage of my life, just as John and Vicki are, to be in a position that many can never be, for whatever reason (quite often financial!). And that is to do what you love, and follow where your heart takes you.

John Cameron (left) with Peter McQuillan (Geography professor whose office is just down the hall from mine)

 **

A few words about Goethean science, based on an article of John’s called "Place, Goethe and Phenomenology: A Theoretic Journey." He wrote this in response to a conversation he had with phenomenology guru David Seamon (who created and maintains the American academic journal where John’s essays can be found). In encouraging John to recognize the enormous value of the experiential teaching practices he had developed and to go even deeper into phenomenological enquiries with his students, he suggested looking at Goethe’s precepts, which followed “an intuitive approach” to wholeness rather than an intellectual approach “in which natural phenomena are explained through generalization and abstraction by underlying mathematical laws” (181).

Goethe suggested different stages, beginning with active looking at an object, then visualizing “what has been observed in as much detail as possible entirely in the imagination”; and, in so doing, developing an “exact sensorial imagination.”

John then explored the concepts with two people who were theorists and practitioners of Goethean science: Henri Bortoft (his book is The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way Towards a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature (NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1996)) and Isis Brook (her 1998 paper is entitled “Goethean science as a way to read landscape” in Landscape Research, 23(1)).

Henri Bortoft described the first two of Goethe’s stages as visualizing a phenomenon using the “space behind the eye,” then moving down the body to the chest to visualize it from “the heart space.” Between his work, and that of Isis Brooks, the four stages are as follows: 1) to observe an object carefully and draw it in detail by looking at it directly and then from memory; 2) to experience “exact sensorial imagination,” where you perceive “the time-life of the phenomenon, seeing it as a being with a past and a future and imagining, visualizing what these are” (185). 3) to “draw out the gesture” or “impulse” of the object, by drawing or describing it over and over again (you can also use a creative medium such as clay or sculpture or poetry, which certainly caught my attention); which will then allow the object to “reveal its essential nature” (this part takes lots of practice!); and 4) “intuiting the responsibility that accompanies coming to know another being from the inside” (188) and passing it on to others in the best way you know how.

In the paper John describes clearly his own first attempts at getting to know a place, in this instance, a granite tor on the Cornish coast of England. And he says that his letters are further attempts at developing what Goethe called bildung, “the schooling of intuitive faculties in the practitioner, which enables greater sensitivity and more holistic awareness of the natural world” (Fifth Letter).

The practice reminds me of a writing exercise I did once with Nova Scotia nature poet Harry Thurston at the Tatamagouche Centre years ago. He asked us to sit with an object in nature, to observe it and to draw it, then to describe it in words using freefall writing or a list – whatever we were comfortable with. Then he asked us to become it, to write its life force, again using freefall. Then finally we were to infuse meaning into it and to shape it into a poem. I’ve included it below.

 

All this is making me wonder about islands: is it possible to understand that “intangible” of islands - what makes islands special and so attractive to so many people – islandness, if you will - through this process? I’ll let you know...

**

Willow

Your roots go deep, but not deep enough to reach the river 

where I see you splayed slippery on the bank’s muddy edge, 

branches a crazy quilt weave of limbs, leaf tips trailing like 

a child’s fingers over the side of a boat or a woman washing 

her hair.

Instead you’re here in this barren field, yellowy leaves with 

spotted underbellies tired in sun that etches fissures into your 

bark, skin a crusty scab.

Blink, I look again. Your knots wink as finger-thin branches 

beckon me in.

Drawn to your shade, I nestle in the whale’s-eye hollow at 

your base, welcome your cool canopy, live branches like 

the ribs of an umbrella overhead, dead ones stiff as Medusa’s 

snakes turned to stone.

My skin wakens to the crunch of your fallen leaves, urged to

life with air currents that play me along. Veined leaves tributaried 

as the insides of my eyelids, I fill my hands with them and 

slide them down, down, between my fingers, my tongue, leave 

traces of my oils, close my eyes and see me growing into you 

on your riverbank, your leaf whisper later the only sound I hear.