Hi there. My name is Maria. I’ve been thinking about the concept behind ëcopoë for some time now. Over the last 25 years I’ve mostly worked on climate change, ecology, and sustainability, and I’ve been known to tweet a thing or two. I also have a couple of old blogs I mostly ignore now, so I took a while to start this one as I wanted to make sure it something that I stick with.
The concept of ëcopoë came to me because the ecological crisis is causing me, like so many others, to search for holes in our thinking so that we can patch them up. I’ve got a lot of what seem to be pretty elementary questions regarding basic assumptions about how we live in relation to nature. I believe that how we think about and interact with the more-than-human world beyond our personal skin deserves some serious re-imagining, and the more of us that put our minds together to do that, the better.
It can be easy to become dark and broody about the social and environmental issues facing us, but the lens of ëcopoë is more about focusing on why the night bird still sings than how dark the night’s become. This creative focus is embedded in the name of the blog as well, ëcopoë, which literally means coming up with the concept of a new home the way an artist comes up with a new song. There are those who think we need to make plans to go to Mars because we will shaft ourselves here. I’m not against contingency plans, but I’m not prepared to give up on Plan A, actually living on this Earth. Living in peace. And living in beauty, as worded so wonderfully in one of my favourite passages of all time, which is taken from the amazing Night Chant of the Diné people, the Kindle Edition which is still available free on Amazon.
Reared Within the Mountains!
Lord of the Mountains!
Young Man!
Chieftan!
I have made your sacrifice.
I have prepared a smoke for you.
My feet restore thou for me.
My legs restore thou for me.
My body restore thou for me.
My mind restore thou for me.
My voice restore thou for me.
Restore all for me in beauty.
Make beautiful all that is before me.
Make beautiful all that is behind me.
Make beautiful my words.
It is done in beauty.
It is done in beauty.
It is done in beauty.
It is done in beauty.
There is an indigenous undercurrent to this blog. I grew up with a story my mother would whisper to me of having an indigenous great-great-great grandmother who, who married my great-great-great grandfather who was a coureurs des bois. Some genealogical digging has led to the discovery that my mother’s roots, dating back to the 1700s in Canada, likely does include not only one, but four other mysterious women who may have been First Nations. Five women without which I wouldn’t exist, but whose stories I know not. Their voices silenced. Their origins erased from the memory of their descendants, as is also the memory of the land which my European ancestors left behind when they came to Canada. So, in this blog I question this too. Why are we so cavalier about not knowing about our own ancestry when many indigenous peoples around the world did the opposite, actively remember and honour their personal ancestors? And so I dig. I dig to recover their stories, the holes in my own story, at the same time as I seek to pull threads out from the shadowy story of the silencing Earth.
Photo taken from cable bridge in Capilano River Regional Park
I am fortunate to live in a very beautiful part of the world that stands on unceded Coast Salish territory of the Skxwú7mesh (pronounced Squamish or Skohomish) and Tsleil-Waututh (pronounced: slay-wa-tooth, aka Burrard) nations in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I live by a steep cliff along the Capilano River along with stands of Douglas fir and cedar that help to ensure that our home doesn’t fall of the cliff, bald and golden eagles that fish for salmon in the river, and hummingbirds that visit our feeder all year long and call to us from the branches around the patio.
I share the inside of the four walls of my house with my husband, two adventure cats, strange thoughts about making a dash for the forest for good, but I wouldn’t really want to do that as I am still grateful for visits from my grown children and other itinerant kith and kin. I don’t like pictures of me much, so the one above just features a wee me wilding about in the alpine meadows in a place I love, the Helen Lake hike up in Banff, Alberta. Below, however, is a picture of my cats.
It’s my hope to have this blog be not just a place for my own explorations in this space, but to build it as a platform for other kindred spirits to share their own voices, their stories, their songs, and art too. Please contact me if you would like to write a guest blog or share some of your art.
Thank-you.