I can’t believe it’s already week 6!
We met with Cathy, our community partner for a brief meeting during week 4. Meeting Cathy was really beneficial, as she gave us a much better idea of the situation of the Williams Lake Community Forest, and specifically, and brief backgrounds on who is involved. It was also a great chance to ask Cathy more questions, and explain our timeline as well. Creating an access management plan is a much more open project than I thought, as it will depend on what information we gather, and how we want to format our report, maps, and perhaps interactive website.
In week 5, my group met with Iain, a student from last year that has knowledge of the bike shops and bike trails. By talking to different people, we’re able to paint a clearer picture of the situation of the Williams Lake Community Forest, though I’m sure we all have slightly different ideas. We are using form of research that is more conversational, which is different to what we are used to with regular academics. I find it really interesting how the role of a geographer of both human and environmental issues coming together is clearly evident in our situation. For example, there are land conflicts between a rancher that has a long family background with the land, recreational trails, and logging. The environmental component came in when we were told about the impacts of climate change on the land use and logging roads, as well as ATVs wrecking streams (un)knowingly. As an environmental geographer, and someone who is passionate about human-environment interactions and relationships, this part of the project has really excited me and motivated me to want to help solve these problems.
From the participant observation guest lecture, I found it connected to the lecture on positionality as we will be seen as outsiders and as students. Our identities for the week will be seen as a group of students. We will be trying to understand the place better, which is done better through participant observation, rather than perhaps watching a video filmed in Williams Lake. From watching the video of the Filipino ceremony, our class noted it was our lack of interaction with the participants made us unable to fully understand what was going on. By being in Williams Lake and talking to the people, I think our projects will greatly benefit, as well as tie in our experience with the project much better. It has been interesting to conduct research for a place 8 hours away, while trying to collect local knowledge.