For my photo assay, I took a trip to the Camosun Bog, guided by my friend and local plant expert. I grew up around the Bog, but frequently have thoughts that when I run or walk through it, I am not truly connecting with the forest but rather using it as a convenience. Less so on days when the paths are empty and I am alone with the trees, but on a weekend day, like on the Saturday I took this trip, the pedestrian traffic on the trails makes me worry that we have artificially maintained/created the forest park area selfish purposes, rather than as nature ‘intended’. Nevertheless, I do enjoy walking through the bog and it was a nice day, so I proceeded in armed with my trusty reusable Starbucks cup full of tea.
As we walked around the bog, my friend pointed out each of the plants, and our discussions in this class about authenticity and exploitation of the earth came to me. I felt compelled to take a picture of Labrador Tea, though I was unsure what I was trying to capture. Was I commodifying it by taking a photo and walking away? I handed her my mug to hold and as I turned to take the picture, I glimpsed her holding the cup and saw the irony of trying to connect with nature while using a Starbucks cup. It was a relieving moment, as it embodied how I felt: like a Starbucks cup trying to engage with nature, but never quite fitting in.
Later in a different part of the forest, we found Licorice fern, which can also be made into tea. She insisted I have a taste of the root and it was sweet and juicy, but I felt that I was taking something I had not been given. As I washed it down with the end of my tea, I considered this imagined division between ‘authentically’ connecting with the earth and living in the modern world. In class we have discussed how Indigenous cultures are constantly evolving, so placing their practices in the past does a disservice to their flexibility through time. Surely my ancestors, from England, did not simply stop connecting with nature. It must live on authentically somehow. Would it be so wrong for me to harvest Labrador fern root and drink it out of this Starbucks cup? How can I connect to the plants around me without artificially removing myself from my other realities and conveniences?
As I continued to take photographs and make use of Duncan’s photography mini-seminar tips, I realised that my cup could provide an interesting element to the natural photographs. In the past I have had difficulty getting good photos in the forest because the colours tend to blend together, but the cup helped both for framing purposes (rule of thirds!) and to bring out certain colours while embodying my experience as an urbanized individual interacting with the natural world.
There was a man-made teepee structure in the forest, and my guide gave me a comprehensive account of the many different types of mosses found in the chosen roofing material. My Starbucks cup felt at home on this teepee, cuddling up to a similarly shaped, but naturally derived, new friend. Can they ever coexist?
Throughout the forest we saw the native Trailing Blackberry, but mostly we saw its invasive cousin taking over everything. At the top left of this picture, the two come head to head, battling for space. Starbucks stands by…
On the way home, after having interesting reflections about how we connected with the plants in the Bog and the rest of the forest, we came across a lawn made of artificial turf. The desire of the homeowners to have a healthy looking lawn had clearly exceeded their interest in nature, which was shocking, but did not seem so far off from the world that is promoted by companies like Starbucks.
The green accents on my cup engaged the turf and the neighbouring grass lawn into a discussion about who was more authentic…but authenticity is really in the eye of the beholder, at the end of the day.
Thank you to my guide, pictured in the selfie below 🙂
