Cypress Knees by Beverly Mixon
Summary
Is “Nature” a real thing, or is it just an idea? When we talk about restoring ecosystems, what are we restoring them to? Or more precisely, when?
This episode is the first part of a conversation between Mendel, Adam, and two of Adam’s mentors, wherein we explore what it means to practice ecological restoration as a form of art.
Click here for photos and details of Oliver’s artwork / restoration project in the Grandview Cut.
Two corrections for this episode:
Prototaxites and giant horsetails (Calamites) were extant ~350 million years before the Eocene
It is indeed a telescope, and not binoculars.
Ready for Part 2? Listen here
Show Notes
This episode features Eric Higgs and Oliver Kellhammer.
Music in this episode was provided by Scott Gailey, the Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn Orchestra, and Sunfish Moon Light.
This episode was produced by Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski
Special thanks to Hannah Roessler, Sadie Couture, Todd Howard, Brea Segger, Maya Gauvin, and Ilana Fonariov.
This episode includes audio recorded by btherad2000, newagesoup, and folkart films, protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses, and accessed through the Freesound Project.
A lot of research goes into each episode of Future Ecologies, including academic literature and great journalism from a variety of media outlets, and we like to cite our sources:
Kellhammer, O. (1993). Healing the Cut – Bridging the Gap. Vancouver, BC. (Public Art Registry)
Kellhammer, O. (2008). Chapter 33: Neo Eocene. Section 3: From Periphery to Center. Making the Geologic Now (eds. Ellsworth, E. and Kruse, J.).
Kellhammer, O. (2008). Botanical Interventions: Open Source Landscape and Community Repair. Originally published in Access All Areas: Conversations on Engaged Arts (ed. Willard, T.). Grunt Gallery.
Higgs, E. (2003). Nature by Design: People, Natural Process, and Ecological Restoration. MIT Press.
You can subscribe to and download Future Ecologies wherever you find podcasts - please share, rate, and review us. We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and iNaturalist.
If you like what we do, and you want to help keep it ad-free, please consider supporting us on Patreon. Pay-what-you-can (as little as $1/month) to get access to bonus monthly mini-episodes, stickers, patches, a community Discord chat server, and more. This season, we’re taking a tour of some of our Seaweed Sojourners, with the help of Josie Iselin.
Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil- Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcription
Introduction Voiceover 00:01
You're listening to season three of Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins 00:08
Hi folks. This is Adam. And this is the first episode of our third season, which we are really excited to share with you. We're going to be transporting you from the seagrass meadows of Okinawa, to the Borderlands of the Sonoran Desert, weaving together stories about mutualism, migration, invasion, extinction, and sanctuary. There will be familiar voices and new producers to introduce, and a whole lot of seaweed. It's easily our most ambitious work to date. And I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we've enjoyed making it.
Adam Huggins 00:44
If you follow us closely, then you haven't heard too much from me lately. And that's because while Mendel has been curating all of these great guest episodes during our hiatus. I've been busy trying to figure out how to approach a handful of ideas that have had a huge influence on how I think about this thing that we call nature.
Adam Huggins 01:06
I've had all sorts of fanciful ideas for how to do this. But in the end, I decided to just sit down and talk them through with Mendel in the studio. And the result is what you're about to hear. I might cut in occasionally to add some context. But otherwise, it's a pretty unfiltered conversation. So here we go. This is “Nature, by Design? Part One: Taking the Neo-Eoscenic Route”
Adam Huggins 01:32
Enjoy.
Adam Huggins 01:38
Hey, everyone, this is Adam.
Mendel Skulski 01:39
And this is Mendel.
Adam Huggins 01:40
And I've brought Mendel into the studio a little bit blind, as in, they have very little idea about what we're going to discuss.
Mendel Skulski 01:49
We're coming in cold.
Adam Huggins 01:50
So it's been about three years now, since I asked you if you wanted to start a podcast with me.
Mendel Skulski 01:58
Ah, yeah. Life has changed so much since then. [Laughter]
Adam Huggins 02:01
It's true. Yeah, I don't, I guess like, it's down the memory hole now. But I remember you asking me why I wanted to call the podcast Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 02:11
Yeah, you. You came in ready with that name, and I was like, okay, well, we'll roll with it. It works for me.
Adam Huggins 02:18
Did you get it at the time?
Mendel Skulski 02:20
I… I liked it. I thought it sounded academic. But I liked it. And I know that we haven't, we haven't done a lot of future, right? Like we've, we've been very much a historical show almost in reflections on how we got to where we are and, and the present that we're in, and a little bit about how we can take inspiration from the past to move forward. But we haven't really talked about the future, very much, at least, very explicitly.
Adam Huggins 02:50
That actually sets us up pretty well for today. I feel like I'm finally ready to answer that question to a certain extent. So I know we've criticized the concept of the Anthropocene a little bit here on the podcast, because it kind of implicates the entire human species and transforming the planet as opposed to like, specific human systems. But I do think it's fair to say that ecosystems in every corner of the planet are being impacted by human activities, and, like, really profoundly in lots of places.
Mendel Skulski 03:24
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 03:25
So I guess, for me, when I'm looking ahead into the future, I think of us living, not in like an ecology, but in multiple ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 03:38
Hmm.
Adam Huggins 03:39
At the same time. And I, like for me, I think I can break them down conceptually into three different groups.
Mendel Skulski 03:46
Okay, we got buckets.
Adam Huggins 03:48
Yeah, buckets.
Mendel Skulski 03:49
Let's go.
Adam Huggins 03:50
Okay, so yeah, and just with a disclaimer that, like, all ecosystems will be some kind of hybrid of these three different groups. Um, so I'm just hoping you'll humor me for the sake of argument. Okay. This is the world according to Adam,
Mendel Skulski 04:01
I'll go easy.
[Translucent electronic music]
Adam Huggins 04:05
Okay, so there will be and are ecologies that we, as people, manage to preserve and protect, to some extent.
Mendel Skulski 04:16
Right, this is like, conservation lands, right?
Adam Huggins 04:19
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 04:20
Parks and designated ecological reserves, right? Quote, unquote.
Adam Huggins 04:25
Yeah, it could be through successful conservation areas, as we traditionally understand them in the West, or that could also be through ongoing traditional lifeways and stewardship. It's, you know, it's often quoted that 80% of global biodiversity that is currently protected is protected by indigenous people.
Mendel Skulski 04:41
Right.
Adam Huggins 04:42
So it could be like, yeah, we set it aside and we protect it, but it could also be like, this is the way of life that we've practiced for generations, and we managed to maintain that and as a result, like these ecosystems, maintain that character. So I’m just gonna go out on a limb and I'm going to call these kinds of ecosystems Cherished Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 05:01
I love that! [Laughter]
Adam Huggins 05:02
Is that right?
Mendel Skulski 05:02
Yeah. [Excited laughter]
Adam Huggins 05:03
Okay, cool.
[More upbeat translucent electronic music]
Adam Huggins 05:11
So they are the Cherished Ecologies, and then I think that there are and there will be ecologies that persist in spite of us.
Mendel Skulski 05:21
Mmm.
Adam Huggins 05:22
And I'm going to call these Tenacious Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 05:24
Recalcitrant ecologies.
Adam Huggins 05:26
Recalcitrant ecologies. All right? [Laughter] If you want, sure, tenacious, recalcitrant.
Mendel Skulski 05:31
Can you give me some examples?
Adam Huggins 05:32
Yeah, sure. So these would be like, mostly rugged or remote areas that resist human occupation, and industry by dint of just their like, hostility to us. [Mendel laughs] So like, high mountain peaks, right, like, and the sea floor and parts of the Antarctic and like…
Mendel Skulski 05:50
Famously places that we love to conquer.
Adam Huggins 05:52
…yeah, swampy areas. You know, that are just like so buggy, and that we just, like, can't really make it in there. Um.
Mendel Skulski 06:00
Just going there and coming back is like, triumphant.
Adam Huggins 06:03
Yeah, exactly. And there's so places like this. You know, all of those places are being transformed by climate change, and, you know, potentially also nitrogen deposition and all sorts of other factors. So it's not like they're unchanged. I think everything is always changing. But if we don't totally destroy the planet, I think they're going to be some ecosystems that continue to persist, like with some integrity into the future without our protection. Even despite us.
Mendel Skulski 06:28
Right. Okay.
Adam Huggins 06:29
So recalcitrant.
Mendel Skulski 06:31
Or tenacious.
Adam Huggins 06:32
Tenacious, you call it.
Adam Huggins 06:33
So we have cherished ecologies, which are those that we preserve. And tenacious ecologies, which are those that persist.
Mendel Skulski 06:42
Okay.
Adam Huggins 06:43
And so that leaves ecologies that we, as humans, actively create, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Mendel Skulski 06:52
Right, yeah, by dint of just allowing to catch all of our effects, or by steering in some way, right?
Adam Huggins 07:00
Yeah. Um, I came up with a bunch of names for these,
Mendel Skulski 07:03
[Laughs] Ok.
Adam Huggins 07:04
Including mendacious ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 07:06
Oh, too close.
Adam Huggins 07:06
Or fallacious ecologies. [Laughter] One of today's guest’s children calls them freak-o-systems.
Mendel Skulski 07:13
Oh, I love that.
Adam Huggins 07:15
And the different guests that we have today, they'll refer to them as novel ecosystems or designer ecosystems, or even hyper-ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 07:22
Okay.
Adam Huggins 07:22
And these are all some of these are like overlapping terms. And some of them refer to different things, which we'll get into.
Mendel Skulski 07:27
I'm pretty sold on freak-o-systems.
Adam Huggins 07:29
Freak-o-systems is pretty great.
Mendel Skulski 07:30
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 07:31
But I came up with my own term, because…
Mendel Skulski 07:34
[Laughter] …because this is your show.
Adam Huggins 07:37
So, as an umbrella term, I want to call them audacious ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 07:42
Ohhh.
Adam Huggins 07:42
Because I think fundamentally, these are ecologies that come to be as a result of our sort of human propensity to take risks in order to achieve some kind of reward.
Mendel Skulski 07:53
Right? Yeah. So just to recap, according to you.
Adam Huggins 07:57
Just – just me
Mendel Skulski 07:58
Our future ecologies will include some that are cherished, some elements that are tenacious, and some elements that are audacious.
Adam Huggins 08:12
Exactly.
Mendel Skulski 08:12
Okay.
Adam Huggins 08:13
And it's that third category, these ecologies that we create on purpose or otherwise, that I want to discuss today.
[Upbeat eerie electronic music gets louder]
Adam Huggins 08:27
And to do that, I'm going to introduce you to two people who have changed the way that I think about the freak-o-systems all around us and also like what it is that I'm doing this my life in general. [Laughter]
Mendel Skulski 08:40
Yeah, okay, let's get to the bottom of you. Let's crack this nut.
Adam Huggins 08:44
Careful of what you ask for.
[Theme song]
Introduction Voiceover 08:50
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples – This is Future Ecologies.
[Theme music fades]
Adam Huggins 09:30
Feels good to be back, eh?
Mendel Skulski 09:31
Yeah. Did we ever really leave?
Adam Huggins 09:33
…
Adam Huggins 09:35
Just gonna leave a pause there. Okay. So I'm just gonna go ahead and introduce you to these two mentors of mine. Mendel, meet Eric.
Eric Higgs 09:43
I'm Eric Higgs.
Mendel Skulski 09:44
Hey, Eric.
Eric Higgs 09:45
I'm a professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. And I spent a lot of time on Galiano Island.
Adam Huggins 09:53
Which is where I live and we're recording right now.
Mendel Skulski 09:55
Yes. What is Eric's deal? What does he do?
Adam Huggins 10:00
He studies restoration ecology, which we'll get into in a minute.
Mendel Skulski 10:04
Right.
Mendel Skulski 10:05
And this is Oliver.
Oliver Kellhammer 10:07
Hi, my name is Oliver Kellhammer, and I'm an artist and a permaculture designer. And I currently am a part time lecturer at Parsons, the New School for Design in New York City.
Mendel Skulski 10:19
Okay, so we have one restoration ecologist, and one artist slash permaculturist. What's the, what's the thread here? What do they have in common?
Adam Huggins 10:31
Well, they actually they have quite a lot in common, although there are definitely areas of like, creative tension. But it's these areas of creative tension that drive my own practice personally. So I'm hoping that neither of them will mind if we juxtapose their ideas, and some of their projects.
Mendel Skulski 10:47
I hope you checked with them.
Adam Huggins 10:49
Just for the record, I did indeed check with them. Anyhow, back to Mendel
Mendel Skulski 10:55
Um, so I think we should back up a bit. Because not everyone is a restoration ecologist. Why don't we unpack some of those terms. Restoration? And permaculture?
Adam Huggins 11:07
I mean, how long do you have?
Mendel Skulski 11:08
Uh, [laughter], let's keep this one under an hour.
Adam Huggins 11:11
Okay. Well, I'll just, I'll let Eric define ecological restoration, because he was actually part of defining it officially, back in the day.
Mendel Skulski 11:20
What, really?
[Mystical electronic music plays]
Eric Higgs 11:25
Well, let me start with a definition that I think has become the gold standard definition, which is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that's been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. So that is the official SER definition. It was the one that we worked up in the late 1990s.
[Suspenseful noise]
Mendel Skulski 11:45
That's wild. With who? To whom?
Adam Huggins 11:47
So SER, that's the Society for Ecological Restoration.
Eric Higgs 11:50
So there was a period of turbulence in the early development of the Society for Ecological Restoration where there were a whole bunch of different definitions floating around, and we finally put some boundaries on it and came up with that definition, which has been shockingly durable I think. It's held up over the last couple of decades.
[Raindrops and suspense noise]
Adam Huggins 12:11
Okay, so that's restoration. Pretty straightforward. And we're about to seriously challenge the boundaries of that definition.
Eric Higgs 12:18
Yeah. And I think there's some elegance to the definition. I mean, it can be criticized in lots of ways too. But one of the attributes I really like about the definition is that it embeds humility [raindrop noise] within it. It says, we're not fixing ecosystems. We're assisting the recovery of an ecosystem.
Mendel Skulski 12:35
Oh, I like that.
Adam Huggins 12:36
Yeah. Lest we forget how much damage we are capable of doing by trying to fix something.
Mendel Skulski 12:41
It's happened before.
[Slow electronic music plays]
Adam Huggins 12:50
So we'll come back to Eric and this question of what restoration is in a bit. If you're cool with that definition.
Mendel Skulski 12:54
I'm good with that.
Adam Huggins 12:55
All right. As for permaculture, I mean, [laughter] good luck finding two identical definitions of permaculture. Yes, there's a guy named Bill Mollison, who was the kind of charismatic Australian who is usually considered the founder of the discipline to find his permaculture,
Mendel Skulski 13:09
He wrote the book.
Adam Huggins 13:10
And he defined permaculture as, quote, "the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems, which have the diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems" end quote.
Mendel Skulski 13:22
It's food focused, right? Like it's serving human needs with food for the most part.
Adam Huggins 13:27
Yeah, it's utilitarian. And I would say the definition has kind of expanded since then. I would personally define it as an ethics based set of principles for designing resilient ecosystems for human benefit.
Mendel Skulski 13:40
Right. So would it, would it also be fair to say that it's kind of a loose set of principles and practices that, in many ways, draws on generations of indigenous wisdom, but has largely been popularized and promulgated by settlers?
Adam Huggins 13:57
Yeah, I would say that that's pretty fair.
Mendel Skulski 13:59
I mean, that that kind of mirrors what happens in ecological restoration, doesn't it?
Adam Huggins 14:05
Yeah, I think those disciplines shared that in common to some extent. And, and that's, that gets into like—there's this way that permaculture and ecological restoration are quite similar. Which is that they're both based on a set of broadly accepted principles for how we should approach intervening in ecological systems. And you know, which discipline you choose to work within is mostly based on the end goals of that intervention, whether they're a little bit more human utilitarian, or a little bit more ecosystem centric.
Mendel Skulski 14:34
Right, right. Like, are we trying to produce food? Or, are we trying to restore habitat for some endangered species or plural endangered species?
Adam Huggins 14:44
Yeah. And like, what if we want to do both at the same time?
Mendel Skulski 14:47
So this is that creative tension you're talking about?
Adam Huggins 14:50
Yeah. And since permaculture is a bit of a loaded term and discipline, this is the last time I'm going to mention it.
Mendel Skulski 14:57
Wow. Really?
Adam Huggins 14:59
In this episode.
Mendel Skulski 14:59
Holy moly.
Adam Huggins 15:00
Because if Eric identifies as a restorationist, Oliver, I think, identifies primarily as an artist.
Oliver Kellhammer 15:08
Yes, I have. And it's a strategy, uh, for survival. There's something odd about art. And, um, as soon as you work within the sphere of art, ah, there's a whole set of conditions that start to apply. And you can kind of do things that other folks find a harder time to have the agency to do. So I can say, I'm doing this art project. And I can find some funding for that, or some support. And I can sort of embark on these kind of crazy projects that, ah, may not be immediately utilitarian, ah, or have like a defined outcome. But I'm able to do these kind of long term experiments, ah, in a way that I don't think I'd be able to do in other territories.
[Angelic music]
Adam Huggins 16:01
And this approach has allowed Oliver to endow the ecosystems that he helps to create with the kind of security that is rarely afforded to ecological systems, especially in a city like Vancouver or New York or Toronto, where he has worked in the past. I mean, in those places, like, so many gardens and green spaces get developed eventually, just because the price of land is so high. But if you call something art, it affords it a certain cachet and a certain kind of protection.
Mendel Skulski 16:29
Yeah, strategic,
Adam Huggins 16:31
Very strategic.
Oliver Kellhammer 16:32
Art has, a currency. It has a kind of commodity value in our society. It is a way of identifying certain human objects or sets of relationships that sets it apart from other things. And, ah, there's a sort of aura to art, you know, to kind of quote Walter Benjamin.
Mendel Skulski 16:56
Benjamin!
Mendel Skulski 16:57
When you want to do certain things, you have to kind of think about where is it situated in terms of, you know, is it a commodity? Is it something to be bought and sold? Well, no. Is it a functional intervention? Well, not necessarily. So what is it? Well, it's some sort of a cultural investigation into the adjacent possible. So that gets you very close to the realm of art. So it seems to be the sort of, you know, last concept standing.
Mendel Skulski 17:29
Oh, man. There's so much art-speak in here, and I'm here for it. [Laughter] A cultural investigation into the adjacent possible.
Adam Huggins 17:39
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 17:40
All right. What does that look like? Bring that to me in terms of an ecosystem.
Adam Huggins 17:46
Okay, um. I met Oliver in my early 20s, when I was like a budding guerilla gardener in East Vancouver. [River sounds] And East Vancouver is a pretty industrial kind of place. So any green space is kind of noticeable. And I started to realize, you know, walking around these areas and trying to understand the place that I was in that this guy named Oliver had been involved in some way in like, all of the green spaces. Like you look around. And there's Cottonwood Gardens, which is in your neck of the woods.
Adam Huggins 18:15
I love Cottonwood. It's so beautiful
Adam Huggins 18:17
Yeah. And then there's Means of Production, which you also probably are familiar with.
Mendel Skulski 18:21
I know it.
Adam Huggins 18:22
Yeah. And because we're talking about art, there's this conceptual layer to, and a lot of Oliver's projects are meant to become what he calls open source landscapes.
[Trumpet and clarinet plays]
Oliver Kellhammer 18:45
Well, I've always had ideas and ambitions to improve the relationships between people and nature. And, uh, I see constant breakdowns in that relationship. So my idea of the open source landscape is, you know, to, to go into a situation as an artist and a designer and look at something that, you know, where the relationships between people in the landscape and people in each other could be improved, in my opinion. So this is very subjective on my part. So I think well, things could be improved. So then I set about creating some sort of a scaffold where the relationships can be improved. And I usually use plants. So I call it like, a botanical intervention. So in the in the work that I did in East Vancouver called Means of Production, I used willow to create a kind of material plantation where people could harvest willow and make things and then, but little by little, you know, people did that. But then little by little people added to that landscape and they're continuing to add to the landscape by bringing in plants and other features that have other intentions. Such as you know, somebody who's making musical instruments, somebody who's making you know dye for dyeing fabrics. Somebody's growing paper making supplies. So all of these things are what, you know, things evolved into but they weren't intended originally. So the landscape constantly adapts to the people who use it, and who are the stewards of it.
Mendel Skulski 20:16
Nice.
Adam Huggins 20:16
So these are places you're already familiar with and that are kind of like woven into your understanding of place, right?
Mendel Skulski 20:21
Mmm hmm. Yeah, it's hard to imagine the character of East Van without those spaces.
Adam Huggins 20:26
Yeah, I feel the same way. And there's so much to say about those projects. But because we're not talking about permaculture so much, I want to move on to a couple other projects that he's created, that I think are really informative. Okay.
[Music grows louder]
Adam Huggins 20:41
Just before we move on, though, this music that we're listening to right now, is being played on instruments made from plants harvested at the Means of Production garden that Oliver was just describing in East Vancouver. The group is called the Legion of Flying Monkeys Orchestra. And the horns that they're playing have to be seen to be believed. They're artful and strange, and fashioned from trees like Elderberry and Paulownia, which are harvested at the Means of Production. This is an outcome that Oliver never anticipated when he made his first botanical interventions there. And that's the beauty of an open source landscape.
[Music grows louder]
Adam Huggins 21:24
Anyway, for the rest of this episode, I'm going to introduce Mendel, and by extension you, to two of Oliver's botanical interventions that challenge the limits of this idea of ecological restoration. The first one is called Healing the Cut, Bridging the Gap. And in this case, one of his botanical interventions has been so successful that it has become almost invisible to people who aren't aware that it's there.
Mendel Skulski 21:53
Am, am I not aware? Is it in my neighborhood,
Adam Huggins 21:56
It's nearby. We'll find out if you're aware. [Laugher] So to tell the story, I'm gonna cut to a piece of tape that I recorded of Oliver during a class that he was teaching.
Adam Huggins 22:06
This is gonna sound a little different. Different in this context means that you're going to occasionally hear chickens, because this classroom was attached to a chicken coop, naturally.
[Piano intro]
Oliver Kellhammer 22:19
So as an artist, you know, I'm always looking for these kind of projects. And this was in the early 90s—93, I think. There was a big construction project that happened right next to the safe way on Victoria Drive and East Bend. And allegedly it was to build better bridges. So, the old bridges were not earthquake stable, and they wanted to build better bridges. But they also had an idea that they wanted to widen the ravine and build like freeways and so on. So I had the sense that this wasn't good. So I said, okay, I'm an artist. Ah, what can I do? And fortunately, at the same time, the city of Vancouver was so, like, they were getting a lot of flack because this forest that was here before got turned into this. Right? And so people are going, ‘oh, my God, this is East Van, we hardly have any green space—it has the lowest green space per capita of any neighborhood in the city. We've lost our forest, you guys.’ So then the city people said, well, we'll bring artists in. And we'll make the bridge nice. We'll have like colored banners, and we'll have art stuff, you know, it'll make it nice. And so they put out a call for submissions, as they always do, for artists to kind of gentrify it, right? And it's like, yeah, but I wanted the money, you know, because I needed to live right. So. Okay, so I put in a proposal with my then collaborator to say, all right, what we're going to do is we're not going to make the bridge pretty. It's ugly. [Rooster crowing] Irredeemably so. But what we are going to do is bring forest back, because that's what people miss. And we went through a whole lot of red tape, juries, blah, blah, blah. Eventually, to make a long story short, I got this contract to reforest the Grandview Cut, it's called. So I did. I’ll show you how I do it.
Mendel Skulski 24:06
Well, oh, my God. The ravine! Okay, so let's break it down. For people who aren't East Van dwellers like myself.
Adam Huggins 24:16
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 24:17
What is the Grandview cut?
Narration Voiceover 24:21
The Grandview Cut, created by the Great Northern Railway in 1913 to bring trains in on a level track into the new freight yards on the former Falls Creek Basin, cut the neighborhood in half.
Adam Huggins 24:34
So the Grandview Cut is basically a ravine that runs through East Vancouver. But it's not a natural ravine. It was actually excavated in the early 1900s in order to provide fill to allow for the construction of rail lines in the Falls Creek mud flats. That land was created right out of basically what must have been like, estuary. [Laugher]
Mendel Skulski 24:52
Yeah, totally. All the earth that they took out of there filled in the flats, filled in my neighborhood in Strathcona, and filled in, like, underneath Main Street, which used to be a bridge over the water of False Creek.
Adam Huggins 25:04
Yeah, and once they had excavated it, they went ahead and they built a railway right through it. And now there's the SkyTrain. So, because it's manmade, and has a lot of infrastructure and construction that's going on within it historically, it's really prone to erosion.
Oliver Kellhammer 25:18
So in the meantime, you know, the rain has not stopped in Vancouver just because you're like, in a meeting, right? So it's like, you guys, we have to do something. Because look what's happening. We have this building up here, this condominium, and suddenly like, the whole cliff is falling down because of the rain, right? It's like landslide city. Like, you got to do something. So finally they said, Okay, okay, come on, we can try this. But if it doesn't work, we're gonna build a concrete wall. It's like, ugh.
[Children playing]
Mendel Skulski 25:48
Oh, man, the stakes are high.
Adam Huggins 25:50
I mean, like, how many artists do you know that have to solve an engineer's problem? Can I show you some photos?
Mendel Skulski 25:56
Oh, I want to see photos.
Adam Huggins 25:58
Oh, man. Okay, so this is a photo of before Oliver got started.
Mendel Skulski 26:01
Oh my god, it's so like, empty and lifeless. It's just, like, a wall of silt and dirt. And there's not a plant in sight.
Oliver Kellhammer 26:13
So now I had even less time, right? Crazy, crazy, crazy. I'm like a guy went to art school. Like, now that’s good. Gives me sort of arrogance, but it doesn't like qualify you for very much right so. So I knew that willow was a very good way to fix, uh, um, damaged, sort of unstable slope, right? So things like willows and poplars. You can literally stick in the ground, and they'll grow, right? Very easy. [Chickens cackling] As long as you do it in dormancy. You don't have to do any ruining burn or anything, you just shove it in the ground, right? And as long as it’s moist, it’ll grow. So I shoved in like hundreds and hundreds of willow sticks on contour. [Laughter] Oh, those chickens. [More chickens cackling]
Adam Huggins 26:57
Let's see. Thought I had a shot there. Yes.
Mendel Skulski 27:00
Oh ohh.
Adam Huggins 27:01
There's a young Oliver live staking with willow.
Mendel Skulski 27:03
Just bundle full of willow. Willows is great. Living fences, living trellis. Got to love willow.
Oliver Kellhammer 27:09
The hillside was like completely barren. And the birds had no place to live. Right? And so one of the main vectors of plant growth is birds, right? Because birds eat seeds and fruits and birds [bleep] constantly. That's what birds do. If you're parked under a cherry tree, you get [bleep] on your car, like a lot, right? So bird flies around. [Hits table] Out comes a seed, out comes a tree. So if you can attract birds, you get a forest, right? So I realized there's no way you can plant enough willows to do this in time. I needed help. Right? And the birds were my kin. Right? So I built these little birdhouses, right? And the birds were like, where's my tree? Oh, I’m gonna have this like stupid little house but it’s better than nothing. So they moved in.
Adam Huggins 28:00
Oh, the little bird houses.
Mendel Skulski 28:02
Yeah, they're just like, just classic box bird houses on sticks, sort of peppered along this, this highly eroded wall of mud and grass.
Oliver Kellhammer 28:13
And there's me, right? Like, with my stick. And I'm like super afraid of heights. So it was like the worst. The other thing was that it was really muddy. So I had this big piece of rebar so I could sort of catch myself in the mud, as I'm falling, I can kind of scramble up the hill again.
Adam Huggins 28:28
So like, here's another shot of that slope, like, just like eroding away, right?
Mendel Skulski 28:31
Yeah, that doesn't look safe.
Adam Huggins 28:32
And like there's a building right above it, just like a disaster waiting to happen.
Mendel Skulski 28:37
It looks like just straight up and down mud.
Adam Huggins 28:39
Yeah. So he's doing all of this work. But there's still lots of erosion going on while it's happening, right? And these huge gullies have formed, which is what happens,
Oliver Kellhammer 28:48
But that's okay. Because what happens is, trees will continue to root. So the more, you know, disturbance, the more rooting. So even if a bunch of soil falls down, the willow does not want to die, right? So it's going to continue to push, push, push, push out, and anchor in, in, in, in. Which is like, the opposite of a piece of steel, which sits there, right? Willow has an intelligence. It's alive. It's not just a neutral material. It has an agenda, like it doesn't want to die and wants to be a big willow tree. So it's gonna constantly be adjusting itself. Which neutral, sort of passive materials don't do. So with borrowed materials, you actually harness the natural intelligence of the material to adjust dynamic situations, right?
Mendel Skulski 29:33
Yeah. Everything with its agenda. You just better hope that it lines up with your agenda. That's true.
Adam Huggins 29:40
And in this case, like the overlap was just like, it was perfect because like so, again, here's the conceptual drawing that he made to kind of submit to get the contract in the first place.
Mendel Skulski 29:51
Right, it's like a pen and ink drawing of a of the slope with the access road running down it and a few plants here and there and then a close up of the little birdhouse.
Adam Huggins 30:00
Yeah. And then, you know, after not too many years, like, this is what that site looks like.
Mendel Skulski 30:06
That's the ravine I know. It's just covered in trees and greenery. Are those all willows now?
Adam Huggins 30:13
Um, no. So there's been succession on the site. And so, originally, he planted willows, but eventually, they were shaded out by Cottonwoods and Alders.
Mendel Skulski 30:23
Wow.
Adam Huggins 30:24
And as far as he knows, the birds planted them.
Adam Huggins 30:26
Wow.
Mendel Skulski 30:27
But yeah, the slope is fully vegetated now. And if you were biking by just on the bridge, you'd like, never know. Right?
Mendel Skulski 30:32
Yeah. I mean, it just, it looks exceedingly natural. Right? Like, it's not clearly a park space where people are supposed to go and somebody's gardening it and caretaking it. Yeah, you'd never think twice about it.
Adam Huggins 30:43
And why would you? The trees look like they've always been there. And I mean, the project was a complete success from the point of view of like a restorationist. He stabilized the slope and reduced the erosion, and he established a native tree cover. And he did it with like, minimal expense
Oliver Kellhammer 30:59
You know, like, people look at this and they go ‘oh, forest.’ But they don't know that this is a completely—it's an art thing, right?
Adam Huggins 31:06
But if you look closely, there is one element that could clue you in to that this, this is an art project.
Mendel Skulski 31:12
[Laugher] Okay, tell me.
Oliver Kellhammer 31:14
Okay, so I had all this leftover money because I didn't have any material cost, except for sticks, and like a bus pass. So I got them to modify the bridge and put this big, which cost like a lot of money, to put this telescope up and these plaques where you can then watch the birds and watch that trees growing. And people love now, stopping in the middle of the bridge, because it’s kind of a long bridge, and they stop, look through the telescope, look at the trains, look at the bridge, look at the birds. And it's become a place of kind of reflection on the regenerative processes of nature. And not just a place to hurry across from one side of the ravine to the other. So it's changed the kind of experience of moving across that bridge.
Mendel Skulski 32:02
Oh, I, I've noticed a little, it's like it's a binocular technically right? Like it's one of those classic tourist trap pole mounted binoculars.
Adam Huggins 32:12
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 32:12
I've never thought about like, why would anybody peer down into this space? Like, why is this a tourist attraction? I've never stopped to question that.
Adam Huggins 32:21
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 32:22
That's so funny.
Adam Huggins 32:22
And it's because it's technically a work of art. Like, Oliver wanted people to see it as it grew. And to be able to watch the birds and to be able to enjoy the plants growing. And now he has intellectual property rights over that slope. So if the city ever wanted to, like modify it again, they'd have a legal fight on their hands.
Mendel Skulski 32:50
You know, I don't. I've got my problems with IP law. But this seems like a force for good.
Adam Huggins 32:56
Yeah. Yeah. So next time you step on that bridge, take a look through the binos. And just think about how things have changed. Yeah?
Mendel Skulski 33:06
I will. I'll make a point of it.
[Angelic and drum sounds]
Mendel Skulski 33:24
So that's, that's project number one. Yeah. And that seems like right on target for textbook Ecological Restoration.
Adam Huggins 33:33
Yeah. Except Oliver, in his own jargon, would call it a botanical intervention.
Mendel Skulski 33:38
Okay. So what's project number two?
Adam Huggins 33:41
Okay, so um, project number two. Oliver spent many years teaching permaculture at a place called Linnaea Farm on Cortez Island, which is also here in the Salish Sea, but north of Galliano. And Cortez actually still supports a healthy wolf population. So compared to the Grandview Cut, I would say, most people would think that it was in pretty good shape, right? Ecologically.
Mendel Skulski 34:04
Sure.
Adam Huggins 34:05
But if you appear beneath the surface on any of these islands, right, and virtually anywhere on the coast of BC, you can see that there are all of these lingering effects of industrial forestry. Like, everywhere.
Mendel Skulski 34:18
No doubt. You don't have to go far to find like, abandoned equipment. As deep as you care to go in practically any forest.
Adam Huggins 34:26
Old road cuts, soil compaction.
Mendel Skulski 34:28
The reach is endless.
Adam Huggins 34:30
And then of course, there's climate change. And on the west coast, that means for weeks on end in the summertime, we can just have smoke for air.
[Theme music starts again]
Oliver Kellhammer 34:41
So this was a couple of years ago. This was on Cortez Island, you know, normally known as a sort of paradise kind of hippie place with clean air and charismatic whales and everything. Then it was like Armageddon. It was like, you know, the air—you couldn't breathe. It was worse than New York. This was the sun at noon on Cortez, right? Crazy, and we didn't have fires on Cortez. The fires were miles and miles away on the mainland. So air quality was terrible. But it's happening more and more now. We're getting these incredible hot summers, forest fires, and trees are dying. So this is happening in the forest. These are Western redcedars. They're actually having trouble. Now, there are places where they're doing fine, of course, but any cedar that's on a kind of edgy spot like that’s maybe a little rocky or not getting good water, they tend to die. So the shifting. There’s been a shifting of species happening. And as I say, we need to notice, if you're interested in forestry at all, maybe we shouldn't be planting cedars as much. Maybe we should be planting different kinds of trees.
Adam Huggins 35:42
So on Cortez, because of this, Oliver started this project called Neo-Eocene.
Mendel Skulski 35:48
That's a mouthful.
Adam Huggins 35:50
Which he has worked on with this botanist named Rupert Sheldrake.
Mendel Skulski 35:54
Oh my god, Rupert Sheldrake. Oh, ahhh!!! [Excited laugher]
[Theme music]
Mendel Skulski 36:04
Like, the Rupert Sheldrake.
Adam Huggins 36:06
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 36:07
Like, botanist, scientist, philosopher, New Age mystic Rupert Sheldrake.
Adam Huggins 36:13
Yeah.
Oliver Kellhammer 36:14
I'm involved in his long term experiment with a botanist called Rupert Sheldrake planting trees from fifty million years ago that used to grow here. Like, you can find, if you are in the Lower Mainland in sort of basically Maple Ridge or in like places in the interior, like Kamloops. You can find fossil redwoods and ginkos and cypresses and stuff. You can find them. They grew here, but they grew when it was warm, fifty million years ago, four degrees C warmer than as warm as it's going to get within the next hundred years. So our experiment was to bring these trees back to the British Columbia forest to see if they would grow without any help.
Mendel Skulski 36:52
All the trees had their knees up. Isn’t that right? When it’s like warm and swampy. They all had like their knees out of the…
Adam Huggins 36:59
I've never heard that before
Mendel Skulski 37:01
They have knees. [Shy laughter] Okay, whatever,
Adam Huggins 37:04
I love that. [Laughter] All the trees had their knees up. That's bald cypresses is right. They have like, they have like roots. That's, I'm trying remember what they're called now. I'm a bad botanist.
Mendel Skulski 37:13
I thought they were knees.
Adam Huggins 37:14
So what did that? What do you mean by that?
Mendel Skulski 37:16
Well, like cypresses. They have their little knobbly knees and they poke them out of the dirt. I don't know, I think it's gas exchange.
Adam Huggins 37:24
Okay, I have to interject here for a minute. When Mendel is talking about knees, they're referring to the bizarre woody projections that surround the trunks of bald cypress trees, almost like swampy stalagmites. We did a little follow up sleuthing after this conversation, and discovered that while early botanists did indeed believe that these structures facilitated oxygen exchange for the cypress tree, and called them pneumatophores, in fact, there is no evidence that they played this role. In the end, these pneumatophores are still just knobly knees, as Mendel said. And we don't know why bald cypresses have them and why other similar trees don't. Anyway, the point is, Oliver and Rupert were imagining a forest of trees that grew in the hot humid swamps of prehistoric North America. The last time levels of carbon dioxide were as high in the atmosphere as they're projected to be if we don't stop burning fossil fuels, and fast.
[Angelic music continues]
Mendel Skulski 38:27
So hot swampy times. Like prehistoric.
Adam Huggins 38:31
Prehistoric. So yeah, that's, and that's the idea. So Rupert had purchased some land that had been clear cut. And so you know, like restoration, Oliver and Rupert decided that they were gonna reforest that clear cut.
Oliver Kellhammer 38:43
But what we did is we got hold of one of these clear cuts, and started planting it with not Douglas firs and cedars. But with redwoods and sequoias and walnuts and ginko's and things that we thought would do well, because they grew well fifty million years ago in a sort of 60 acre plantation.
[Low bass guitar]
Mendel Skulski 39:06
Okay, so yeah, he's bringing back these ancient species.
Adam Huggins 39:09
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 39:10
But why?
Adam Huggins 39:12
Well, if restoration is, quote, unquote, "assisting in the recovery of an ecosystem that has been damaged" then, like, the key word there is recovery, right? Like recovery to what? Would it be recovery to like, health, or, or to the way that it was previously? And so like, oftentimes, people are thinking that it's just about taking an ecosystem back to a previous state, right? Restore. Like to restore something.
Mendel Skulski 39:41
Make trees great again.
Adam Huggins 39:42
Oh God.
Mendel Skulski 39:43
Sorry. [Laugher]
Adam Huggins 39:44
And, and, and, and usually, like, we use something that restoration has called historical reference system, which is basically like an ecosystem that's kind of still like that. And so we use that as a model. Like, oh, this ecosystem used to be like that one and still is. So we're going to try to make this one. Yeah, like that again. And basically what Oliver is saying here is that, I mean, if we're gonna keep putting carbon into the atmosphere like there's no tomorrow, then the most appropriate historical reference ecosystem is not like Cortez island in the year 1800. Right? It's Cortez island in the Eocene, like 50 million years ago, when carbon levels were about this high in the atmosphere.
Mendel Skulski 40:26
He's going prehistoric.
Adam Huggins 40:27
He's going prehistoric. And what that means is planting Dawn redwoods and Coast redwoods and giant sequoias and ginkos and bald cypresses. Plants that dominated this region at that time.
[Drums playing]
Oliver Kellhammer 40:46
So back in those times, I mean, nobody was around, but they speculate from like fossil records. This is what it looked like. So they had these trees like the cypress and stuff growing in the water. They had a lot of crazy critters that don't live here anymore, like crocodiles and pythons and tapers and stuff.
Mendel Skulski 41:05
Does he have space for big horsetails? Big horsetails and prototaxites? [Laughter]
Adam Huggins 41:10
Unfortunately, none of those survived the intervening mass extinction events, like.
Mendel Skulski 41:15
Give me prototaxites.
Adam Huggins 41:16
[Laughter] If you build it, maybe they will come. I don't know. Like, yeah, you can't get back all these extinct megafauna. Right? So it's definitely like, they planted the trees that have survived the intervening fifty million years and are still with us today.
Oliver Kellhammer 41:31
Now, mind you, the summers were wetter so the ginko didn't particularly love it here, it likes wetter summers. But the redwoods were very happy. And so were the sequoia so you know, we learned some things. This is like a, you know, five year old redwood—it's just kicking butt and it's not protected. We didn't have to comb them because the deer don't like them. And they are doing—outcompeting the native redcedars in a clear craft with no water.
[Birds chirping and angelic sounds continue]
Oliver Kellhammer 41:58
Now, some people didn't like this idea. And it was a very good argument. And I totally respect their point of view, because we had some covenants on the land. And the covenants insisted that the trees that were to be reforested were to be the native trees. But my argument was, they're prehistorically native, okay? They were years ago. It's still a big issue in restoration ecology, you're gonna come up against people who think you're nuts, and you shouldn't be able to do this. And it's a worthwhile discussion to have, because, you know, you don't want to be the person to be the next scotch broom introducer person, right. So there's downsides to exotics. Right? But my argument is that formerly native species are a fair game, right.
Mendel Skulski 42:39
[Laughter] Okay. prehistorically native. That's a bold take.
Adam Huggins 42:45
Yeah. What do you think of his argument?
Mendel Skulski 42:47
You know, that's like an artist's way of framing it, right? Like, that's so funny to not go back to like, how it was pre-industrial right? But to go all the way back, so far back, into the world that we are becoming. Into this high carbon, high heat, probably pretty wet around here.
Adam Huggins 43:08
Yeah, the bald cypresses have got to get their knees up.
Mendel Skulski 43:10
The bald cypresses gotta get their knees up. And like, it sticks your nose right in it. Right? Like, get ready. We're going back. We're going all the way back. And these are the plants that we need.
Adam Huggins 43:19
Back to the Future.
Mendel Skulski 43:20
It's Back to the Future. I kind of like it. I think it's incendiary.
Adam Huggins 43:26
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 43:26
But it's funny.
Adam Huggins 43:27
So I asked Eric about this project. And this is what he said.
Eric Higgs 43:31
So as an actual provocation, it's brilliant as a learning opportunity. It's really powerful. And as a specific experiment, it strikes me as being bold and original. Should we all be planting bald cypress? Probably not.
Mendel Skulski 43:47
Yeah, exactly. It's, it serves as art, right? Like, it's not, hopefully, the model. But…
Adam Huggins 43:55
Yeah, definitely, like the outer limits of what you would possibly be able to define as ecological restoration. But like all of Oliver's open source landscapes, that ecosystem is going to change and evolve on its own over time, and different organisms and people are going to participate in that process. So in that way, it is a lot like many restoration projects, right?
Mendel Skulski 44:19
Yeah, it's just a just a wildly different starting point.
Oliver Kellhammer 44:22
As a designer, I see myself as a sort of homeopathic presence. I, um, introduce some small quantities of design and then watch. Yeah, the sort of, sort of catalytic effect. Kind of watch it unfold. And then eventually, I'm not required anymore, which is like the best feeling in the world when you can just go ‘oh, they don't need me. I can go do something else.’ And that's fortunately happened in most of my work. It's lucky to some extent, but it's also built in. Like, like my obsolescence is built in.
Mendel Skulski 44:56
I mean, yeah, opinions vary about homeopathy, but I like the sentiment, right? Like, you're framing it, like open source, implies that like, anybody really can access it and change it over time. And that's, that's not just humans, right? Those are birds. And those are burrowing animals. And those are beetles and spiders and fungi. And, you know, I sometimes call myself an artist, and I know how hard it can be to step back from your work and just allow other people to help it evolve.
Adam Huggins 45:29
It does, like it takes a lot of trust. And also like a real sense of like, the impermanence of things. Which is kind of ironic because Oliver identifies himself as a permaculturist.
Mendel Skulski 45:40
That's so funny. Maybe im-permaculture is a is a better target.
Adam Huggins 45:44
Yeah, it's got a nice ring to it. [Laughter] I would say like, I think he is kind of an im-permaculturist.
Oliver Kellhammer 45:50
Yeah, that's the thing. Um, the transience of things is very important to appreciate. And I'm lucky to be married to a Zen Buddhist, who's taught me a lot about ephemerality. And there's a Japanese notion of mono no aware, which is a sort of poignant awareness of the transience of things, which is kind of epitomized by the cherry blossom. You know, the cherry blossom blooms, and it's beautiful. And it's even more beautiful when it has just finished and falling off the tree, right? Because that's the moment of over-ness. But that moment is so beautiful. And so the ephemerality of our efforts, ah, is something that we need to cultivate as an aesthetic. I think we need to cultivate more ephemerality, and, ah, and emergent sort of generative things that they can change, they can pop up, they can exist for a while they can live their lives. Sometimes they might last 100 years, sometimes they might last 100 days. And that's okay.
[Birds chirping and wind chimes]
Mendel Skulski 47:14
Oh, it's incredible. There's just this, like East Van osmosis happening between me and him.
Adam Huggins 47:20
Or that, like, his intellectual DNA that we're discussing right now is embedded in the landscapes that you have been living in and soaking in.
Mendel Skulski 47:28
In my entire life, right? And like the, the aspirations of what a healthy urban ecological system looks like is entirely informed by his life's work. And I had no idea right? Like, I just grew up in it.
Adam Huggins 47:44
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 47:45
That's amazing to me.
Adam Huggins 47:46
Yeah. I mean, homeopathy, opinions may vary, but pretty effective in this case.
Adam Huggins 47:51
Yeah.
[Birds chirping and wind chimes]
Mendel Skulski 48:01
You know, now that Oliver has taken us on a tour of some of his artworks—these open source landscapes and botanical interventions.
Adam Huggins 48:09
These audacious ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 48:14
Yeah—it's really cool to see how much they have to offer. I guess, folks like us who want to get down to it are really just trying to improve those relationships between people and that more than human world.
Adam Huggins 48:26
Yeah, it's fascinating to see how an artist's approach can really allow you to make some beautiful things. And stretch the definition of ecological restoration that Eric gave us. Actually just like stretch the definition of nature. Right? And so I guess, at this point, I really want to return to Eric, because he's got a pair of cautionary tales for us about what happens when the nature that you think you're designing with or for doesn't really resemble nature at all.
[Upbeat electronic music break]
Mendel Skulski 49:10
That sounds great. I gotta stop you there, though.
Adam Huggins 49:13
Oh, okay. Why?
Mendel Skulski 49:16
I think this episode has gone on just about long enough.
Adam Huggins 49:21
I guess you're right. I totally lost track of time.
Mendel Skulski 49:23
I'm sure you have more to say.
Adam Huggins 49:25
I do have more to say.
Mendel Skulski 49:27
I think we got to hold on to that. Till next time.
[Theme music picks up in increasing volume]
Adam Huggins 49:30
Yeah, I guess you're right. [Laughter] Okay, so that would be next time. On “Future Ecologies Part two of Nature by Design: A Tale of Two Wildernesses.”
[Theme music continues]
Mendel Skulski 49:46
Thanks for listening. This has been an independent production of Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins 49:51
This episode was produced by myself, Adam Huggins
Mendel Skulski 49:54
And me, Mendel Skulski.
Adam Huggins 49:56
In this episode, you heard Oliver Kelhammer and Dr. Eric Higgs. Oliver teaches at the Parsons School of Design at the New School in New York, and you can learn about his many projects at oliverk.org. Eric teaches at the University of Victoria, and is the author of several books including Nature By Design, People, Natural Processes, and Ecological Restoration. You can learn more about his work at erichiggs.ca.
Mendel Skulski 50:25
We'll be back next month with part two. Please rate and review Future Ecologies wherever podcasts can be found.
Adam Huggins 50:32
Special thanks to Hannah Roessler, Sadie Couture, Todd Howard, Brea Segger, Maya Gauvin, and Ilana Fonariov.
Mendel Skulski 50:39
Music in this episode was provided by Scott Gailey, the Legion of Flying Monkeys Horn Orchestra, and Sunfish Moon Light.
Adam Huggins 50:49
If you like what we do, please share us with your friends. You can also support us on Patreon. Our patrons get access to special mini episodes, interview segments, stickers, patches, and a Discord server. You can support us starting at just $1 a month by going to patreon.com/futureecologies. And we want to give a special shout out to all the patrons who supported us through our hiatus. You really keep us going.
Mendel Skulski 51:15
I love our patrons. We honestly have the coolest patrons, ahhh, I love you guys. You can get in touch with us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and iNaturalist and maybe Discord. The handle is always futureecologies. You can find a full list of musical credits, shownotes, links, and now, episode transcriptions on our website, futureecologies.net.
Adam Huggins 51:44
Okay, that's it for now. See you next time.
Mendel Skulski 51:47
Bye.
[Theme music fades]
Adam Huggins 51:57
That's after the break.
Adam Huggins 52:00
We have breaks again? We took a break from breaks. We’re back to breaks. We don't even sell ads. What are we doing?
Adam Huggins 52:11
That's the break. [Laughter]
[Electric guitar kicks back in and fades out]
Transcribed by https://otter.ai, and edited by Abe Proffitt & Victoria Klein