ni on water

New Internationalist     378     May 2005

Ecosystems / Water Water is a necessity for life. Yet, though life first evolved in the oceans, most terrestrial organisms cannot drink the salt water that makes up over 97 per cent of the world’s total. Of the fresh water that makes up the rest, more than 90 per cent is locked away in glaciers and ice sheets, or hidden deep underground. Only 0.0001 per cent of fresh water is easily accessible; human settlements are clustered along the waterways and fertile floodplains. This is all the fresh water available to us. It is not created anew but recycled, as the sun evaporates the oceans and water falls back to earth as rain and snow. What we drink is made up of ancient molecules of water that have fed rainforests, slaked the thirsts of dinosaurs and prophets, spent millennia frozen in glaciers. There is enough water in total for us all, but it is unevenly distributed. While the rich world uses more and more, many countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, suffer shortages. A third of the world’s people live in dryland regions that have access to only eight per cent of the world’s renewable water supply. For centuries humans dumped waste in the nearest watercourse and drank from it too, but this works only when the waste is small and the people are few. The pollution of waterways by toxic industrial waste and sewage is one of the biggest environmental challenges of our time. Modern improvements in human health are largely due to great public municipal works of sanitation that provide people with clean drinking water. Access to clean water is still one of the major distinctions between the world’s ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. The wars of the future are likely to be over fresh water – and sooner than we think. Meanwhile, as the Earth heats up and the polar ice caps melt, the rising, warming oceans are washing inland, salinizing freshwater tables and flooding human settlements. The oceans are the engines of global weather systems: as they warm, they are not only killing whales and coral reefs, they are triggering storm surges, droughts and new unpredictable weather patterns right across the planet. New Internationalist Ship cemetery, Aralsk harbour, Kazakhstan A beached ship in what remains of Aralsk harbour in the dry bed of the Aral Sea. In 1964 the rivers supplying the sea were pumped dry to irrigate cotton crops - 'white gold' - in Central Asia. Now the water has receded by over 100 kilometres, leaving a legacy of pollution that will severely damage the health of many generations to come. Photo: Paul Howell / UNEP / Still Pictures ‘When I was a boy, the ponds and waterholes used to last the whole year through. Now they are dry and empty. When the rains came and filled the oshanas (streams), we used to take our baskets and go fishing. Now the fish baskets hang from the roof poles as ornaments.' Abraham, from the Cuvelai basin in Namibiaz Bleached coral, Maldives Coral reefs, one of the richest ecosystems, are suffering the effects of tourism, overfishing, pollution and disease. The bleaching of coral tends to be caused by rising sea temperatures - themselves the result of global warming. Some 20 per cent of the planet's coral reefs have already been destroyed, with another 20 per cent badly degraded. Photo: Pascal Kobeh / Still Pictures Flooding near the Bay of Bengal In South Asia alone, half a billion people irrigate their crops with glacier-fed river flows from the Himalayas. But as the glaciers retreat, the spring meltwater will first surge, causing floods; and then, when the glaciers are gone, stop completely. Photo: Trygve Bolstad / Panos Tree roots, French Guiana The northern coast of South America has important forests and the Orinoco-Amazon mangroves and coastal swamps. The region is an ideal resting place for migratory birds such as scarlet ibises, herons, frigatebirds and greater flamingos. Photo: Fred Hoogervorst / Panos WATER – THE FACTS • Water withdrawals from rivers and lakes for irrigation, household and industrial use have doubled in the last 40 years. • In some regions, such as the Middle East and North Africa, humans use 120% of renewable water supplies, due to the reliance on groundwater that is not recharged. • Between 1960 and 2000 the storage of water in reservoirs quadrupled, so that the amount of water now stored behind large dams is estimated to be 3-6 times the amount held by natural river channels (excluding natural lakes). • The construction of dams and other structures along rivers has affected flows in 60% of the large river systems of the world. Water removal for human uses has reduced the flow of several major rivers, including the Nile, Yellow and Colorado Rivers, to the extent that they do not always flow to the sea. • As water flows have declined, so have sediment flows, which are the source of nutrients important for the maintenance of estuaries. Worldwide, sediment delivery to estuaries has declined by roughly 30%. • Since about 1980, approximately 35% of mangroves have been lost, while 20% of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed and a further 20% badly degraded.

susan griffin woman+nature 1978

PROLOGUE

He says that woman speaks with nature. That she hears voices from under the earth. That wind blows in her ears and trees whisper to her. That the dead sing through her mouth and the cries of infants are clear to her. But for him this dialogue is over. He says he is not part of this world, that he was set on this world as a stranger. He sets himself apart from woman and nature.

And so it is Goldilocks who goes to the home of the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood who converses with the wolf, Dorothy who befriends a lion, Snow White who talks to the birds, Cinderella with mice as her allies, the Mermaid who is half fish, Thumbelina courted by a mole. (And when we hear in the Navaho chant of the mountain that a grown man sits and smokes with bears and follows directions given to him by squirrels, we are surprised. We had thought only little girls spoke with animals.)

We are the bird's eggs. Bird's eggs, flowers, butterflies, rabbits, cows, sheep; we are caterpillars; we are leaves of ivy and sprigs of wallflower. We are women. We rise from the wave. We are gazelle and doe, elephant and whale, lilies and roses and peach, we are air, we are flame, we are oyster and pearl, we are girls. We are woman and nature. And he says he cannot hear us speak.

But we hear.

This round cavern, motion turned back on itself, the follower becomes the followed, moon in the sky, the edge becoming the centre, what is buried emerges, light dying over the water, what is unearthed is stunning, the one we are seeking, turning with the ways of the earth, is ourselves.
This cave, the shape to which each returns, where image after image will be revealed, and painted over, painted over and revealed, until we are bone. 

Where we touch the ones who came before and see their visions, where we leave our mark, where, terrified, we give up ourselves and weep, and taken over by this darkness, are overwhelmed by what we feel: where we are pushed to the edge of existence, to the source which sounds like a wave inside us, to the path of the water which feeds us all.
The way of the water we follow, which has made this space, and hollowed the earth here, because the shape of this cave is a history. from: http://allecto.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/caves-the-eeriness-of-reading-susan-griffins-woman-and-nature/ 

LINK ~ http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.womanandnatureroar.toc.htm

a review of Griffin's woman and nature: http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/ongriffin.htm

Bachelard ~ water + dreams Dillard

"Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after." Annie Dillard (An American Childhood) 

Bachelard 'to see' ~ he claims, we must go beyond our own narcissism

 Source: Photograph courtesy of Sean McPhail Lake Pedder

"The world wants to see itself"

  Water reveals, reflects

" the Lake is a large tranquil eye"

sea dragon

The night sea journey is a kind of descensus ad inferos--a descent into Hades and a journey to the land of ghosts somewhere beyond this world, beyond consciousness, hence an immersion in the unconscious.

The Psychology of the Transference CW16, par. 455 

 

link

Chiron~tapping the bones

what is submerged/suppressed becomes visible when sought. Science/Doubt/Courage Penetrated by the Fool - below the Surface, beneath the liminal Sheath, Lurking darkness, seductive Redness - cool Water.
Asklepios (Greek hero who later become a plague god, then the god of medicine and healing); Aesculapius (Roman god of healing based on the Greek Asklepios); Garuda (great golden bird with an eagle's beak and wings and human body, the Indian symbol of medicine); 

Meditrina ("Healer," a Roman goddess of wine and health who was later syncretized into the cult of Aesculapius); Eeyeekalduk (Inuit god of healing); 
the Medicine Buddhas (most prominently, Bhaishajyaguru in Tibet and Yakushi-Nyorai in Japan, who symbolize the healing and transformative quality of buddhahood}.

shaman relics

seed + dellinger + Jeffers ..." Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe ..."

"Of all the species that have existed, it is estimated that less than one in a hundred exist today. The rest are extinct. As environment changes, any species that is unable to adapt, to change, to evolve, is extinguished. All evolution takes place in this fashion In this way an oxygen starved fish, ancestor of yours and mine, commenced to colonise the land. Threat of extinction is the potter's hand that molds all the forms of life. The human species is one of millions threatened by imminent extinction through nuclear war and other environmental changes. And while it is true that the "human nature" revealed by 12,000 years of written history does not offer much hope that we can change our warlike, greedy, ignorant ways, the vastly longer fossil history assures us that we CAN change. We ARE the fish, and the myriad other death-defying feats of flexibility which a study of evolution reveals to us. A certain confidence ( in spite of our recent "humanity") is warranted. From this point of view, the threat of extinction appears as the invitation to change, to evolve. After a brief respite from the potter's hand, here we are back on the wheel again. The change that is required of us is not some new resistance to radiation, but a change in consciousness.

"... For Dogen Zenji, the others who are 'none other than myself' include mountains, rivers, and the great earth. When one thinks like a mountain, one thinks also like the black bear, so that honey dribbles down your fur as you catch the bus to work." Robert Aitken Roshi, Zen Buddhist teacher, "Gandhi, Dogen and Deep ecology", Zero Magazin 

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/Anthropo.htm

John Seed LISTEN

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/04/sot_20100418.mp3

THE TREASURE

by Robinson Jeffers

Mountains, a moment's Earth-waves rising and hollowing; the

          earth too's an emphemerid; the stars -

Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in

          their summer, they spiral

Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing

          lives long; the whole sky's

Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulf

          before birth, and the gulf

After death is like dated: to labor eighty years in a notch of

          eternity is nothing too tiresome,

Enormous repose after, enormous repose before, the flash of

          activity.

Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were prologue

          and epilogue merely

To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is

          called life? I fancy

THAT silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it; inter

          jection, a jump of the breath at that silence;

Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe: as a man finding treasure

          says "Ah!" but the tresure's the essence;

Before the man spoke it was there, and after he has spoken he

          gathers it, inexhaustible treasure.

Robinson Jeffers, Tamar, 1920-23 Collected Poetry Vol 1 p 102

Stanford University Press 1988

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/treasure.htm

WORD TO THE MOTHER

I once was blind, but now I see
I understand that the planet is the source of me
Literally, just like a mom gives birth to a babe
Mother Earth's given birth to everything that's been made
Word to the Mother
Source of every other
Thing, every being, in the ring of creation
And every individual's a manifestation
Of the grace innate in this place, space and time
Expressing the blessing, caressing my mind
Holy Osmosis!
That's what the cosmos is
Boomin',
Universe,
Earth,
Human.
From the beginning
The spinning Universe possessed
A spiritual interior
Inside the manifest
Blessed with a blast from the past
Free at last
As the Big Bang
Rang, sprang, sang from the start, from the void
Like a joy from the heart of the dark
And the light's
The birthright of us all
You and
I are all
The fire ball
The higher call
Inspires all with a sense of place
Let us find the divine mind
Behind every face
I've just begun to recognise the whole
soul force
Word to the Mother
Word to the Source

We've gotta get back to the Mother
We've got to get back to the Earth
We've gotta get back to the Mother
We've got to get back to the Earth

Word to the Mother
So how dare we
Have the nerve to disturb
The planetary Source
The very force that brought us alive
If She ain't in effect
There ain't no way to survive
How can we see no wisdom
From the ecosystem
This industrialized phase craze to pave highways
Yikes!
50,000 toxic sites
Nuclear power plants
Constructed with haste
Without any clue
What to do with the waste
Radiation. Seeping deep in the nation
Losing patience
With corporations
And abusers
Grinnin' like their winnin' when we'll all be the losers
Ignore natural forces
Deplete our resources
No remorse, we're off course, hold your horses.
Mother may I
Try to say why
My society lost sight of the whole
As we try and we try till we die to control
The Earth dream that can never be tamed
That can never be sold and that can never be named
What's a shame and is lame is that we thought it was clever
To dam every river ever
Never-never land is at hand unless we see and rediscover
There ain't no other
It's absurd to have to say it:
But Word to the Mother

We've gotta get back to the Mother
We've got to get back to the Earth
We've gotta get back to the Mother
We've got to get back to the Earth

The story of the Mother as I reminisce
is enough to make this brother ecofeminist
How can we limit this limitless exponential
Growth potential. Economy is secondary
Earth's essential.
The Mother exists in every wave on the sea
Every bird in the sky and every leaf on the tree.
Community, unity, you and me, family
All of us children born from 4 billion years
Of the blood sweat and tears
of the Earth
We need to
let her be
Let her grow
Set her free, let her fly, let her flow, let her go
And unfold
The way the mother intended
Activities that damage the Earth must be suspended.
Listen cause we're missin' what the Mother's advice is
She'll help us deal with ecological crisis
She's mightier
Than Aphrodite or Isis
And twice as creative, illustrative of the point
When the Earth gives birth to the Now
Still We try to milk every sacred cow
We need to chill untill we see
That no creature is my enemy
They're all kin to me
Earth is the remedy
For the malady
She's the truth at the root of reality
The elements of my bones
are left over from the swirling stardust of a supernova
Made by the Earth and the Breath of the One
Rain's in the veins in the flames of the sun's
In the heart each part contains the sum of the whole
Earth Body, Earth Spirit, Universe Soul
Word to the Mother
You gotta love her

We've gotta get back to the Mother
We've got to get back to the Earth
We've gotta get back to the Mother
We've got to get back to the Earth 

copyright Drew Dellinger, 1998
Drew King Dellinger
Promoting Justice and Cosmology through Education and Arts.
the Center of the Universe
PO Box 11347, Prescott, AZ 86304
(520) 445-6186
Drew@lankaster.com

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/roadshow/songs.htm#WORD%20TO%20THE%20MOTHER

divining Y

Divine inspiration to solve water shortage?

By Anna Vidot

Who do you call if you want to find water on your property? A scientist? Or a water diviner?

Winston Woods from Sorell in southern Tasmania has been divining water on farms around Tasmania since the 1970s.

He says it's a gift, and he wants to use it to help farmers find water on their land.

"I just wander around, drive around with me car, me van. People invite me to have a look on their places to see if I can find water. I can feel the energy in my vehicle. So then I get out with my forky stick, do a 360 turn around, and I can usually pick it up within about 400, 500 metres of the vehicle," he said.

"I can feel it in me body, it comes through my body. I can't walk in front of a TV. The TV goes all blurry."

One of those who has faith in Winston's ability is David Downie, the deputy mayor of the Northern Midlands Council.

He says all avenues should be explored in the search for water solutions.

"Council has tried to find water within the town boundary of Ross and we've failed. Perhaps if we had've spoken to Winston before we bored, we may have come up with a better site that would have provided a better result from the boring experience," he said.

85% on 1%

85% of Australians occupying only 1% of the continent

notes

NOTES:

+ investigate North Stradbroke Island - indigenous history in terms of moving through/across water, water craft, hunting (dugong, stingray etc from boats) midden residue, serpentine meandering of water across the landscape - colour caused when sunlight hits the water at an angle

+ closest burial trees with Auntie Sally

+ indigenous beliefs relevant to 'below water surface'

+ investigate Solomon Island Tree (roots)/Boat metaphor

+ photograph glass decanters underwater (fill with water sediment) - petri dishes - evaporate, rephotograph - relics of western shipwrecks - suggest layered history

+ bones - photograph in Coombabah Lake - relics and residue - source more bones

+ embed lace in mud

+ return to fabric in the water (1980 images) above/in/below, Coochiemudlo dress images

+ Monet style 'strips' of mangrove (under the water line)

+ night shots Lorekeet Island

+ group images 1. mangroves - Romantic sublime, 2. night fish - inhabiting the liminal, 3. historical/factual re Broadwater habitation - 'use' of Broadwater, 4. metaphorical/psychological 5. Peel Island colonial relics vs natural

+ what is the oldest remaining water source/course in Australia? - Lake Mungo - does it rain?

umwelt

"Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after."

— Annie Dillard (An American Childhood) 

n(Biology, psychology)  

the environmental factors, collectively,that are capable of affecting the behaviour of an animal or individual C20: from German Umwelt environment) 

Naming Nature, by Carol Kaesuk Yoon, is a thought-provoking text that plays a new and fascinating tune on the old theme of objectivity versus subjectivity. Its subject is the history of biological systematics—the description, ordering and explanation of biological diversity.

In Yoon’s rendition, subjectivity is rooted firmly in our instinct. She explains that neuroscience, anthropology and evolutionary biology now tell us that we are born with the remnants of an instinctive perspective on the living world, which she calls the “human umwelt,” a vision “molded during our species’ days as hunter-gatherers.” This vision of a natural order is “thoroughly sensuous and wildly subjective,” Yoon says, and she maintains that the history of scientific taxonomy is really a “two-hundred-year-long battle against the human umwelt.” In modern times, we have given up this instinctive perception of the order of nature in favor of letting scientists find a more objective, evolutionary order, with the result that we are now disconnected from nature: “We are so used to someone else being in charge of the living world that we have begun not to even see the life around us.”

C K Yoon

B.S. in biology from Yale and a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/on-the-origin-of-taxonomy

littoral

post meeting notes
Main Entry: ¹lit·to·ral

Pronunciation: \ˈli-tə-rəl; ˌli-tə-ˈral, -ˈräl\

Function: adjective

Etymology: Latin litoralis, from litor-, litus seashore

Date: circa 1656: of, relating to, or situated or growing on or near a shore especially of the sea

"In coastal environments and biomes, the littoral zone extends from the high water mark, which is rarely inundated, to shoreline areas that are permanently submerged. It always includes the intertidal zone and is often used to mean the same as the intertidal zone. However, the meaning of "littoral zone" can extend well beyond the intertidal zone.

The word "littoral" is used both as a noun

Ordinary high water mark

Ordinary high water mark refers to the highest level reached by a body of water that has been maintained for a sufficient period of time to leave evidence on the landscape. It may be indicated by destruction of terrestrial vegetation, the presence of marks on trees or debris deposits...

Intertidal zone

The intertidal zone is the area that is exposed to the air at low tide and underwater at high tide . This area can include many different types of habitats, including steep rocky cliffs, sandy beaches, or wetlands...

and an adjective. It derives from the Latin noun litus, litoris, meaning "shore". (The doubled 't' is a late medieval innovation and the word is sometimes seen in the more classical-looking spelling 'litoral'.)

There is no single definition. What is regarded as the full extent of the littoral zone, and the way the littoral zone is divided into subregions, varies in different contexts (lakes and rivers have their own definitions). The use of the term also varies from one part of the world to another, and between different disciplines. For example, military commanders speak of the littoral in ways that are quite different from marine biologists."

Supralittoral zone The supralittoral zone (also called the splash, spray, or supratidal zone) is the area above the spring high tide line that is regularly splashed, but not submerged by ocean water. Seawater penetrates these elevated areas only during storms with high tides.

Organisms here must cope also with exposure to air, fresh water from rain, cold, heat and predation

Predation

In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey, . Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of the prey...

 by land animals and seabirds. At the top of this area, patches of dark lichen

LichenLichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic association of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacteriums can appear as crusts on rocks. Some types of periwinkles

Common Periwinkle

The common periwinkle, winkle, or Littorina littorea, is a small edible species marine gastropod with gills and an operculum in the family Littorinidae, the winkles.- Shell : Neritidae and detritus feeding Isopoda commonly inhabit the lower supralitoral.

Neritidae

Neritidae, known as the nerites, are a taxonomic family of small to medium-sized saltwater and freshwater snails which have a gill and a distinctive operculum...

Eulittoral zone The eulittoral zone (also called the midlittoral or mediolittoral zone) is the intertidal zone, also known as the foreshore. It extends from the spring high tide line, which is rarely inundated, to the neap low tide line, which is rarely not inundated. The wave action and turbulence of recurring tides shapes and reforms cliffs, gaps, and caves, offering a huge range of habitats for sedentary organisms. Protected rocky shorelines usually show a narrow almost homogenous eulittoral strip, often marked by the presence of barnacles. Exposed sites show a wider extension and are often divided into further zones. For more on this, see intertidal ecology

Intertidal ecology

Intertidal ecology is the study of intertidal ecosystems, where organisms live between the low and high tide lines. At low tide, the intertidal is exposed whereas at high tide, the intertidal is underwater...

Sublittoral zone The sublittoral zone, also called the neritic zone, starts immediately below the eulittoral zone. This zone is permanently covered with seawater.

In physical oceanography, the sublittoral zone refers to coastal regions with significant tidal flows and energy dissipation, including non-linear flows, internal waves, river outflows and oceanic fronts. In practice, this typically extends to the edge of the continental shelf

Continental shelf

The continental shelf is the extended perimeter of each continent and associated coastal plain, and was part of the continent during the glacial periods, but is undersea during interglacial periods such as the current epoch by relatively shallow seas and gulfs. The continental rise is below the with depths around 200 metres.

In marine biology, the sublittoral refers to the areas where sunlight reaches the ocean floor, that is, where the water is never so deep as to take it out of the photic zone

Photic zone

The photic zone or euphotic zone is the depth of the water in a lake or ocean, that is exposed to sufficient sunlight for photosynthesis to occur...

This results in high primary production and makes the sublittoral zone the location of the majority of sea life. As in physical oceanography, this zone typically extends to the edge of the continental shelf

Continental shelf

The continental shelf is the extended perimeter of each continent and associated coastal plain, and was part of the continent during the glacial periods, but is undersea during interglacial periods such as the current epoch by relatively shallow seas and gulfs. The continental rise is below the...

Primary production

400px|thumb|Global oceanic and terrestrial photoautotroph abundance, from September [[1997]] to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential, and not an actual estimate of it...

The benthic zone in the sublittoral is much more stable than in the intertidal zone; temperature, water pressure, and the amount of sunlight remain fairly constant. Sublittoral corals do not have to deal with as much change as intertidal corals. Corals can live in both zones, but they are more common in the sublittoral zone.

Within the sublittoral, marine biologists also identify the following:

• The infralittoral zone is the algal dominated zone to maybe five metres below the low water mark.
• The circalittoral zone is the region beyond the infralittoral, that is, below the algal zone and dominated by sessile
  
  
  Sessility (limnology)
  In limnology, sessility is that quality of an organism which rests unsupported directly on a base, either attached or unattached to a substrate. It is a characteristic of vegetation which is anchored to the benthic environment. There are two families of sessile rotifers: Flosculariidae and...
   animals such as oyster
  
  
  Oyster
  The word oyster is used as a common name for a number of distinct groups of bivalve molluscs which live in marine or brackish habitats. The valves are highly calcified.."

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's referent...

 http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Littoral

Relating to the coastal zone between the limits of high and low tides. The littoral zone is subject to a wide range of environmental conditions, including high-energy wave action and intermittent periods of flooding and drying along with the associated fluctuations in exposure to solar radiation and extremes of temperature

"The Littoral Archaeological Project The archaeology of the coastal zone has emerged as a recognized area of research for the understanding of our cultural heritage, particularly the focus on maritime culture. Significant progress has been made over the last two decades as researchers have become increasingly aware of the dynamic nature of the littoral landscape. Attention has concentrated on issues relating to the changes in the natural environment."  

Littoral Encounters: The Shore as Cultural Interface in King Horn
Sebastian Sobecki
Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 1473-348X, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 79 – 86

The thirteenth-century poem King Horn is widely regarded as the first Middle English romance. Consequently, a disproportional amount of attention has been paid to the work's genre and linguistic features, often at the expense of more complex interpretative concerns. One such aspect of the poem is the structural negotiation of the conflict between Saracens and the londisse men allied to the protagonist. This clash permeates the work and pits the land against the sea, elevating the shore to a defining role. 

relic site

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. 

We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift" 

Albert Einstein

 Peel Island: Since the mid 1880, the island has had a significant history and place in Moreton Bay.  Now it is enjoyed by many locals and visitors, however the island is only accessible by watercraft. Dugongs, turtles, and dolphins frequent the waters around the island. Often there are thousands of jellyfish following the currents, and sharks are known to inhabit these waters.

 

 

Goat Island + Bird Island

navigating space + time

"Clouds also provide clues to the wayfinder - their shape, colour, character, and place in the sky. Brown Clouds bring strong winds; high clouds no wind but lots of rain. Their movements reveal the strength and direction of the winds, the stability of the sky, the volatility of storm fronts. There is an entire nomenclature to describe the distinct patterns clouds form as they gather over islands or weep across the open ocean. Light alone can be read, the rainbow colours at the edge of stars, the way they twinkle and dim with an impending storm, the tone of the sky over an island, always darker than that over open sea.Red skies at sunrise and sunset indicate humidity in the air. A halo around the moon foreshadows rain, clouds laden with moisture. The number of stars within the halo anticipates the intensity of the storm; if there are fewer than ten, expect trouble, high winds, and torrential rain. If a double halo surrounds the moon the weather will move in on the wings of a gale. 

"Other signs are found in wildlife and seamarks, as opposed to landmarks. A tan shark moving lazily in the sea. A lone bird separated from its flock. Dolphins and porpoises swimming toward sheltered waters herald a storm, while the flight of a frigate bird heading out to sea anticipates calm. Pelagic birds like the albatross lead nowhere, but others such as petrels and terms travel fixed distances from their nests, returning every night to land, rising out of the waves at sunset, their flight paths home as precise as compass bearings. A sighting of a white term indicates that land is within 200 kilometres; the brown tern reaches out as far as 65 kilometres, the boobies rarely more than 40. Phosphorescence and the debris of plants in the sea, the salinity and taste and temperature of the water, the manner in which a swordfish swims, all these become revelatory in the senses of the navigator.

"... the crew could name and follow some 220 stars in the night sky. She knew and could track all the constellations, Scorpio and the Southern Cross, Orion, the Pleiades and the North Star, Polaris. But for her the most important stars were those low in the sky, the ones that had just risen or were out to set. Nainoa explained: As the Earth rotates, every star comes up over the the eastern horizon, describes an arc though the sky, and then sets on a westerly bearing. These tow points on the horizon, where a specific star rises in the east and sets in the west, remain the same throughout the year, though the time at which a star emerges changes by four minutes every night. Thus, as long as one is able to commit to memory all the stars and their unique positions, the time at which each is to appear on a particular night, and their bearings as they break the horizon or slip beneath it, one can envision a 360-degree compass, which the Hawaiians divide conceptually into the thirty-tow star houses, each a segment on the horizon named for a celestial body. Any on e star is only dependable for a time, for as it arcs through the sky its bearings change. But by then there will be another star breaking the horizon. again on a bearing known to the navigator. Over the course of a night at sea- roughly twelve hours in the tropics - then such guiding stars are enough to maintain a course. To steer, the crew at the helm, instructed by the navigator, takes advantage of the canoe itself, positioning the vessel so that a particular star or celestial body remains framed, for example. within the angel subtended between the tip of the mast and stays that support it.. Any consistend point of reference will do.

"With the dawn comes the sun ,always a critical transition for the navigator. It is a moment to take measure of the sea and sky, study the winds, and observe their impact on the waves. Mau, Nainaoa's teacher, had dozens of names just to identify the different widths and colours caused by the path of the sun as its light and shadow rose and moved over the water. All of these told him something about the day to come.

" ... The navigator by day conceptually divides the horizon ahead and behind, each into sixteen parts, taking as cardinal points the rising an setting of the sun. Thus by day he or she replicates the star compass of the night. The metaphor is that the Hokule'a never voves. It simply waits, the axis mundi of the world, as the islands rise out of the sea to greet her.

"Beyond sun and stars ins the ocean itself. When clouds or mist obliterate the horizon, the navigator must orient the vessel by the feel of the water, distinguishing waves created by local weather systems, for example , from the swells generated by pressure systems far beyond the horizon. And these swells, in turn, must be differentiated from the deep ocean currents that run through the Pacific, and which can be followed with the same ease with which a terrestrial explorer would follow a river to its mouth. Expert navigators like Mau, sitting alone in the darkness of the hull of a canoe, can sense and distinguish as many as five distinct swells moving through the vessel at any given time. Local wave action is chaotic and disruptive. But the distant swells are consistent, deep and resonant pulses that move across the ocean from one star house to another, 180 degrees away, and thus can be used as yet another means of orienting the vessel in time and space. Should a canoe shift course in the middle of the night, the navigator will know, simply from the change of the pitch and roll of the waves. Even more remarkable is the navigator's ability to pull islands out of the sea. The truly great navigators such as Mau can identify the presence of distant atolls of islands beyond the visible horizon simply by watching the reverberation of waves across the hull of the canoe, knowing full well that every island group in the Pacific has its own refractive pattern that can be read with the same ease with which a forensic scientist would read a fingerprint.

All of this is extraordinary, each one of these individual skills and intuitions a sign of a certain brilliance. But as we isolate, deconstruct, even celebrate these specific intellectual and observational gifts, we run the risk of missing the entire point, for the genius of Polynesian navigation lies not in the particular but in the whole, the manner in which all of these points of information come together in the mind of the wayfinder. It is one thing, for example, for the to measure the speed of the Hokule'a with a simple calculation: the time a bit of foam or flotsam, or perhaps a mere bubble, takes to pass the known length separating the crossbeams of the canoe. Three seconds and the speed will be 8.5 knots; fifteen seconds and the vessel slogs at a mere 1.5 knots.  

" But it is quite another to make such calculations continually, day and night, while also taking the measure of stars breaking the horizon, winds shifting both in speed an direction, swells moving through the canoe, clouds and waves. The science and art of navigation is holistic. The navigator must process an endless flow of data, intuitions and insights derived from observation and the dynamic rhythms and interactions of wind, waves, clouds, stars, sun, moon, the flight of birds, a bed of kelp, the glow of phosphorescence on a shallow reef - in short, the constantly changing world of weather and the sea"
(Davis, 2009 55-60)

NOTES:

+ investigate North Stradbroke Island - indigenous history in terms of moving through/across water, water craft, hunting (dugong, stingray etc from boats) midden residue, serpentine meandering of water across the landscape - colour caused when sunlight hits the water at an angle

+ closest burial trees with Auntie Sally

+ indigenous beliefs relevant to 'below water surface'

+ investigate Solomon Island Tree (roots)/Boat metaphor

+ photograph glass decanters underwater (fill with water sediment) - petri dishes - evaporate, rephotograph - relics of western shipwrecks - suggest layered history

+ bones - photograph in Coombabah Lake - relics and residue - source more bones

+ embed lace in mud

+ return to fabric in the water (1980 images) above/in/below, Coochiemudlo dress images

+ Monet style 'strips' of mangrove (under the water line)

+ night shots Lorekeet Island

+ group images 1. mangroves - Romantic sublime, 2. night fish - inhabiting the liminal, 3. historical/factual re Broadwater habitation - 'use' of Broadwater, 4. metaphorical/psychological 5. Peel Island colonial relics vs natural

+ what is the oldest remaining water source/course in Australia? - Lake Mungo - does it rain?