:: Biblioteca Digital de Ecopsicologia (BDE)

Bringing Nature to Consciousness in Peace and Conflict Studies through a Phenomenological Analysis of Veterans’ Narratives of Nature and Recovery

Bringing Nature to Consciousness in Peace and Conflict Studies through a

Phenomenological Analysis of Veterans’ Narratives of Nature and Recovery

Stephanie Westlund

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of

The University of Manitoba

in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Peace and Conflict Studies

University of Manitoba

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Abstract

Peace and conflict studies arose as a response to the human experience of violence,

with an intention towards finding possibilities for nonviolent ways of relating. These

possibilities, however, tend to be preoccupied with social conflict, peace and

reconciliation, and post-conflict recovery as taking place solely within the realm of

human beings, thereby creating an ontology that renders nature silent. This thesis asks

questions about why it is so difficult to attend to natural contexts and the more-than-

human world in peace and conflict studies. This research suggests that the shift in

experience that comes through connection with more-than-human nature opens

possibilities for peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery. Thus, while it explores

responses to the human experience of violence, this thesis also works to articulate an

understanding of how all human activity, including conflict and peacebuilding, takes

place within a shared, interconnected and interdependent global ecosystem.

The core of this inquiry is experience-centred narrative research within the

phenomenological interpretive framework provided by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This

research narrates and explores the personal experience stories of veterans suffering from

stress and post-traumatic distress from their military training and combat exposure. All of

the veterans have suffered and/or continue to suffer from stress and/or post-traumatic

distress, and all regard their personal recovery from stress and traumatic experiences as

intimately tied to their nature experiences. These experiences are further illuminated by

supporting interviews, personal narrative interludes, other stories and anecdotes from the

edges of violence, and theories and praxis in ecology, ecopsychology, cognitive science,

and neuroscience.

Through exploring themes of sensory experience, safety, sense of purpose,

relationships, basic needs, and regained humanity, this research culminates in the

remembrance that as human beings, we are nature, and the insight that it is our (human)

nature that impels and enables us to reach out and relate with others and with the more-

than-human world. This central insight holds profound implications for peace and

conflict studies, which focuses on peacebuilding through recognition of common

humanity and conflict transformation through changed relationships. The thesis

concludes by exploring possibilities and implications for bringing nature to consciousness

in peace and conflict studies and for revising theoretical and practical frameworks to re-

embed peace and conflict studies in the everyday world—the world beyond the

boardroom or negotiating table, and the world that sustains all life on earth.

iii

Acknowledgements

Above all, my deepest gratitude to everyone whose stories and insights are shared

herein for your time and for sharing your stories and experiences, and my most humble

respect for the work that you do every day.

To my doctoral supervisor Dr. Jessica Senehi and committee members Dr. Marlene

Atleo and Dr. Shirley Thompson, my thanks for your enthusiasm and support for this

project. I have deeply appreciated your willingness to help and guide me when necessary,

your book and article recommendations, and your small notes of encouragement, but also

the ways that you gave me the space and freedom to pursue my research and writing

when I needed that, too. I also wish to thank Dr. Sean Byrne, along with Dr. Jessica

Senehi, for starting the Arthur V. Mauro Centre for Peace and Justice, which created the

supportive and nurturing interdisciplinary academic space in which this research could be

pursued.

Thank you to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

(SSHRC) for a Canada Graduate Scholarship - Doctoral Scholarship, and the University

of Manitoba for the initial University of Manitoba Graduate Fellowship, and the

Manitoba Graduate Scholarship.

When I made the decision in 2006 to pursue a PhD, it seemed like it was mine

alone to make. But over the past six years, I have realized that just as it takes a

community to raise a child, it takes a community to complete a PhD. The decision I made

six years ago has affected and required assistance and support from so many people, who

have all come along willingly and lovingly on this journey not of their choosing and it is

almost impossible to thank them enough, both for helping to complete my PhD and in

raising a wonderful child! Thanks and love go to my parents, Fritz and Hanne, for

helping Scott and me move to Winnipeg, and then later with the move back to Calgary; to

my mom and mother-in-law, Sharon, for generosity with your time in caring for Cameron

over the past year; to my dad for conversations about war and insights from his own

experience; to the many other family members, friends, siblings, and peers at the Mauro

Centre who have cheered loudly from the sidelines; to my sister, Jackie, for endless

conversations about books and ideas; and most especially to Scott, for coming along on

this adventure, for many conversations over the years, constant support and complete

encouragement, as well as to Cameron, who has spent more time in the university library

than most toddlers, for providing the inspiration to reflect on the deep human

interconnections with nature, as well as for his unconditional love, joyful presence, and

providing lots of playtime to keep me grounded in the world throughout my writing!

We’ve also been blessed with some other wonderful caregivers during the past

year, who have allowed me to focus on my research and writing, all the while knowing

that Cameron was in good hands: Sarah G., Stephanie S., Terin D., Kristy C., Gurpreet

A., Katie G., and Marnie W., I couldn’t have done it without you!

With love and gratitude to

Scott, my partner and best friend,

and Cameron, the sweetest muse ever.

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ II

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................ IV

DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................... VI

ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................................. X

EPIGRAPH........................................................................................................................... XI

PROLOGUE – A CONVERSATION WITH KURT HOELTING...................................................... 1

PART I – UPROOTING OLD STORIES AND UNEARTHING NEW ONES .................................. 8

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION................................................................................................ 9

Casting Sideways Glances ............................................................................................ 15

Overall Research Focus and Research Questions ................................................... 16

Some Notes about Language ................................................................................... 20

Outline of the Thesis ..................................................................................................... 30

NARRATIVE INTERLUDE – EXCURSIONS INTO MEMORY AND EMBODIMENT ........................ 37

CHAPTER 2: ABOUT THIS RESEARCH................................................................................. 41

The Evolution of a Thesis ............................................................................................. 42

Defining Nature: Concept and Story............................................................................. 45

Philosophical and Historical Underpinnings of Nature........................................... 47

Nature in this Thesis ................................................................................................ 51

CHAPTER 3: EXPERIENCE-CENTRED NARRATIVE RESEARCH ........................................... 57

Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology................................................................................. 58

The Mind/Body Split............................................................................................... 59

Modern Science and ‘Objectivity’........................................................................... 61

Narrative Research Methods......................................................................................... 65

The Study................................................................................................................. 69

Writing, Presenting and Analyzing the Stories ....................................................... 75

Gender and Ethnicity Imbalances............................................................................ 78

CHAPTER 4: DECONSTRUCTING PEACE AND CONFLICT STUDIES ..................................... 81

Reviewing Peace and Conflict Journals for References to ‘Nature’............................. 83

vii

The Phenomenological Interpretive Framework .......................................................... 85

Peace and Conflict Studies—Oriented by Cultural Meta-Stories................................. 88

Rationality ............................................................................................................... 89

Progress ................................................................................................................... 95

Meta-stories and Environmental Conflict and Security ........................................ 105

Phenomenology, Perception, and Peace and Conflict Studies.................................... 109

PART II – EMBODIMENT, NATURE AND NARRATIVES .................................................... 111

CHAPTER 5: BRINGING BACK THE BODY......................................................................... 112

Merleau-Ponty—Life, Influences and Phenomenology ............................................. 113

Merleau-Ponty’s Views on the Body .................................................................... 116

The Flesh, the Chiasm, and Nature ....................................................................... 121

Biophilia and Ecological Intelligence ......................................................................... 126

Approaches in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.................................................. 129

Ecopsychology............................................................................................................ 132

NARRATIVE INTERLUDE – ON BIRTHING AND RAISING A CHILD........................................ 136

CHAPTER 6: CONNECTIONS BETWEEN NATURE AND HEALING ....................................... 139

Empirical Connections between Humans and Nature ................................................ 141

Wilderness Therapy and Wilderness Experiences ...................................................... 146

Horticulture Therapy and Green Care......................................................................... 147

Mental Fatigue and Aggression .................................................................................. 152

NARRATIVE INTERLUDE – ON POLITICAL VIOLENCE......................................................... 155

CHAPTER 7: INVISIBLE WOUNDS AND POST-TRAUMATIC DISTRESS ............................... 159

Invisible Wounds and Post-traumatic Experience ...................................................... 160

Trauma and Suffering Amongst Canadian Soldiers and Veterans ............................. 164

Symptoms Commonly Associated with Post-Traumatic Distress .............................. 171

Treatment and Coping with Post-traumatic Distress .................................................. 176

CHAPTER 8: NARRATIVES OF NATURE AND RECOVERY................................................... 180

Christian MacEachern................................................................................................. 183

Tim Lewis ................................................................................................................... 197

Gord Cousins .............................................................................................................. 209

Shepherd Bliss ............................................................................................................ 220

CHAPTER 9: OTHER STORIES FROM THE EDGES OF VIOLENCE ...................................... 231

Veterans-Turned-Farmers in the United States........................................................... 232

Farming Together in the Buduburam Refugee Camp................................................. 236

Into the Forest with Srebrenica Survivors .................................................................. 237

Wilderness Therapy Project of Kathorus, South Africa ............................................. 238

The Butterfly Peace Garden in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka................................................. 240

Workshop with Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis................................................................ 241

The Football for Peace Project.................................................................................... 242

American-Soviet Walks .............................................................................................. 243

viii

To Reflect and Trust ................................................................................................... 244

Seeds of Peace............................................................................................................. 245

The Cyprus Consortium Peacebuilding Project’s Youth Camp ................................. 245

Ending Apartheid and Negotiating a New Constitution in South Africa.................... 247

The Norway Channel and the Oslo Accord ................................................................ 250

PART III – REFLECTIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND CONCLUSIONS...................................... 254

INTERLUDE – A CONVERSATION WITH ANDY FISHER...................................................... 255

CHAPTER 10: WE ARE NATURE: REFLECTIONS AND ANALYSIS ...................................... 262

Sensory Experience in the More-Than-Human World ............................................... 266

Safety in Nature .......................................................................................................... 271

A Renewed Sense of Purpose through Experiences in the Natural World ................. 276

Relationships Facilitated in More-Than-Human Settings........................................... 281

Fulfilling a Need to Carry Life Forward ..................................................................... 286

Regaining Humanity through the More-Than-Human World .................................... 289

CHAPTER 11: BRINGING NATURE TO CONSCIOUSNESS ................................................... 297

Why Does this Research Matter for Peace and Conflict Studies? .............................. 297

Narrative: Bringing Nature to Consciousness............................................................. 302

Nature as an Active Participant in Peacebuilding and Recovery................................ 309

Expanding the Veterans’ Narratives to Civilian Trauma Survivors ........................... 312

Detractors: Nature as Antitherapeutic for Post-Traumatic Distress? .................... 318

CHAPTER 12: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: MEANINGS FOR PRAXIS .................................. 320

Intersections with Indigenous Perspectives and Other Traditions .............................. 322

Meanings for Praxis .................................................................................................... 324

Personal Implications ............................................................................................ 327

Challenges and Opportunities for Peace and Conflict Studies .............................. 329

A Final Thought: Stories of Caution, Stories of Hope................................................ 334

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 335

APPENDIX A – ETHICS APPROVAL CERTIFICATE ............................................................ 357

APPENDIX B – SAMPLE CONSENT FORM ......................................................................... 359

Abbreviations

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Causeries, 1948. Translated into English as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The

World of Perception

La Nature, Notes, Cours du Collège de France. Translated into English as

Nature: Course notes from the Collège de France

L’Oeil et l’esprit. Translated into English as “Eye and Mind”

Phénoménologie de la perception. Translated into English as Phenomenology

of Perception

Resumes de cours, Collège de France 1952-1960. Translated into English as

Themes from the Lectures at the Collège de France, 1952-1960.

Le Visible et l’invisible, suivi de notes de travail. Translated into English as

The Visible and the Invisible, Followed by Working Notes

Why not go into the forest for a time, literally? Sometimes a tree tells you

more than can be read in books.

—C.G. Jung (letter to a friend)

Prologue

A Conversation with Kurt Hoelting

“I have always felt a deep sense of homecoming in wild places and a sense of

wholeness that seems to be missing from day-to-day life in urban settings,” Kurt Hoelting

told me in September 2011 from his home on Whidbey Island within Puget Sound in

northern Washington State. Formerly a commercial fisherman, as well as the author of

The Circumference of Home and the founder of Inside Passages, Kurt has been offering

sea kayaking retreats since 1994. He also teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in

the Seattle Veterans’ Affairs (VA) Hospital to veterans who suffer from post-traumatic

distress.

The inspiration for Kurt’s sea kayaking retreats came to him during a Mountains

and Rivers Sesshin (Zen retreat). In a typical Zen retreat, participants spend much of their

time sitting in silent meditation but during this particular Sesshin, the teacher

incorporated hiking in silence as a form of extended meditation. As a long-time Zen

practitioner and someone who has spent a lot of time in nature, including as a fisherman

as well as a climber and recreational backpacker, Kurt was intrigued. “I found that that

approach to time in the wilderness, where a lot of time was spent in silence, and [which]

incorporates formal meditation practice, sitting practice, as well as informal silent

Prologue – A Conversation with Kurt Hoelting

walking and hiking, was really powerful and took the whole experience deeper than just

my going out with a group of people or on my own to have a wilderness experience,” he

told me over the telephone. At the time, Kurt had been feeling conflicted about his role in

the commercial fishing industry, which, while it provided “a lot of contact with wildness

and big forces, big animals,” the work was also in the context of a “very industrial kind

of extractive activity.” So from the Mountain and Rivers Sesshin, Kurt came away with

the idea to start Inside Passages and to begin offering kayaking retreats, with a focus on

bringing the contemplative model “into the experience of being with a group out in a wild

place.” Sea kayaking, Kurt finds, is a “naturally contemplative activity . . . you’re on the

water, you’re right down at water level, you’re in silence, you can get into places that you

can’t get by any other means.” Most of his clients are environmental activists and

religious leaders, and the retreats are designed as a means for “restoring our inner habitat

of heart and mind and spirit, which naturally happens when we’re in nature in all kinds of

ways,” he tells me.

Over the years, Kurt has developed a deep belief in what he calls “the three-day

rule.” He reflects further, “Whether I’m in a meditation retreat or out backpacking or

kayaking or whatever, it takes about three days for the nervous system to drop the buzz,

the hectic energy, the anxious energy that we’re carrying around with us that we don’t

even really notice. It’s just so much part of us—you can’t flip a switch. You actually have

to be for a duration of time in an environment that is really conducive to this kind of

experience before the soul can catch up with the body and really be present. And that’s

something that in my experience is biologically non-negotiable. You can’t think your

way there. You actually just have to slow down, stop, be in a place in that way for several

Prologue – A Conversation with Kurt Hoelting

days before the mind and the body and the heart all join forces and are present and can

receive what’s there. And because we’re moving so fast and we’re in such a hurry, most

of us don’t even have that experience for five or ten minutes, let alone three days. So

there’s a danger for that part of our conscious experience, or that potential that’s in us—

to actually die or go extinct, just because we’re not experiencing it anymore.”

Kurt incorporates the three-day rule into his kayaking trips by giving retreat

participants “the duration of time to be in a place that is evocative in this way in order for

something to come back alive in them, that they then recognize it as being an essential

part of what it is to be human. And that they have in their direct experience, so that they

can apply that to whatever work they’re doing in the world back home or the places they

live, apply that longer view, thousand year view, of our lives across time, the places we

live across time, and the depth of presence that that can convey in the moment if we’re

able to access it. That’s the best way I can describe it. It’s very difficult—you can

describe it all you want, but it’s the kind of thing that you have to experience in order to

realize: Oh yeah, this is part of who I am. I’m actually a piece of this much, much larger

whole that is the life force that I have and move through, that’s just so much bigger than

this small, encapsulated ego that we think is walking around separate from everything

around us. I have some direct experience of that.”

Some of the most powerful moments on Kurt’s week-long trips come when the

group is paddling in silence. “If the weather is favourable and not too rough and the tide

is with us or the wind is with us, [the paddlers just] stop and sometimes have long, silent

drifts, where by ceasing activity—even when you’re out hiking or out paddling there’s

always the sound of the swish of clothing and the crunch of feet, or the paddle dipping

Prologue – A Conversation with Kurt Hoelting

into the water, that drown out the larger soundscape. And so when you just stop, really

stop, which is something that people rarely do, even on wilderness trips—they’re either

talking, chatting, moving around—so to just really stop and allow the expansiveness and

the kind of deep silence and the full power of being in a huge wild expansive area is

really, really powerful.”

Kurt believes that these profound moments on his trips often facilitate a discovery

beyond the intellectual level, that “at a cellular or visceral level, we’re part of something

really huge . . . And the same thing happens when we do our sitting practice in a wild

place, where for a period of time as a group we’re sitting in stillness for a half hour or so,

where no one’s moving. There’s no interruption, no one’s talking. You’re aware that

you’re with other people. You’re aware that you are in an amazing physical place. But

there’s nothing that gets in the way of that kind of connection with the part of ourselves

that is that wild place that we come out of. So there’s a visceral experience that tends to

happen. It’s quite different and quite a bit more catalytic than just sitting around talking

about it, or talking about the issues, or seeing the natural world as a kind of backdrop to

whatever kind of tapes you’re spinning in your mind.”

Unlike his kayaking retreats, Kurt’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

work with veterans at the VA Hospital in Seattle often takes place in a room in the

basement of the hospital, a context he describes as “pretty bleak” with no nature around.

MBSR is a secular approach to mindfulness meditation based on the work of Jon Kabat-

Zinn, who founded the Stress-Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts

Medical School. Kabat-Zinn initially designed the eight-week MBSR course for patients

suffering from chronic pain, who could not be helped by the medical system.

Prologue – A Conversation with Kurt Hoelting

Specifically, the course incorporates insights from meditation and gentle yoga to help

participants to work with their experience and learn to relax, even amidst a lot of

discomfort and pain. The patients’ homework is to practice mindfulness for

approximately 45 to 60 minutes every day. Then, they come together once a week to

meditate together and to talk about their practice and experiences during the week,

including both challenges and insights. In this way, course participants reinforce and

support one another’s mindfulness experiences, and as Kurt describes, many of them

“come to an understanding that they have a lot more capacity than they thought they did

to shift their relationship with their pain, if not eliminate the pain itself.”

While on the surface Kurt’s kayak retreats and his MBSR work with veterans may

seem to be two very different approaches, he sees many “overlapping circles” between

them. “Just as it’s possible to be in a really gorgeous, drop dead beautiful wild place, and

feel really depressed, be really not present,” he tells me, “It’s possible to be in [a room in

the basement of the VA Hospital] and do the work of mindfulness, of sitting quietly, of

working in a non-judging way with whatever is coming up in our experience in the

moment, and actually drop into a place of deep presence and gratitude and buoyancy,

resilience.” As such, Kurt describes both his work with veterans and with the participants

on his kayaking retreats as “leading people into the vicinity of their own inner wildness

and giving them some ways to navigate that so that the grief can actually have its place at

the table, the fear, the anger, all of that as well as the wonder and all of the positive things

that we associate with being in a beautiful place.”

As he explains this to me, Kurt also reflects on the deep interconnections between

the nature outside the human body and the nature inside us. “In a sense, our culture tends

Prologue – A Conversation with Kurt Hoelting

to think of nature as being out there and something that we go out there to get. But

actually, this is inside of us every bit as much as it’s outside of us,” he tells me. “I’m

blown away, actually, by how much of this same capacity for being present in a way that

is relaxed and at ease even in the midst of a lot of pain and a lot of distress in our lives—

that that happens at the VA Hospital as well over time through the application of these

tools of mindfulness. So that suggests to me that it’s the inner nature, inner habitat,

however you want to call it, that is the critical component here.”

Kurt observes that perhaps “being in a place of natural beauty and abundance calls

out [our inner nature, inner habitat] more easily [than a hospital basement] in some ways,

but you still have to do the same work of attending, of arriving, of allowing things to be

what they are. And it doesn’t just do that for us. We have to do that work ourselves.” On

the MBSR course, in addition to the weekly two-hour meetings, there is also a full-day

meditation retreat at around the six-week mark, in which participants come together to

spend six hours in silence. Most of the all-day retreats for the courses at the VA Hospital

take place in the same basement room used for their weekly meetings, but Kurt once

hosted one such retreat in a natural place. “And I think the benefit is pretty obvious,” he

says, recalling the experience. “When you get away from a place that’s noisy and dank

and dark and you get out in the light, you get out into the fresh air and you get into a

place where natural sound is able to make itself felt and you’re not just dealing with

mechanical sound overriding natural sound all the time, the heart and the mind just open

more easily and so you can oftentimes have an even more satisfying and healing

experience of presence more quickly. You can feel the boundary between self and world

Prologue – A Conversation with Kurt Hoelting

softening. It doesn’t have that hard edge that is just always there when you’re in a

hospital basement somewhere.”

However, Kurt emphasizes the importance of understanding that this kind of stress-

reduction work can and does happen in the more bleak context of the hospital basement.

And this is perhaps because it is the work of our own human nature, he suggests later

during our conversation. As Kurt describes his work with the veterans, he shares his

growing affection for them, and his admiration for the courage it takes for them to

commit to the MBSR course and to do the work of mindfulness. Over the weeks of a

course, Kurt finds that an important human connection develops between him and the

veterans. “And I see that [connection] actually as a manifestation of healing nature,” he

tells me. “That our human nature wants to connect. And the primary way that we connect

with nature is through each other, through our human nature, through words, through

emotions, through shared experience . . . And then when it can be linked to the wider

nature that we actually come out of and that sustains us literally from one breath to

another and from one meal to another and it sustains our sense of being part of something

much bigger than ourselves, then all the better. But in a certain strange kind of way, it’s

all connected. It’s very much working with healing nature.”

PART I – Uprooting Old Stories and Unearthing New Ones

Chapter 1

Introduction1

Man [sic] feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer

involved in nature, and has lost his emotional ‘unconscious identity’ with

natural phenomena. These have slowly lost their symbolic implications.

Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god, nor is lightening his

avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree is the life principle of

man, no snake the embodiment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a

great demon. No voices now speak to man from stones, plants and animals,

nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. His contact with nature

has gone, and with it has gone profound emotional energy that this symbolic

connection supplied.

—C.G. Jung, 1964, p. 85

The seeds for this thesis might have been planted in 2004 when I watched the

documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, which tells

the story of Lieutenant General (ret) Roméo Dallaire’s experience as the commander of

the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. In the film, Dallaire returns to

Rwanda to attend the 10-year commemoration of the Rwandan genocide, accompanied

by his wife Élizabeth and a film crew. The film is a devastating account of the UN

mission’s failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda, and depicts both the breakdowns in the

1 Portions of this thesis have been published in the following article:

Westlund, Stephanie. (2010). Incorporating ‘the earth and skies, the winds and rocks’: nature as an active

participant in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Global Change, Peace & Security, 22(3),

available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cpar20/22/3 [DOI 10.1080/14781158.2010.510244].

Introduction

UN system and the toll of the genocide on the Rwandan people as well as on the

peacekeepers who were present but who had neither the mandate nor the personnel to

stop the genocide. Approximately an hour into the film, Roméo and Élizabeth Dallaire

stand holding hands on a verdant terraced hillside in Kinihira, which in his book Shake

Hands with the Devil, he describes visiting a number of times during his mission in

Rwanda, and which he writes, “rapidly became one of my favourite places” (Dallaire,

2003, p. 103). In the film, Dallaire reflects that this hillside is the place in Rwanda where

he felt most comfortable, and he tells Élizabeth, “C’est ici que j’ai redevenu humain”

(English translation: “It’s here that I became human again”). Towards the end of the film,

Dallaire returns again to the same hilltop and tells the filmmakers, “I want to show you

where in all this I could find myself. I could find the solace and be one with my soul,

with my heart, with my being.” These two images were forever burned in my mind—the

serenity and calm beauty of this hillside contrasted with the extreme violence that

occurred in and around it in 1994. It wasn’t until well into my research for this thesis,

however, that I became conscious of the effect that those two scenes in the documentary

had on me and how often the images of Dallaire standing on that hillside have returned to

my mind over the years.

A second seed came while reading Viktor Frankl’s (2006) account of his inhuman

experiences in Nazi death camps during WWII, in which he also provides several

glimpses of how hope and solace are found in human beings’ relationships with nature,

even under desperate—and perhaps the most ‘unnatural’—circumstances. He reflects that

even in a concentration camp, prisoners would draw one another’s attention to the beauty

of a sunset. Frankl recalls another time, when he and a group of prisoners were being

Introduction

transferred by train from Auschwitz to a camp in Bavaria: “If someone had seen our faces

on the journey . . . as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits glowing in

the sunset, through the little barred windows of the prison carriage,” Frankl writes, “he

would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up all hope of

life and liberty. Despite that factor—or maybe because of it—we were carried away by

nature’s beauty, which we had missed for so long” (pp. 39-40). Frankl also recounts

meeting a woman who was ill and would die within days. As she lay in a hut, the woman

pointed out the window to the only branch of a chestnut tree that she could see, which

held two flowers. “This tree is the only friend I have in my loneliness,” she told Frankl. “I

often talk to this tree.” Upon hearing that she spoke to the tree, Frankl wondered whether

the woman was delusional and he asked if the tree spoke back to her. “Yes,” she replied.

“It said to me—I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life” (p. 69).

A third inspiration for this thesis came when I read scholar and peacebuilder John

Paul Lederach’s (2005) description of his integrated framework presentation to a group of

Guatemalans. During the lunchtime break, an indigenous Mayan priest came up to him.

While “your framework captures many things,” the priest said, “[i]t is missing one

overarching element” (p. 140). Lederach was puzzled, and couldn’t imagine which

“political, economic, or historic piece” he had missed in his presentation. The priest

continued:

Your framework is missing the earth and skies, the winds and rocks. It does

not say where you are located. In a traditional Mayan view, if there is a

problem in the community, the first thing we would ask is: Did you greet the

sun today? Did you thank the earth for the corn? It is not the only thing, but

it is the first. We always must know where, [in] what place and time, we are

located. (ibid.)

Introduction

While Lederach takes up the latter part of the priest’s critique as a different way of

understanding space and time, he does not address the first part: “Your framework is

missing the earth and skies, the winds and rocks.” The dominant narratives in the

academy and particularly in stories about conflict and peace tend to neglect context, place

and nature. Indeed, while questions about human embeddedness in ecosystems are

increasingly being asked in diverse academic fields such as epidemiology, environmental

psychology, neuroscience, medicine, education, urban planning, and social ecology, such

questions are rarely asked in connection with conflict transformation, peacebuilding, and

post-conflict recovery. Peacebuilding scholar Lisa Schirch (2005), whose own research

and practice focus on bringing the body back into peacebuilding and conflict

transformation, reflects that “there is relatively little documented information on the

importance of physical context in peacebuilding processes” (p. 68). Rather, Schirch says

we tend only to hear stories of “serious negotiations, rational discussion, and problem-

solving efforts” (p. 148). This lack of attention to place and context was confirmed by my

brief study of all the full-length articles published in five major peace and conflict studies

journals from 2008 to 2010, which found that only five percent of articles included nature

as a major theme, and none of those suggested that nature might be an active participant

in conflict transformation, peacebuilding and recovery. (See Chapter 4 for a more

detailed description of this study.)

War and other forms of political violence have many direct effects on people’s

health and wellbeing—for combat soldiers as well as civilians, including men, women

and children—and there is a growing body of literature documenting such effects. There

is also a growing body of literature focusing on the importance of nature for the human

Introduction

psyche, but relatively little focus on bringing the two discourses together. It seems,

however, that peace and conflict studies’ focus on issues of justice, power and

emancipation provides an opening to see that the “society that violates human nature” is

the same one that violates the more-than-human world (Fisher, 2002, p. 25). This thesis

aims to widen this opening by exposing the complex intertwinings between conflict,

peace, and recovery—that is, all of life—and nature. The broad intention of this research

is to extend current social research methods in peace and conflict studies to include non-

social factors, highlighting the many ways that nature tends to be left out of discussions,

analyses, planning, and execution.

The core of this inquiry is experience-centred narrative research within the

phenomenological interpretive framework provided by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It is also

informed by theories and praxis in ecology, ecopsychology, cognitive science, and

neuroscience, among others. All of these areas are, from different angles, illuminating the

problems associated with the meta-stories of rationalism and progress that guide and

orient Western life, and pointing to the profound and inextricable connections between

humans and nature. According to Buddhist scholar David Loy (2010), such meta-stories

come about in the search for an all-encompassing story that explains all stories. They are

the stories that we internalize and take for granted as ‘true.’ They teach us what is

important and they teach us how to behave. They also justify patterns of thought and

behaviours, such as believing human beings are superior to nature, or social orders in

which some humans are more important and deserving than others. Such stories cannot

get outside themselves and when we are living within them, we forget that they are

stories. But meta-stories are just “stories about stories” (p. 7), and we can challenge them

Introduction

by questioning the stories themselves. For example, Loy suggests asking whether our

meta-stories “alienate us from nature or embed us in it?” (p. 10). And if we stop believing

in and telling certain stories, this opens space for the stories to change.

Psychoanalyst Harold Searles (1972) maintains that “an ecologically healthy

relatedness to our nonhuman environment is essential to the development and

maintenance of our sense of being human” (p. 368). Thus, inspired by the Mayan priest’s

words, Dallaire’s description of that hilltop in Rwanda where he “became human again,”

and Frankl’s recognition of the interconnections between nature and human beings even

when living in inhuman conditions, this thesis explores new stories about what it might

mean for studies and practices in conflict transformation, peacebuilding and recovery

from conflict to include the earth and skies, the winds and rocks. What might it mean to

say where we are located? And importantly, what is the relationship between the nature

inside us—inside our human bodies—and the nature outside us?

Given the seriousness of social conflicts and the violent legacies of colonialism,

oppression, protracted ethnic conflict, or seemingly zero-sum territorial disputes, some

people might be sceptical about the significance of including nature in conflict

transformation, peacebuilding and recovery approaches; however, it may be these

difficult and intractable conflicts that benefit the most from inclusion of the earth and

skies, the winds and rocks. It may be, as described by Kurt Hoelting in the opening story

of this thesis, that contact with the more-than-human world provides the best way of

softening the boundaries between self and world, and for opening the heart and mind

more easily in order to connect both with one another and with the world around us.

Introduction

Casting Sideways Glances

Marlene Atleo (2008) shares the words of Ahousaht elder Trudy Frank, who

reflected on the importance of “just watching until it becomes clear to you” (p. 231),

suggesting that clarity and vision come over time, through enacting a curious gaze rather

than only accepting what is seen at face value. Cultural critic and philosopher Slavoj

Žižek (2008) asserts that if we look only directly at problems in the world, we will see

only what is most obvious, what our worldview allows us to see, and what is brought to

attention by those in power. Yet in cases of conflict, violence, and recovery, obvious

causes often mask other important issues. For example, social conflict is sometimes

thought, simplistically, to occur over ‘tangible’ factors (i.e., things that can be touched),

such as two toddlers fighting over the same toy. Or, in another instance, Richard Louv

(2008) brings attention to Western society’s “myopic focus on high technology as

salvation” (p. 137). This mesmerization with modern technology includes a focus within

the Western medical model on treating sufferers of trauma and post-traumatic distress

with drugs and talk therapy, wherein even suffering is viewed as manageable and

‘curable’ through technological innovation.

Žižek (2008) argues that casting a “sideways glance” often reveals more than meets

the direct gaze, and exposes the different and complicated questions that need to be

asked. Indeed, sideways glances at issues of violence and conflict tend to reveal that they

are rarely so simple as to be only about tangible factors. While many conflicts involve

tangible elements, such as land or oil, most often, intangible factors such as identity,

culture, emotions, stories, religions, ideologies, language, perceptions, fantasies, and/or

images of the ‘other,’ come into play, rendering the situation inherently complex (Senehi,

Introduction

2002). When conflicts grow to a protracted status, they often come pervade most areas of

social life, and might even fuse with an individual’s, group’s, or nation’s identity and

culture. Similarly, while the Western medical model’s focus on medication and talk

therapy may provide relief for some post-traumatic distress sufferers, these methods are

not a panacea. Indeed, the veterans whose stories are shared in this thesis all describe

turning to nature as an alternative to, or in addition to, traditional therapy and/or

medication.

Casting these sideways glances that seek to reveal more than meets the eye is not an

easy task. Such curiosity about life and the world takes energy. But as feminist scholar

Cynthia Enloe (2004) points out, this curiosity is often needed to uncover issues that are

taken for granted. In particular, Enloe’s feminist curiosity leads her to ask about

patriarchal relationships in the academy and international relations, revealing her central

question: “Where are the women?” Throughout my doctoral studies, my own curiosity—

what might be called an ecological curiosity (in addition to a feminist curiosity)—has led

me to ask about the natural world, ecosystems and human bodies that, like women, tend

to be overlooked or altogether missing within fields such as international relations and

peace and conflict studies. My main question over the past six years has been “Where is

nature?” and it is by casting sideways glances and watching until it becomes clear, that I

now work in this thesis to uncover the ways that our human processes for developing

identity and making meaning are tied to and embedded in nature (Norton, 2009).

Overall Research Focus and Research Questions

This thesis addresses the lack of attention to nature in peace and conflict studies by

asking urgent questions about how social conflict, peace and reconciliation, and post-

Introduction

conflict recovery might be envisioned as inextricably interconnected with nature.

Specifically, this research takes up the examples veterans suffering from stress and post-

traumatic distress from their military training and combat exposure. Over the course of

this research, I have come across the stories of a number of Canadian and U.S. veterans

who regard the more-than-human world as crucial in recovering a sense of their inner

nature, in recovering their sense of humanity. This thesis narrates and explores the

personal experience stories of four veterans’ post-conflict interactions with/in nature. All

of the veterans have suffered and/or continue to suffer from stress and/or post-traumatic

distress, and all regard their personal recovery from stress and traumatic experiences as

intimately tied to their nature experiences. Thus, through the veterans’ narratives, as well

as through supporting interviews, this thesis illuminates the ways that as human beings

regain a sense of connection with the more-than-human, we are calmed and changed in

the process, and often life becomes imbued with new and/or remembered meaning.

Situated in the context of narrative inquiry within the phenomenological

interpretive framework provided by the work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-

Ponty, this thesis is guided by the following questions:

1) In what ways do veterans’ narratives of post-conflict recovery highlight

nature as important for physical and/or psychological and spiritual wellbeing

and survival?

2) What role does narrative play in bringing nature to consciousness in peace

and conflict studies?

3) How might nature be considered an active participant in recovery processes,

rather than a passive backdrop?

Introduction

4) Since the majority of conflict-related trauma survivors in the world today are

civilians (Roberts, 2010), in what ways might the veterans’ narratives inform

the stories of civilian survivors?

Learning the personal stories of those who suffer materializes this suffering in the

present, and enables a better understanding of the long-term difficulties associated with

post-conflict trauma, healing and recovery. In hearing the stories of veterans, one has to

accept that war and conflict create deep and lasting wounds. One also begins to

understand the ways that, as Lakoff and Johnson (1999) reflect, “Our body is intimately

tied to what we walk on, sit on, touch, taste, smell, see, breathe, and move within. Our

corporeality is part of the corporeality of the world” (p. 565). Through gathering the

detailed narratives of veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress and their embodied

interactions in nature, I am seeking to get beyond the socially constructed boundaries

between humans and nature, and to revise theoretical and practical frameworks in peace

and conflict studies to be more inclusive of the natural world. This requires expanding the

context of peace and conflict studies in a way that incorporates human relationships with

the natural world, and situates conflict, peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery in its

ecological context.

Since its inception as an academic discipline, peace and conflict studies has lacked

an overall interest in nature. The approaches to issues of peace, conflict and recovery

have been dominated by anthropocentric discourses and research methods, which see

these issues as taking place only within the realm of human beings. Existing research

methodologies tend to neglect more-than-human others, factors with little or no

‘economic’ value, and most long-term interests and rights, including those of future

Introduction

generations. Social research has, in the past, similarly excluded other areas, such as

gender and culture, that are difficult to ‘measure,’ in favour of those that can be easily

documented and controlled. These approaches are understandable when one examines

both the roots and traditions of peace and conflict studies, as well as the discipline’s

general focus: war, violence, conflict, and peaceful resolution and transformation of

conflict. Peace and conflict studies and the disciplines from which it is descended are

profoundly situated in the Western philosophical tradition of the separated mind, this idea

that the human ability to reason is what separates us from and places us above animals

(this tradition is explored in greater detail in Chapter 4). The dominant culture and

training in Western society, Mark Braverman (1999) observes, “has taught us to look for

neat simple solutions to complex problems. We are hungry for easy, ‘cookie cutter’

answers” (p. 3). But as I explore in this thesis, if we instead begin to regard and

understand the human mind from the perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s

phenomenology, as well as theories in ecopsychology, cognitive science, biophilia, and

neuroscience, among others, our understanding of the human mind is radically altered

and we in the Western world begin to remember why nature—the more-than-human

world—is so important in our everyday lives.

In Mary Lawson’s (2003) novel Crow Lake, narrator Kate reflects that water “is the

medium we came from . . . We were all rocked by water at our beginnings” (p. 101). Like

all other mammals, Robert Greenway (2009) argues that this time spent in the oceanic

experience of the womb continues to exist “in our psychic depths” (p. 135). Moreover,

our human capacities and capabilities evolved from and grew out of animal capacities

and capabilities; indeed while our society may reject such thinking, we continue to be

Introduction

animals, a “carnal density of muscles and skin and breath” (Abram, 2010, p. 84). Many

authors and scholars are now arguing in favour of a human ‘ecological unconscious’

(e.g., Louv, 2008; Greenway, 2009; Wilson, 1993), which came about during human

evolutionary history but is now mostly repressed. Further, as Lakoff and Johnson (1999)

explain, “Human reason is a form of animal reason . . . our bodies, brains, and

interactions with our environment provide the mostly unconscious basis for our everyday

metaphysics, that is, our sense of what is real” (p. 17). That is, our reason, emotion, and

perception are bound up in our bodies. The consequences of this understanding seem

profound for peace and conflict studies.

Some Notes about Language

The limits of my language are the limits of my world.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein (as cited in Loy, 2010, p. 5)

Despite being a long-time lover of language, while writing this thesis I have been

occasionally paralyzed and imprisoned by language as I realized the deep and varied

meaning that permeates many words. Yet “the only medium with which we can define

language is language itself,” writes David Abram (1996, p. 73), concisely describing my

conundrum. In Western society, we tend to overlook the subtle ways that words work.

Language can be a powerful tool of domination and oppression. Those who control

words’ meanings are often in a position to determine not only the direction of dominant

narratives and discourses but also what can and cannot be conceived within a language

and its associated worldview. And so it is always important to ask: who defines words

and whose interests do they serve?

Introduction

Cultural critic and philosopher Slavoj Žižek (2008) reflects that “a basic fact of

language [is] constructing and imposing a certain symbolic field” (p. 60). Whenever we

write or speak, we use words in ways that communicate our own view of reality

(Callenbach, 1998; Fisher, 2002; Richardson, 1997). Drawing on the work of Henry

Giroux, ecopsychologist Andy Fisher (pers. comm.) reminded me that the language we

use, and indeed “our whole culture is a form of pedagogy, it’s constantly teaching what is

right or wrong.” In each society around the world, the words used always encode a

narrative, and within Western society, this narrative is often situated within the dualistic

frameworks that arose from Descartes, to perpetuate the meta-stories of rationalism and

progress. This points to an overall difficulty presented by language—that it is slippery,

with meanings that shift and twist, that cannot be contained.

Language can be inherently violent, reducing something complex (such as nature)

to a simple feature or word. Language “dismembers the thing, destroying its organic

unity, treating its parts and properties as autonomous. It inserts the thing into a field of

meaning which is ultimately external to it” (Žižek, 2008, p. 61). Meanwhile, compared to

our Western nonchalance around language, Indigenous peoples often have deep

understandings the power inherent in words. Basil Johnston (1999) shares that many

Indigenous peoples hold views of words as “medicine and sacred, bad and good; they

could either injure or heal, offend or comfort, mislead or enlighten” (p. 50). And Joe

Sheridan (2001) reminds us that practices of naming through language keep “speakers

elevated from the ground and [also elevated from] the place where the things and their

real names live” (p. 202).

Introduction

If language is about creating and applying a specific symbolic field—indeed, if

language is pedagogy and words hold deep power and meanings—then some of the most

important decisions made while writing this thesis have been about language: Which

words do I use? Which do I avoid? I have reflected often about words associated with

nature, as well as those that describe the stress and distress that come about from

traumatic experiences. For example, opting to use a medical term and abbreviation such

as ‘PTSD’ would immediately situate this thesis within a particular pattern of thinking.

Andy Fisher (pers. comm.) also points to how “using words like ‘mental health’ and

‘nature is good for your mental health’ . . . right away just pushes the ‘Play’ button on a

certain discourse.” Thus, below I reflect generally on some of the terminology used in

this thesis, which will be explored in greater depth in the chapters that follow.

Language and Nature

I have realized over the past few years that to invoke the word ‘nature’ causes

trouble, and brings forth problems of meaning. It is a difficult, slippery word. The word

nature brings about a multiplicity of responses, ranging from wonder to discomfort and

even hostility. I don’t have an answer as to why the word evokes such an array of

responses. Indeed, people’s reactions to and discomfort with this word could be the topic

of a PhD dissertation in itself. It may be that the strongest associations the word nature

holds for some people involves romantic notions of pot-smoking hippies wearing tie-died

t-shirts and rose-coloured glasses who are ‘communing with nature,’ and they don’t wish

to be associated with ‘tree huggers’ or ‘nature lovers.’ For others, it may be that the word

invokes images of ‘radical’ or ‘crazy’ environmentalists, such as activists and others who

chain themselves to trees, hang from buildings and ship masts, and protest in the streets.

Introduction

Particularly in places such Western Canada, where the oil industry is deeply implicated in

the lives of many people, jobs are often pitted against nature. For example, the Canadian

federal government recently branded as “radicals” anyone opposed to the Northern

Gateway pipeline project, which is intended to run from Alberta’s tar sands to the B.C.

coast in order to supply Canadian crude to Asian markets (Paris, 2012). In this case, the

word nature invokes the world and interrupts current discourses about economics and

capitalism—it becomes the unwelcome guest in the room, and people don’t always know

what it means for the guest to be there. It is generally easier to lock that guest away, or to

wish s/he was at a different party altogether.

Beyond these associations, since language holds meanings from the basis of our

experience (Merleau-Ponty, PP, xvii), I also wonder whether at a deeper level the word

nature might unconsciously bring forth the ways that as human beings, we have separated

ourselves from the world around us, and perhaps the word reminds us of the ecological

trauma associated with this separation. Perhaps the word nature recalls our fragility and

mortality, and reminds us of things that we might not wish to think about. Perhaps it

brings up a response of deep unconscious grief. The world most of us live in most of the

time cannot take in this word nature; to bring in this word can make our work and life

difficult. It is often easier, particularly in academic settings, to focus only on the bits and

pieces, while overlooking or dismissing the interconnections between all things.

In working to situate my own inquiry and analysis, I have deeply contemplated

peace scholar Betty Reardon’s (1992) reflection that “our language and our metaphors

reveal just how we think more clearly than our arguments and proposals” (p. 395). It

becomes necessary to carefully consider both the words I use and the ones I reject. A

Introduction

term I reject outright is the oft-used ‘non-human nature,’ which with its negative prefix

not only maintains dualistic thinking about humans and nature, but declares any ‘non-

human’ entity as somehow less deserving than those that are ‘human.’

Since I advocate a view of humans as nature, I have come to prefer David Abram’s

(1996) ‘more-than-human,’ a term capable of accepting the radical ecological

dependencies and relationships within the larger family of things. Perhaps an example is

useful here. If a tree defined everything other than itself as ‘non-tree,’ the ‘tree’ world

becomes very narrow. The ‘non-tree’ world would include, among others, the soil in

which the tree grows, insects that pollinate the tree’s flowers, the birds and winds and

squirrels that disperse the tree’s seeds, the rain and snow waters that help the tree grow,

the animals whose excrement and decomposing bodies provide essential nutrients to the

tree’s roots, the human who sits in the tree’s shade on a hot summer day and breathes out

carbon dioxide to give the tree breath, the insects and worms that decompose the tree

once its life ends so that it may provide life to other trees (and so much more!). By subtly

changing ‘non-tree’ to ‘more-than-tree,’ however, it becomes possible to conceptualize

the tree as being in ecological relationship with all these other beings that, while distinct

from her, are important in her lifecycle. Without this ‘more-than-tree’ world, the tree

would not live. Similarly, the term ‘more-than-human’ (instead of ‘non-human’) helps to

account for the complex ecological dependencies that form the basis of human life.

Despite the trouble and problems of meaning I allude to earlier, I also use ‘nature’

as a synonym for the more-than-human world (Chapter 2 takes up a more detailed

exploration of the word nature). Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s definition, the word nature

used herein refers to “our soil [sol]—not what is in front of us, facing us, but rather, that

Introduction

which carries us” (N, 4). While Merleau-Ponty often capitalizes the word nature,

particularly in his later works, after some reflection and discussion with others, I have

chosen to use a lowercase nature, since there is perhaps more permeability and room to

push the term’s boundaries and edges. (I have kept the capitalization of nature in quotes

from other scholars and authors, particularly when drawing on the works of Merleau-

Ponty.)

I acknowledge that to use this word can be—and is—at times problematic. Every so

often, I have been frustrated by my inability in this thesis to transcend the post-Cartesian

separations of body and mind, humans and nature. Despite my attempts to get outside the

constraints and dualisms of Western culture, I found myself continuously drawn inside

the Western discourse and the language of separation that underlies the whole Western

timeline of capitalism, colonialism, and urban-industrial contexts—the language that has

contributed to many of the problems we now face as a planetary community, including

unprecedented ecological change and strain, characterized by mass extinctions of species,

languages and cultures, alongside escalating population growth.

Reflecting on the difficulties I have encountered, I have come to realize that the

project of relanguaging and restorying is infinitely complex—an infinite and humble

project that goes beyond this thesis. It may be that finding language and ways of speaking

that can permeate and transcend the discourse are still in the future. Indeed, this will

likely become part of my life’s work, just as it has been and continues to be the work of

many others over generations. I hope, however, that I have succeeded in pushing the

boundaries and edges, especially of the peace and conflict studies discourse, even just a

little bit. And as I and many others continue to work on this project, it may be that as

Introduction

openings are created for exploring deep interconnections with the more-than-human

world, other forms, such as ritual, painting, poetry, song, and dance, among others, are

better at communicating and bringing meaning to these connections.

‘PTSD’ and the Medical Model for Responding to Suffering

The more conversations I have and reading I do around the topic of suffering, and

particularly the suffering that extends from traumatic experiences, the more I understand

how the modern Western medical model has one general standard for dealing with

suffering—it is labelled, often with an abbreviation (PTSD) and ‘treated’ with drugs

and/or talk therapy. Clinicians are generally taught how to respond to an instance of

suffering, but not to the physical experiences of the person who suffers (Frank, 2001).

Arthur Frank explains that suffering itself “resists definition because it is the reality of

what is not . . . Suffering is expressed in myth as the wound that does not kill but cannot

be healed” (p. 355). While the medical model is very good at healing a broken arm or

tendonitis, which can be isolated and treated, on the whole it has difficulty with suffering,

which extends into the whole body and human experience.

In his analysis of war, Jungian psychologist James Hillman (2004) brings attention

to the “the inhuman stress of war” and argues that “the very idea that human agony can

be named a ‘stress syndrome’ is inhuman, imagining a man as a machine part, a cog in a

military wheel” (p. 62). Indeed, in its conception of humans as machines, the medical

model overlooks and dismisses humans as nature. As Besthorn, Wulff and St. George

(2010) describe, “one of the effects of the modern industrial, techno-scientific worldview

is the constriction and elimination of language to communicate views of reality

inconsistent with the dominant worldview” (p. 26). As such, since this thesis research

Introduction

explores the narratives of veterans who have found ways of easing their suffering outside

the medical model, it also requires a break with the language used in the medical model.

First, however, it is helpful to understand the history and development of the medical

term ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ (PTSD). (The invisible wounds of war and the

experience of post-traumatic distress are discussed at greater length in Chapter 7. The

discussion below highlights primarily the way that the language has changed over the

past few centuries, and how the abbreviation PTSD came into common usage.)

The invisible wounds and anxiety that can come from combat stress have long been

recognized and described using various terminologies. In the seventeenth century,

Spanish doctors used the expression estar roto, literally meaning “to be broken” (Tick,

2005, p. 99). During the American Civil war, it was called “soldier’s heart” (Tanielian

and Jaycox, 2008). The term “shell shock” first appeared in The Lancet, the British

medical journal, in early 1915, a few months after the start of World War I (Alexander,

2010). Shell shock was initially considered to be a physical injury, since it was thought to

result from a soldier’s brain being shaken in his skull during a shell explosion. However,

over the course of the war, psychiatrists began to see shell shock in increasing numbers of

soldiers who had been nowhere near an explosion. When it was realized that these

soldiers were suffering from emotional shock rather than physical trauma, they were

often singled out as “cowards and traitors” by their peers and superiors, a stigma that

many veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress continue to feel today (Lamprecht

and Sack, 2002, p. 224).

“Combat fatigue” and “battle fatigue” were the common terms used during World

War II (Herman, 1997; Singer, 2007). As evidenced by the word fatigue, it was becoming

Introduction

better understood that war brought psychological trauma for many soldiers and other

service personnel. The Vietnam War brought the term “post-Vietnam syndrome” into

common usage (Poole, 2010). Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, as psychiatrists

Chaim Shatan and Robert Jay Lifton worked with many distressed veterans, they also

lobbied for a new diagnostic concept to be added to the American Psychiatric

Association’s official diagnostic manual (Satel, 2011). It was during this time that post-

traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) first became identified as a syndrome undeniably

related to combat exposure and in 1980, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was

officially added as a category in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, then the DSM-III (McNally, 2003).

Post-traumatic stress is often understood as “an emotional and behavioral response

to a traumatic stressor (or stressors) that becomes generalized and maladaptive”

(Benedek, 2011, p. 550). However, within the academic and psychological/psychiatric

communities, as well as amongst the sufferers themselves, there is now some debate over

the term disorder. Stein and colleagues (2007) explain that on the one hand, some view

trauma as abnormal and generally outside the realm of experience, and therefore employ

medical language to define disorders stemming from trauma. In this view, because

trauma is abnormal, disorders associated with trauma are also rare. Others, however,

suggest that trauma is widespread in human life and that many people will at some point

experience distress during the post-trauma period, although the persistent distress

experienced by those diagnosed with ‘PTSD’ is much less common.

While the language around PTSD continues to be popular in the media and

academy, the umbrella term ‘operational stress injury’ (OSI) is now also used to describe

Introduction

“any persistent psychological difficulty resulting from military service. OSIs include

diagnosed medical conditions such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress

disorder” (Veterans Affairs Canada, 2011). A report from the Canadian Standing Senate

Committee on National Security and Defence (2003) indicates that many veterans

seeking assistance for their distress favour the expression operational stress injury

because it “is less intimidating and emphasizes that the problem is an ‘injury’, not a

mental disease” (p. 7). Accordingly, all peer-support clinics for veterans suffering from

invisible injuries established by Veterans Affairs Canada are named “Operational Stress

Injury Clinics.”

In searching for terminology outside the medical model, James Hillman (2004)

suggests becoming aware of “the decline in the power of the term” associated with post-

traumatic distress. Expressions such as estar roto (to be broken), soldier’s heart, and

shell shock all convey powerful images of shock and distress when compared with

‘PTSD’, which simply becomes an abbreviation or organizing category on a medical

report (p. 64). Hillman eschews the term post-traumatic stress disorder, opting instead for

‘shell shock’ to describe soldiers’ suffering from the traumas of war. In his keynote

address as part of a Farmer-Veteran Coalition event, Shepherd Bliss (2008) spoke to

attendees about “Farming as healing, especially for post-traumatic stress.” He continued,

“You’ll notice I don’t say post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s not a disorder. It’s an

appropriate response to trauma.” In our conversation, Shepherd Bliss explained further:

I don’t like the term PTSD because . . . the problem is, then you see yourself

as a disorder. Nobody is a disorder. I don’t like the terms illegal immigrants.

Nobody’s illegal. So language is key . . . There is a shock there and I think

[shell shock] is a better term. And there is stress. But you don’t have to image

yourself as a victim. It’s how not to be a victim, how to know that you hurt,

Introduction

admit you were hurt, and not perpetuate it on the next generation or people—

but somehow pick up your bed and walk, basically.

I share James Hillman and Shepherd Bliss’s aversion to the term disorder, which

seems to blame the sufferer for traumatic experiences beyond their control. Accordingly,

in this thesis, while I do occasionally use the term PTSD when referring specifically to

some of the medical literature or quoting a participant, I generally use the term ‘post-

traumatic distress’, which I first encountered in an essay by Andy Fisher (2006). I have

chosen this term, despite Hillman’s and Bliss’s suggested ‘shell shock,’ because shell

shock seems to apply specifically to soldiers and veterans, while the notion of post-

traumatic distress extends beyond soldiers and veterans, to encompass the suffering that

can accompany any post-traumatic experience.

Outline of the Thesis

This thesis opened with the story of Kurt Hoelting’s kayak retreats and his work

with veterans at a Seattle VA hospital. This story, in many ways, captures the essence of

this thesis and prepares the ground for the academic explorations, narratives and

reflections to come. In addition, narrative interludes are interspersed between the

chapters. These interludes are primarily stories from my own experience that have

contributed to my understanding of nature, embodiment, and the effects of political

violence and trauma.

This thesis is divided into three parts, each providing the basis for the next. Part I—

Uprooting Old Stories and Unearthing New Ones includes chapters one through four,

which lay the groundwork for this thesis. Following this introductory chapter, Chapter 2:

About this Research tells the story of this research and its evolution from an ambitious

Introduction

project to one that was more manageable and focused. It provides an overview of the

different perspectives that have influenced my thoughts and research process in the past

six years. In addition, this chapter explores the Western philosophical underpinnings of

nature, some of the current Western views of nature, as well as how I refer to nature in

this thesis. Nature is not a tidy category. In some senses, nature is everything because

nothing comes from nothing. This is what makes nature both difficult and necessary to

define.

Chapter 3: Experience-Centred Narrative Research describes both the

methodology and methods underlying this thesis. This chapter briefly introduces

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and explores his critiques of the Copernican/Cartesian

worldview as well as his critiques of modern science. This is followed by a description of

narrative inquiry as a relational form of research, which makes it capable of paying

attention to context (Clandinin and Rosiek, 2007), and thus makes it an ideal method of

inquiry for this research project. Merleau-Ponty (2003) said that “if Nature is an all-

encompassing something we cannot think starting from concepts, let alone deductions,

but we must rather think it starting from experience” (p. 87). A phenomenological

approach for understanding and evaluating the patterns and roles of nature in conflict and

peace considers personal experience stories—embodied experience stories—as legitimate

knowledge; it recognizes that through stories, we get at subjectivity and experience

(Senehi, 2000). Perhaps through stories of experience, we can begin to uncover the

pretheoretical2 dimensions of human interactions with nature, the ways nature resists, the

2 Both Maurice Merleau-Ponty and David Abram suggest that interactions with nature occur prior to

thought—that is, prior to being articulated in words, either through mental conversation in one’s own mind,

or articulated aloud.

Introduction

ways it connects with human bodies. Perhaps through stories, we might remember to trust

intuition and sensory experiences again. And perhaps through stories, we might gain

access to the experience of others. In addition to exploring the main tenets of narrative

research as it supports this thesis, chapter three also delves into the specific research

methods used in this study, including descriptions of how participants were selected, how

interviews were conducted, and the process of writing, presenting and analysing the

narratives. I also reflect on the obvious gender and ethnicity imbalances amongst the

participants in this research.

Chapter 4: Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies presents the details of my

brief study of all the full-length articles in five international peace and conflict journals

published over three years to illuminate the ways that nature is discussed (and

overlooked) in the peace and conflict studies literature. Following that, I briefly explore

the phenomenological interpretive framework, which lays the groundwork for

investigating the ways that nature is dismissed in peace and conflict studies. This chapter

then reveals how peace and conflict studies is deeply embedded in the Western meta-

stories of rationality and progress, and deconstructs the dominant perspectives in the field

to expose the theories and ideas that underlie these various perspectives. I seek mainly to

investigate the patterns of thought and action towards nature now operating in, and

influencing, the Western academy and thus orienting research and praxis in peace and

conflict studies.

Part II—Embodiment, Nature and Narratives, which includes chapters five through

nine, focuses on bringing the body back into academic research and praxis. Chapter 5:

Bringing Back the Body delves further into Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, whose

Introduction

work has been important for a number of scholars writing about nature, ecology and

ecopsychology (e.g., Abram, 1996; 2007; Cataldi and Hamrick, 2007; Fisher, 2002, 2006,

2009). The broader appeal of Merleau-Ponty’s work in ecology- and ecopsychology-

related works may be his assertion that perception is “an organism’s entire bodily relation

to its environment” (Carman, 2008, p. 1). My own work and research have also benefited

from and been influenced heavily by Merleau-Ponty. His work both philosophically

situates and experientially grounds this research, since perhaps more than any other

Western philosopher, he provides a holistic philosophy of embodiment. He articulates an

embodied way of participating in the world, a world in which we are deeply implicated

and on which we are profoundly dependent for our own human survival. In addition, this

chapter explores theoretical insights from biophilia hypothesis and ideas about ecological

intelligence, approaches in cognitive science and neuroscience, and ecopsychology, all of

which seek to reintegrate the body into Western thought and research.

Chapter 6: Empirical Connections between Nature and Healing reviews some of

the recent empirical studies that demonstrate the important interconnections between

nature and humans. Some studies, for example, show that hospital patients with a window

view of trees recuperate faster than those with a view of a brick wall, and others reveal

that nature walks result in lowered blood pressure while urban walks can lead to

increased blood pressure. This chapter also explores insights from some of the work done

with refugees and trauma survivors in healing gardens, and overviews the green care

movement in Europe. Additionally, it examines connections between violence and lack of

access to nature.

Introduction

Prior to presenting the veterans’ narratives, Chapter 7: Invisible Wounds and Post-

Traumatic Distress works to contextualize the veterans’ experiences within the overall

history of post-traumatic distress. This chapter describes the changing picture of veterans

in Canadian and American society, the invisible wounds that can result from military

experience, including peacekeeping and combat exposure, and the ways that the

understanding of such wounds has changed over time. It also examines general symptoms

associated with post-traumatic distress, and the most common treatments currently

provided. I hope that through this chapter, readers will get a sense of the deeply

embodied experience of post-traumatic distress, including flashbacks, anxiety, insomnia,

and nightmares. Even in cases when the sufferer does not recall the traumatic incidents

that led to his/her post-traumatic experiences, the body remembers the experience.

James Hillman (2004) reflects that in general, human beings have difficulty

imagining and understanding war because war is inhuman and impersonal—it goes

against our very being. Narrative and story are what move us (Kearney, 2011). Learning

the stories of those who suffer materializes this suffering. It makes it real, and enables us

to imagine ourselves in their place, and to acknowledge the pain and suffering that result

from war and military experience. As such, Chapter 8: Narratives of Nature and

Recovery presents the narratives of four veterans, highlighting the role of the natural

world in their recovery from post-conflict/post-military experience.

Chapter 9: Other Stories from the Edges of Violence offers an additional thirteen

short stories from around the world from contexts of trauma, violence and conflict, and/or

processes aimed at transforming conflict. Like the veterans’ narratives in Chapter 8, the

significance of these stories, which include former soldiers and civilian trauma survivors,

Introduction

as well as people from peacebuilding contexts, is that in each one, the more-than-human

world was a key component. Of additional importance is that all of these stories were

obtained primarily by ‘reading between the lines’—that is, in the original articles and/or

books from which these stories were taken, the role of nature tends to be downplayed (if

noted at all), in favour of the connections and relationships that are built between

adversaries.

Part III—Reflections, Implications and Conclusions includes chapters ten through

twelve, and focuses on the thematic connections within the veterans’ narratives as well as

explores the theoretical implications of this research and its meanings for praxis. This

part begins with an interlude that shares some of the insights that came out of my

conversation with ecopsychologist Andy Fisher.

Chapter 10: We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis returns to the question: In

what ways do veterans’ narratives of post-conflict recovery highlight nature as important

for physical and/or psychological and spiritual wellbeing and survival? In this chapter, I

review and reflect on the thematic connections that emerged from the veterans’

narratives. I also draw on my supporting interviews and other stories from the edges of

violence to highlight the ways that the rhythms of the more-than-human world became

part of and left traces on the processes and the people involved.

Chapter 11: Bringing Nature to Consciousness begins with an exploration of why

the themes explored in Chapter 10 as well as the overall research in this thesis matter to

peace and conflict studies. This chapter also returns to and explores the other three main

research questions: What role does narrative play in bringing nature to consciousness in

peace and conflict studies? How might nature be considered an active participant in

Introduction

recovery processes, rather than a passive backdrop? In what ways might the veterans’

narratives inform the stories of civilian survivors?

Finally, in Chapter 12: Concluding Thoughts: Applications and Meanings for

Practice, I reflect on possibilities for remembering the more-than-human in

peacebuilding and recovery praxis. By listening to veterans’ stories of their experiences

with stress and recovery in natural settings, I hope to bring a new story to the meaning of

recovery, and to begin to highlight the connections between human life, bodies and

nature in a way that until now has been missing in academic inquiry in peace and conflict

studies, as well as in many other related academic areas, and in the practical work being

done with veterans and civilians recovering from the stresses of war.

In writing this thesis, I organized the chapters in the manner I considered most

logical, so that one chapter would provide the basis for the next. However, depending on

the reader’s interests and background, it may make sense to read the chapters in a

different order. For example, for readers who have little familiarity with the discipline of

peace and conflict studies, reading Chapter 4 prior to Chapter 3 (or even prior to Chapter

2) may provide a better sense of how the discipline tends of overlook nature, and

accordingly the contribution of this thesis to the field. Other readers may be most

interested in the veterans’ personal experience stories, and may wish to skip immediately

to Chapter 8. In general, there is no right or wrong way or order in which to read this

thesis; however, I would encourage readers most interested in the analysis and reflections

provided in Chapters 10 and 11 to first read the veterans’ stories in Chapter 8, as well as

the Prologue conversation with Kurt Hoelting and the interlude that presents my

conversation with ecopsychologist Andy Fisher at the beginning of Part III.

narrative interlude

excursions into memory and embodiment

Vivid memories of childhood flood my mind frequently while I write this thesis and

reflect on raising my son. As a child, I spent much of my time outdoors, trekking in and

around Alberta’s swamps, lakes, and rivers, forests and brush, stacking wood for fires,

canoeing, camping, cross-country skiing, riding horses, and pursuing small critters. From

ages two until five, I lived with my family outside of Rocky Mountain House in central

Alberta. Sunny summer days were spent searching the nearby swamp for tadpoles and

frogs, or standing at the edge of Crimson Lake, waiting to scoop up minnows to bring

home by the bucketful, only to have to return them later to their home in the lake.

Countless hours, too, were spent lying on my belly on the boat dock, watching the

leeches and tiny ‘hair snakes’ that knotted themselves around the plants that grew in the

shallow water. These little ‘snakes’ were no fatter than a thick piece of thread and less

than a foot long. We would reach in to the water, mindful of the leeches, and begin to

untangle the tiny creature from around a plant, only to watch it re-entangle itself as soon

as we let it go. Many nights were spent around the campfire, singing songs and listening

to stories. Throughout the summer months, my skin was so swollen with mosquito bites

Narrative Interlude

that my mother often worried what others might think of our home situation. Winter

found me sledding and playing with my sisters and friends in deep snow banks, or

locating a clear patch in the ice on Crimson Lake to see through to the underwater world

still alive beneath.

When I was five, we moved to a rural area in the dense pine forests of the foothills

halfway between Calgary and Banff, and my rural life continued until I was 18. Power

outages were a regular part of our life, on rare occasions lasting several days, and

reminded us of the influences and unpredictability of the weather. And my parents told us

often that we must never forget those such as bears and cougars, who lived in the same

woods as us. We were never to go walking in the woods alone, and even in the company

of others, we needed to make plenty of noise so as not to startle any animals. Deer and

coyotes were part of every day’s reality; more occasionally moose, badgers, and

porcupines were, too. We didn’t often see bears, but knew of their presence by the tracks

and scat on the trails around our house, and the flattened patches of grass near the

raspberry patch. Early one morning, a bear even left tracks in the frost on the wooden

deck of our house, where it had looked through the patio door.

Some of my most vivid teenaged memories are from several week-long canoe trips

on the North Saskatchewan River, during which I, along with a group of other teenagers

and a few adults, made camp each night on the river banks far away from any amenities,

surviving only on the food we brought with us, and hauling wood for a fire to dry our

clothes and shoes, cook our food, and warm our bodies. Our communal tent was crudely

constructed of canoes stacked one on top of the other with a plastic tarp draped over top.

Narrative Interlude

These experiences mingle with the stories I heard often while growing up. My

mother sometimes spoke about her parents’ love for camping, and how they took her and

her sisters out whenever they could—right on the sandy beaches of the Baltic coast in

Germany, and later at Redberry Lake in Saskatchewan and at Long Beach on Vancouver

Island. As a teenager, I remember once walking by the ocean with my mother when she

suddenly stopped and sniffed the air. “This, to me, always smells like home,” she said.

My father regularly talked about growing up in war-torn Berlin. He often told

stories about my grandfather who, during the Allied Airlift, turned their entire yard into a

garden which they guarded at night, so that his family, compared with many others in

Berlin, usually had enough to eat. They kept animals, such as rabbits and goats, in the

attic of their house, since if they were kept outside, desperate and hungry neighbours

would steal them in the darkest hours of the night. When others used to ask, “But what

about the smell, Herr Seidel?” my grandfather would joke, “Oh, the animals don’t seem

to mind us.” And while my father and his brother’s friends always went out to play

immediately after school, the two boys spent had to first spend several hours each day

picking grass and dandelions to feed the animals.

Not long after we moved to Alberta’s foothills, one of my sisters got two pet rabbits

from her friend in town. Both were supposed to be female, but not long after, we had 10,

then 20, then 30 rabbits. And with echoes of his own childhood, my father would send

my sisters and me out with five-gallon pails to pick clover and dandelions for the rabbits.

Soon these rabbits began to fill our freezer, too.

In those first years after we moved to the foothills, my father also brought home a

load of tiny chicks every spring. I remember always scooping them up and taking great

Narrative Interlude

delight in their soft downy bodies. The chicks grew quickly, and within a few days turned

into gawky teenagers, with long necks and white adult feathers peeking out from beneath

their yellowy down. And within weeks, they became adult chickens. We fed and cared

for those chickens all summer, until early fall, when those chickens also shared space

with the rabbits our freezer.

I share these memories as a way of situating my own knowledge, and positioning

how my rural childhood has influenced my thinking and given me an embodied

understanding of human life as connected with the natural world. To this day, despite

living in cities for many years, I still dream of wild animals with some regularity—even

when these dreams come in other places, the setting is always the foothills of the Rocky

Mountains. When I returned to Alberta in the summer of 2007, after spending the first

year of my doctoral studies in Winnipeg, I felt an old familiarity take root in my body—

the smells, the great swaths of pine forests, the mountains, the colour of the glacial lakes.

I relaxed in a way I had not during the previous year in Manitoba (both while awake and

in my dreams). And I realized that even as an adult, I still feel most rooted here—most at

home in these places, and feel my tensions release and anxieties decrease when walking

in the woods, camping in the mountains, or sitting and walking by the water. In early

2009, after spending two years in Winnipeg for graduate school, and one year in New

York City for my partner’s work with the United Nations, we decided to return to

Calgary, which is where both Scott and I feel most at home.

Chapter 2

About this Research

Nature is not simply the object, the accessory of consciousness in its tête-à-

tête with knowledge. It is an object from which we have arisen, in which our

beginnings have been posited little by little until the very moment of tying

themselves to an existence which they continue to sustain and aliment.

—Merleau-Ponty, RC, 64

This chapter starts by telling the story of this research and thesis. In searching for a

way (or ways) to explore questions about nature in peace and conflict studies, this

dissertation has meandered across topics and locations—from Calgary, to Winnipeg, to

New York, then back to Calgary. In all of these places, I continued to listen for the

ecological story, and indeed, it was in Calgary again—the place I feel most rooted, most

at home—that I finally found my focus. It has also been coloured by some wonderful

experiences (becoming a mother), some unspeakable experiences (the death of a beloved

nephew), and some unfortunate experiences (the disbanding of my research group). This

chapter also explores definitions of nature, including Western philosophical

underpinnings and modern uses as well as the ways that I understand and use the term

nature in this thesis.

About this Research

The Evolution of a Thesis

Asking questions about nature has not been easy and in the past few years, I have

stumbled a number of times in my attempts to articulate and find examples for this

research. At one point several years ago, I realized that it might have been easier to focus

on a topic such as environmental conflict or ‘resource’ scarcity, since there is

considerable work being done in the area, and I could easily have found a specific

example to investigate. However, my sideways glances and ecological curiosity revealed

that the issues I wanted to explore run much deeper. I wanted to find ways to engage the

earthly nature of the human body in academic inquiry, which is inherently messy and has

not always been popular in Western academic circles. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty was

accused of being anti-intellectual for his attempts to bring the body into philosophical

inquiry (Madison, 1999). An additional difficulty inherent in this research project is that

it is not well contained within disciplinary boundaries, but rather, it reaches out across

disciplines, and attempts to build bridges between phenomenological frameworks,

ecological and ecopsychological perspectives, and peace and conflict studies.

This research began as part of a larger study, in which I intended to explore the

ways that nature features into the entire conflict cycle—to draw out stories involving

patterns of reciprocal interaction with nature, with a focus on not only content but also

context. For example, there are many stories of the Jewish Partisans who survived the

Holocaust by escaping into the forests of Poland and Belarus during World War II (e.g.,

Grabowski, 2004; Yad Vashem, 2001). A different but similarly valuable example might

be Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt Movement in Kenya, which works to connect peace

and good governance with environmental protection (Maathai, 2003). Other examples

About this Research

include the Cyprus Consortium Peacebuilding Project’s summer camp that brought

together Greek and Turkish Cypriot youth in a wooded area of Pennsylvania (Schirch,

2005), the negotiations that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa, which included

fishing trips, ‘bush’ conferences, and meetings held in park-like settings in England

(Sparks, 1995), and the Norway Channel that led to the signing of the Oslo Accord

between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which involved secret

meetings held in the Norwegian countryside, surrounded by pine forests, lakes,

mountains, and fjords (Corbin, 1994). In all three of these cases, the locations themselves

became part of the peacebuilding story (Westlund, 2010).

As I set out to begin this project of gathering living examples of patterns of

interaction with nature amongst both individuals and groups during the entire cycle of

conflict, peacebuilding, and recovery from conflict, I did not envision how difficult it

would be to find participants and stories. In hindsight, I might have better anticipated the

struggles inherent in looking for the story that is usually excluded from standard or

traditional academic research—that perhaps part of the reason it is excluded or missing is

that it is difficult to tell! When I proposed this project to my committee, I also did not

intend to have a baby in the middle of this research, and was not prepared for the

debilitating nausea and exhaustion that consumed me for the first 16 weeks of my

pregnancy nor for the difficulties associated with travelling to do research once my son

was born. During the second and third trimesters of my pregnancy, I also took my first

university teaching job and found most of my time consumed by all of the experiences

and learnings associated with teaching in an academic setting for the first time. As such,

both my pregnancy and teaching job meant that most of this research had to take place

About this Research

after my son was born. Thus, the research needed to evolve to support my new role as a

mother, and to be present for my child with no long absences from home.

In December 2009, towards the end of my pregnancy, I became involved with the

Canadian Veteran Adventure Foundation (CVAF), a Calgary-based organization founded

by veteran Cpl. (ret.) Christian MacEachern, C.D. After years of undergoing treatment

for his post-traumatic distress through the medical system, Christian discovered that he

felt best during and after spending time in nature. Based on his own experiences and

insights, he founded the CVAF to facilitate nature experiences for other Canadian

veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress. In December 2009 and January 2010, I

conducted initial interviews with all of the CVAF board members and realized that it

might be possible to focus on this one organization and the experiences of individual

veterans participating in its programs.

Then, my son Cameron was born in February. Since my husband was eligible for a

paternity leave, I intended to shorten my maternity leave and to resume my research with

the CVAF in the summer of 2010. However, the shock and grief that accompanied my

nephew Isaac’s unexpected death in June 2010 left me both unable to concentrate

academically and made me profoundly aware of the fragility and preciousness of life and

of spending time with my young son—time that I would never get back. Therefore, I

extended my leave and did not meet again with the CVAF until January 2011, when

together we planned for me resume my research in conjunction with their July 2011

program.

Unfortunately, before that could happen, the CVAF, which had always been

plagued by funding difficulties, disbanded due to a lack of funding. After a period of

About this Research

disappointment and uncertainty, in my search to salvage my research, I came across the

stories of several other veterans whose experiences in nature complemented the story I

had heard from Christian MacEachern and the CVAF board members. In the end all of

these unforeseen events and circumstances have led to a stronger thesis—not one that I

could have imagined when I started out, but one that has fascinated and inspired me, that

has interested and captured the attention of many others I have spoken with along the

way, and that is timely and relevant as thousands of Canadian and U.S. soldiers return

from their military experiences overseas. With the help of the veterans’ narratives, some

narratives based on my own experience, and several from other interviews, I explore in

depth the idea that humans are nature, that there is no mythical separation, and the ways

this holds important propositions for trauma recovery, peace and conflict studies, and for

all life.

Defining Nature: Concept and Story

Phusis kruptesthai philei wrote Greek philosopher Heraclitus in Ephesus around

500 BCE (Hadot, 2006, p. 1). These three words from Heraclitus’s small book are now

commonly translated as “nature loves to hide,” a phrase that has been the subject of much

interpretation (and, according to Pierre Hadot, misinterpretation) over the centuries.

Indeed, the word nature is a term so dense and complex, often holding several levels of

meaning at once, and so burdened with history, that it seems nearly impossible to define.

Merleau-Ponty suggested that rather than thinking about nature starting from concepts,

the only way to conceive of nature is to start from lived experience (N, 87).

In The Elements of Style (1918), one of the most influential writing guides in North

America, William Strunk, Jr. lists ‘nature’ among the “Words and Expressions

About this Research

Commonly Misused.” Strunk advises avoiding the word nature unless one can be specific

in one’s meaning. He especially urges that writers avoid ambiguous phrases such as “a

lover of nature” and “poems about nature” since “the reader cannot tell whether the

poems have to do with natural scenery, rural life, the sunset, the untouched wilderness, or

the habits of squirrels” (p. 39).

Kate Soper (1995; 2000) suggests there are three overall ways in which the concept

of nature is understood in Western society. In what she refers to as the “realist” sense, we

as human beings continue to see ourselves as nature and as being affected by the “laws of

nature,” which apply to the entire physical world. Like all other creatures, we are born

and we die, we need to eat and excrete, we are affected by gravity. However, Soper also

suggests a second sense, in which nature is dualistically posed against culture, and

against human (i.e., human vs. non-human). In this sense, what is ‘natural’ is that which

is not human. It tends to be this “metaphysical concept” of nature that we use when

pondering the question of human specialness—that is, when differentiating ourselves

from other life forms and setting ourselves as superior to nature. Soper additionally draws

attention to a third sense, which she suggests is the “surface” or “lay” concept of nature.

This is the most common use of nature in everyday life and language, which tends to

depict nature as the opposite of urban, as in the concepts of countryside, wilderness,

landscape, rurality, and domestic and wild animals. Commenting on this lay concept,

Soper (1995) writes, “This is the nature of immediate experience and aesthetic

appreciation: the nature we have destroyed and polluted and are asked to conserve and

preserve” (p. 320). Wilderness here becomes the binary of ‘civilization’ and those who

lament urban lifestyles often long for what they perceive as the pureness and simpleness

About this Research

of a life in the wilderness (van den Berg, 2007). William Cronon (1995) describes how

this idea of wilderness offers itself “as the best antidote to our human selves” (p. 1).

The way that nature is thought about and defined is also a cultural story; it is used

to justify a way of life in terms of what is natural. For example, capitalism regards

competition and survival of the fittest as “natural” (Evernden, 1992, p. 27). And Neil

Evernden argues that no matter how I define nature, I am implicitly making a judgement

about ‘the good life’—about what is worthwhile for me, my family, my society, and the

world. The industrialist, oil sands executive or nuclear plant operator has a conception of

the good life, too, perhaps even a conception of nature’s role in the good life, but it is

likely different from mine. Specifically, the industrialist might think of nature as

‘resources’ to support the good life, or s/he might enjoy spending time hiking and

camping and canoeing when not at work, able to consciously separate work from

playtime and not perceive any connections between the two.

Philosophical and Historical Underpinnings of Nature

Nature and its relationship to human beings has long been one of the main topics of

Western philosophy. In seeking to understand and define nature, it has been helpful to

explore the philosophical underpinnings that underlie the topic of nature within Western

consciousness. I do not investigate all views of nature, since in this thesis I am suggesting

that the Western tradition needs to look inside itself for alternative ways of knowing and

thinking. Therefore, this section reviews some of the Western philosophical basis for

thinking about nature, as well as some of the main perspectives of nature that operate

simultaneously in contemporary Western society. I delve into the many contested

About this Research

meanings of nature—attempting to hold at bay any illusions of certainty about nature, and

exposing the theories and ideas that underlie the various perspectives of nature.

Most often, over the centuries, Western philosophers have sought to establish

human being as a unique category of being, superior to everything else on earth, thus

leading to the development of what is commonly considered a hostile view of nature.

However, this hostile view did not always exist. In ancient Greece, for example, one

found a holistic concept of nature based on an understanding of the interrelationships and

interdependencies between humans and the world around them (Abram, 1996). Nature

featured prominently in the myths and epics, where the living gods could be heard, seen,

and felt in nature: Athene in the owl’s hoot, Boreus in gusts of the north wind, and

Poseidon in the stormy seas (Hillman, 2004). In this primarily oral culture, David Abram

(1996) explains that words were mere “utterances,” whose meaning arose and existed

only in their spoken context, and then immediately “slipped back into silence” (p. 110).

Words and meaning were only ever connected to phenomena and events in the wider

world they sought to describe.

The orality of Greek culture changed with the two men considered to be the

founders of Western philosophy: Socrates and Plato. Though mostly illiterate, Socrates

set the stage for change with his dialectic, when he asked students to reflect on and

explain the meaning of their spoken words, to “separate themselves . . . from the phrases

and formulas that had become habitual through the constant repetition of traditional

teaching stories” (Abram, 1996, p. 109). Plato expanded the Socratic dialectic, a move

that David Abram argues was facilitated by the emergence of the phonetic alphabet,

About this Research

which gave words “new autonomy and permanence” (p. 111). Once words were written

down, their meanings could be contemplated outside of their spoken context.

Plato’s view of the nature was established in his dialogue Phaedrus, in which his

main character Socrates talks to Phaedrus and explains: “I’m an intellectual, you see, and

country places with their trees tend to have nothing to teach me, whereas people in town

do” (Plato, 2002, p. 7). Here, Plato sets the tone for the Western philosophical tradition to

deliberate nature apart from (and below) the human experience of being (Abram, 1996).

But while European thought has long been associated with this hostile view of nature, the

new way of thinking did not immediately filter through all of European society. For

hundreds of years still, many people lived in reciprocity with their surroundings. It was

only with the sixteenth and seventeenth century witch burnings that Europeans saw a

final attempt to extinguish the remaining “traditions rooted in the direct, participatory

experience of plants, animals, and elements” (p. 199).

Along with the violent rooting out of these remaining land-based traditions, the

beginning of the seventeenth century saw the rise of the first ‘modern’ philosopher, René

Descartes, who in his Sixth Meditation described nature as only a “thought,” thus

entrenching it as wholly separate from, and exterior to, human being (Merleau-Ponty,

N, 83). Indeed, it may have been this changed conception of nature that allowed for the

many scientific discoveries that began shortly thereafter. Merleau-Ponty contends that if

the conception of nature had not become so estranged from human being, the scientific

revolution could not have occurred.

Following on Descartes, Immanuel Kant also took up the idea of nature,

articulating a humanist hierarchy that even more firmly placed humans in a position of

About this Research

dominance. Kant reinforced nature as a construction of human reason, and suggested that

human being is only complete in opposition to nature (Merleau-Ponty, N). Within

Kantian humanism, “all that we can speak of is only an attribute of human being. Such

thought tends to make the problem of Nature disappear” (p. 136).

Not long after Kant, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling introduced a romantic

conception, referring to nature as “the barbaric principle” (Vallier, 2003, p. xviii), which

he argued was the most ancient element in the world, even “more ancient than God”

(Merleau-Ponty, N, 38). Even though nature remained opposite humans through the

process of reflection, Schelling perceived that there was a reciprocal relationship between

humans and nature, not the linear and hierarchical one-way relationship advocated by

those who preceded him. It was Schelling who first suggested that “we rediscover Nature

in our perceptual experience prior to reflection” (p. 39). Schelling’s notion of perception

became important for Edmund Husserl’s articulation of phenomenology and his

Lebenswelt (life-world), which entailed “the world of our immediately lived experience,

as we live it, prior to all our thoughts about it” (Abram, 1996, p. 40). Husserl believed

that it was phenomenology’s responsibility to reveal how all theory and science arises

from and is sustained by our embodied lived experience.

In the middle of the twentieth century, Maurice Merleau-Ponty was still responding

to and grappling with the Cartesian conception of nature, which he viewed as highly

destructive. Following Husserl, Merleau-Ponty set out to offer an alternative philosophy

of experience based on the role of perception and human embodiment in the world.

Drawing on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Merleau-Ponty began

articulating a new vision of nature, in which the human body emerged at the intersection

About this Research

of nature and thought/reason (Vallier, 2003, p. xx). For Merleau-Ponty, the human mind

was not “an impartial observer of Nature,” but rather human awareness was itself a

process of nature (N, 117). Thus, he argued that there exists “a sort of reciprocity

between Nature and me as a sensing being. I am part of Nature and function as any event

of Nature: I am by my body part of Nature and the parts of Nature allow for them

relations of the same type as those of my body with Nature” (ibid.).

Perhaps echoing Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical iterations, renowned psychiatrist

C.G. Jung (1964) reflected on his connection with nature this way: “At times I feel as if I

am spread out over the landscape and inside things, and am myself living in every tree, in

the splashing of the waves, in the clouds and the animals that come and go, in the

procession of the seasons” (p. 225). This is a view that regards nature not only as a

surrounding context, but acknowledges that nature is intimately “with us and within us,

both at once” (Casey, 2006, p. 193). This view implies that nature exists deep within the

human psyche and experience, and it is this view that I take up in this thesis.

Nature in this Thesis

Ultimately, the word nature is “always the expression of an ontology—and its

privileged expression” (Merleau-Ponty, N, 204). That is, conceptualizations of nature

within Western thought and languages are historically situated and change over time,

which makes nature inherently difficult to define. Evernden (2002) goes so far as to

suggest that nature is a dangerous word, for “it’s never exactly what you think it is”

(p. 112). Nature does not name itself (Schama, 1995). Renowned storyteller Ursula K. Le

Guin (1994) observes that “as soon as you call it nature, you immediately create a

dichotomy between you and it” (p. 113). And by naming it nature, it becomes something

About this Research

other than human. Le Guin suggests that most peoples who fully inhabit and respect their

ecosystem do not have a word for it: “They’d just call it the world” (pp. 106-107).

Indeed, James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson (2000) observes that most Indigenous

languages have no word for nature. He provides an example from the Atlantic coast

Míkmaq, who when referring to nature and their environment might use words such as

“‘space’ or ‘place of creation’ (kisu'lt melkiko'tin)” (p. 257).

In opening up this word nature, poet Gary Snyder (1992) is helpful when he advises

that nature is not easily known, that “whatever it actually is, it will not fulfill our

conceptions or assumptions. It will dodge our expectations and theoretical models” (p. v).

Does or can nature ever have a single meaning? Is it the tree that grows outside my

window? the park across the street? farmland? wilderness? only those we designate as

‘natural resources’ or ‘raw materials’? is it cows? fishes? insects? rocks? rivers? wind?

Only elements that are ‘alive,’ or all of the animate and inanimate earth? In looking at

these questions, I become temporarily preoccupied with finding the meaning of nature,

only to discover that there isn’t one, that perhaps Snyder is right: “the greatest respect we

can pay to nature is not to trap it, but to acknowledge that it eludes us” (ibid.). Nature is

infinitely unknowable.

Still, as Merleau-Ponty (2003) asks, “Wouldn’t there be something that had always

been intended, if not expressed, by those who use words?” (p. 3). Tracing a word’s

etymology sometimes reveals surprising connections, forgotten meanings embedded

within the word itself. ‘Nature’ can be traced to the Latin natura, literally meaning

‘birth,’ and natura itself comes from natus (‘to be born’). Perhaps this Latin word for

nature came from its speakers’ conceptions that the earth provides life to, or quite

About this Research

literally births (and keeps alive), human beings. Indeed, even the word human comes

from humus, meaning ‘of the earth,’ which points to human beings’ mortal and fragile

nature (OED, 2001). No matter how hard we try, it is not so easy to escape our origins. In

modern English lexicon, however, these original meanings are all but forgotten.

When I use the word nature in this thesis, I am trying to use it in a way that

acknowledges that all life exists within a non-growing ecosphere.3 Ecology might be

considered narrowly by some as the scientific discipline that studies “all interactions

among living beings and the environment” with the goal of understanding “the

functioning of whole living systems, not simply [breaking] them down into component

parts for analysis” (Callenbach, 1998, p. 34). However, here I use the word ‘ecology’

more broadly, not just in the scientific sense, but stemming from its origins in the Greek

word oikos, meaning ‘house, dwelling place, habitation’ (OED, 2001). Ecofeminist

philosopher and theologian Catherine Keller (1996) reflects that this sense of meaning is

shared by many ecologists and Indigenous peoples, for whom nature “is first of all

habitat, the reality in which—or more precisely, as part of which—one dwells” (p. 146).

Thus, in this thesis, I draw on an understanding of human experience as taking place

within complex interdependent ecosystems, and rejecting any human/nature and

mind/body splits wrought by Cartesian thinking. As humans, we are nature, our existence

itself is “a network of relations” (Fisher, 2002, p. 11).

Despite the common view of Western philosophy as hostile towards nature, the

ways that I am thinking and writing about nature in this thesis are not new, but have

3 Callenbach (1998) explains that this term ‘ecosphere’ is often interchangeable with ‘biosphere,’ but that

ecosphere is capable of not only referring to all earthly living things, but also granting “a stronger sense of

their interconnections with their nonliving environment (soil, rocks, air, and water)” (p. 20).

About this Research

swirled about and been articulated since time immemorial, existing in the West alongside

the separated view of humans and nature. For example, historian and philosopher Pierre

Hadot (1995) recalls that for the Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius who lived nearly 2000

years ago, when one acted according to nature, one was acting “in full awareness of the

fact that one is part of a cosmic whole” (p. 283). Hadot observes the similarity to

Einstein’s view at the beginning of the twentieth century when “he denounced the optical

illusion of a person who imagines himself to be a separate entity, while he is really a part

of the whole which we call the universe.” Accordingly, Einstein asserted that it is “our

duty to open our hearts to all living beings, and to all of nature in her magnificence”

(ibid.).

My purpose in using the word nature it is not to say that nature is other than

human, but rather that as humans, we are nature, nature is us. I am trying to get away

from human-centred notions of nature, to reveal the intimate bodily connections with

nature—with plants and animals, earth and sky, winds and rocks. Merleau-Ponty said, “I

am part of Nature and function as any event of Nature: I am by my body part of Nature”

(N, 117). And at the most basic level, it is our bodies that remind us we are nature. As

Timothy Beatley (2004) points out, our bodies have a biological need for full-spectrum

sunlight, and for access to the stars, sky, and other elements in nature. Moreover, Gay

Bradshaw (2009), whose work centres on trans-species psychology, reflects that

“attributes once considered uniquely human—including culture, mourning rituals,

empathy, self-awareness, suffering, tool use, distinct personalities, ethics, complex

linguistic abilities, and a sense of aesthetics—are now identified in myriad species”

(p. 159).

About this Research

Nature is not an assortment of things that exist out there but rather as Lakoff and

Johnson (1999) observe, “it is part of our being. It is the locus of our existence and

identity. We cannot and do not exist apart from it” (p. 566). This thesis is exposing and

attempting to get beyond the falseness of human/nature dichotomies, and beyond the

socially constructed concepts of ‘nature versus humans’ or ‘nature versus society.’ While

industrialization and Cartesian thought have supported forgetting that humans are nature,

physicist and plasma scientist Timothy Eastman (2008) reveals the ways that modern

comprehensions of nature are beginning to shift based on research in fields such as

nonlinear dynamics, quantum theory, superconductivity, and space plasmas. This

research is showing that “all entities are constituted by networks of relationships, in

contrast to substance views that ground all things in some type of immutable substance”

(p. 89), an understanding that has been at the base of indigenous philosophies since the

beginning of time.

Richard Louv (2008) suggests that in its most broad interpretation, nature is

everything, including toxic waste, or in a more narrow interpretation, nature might be

conceived of as what is not human and things not made by humans (p. 8). When I think

of and use the word nature, it falls between these two extremes. Toxic waste and iPods

and computers are not nature (although the products that go into them are nature, such as

the metals mined from the ground, the plastics derived from petroleum, itself from the

fossilized remains of plants and animals that lived long ago). As Merleau-Ponty (2003)

said, nature is “that which carries us” (p. 4). It is the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the

shelter over my head. It is my own body, my permeable skin, the water inside that I both

expel and replenish constantly, the minerals and elements found in my bones and in the

About this Research

bones of other living creatures, as well as in the earth’s soil. Nature is language itself,

writes Merleau-Ponty in The Visible and the Invisible, “the very voice of the things, the

waves, and the forests” (VI, 155).

Nature, as it is used and described in the stories in this thesis, inspires wonder,

imagination and vision. It is something with which one can have intimacy. It awakens our

senses, breathes new life into places that once seemed dead or broken. It is the earth, the

skies, the winds, the rocks. It is the trees outside my window, the park down the street,

the food I eat, the plants in my living room, the garden in my backyard, the farm an hour

from my house. Even more, it is not separate from what is human—it is our human

bodies, the young child playing in my living room, and my own self sitting at this

computer. As Andy Fisher (2002) writes, “The body is the site of intersection of inside

and outside, self and world; it belongs to both realms and mediates their relations”

(p. 64).

Chapter 3

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

Narrative and life go together and so the principal attraction of narrative as

method is its capacity to render life experiences, both personal and social, in

relevant and meaningful ways.

—Connelly and Clandinin, 1990, p. 10

The core of this inquiry is experience-centred narrative research (Squire, 2008)

within the phenomenological interpretive framework provided by Maurice Merleau-

Ponty. Narrative research and phenomenology share many overlapping qualities,

particularly in that both focus on lived experience and the meaning of that experience. In

his seminal work on phenomenological research, Max van Manen (1998) writes that “To

do phenomenological research is to question something phenomenologically and, also, to

be addressed by the question of what something is ‘really’ like. What is the nature of this

lived experience?” (p. 42). The phenomenological framework appeals to me in the ways

that it encourages reflection on embodied experience. In particular, Merleau-Ponty’s

philosophy encourages reflection on how the body inhabits and is intertwined with the

world of nature. In addition, because human experience takes place at both conscious and

unconscious levels, narrative is a helpful and necessary way of understanding and making

sense of that experience, and within this research context especially experience in nature.

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

This chapter briefly introduces Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology and explores his

critiques of both the Copernican/Cartesian worldview and modern science. Following

that, it provides an overview of narrative research methods and a discussion of the

specific methods used in this inquiry.

Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues that there is no ‘objective’

world, that everything starts from subjective experience, and that all meaning is derived

from that experience. He explains that in phenomenology, “We are interrogating our

experience precisely in order to know how it opens us up to what is not ourselves” (VI,

159). Unlike many philosophical methods and academic inquiries, which focus solely on

the realm of the intellect, for Merleau-Ponty, “my body is my point of view upon the

world” (PP, 81). Indeed, the central tenet of his philosophy is that the body cannot be

taken out of the subject—we, as human beings, are subjects by virtue of our embodiment,

and all meaning is grounded “in the bodily intelligibility of perception” (Carman, 2008,

p. 23). At its core, Merleau-Ponty is proposing a philosophy of experience—both a way

to conceive of human embodied experience and to acknowledge that our ways of

knowing only ever arise from our own personal experience. As Matthews (2006) reflects,

“we can only attach meaning to an abstract idea by referring back to our own direct

experience of things, that is, to perception” (p. 21). It is only by living in the world—by

inhabiting the world—that we come to know about it, since as Merleau-Ponty points out,

“the world is there before any possible analysis of mine” (PP, x).

Accordingly, Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception refers not to abstract

ideas or thought, but to direct contact and engagement with the world around us. The

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

value of phenomenology for this inquiry, and particularly the value of Merleau-Ponty’s

phenomenology, is that it provides possibilities for theorizing and investigating the

human body, including intuition and sensory experiences, in conflict, peacebuilding and

recovery—through examining the ways nature may support human physical,

psychological, and even spiritual wellbeing at all stages of human life, including

situations of conflict, peacebuilding and recovery. In addition, Merleau-Ponty provides

an alternative to competitive scholarly traditions which exist namely to refute and prove

one another false. Instead, Merleau-Ponty offers a cooperative, non-adversarial

philosophical approach, undertaking to tease out and learn from the positive aspects of

different traditions, and to build and expand on these aspects (Carman, 2008). As an

interdisciplinary scholar, I find this approach is appealing, because it implies a focus on

research and theory as method for bettering the world through discussion and

collaboration.

The Mind/Body Split

René Descartes is often blamed for severing the thinking mind from the living body

in Western philosophical and scientific thought, but the origins of the mind/body dualism

likely began with Nicolaus Copernicus, who approximately a century before Descartes

first advanced the theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. David Abram (2007)

reflects that the heliocentric system radically contradicts human sensory experience, in

which we observe the sun moving across the sky while the earth remains motionless

beneath our feet. Thus, as Europeans began to accept Copernicus’s theory, they no longer

felt able to trust their bodily senses, and when Galileo later confirmed the heliocentric

system, he proposed the necessity of splitting objects from the human perceptions of

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

those objects (Hamrick and Van der Veken, 2011). Thus the work of Copernicus and

Galileo laid the foundation for the first ‘modern’ philosopher, René Descartes, whose

famous dictum cogito ergo sum (‘I think therefore I exist’) provided the orientation for all

subsequent philosophy. With this dictum, Descartes completed the detachment of mind

from body, and moreover, privileged thought over bodily sensations (Abram, 2007).

Thus, as Merleau-Ponty explained, “The Copernican revolution . . . [allowed for] a return

to human being as the power to construct” (N, 22).

These moves by Copernicus, Galileo, and Descartes in the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries held deep implications for all philosophy and science that followed.

In Merleau-Ponty’s essay Eye and Mind, he suggests that science and philosophy are

“two monsters born from [Cartesian] dismemberment” (OE, 308-309). With Descartes,

thought became “placed in the service of the body and functions according to the

disposition of the nervous machine” (N, 19), a view that continues to dominate Western

philosophy and science today. Philosopher Taylor Carman (2008) explains that the

continued dominance of Cartesian dualism has meant that in scholarship, and in life more

generally, we have become used to conceiving of the body as a simple object standing

apart from ourselves, as a machine comprising individual parts. The legacy of the

Copernican revolution and the subsequent Cartesian split was a retreat into thought as

“our essential relation to the world” (ibid., p. 12), which is the mind-set that Merleau-

Ponty worked all his life to revise.

In his 1948 talks on French public radio, Merleau-Ponty insisted, “we are not alone

in this transfigured world. In fact, this world is not just open to other human beings, but

also to animals, children, primitive peoples and madmen who dwell in it after their own

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

fashion; they too coexist in this world” (C, 54). While Merleau-Ponty’s manner of

speaking, particularly his reference to “primitive peoples and madmen” is no longer

welcomed as politically correct, the heart of his point is important—that different ways of

knowing, points of view, and experiences, both amongst human beings and within the

more-than-human world, have been largely ignored in the science and philosophy

following Descartes because scientists and scholars “believed that there is such a thing as

a fully-formed man whose vocation it is to be ‘lord and master’ of nature” (C, 55).

Merleau-Ponty observes that “Descartes saw animals as no more than collections of

wheels, levers, and springs – in effect, as machines” (C, 54). In addition, any attention

paid to children “fell on trying to measure how far their efforts fell short of what the

average adult or healthy person was capable of accomplishing” (C, 55). Thus, in the

Cartesian worldview, if you do not ‘measure up’ to the definition of the ‘fully-formed

man,’ you are not worthy of attention. Furthermore, if you are a ‘fully-formed man,’ only

your mind is important, while your embodied experiences should be dismissed.

Modern Science and ‘Objectivity’

The legacy of the Copernican worldview and Cartesian thought continues to

influence philosophers, scientists and other researchers into the twenty-first century, not

only in terms of the ways that we conceive of and separate thought from corporeal

experience, but also the ways that we separate humans from nature, in what Merleau-

Ponty refers to as the ‘ontology of the object’ (Hamrick and Van der Veken, 2011). In

this view, which continues to be held and advocated by many modern academics, human

beings are removed from an active, engaged and responsive relationship with/in the

world, and we pretend ourselves instead to be only external, passive and disembodied

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

observers. The problem that Merleau-Ponty points to, however, is that the objectivist

disembodied account is only make-believe, for we can never be without a body. As

Robert Kirkman (2007) writes, scientists, too, “are participants in the flesh of the world”

(p. 28).

For Merleau-Ponty all of human experience is “through and through compounded

of relationships with the world” (PP, xiv). Importantly, in his critique of Cartesian

dualisms and modern science, Merleau-Ponty was not confronting science itself; he saw

the importance of scientific research and was interested in the outcomes of science in its

proper context—that is, as scientific observations. He was bothered, however, by the

privileging of science and the ways that utilitarian attitudes had gained favour over lived

experience in the world. He was particularly concerned by the dogmatism that lived

experience is of little value while science “thinks itself capable of absolute and complete

knowledge” (C, 36). Merleau-Ponty was thus deeply critical of the objectivist stance that

views science—and only science—as providing the best and most dependable description

of reality, for as he would point out science itself is a human accomplishment—designed

by humans for human purposes. “All my knowledge of the world, even my scientific

knowledge,” writes Merleau-Ponty, “is gained from my own particular point of view, or

from some experience of the world without which the symbols of science would be

meaningless. The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly

experienced” (PP, ix). All of our experiences and knowledge are located in and moulded

by our corporeal animal bodies. “I am the absolute source,” he argues (ibid.). Thus

human beings gave science and all scientific concepts their original meaning, including

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

the notion of objectivity, but this seems to have been forgotten in the search for objective

knowledge and the modern privileging of science.

Merleau-Ponty argues that the objectivity sought within scientific research is

impossible—that all of our actions, choices and experiences in life provide the lens

through which we interpret and understand the world. Our engagement in and

understanding of the world comes not from theoretical positions, but from inhabiting the

world in/through our bodies. As human beings, we are not disembodied minds: “Human

existence can never abstract from itself in order to gain access to the naked truth” (C, 80).

Rather, all human thoughts and theories are themselves embodied. While science reduces

the human body to a series of discrete systems—respiratory, circulatory, digestive,

reproductive, nervous, immune, and so on, which can be documented and diagrammed in

medical textbooks—David Abram (1996) explains that the “breathing body, as it

experiences and inhabits the world, is very different from the objectified body” (p. 45).

In the last essay published before his early death, Merleau-Ponty continued his

critique of science and the absolute reverence for scientific knowledge in Western

society:

Science manipulates things and gives up living in them. It makes its own

limited models of things; operating upon these indices or variables to effect

whatever transformations are permitted by their definition, it comes face to

face with the real world only at rare intervals . . . . [the] fundamental bias [of

science] is to treat everything as though it were an object-in-general – as

though it meant nothing to us and yet was predestined for our use. . . . To say

that the world is, by nominal definition, the object x of our operations is to

treat the scientists’ knowledge as if it were absolute, as if everything that is

and has been was meant only to enter the laboratory. Thinking ‘operationally’

has become a sort of absolute artificialism, such as we see in the ideology of

cybernetics, where human creations are derived from a natural information

process, itself conceived on the model of human machines. (OE, 291-292)

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

Scientific theory relies on finding conditions and qualities that can be quantified or

measured so that the knowledge may qualify as objective. In Merleau-Ponty’s first course

at the Collège de France on The Concept of Nature (1956-1957), he commented that the

scientist “looks for a way to grasp the phenomenon, but he doesn’t seek to understand

it . . . Immediately after having discovered the phenomenon, he looks for the conditions

of it” (N, 86). Matthews (2006, p. 38) draws analogies between what American

philosopher Thomas Nagel calls science’s “View from Nowhere” and Merleau-Ponty’s

description that science seeks “the exercise of a pure and unsituated intellect can allow us

to gain access to an object free of all human traces, just as God would see it” (C, 36).

The empirical view of the world imagines that we as human beings can step outside

our own experience, and see the world solely as a series of separate objects that exist only

in spatial relation to one another (Matthews, 2006). In addition, non-objects, such as

emotions, cannot be studied scientifically, and as such, tend to be undervalued within the

scientific paradigm. Science tends only to be concerned with what can be studied and

observed externally (although recently some scientists, such as Esther Sternberg (2000;

2009) and Candace Pert (1997), have become interested in additional facets of human

experience, such as senses and emotions).4 This prestige given to science, reason and

thought over sensual embodied experience leads to the belief that empirical and

quantitative scientific inquiry is the only valid method for revealing the world (Hamrick

and Van der Veken, 2011). However, each of our experiences, Merleau-Ponty reminds

4 Dr. Ester Sternberg (2000; 2009), who is currently the Chief of Neuroendocrine Immunology and

Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health, has spent much of her career investigating mind-body

interactions in illness and healing. In the Preface to her book, The Balance Within: The Science Connecting

Health and Emotions, Sternberg (2000) comments on the ways that scientists studying mind-body

connections are both ignored and often rejected by the rest of the scientific community.

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

us, are only lived inside ourselves—are grounded in our bodies—and thus our perception

is never outside ourselves but always the point of view from which we sense and

experience the world. “I live in [the world] from the inside; I am immersed in it,” he

observes. “After all, the world is all around me, not in front of me” (OE, 309). Thus,

Merleau-Ponty’s critique of science involves specifically asking “whether science does,

or ever could, present us with a picture of the world which is complete, self-sufficient and

somehow closed in upon itself, such that there could no longer be any meaningful

questions outside this picture” (C, 34).

Narrative Research Methods

As examined in the previous section, Descartes’ dualistic legacy has taught us to

distrust our senses and instead to trust and rely solely on our intellect to learn about the

world. Positivist research traditions, which unfolded from Cartesian thinking, typically

focus on the so-called virtues of reliability, objectivity, generalizability, and validity—

that is, what counts as true and which ways of knowing are considered valid (Pinnegar

and Daynes, 2007). Such research seeks to measure and prove cause and effect, and

explanations derived from this type of research are generalized, so as to be widely

applicable. Indeed, Chapter 6 of this thesis provides an overview of the empirical

research currently examining the connections between humans and nature. This research

typically falls within the positivist paradigm, since researchers measure participants’

blood pressure, or levels of cortisol, for example, after spending time in nature versus

urban settings. Or they measure levels of interpersonal violence in accordance with

participants’ access to nature settings. Similarly, the medical and psychological research

on post-traumatic stress disorder often focuses on large groups and generalizes the

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

symptoms and causes of the ‘disorder.’ Indeed, a positivist approach to this thesis

research might focus on explaining nature’s effects on veterans’ physiology. Such an

approach would also seek to incorporate ways of generalizing the veterans’ experiences

and to incorporate criteria such as validity and reliability (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990).

Yet, in the veterans’ narratives shared in Chapter 8, despite some commonalities, each

person’s experience of stress and distress is unique. Further, their stories reveal that

healing and recovery are embodied and individual experiences (despite the fact that the

veterans may also describe them as social and place-based experiences).

In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty explores the case of Schneider, a

psychiatric patient, who suffered from brain damage that left him feeling disconnected

from his body. While he is able to perform routine and habitual tasks with his eyes

closed, such as blowing his nose, Schneider is generally unaware of the physical location

of his body and is unable to perform new or abstract movements, which most people take

for granted, such as his doctor’s request to touch his nose with a ruler (PP, 118-159).

However, as Merleau-Ponty explains, it is not enough to understand and explain the

symptoms associated Schneider’s medical condition. The problem for Schneider is more

personal than his symptoms—his suffering stems from the fact that his condition impedes

him from that for which he yearns: to interact normally with others and with the world.

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s assessment, Matthews (2006) further explains that while

“causal explanation will tell us how it came about that Schneider suffered in this way, . . .

it will not help us to understand what his disorder meant to him, what role it played in his

life” (p. 72).

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

Thus, paralleling Merleau-Ponty’s observations and approach, narrative researchers

Stefinee Pinnegar and Gary Daynes (2007) argue that by distilling human experience into

measureable and distinct and generalizable portions, quantitative research loses the

“nuances of experience and relationship in a particular setting that are of interest to those

examining human experience” (p. 15). Positivist methods have turned individual

experience into something that can be objectified and quantified, as well as have turned

nature into something that exists only outside our human bodies. According to Jean

Clandinin and Jerry Rosiek (2007), narrative research is a response to positivist research

methods. And Pinnegar and Daynes (2007) define narrative research as “a movement

away from a position of objectivity defined from the positivistic, realist perspective

toward a research perspective focused on interpretation and understanding of meaning”

(p. 9). Story is often the best way of getting at and understanding human experience.

Narrative allows us to better enter the experience, since “understanding depends on being

able to share something with the person whose behaviour we are trying to understand, to

be able to see the world from their point of view” (Matthews, 2006, p. 72). In the case of

veterans suffering from stress and post-traumatic distress from their military training and

service, it is not enough to understand their symptoms causally. Rather, this research

draws on experiential accounts and reflections of veterans’ lived experiences to

illuminate the importance of human senses, and to value their embodied contact with the

world around them.

Andy Fisher (2002) draws attention to the ways that “our experience is always

directing us toward some sort of contact with the world and the world itself calls forth our

experience” (p. 26). Explaining stress and post-traumatic distress causally does not get at

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

what the experience is like for the individual who suffers, nor can it illuminate the efforts

and courage required to live with such experiences and move towards recovery. It is

narrative that materializes each veteran’s suffering, and enables a better understanding of

the long-term difficulties associated with post-conflict healing and recovery.

In contrast with positivist methods, narrative inquiry is capable of paying attention

to context—indeed, as Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) point out, narrative inquiry is “a

relational form of inquiry” (p. 45) and “the qualities of place and the impact of places on

lived and told experiences are crucial” (p. 70). Each veteran came individually to the

realization that he feels best in the company of the more-than-human world. Each

describes his phenomenological experience of nature and this experience is meaningful in

ways beyond those which can be explained by science—indeed, this embodied

experience of interdependence cannot be measured, proved, or evaluated. Moreover,

veteran Tim Lewis shared that he does not need to explain or understand the ways that

nature has affected him: “I’m not sure if I really want to explain it either. It’s good that

there’s mystery around.”

Trauma and distress, argues counsellor and psychotherapist Kim Etherington

(2003), are experienced subjectively, and are embodied in various ways, including

through “physical illness, disability, addiction and pain” (p. 11). It might be easy to look

at the underlying causes of veterans’ distress (specific trauma incidents), but it is

narrative that sheds light on the experience and the meaning the distress has in their daily

lives. Only narrative is capable of getting at the unexpected swells of anger or the

unpredictable nature of flashbacks, for example, that impede each veteran from living as

he might wish. This research shows that the veterans’ subjective experiences vary widely,

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

as do the causes of their distress and post-traumatic distress. The veterans’ experiences

cannot be generalized or identified by numerical values—to generalize them would be to

lose the richness and stories related to what has been considered private for most

veterans—namely post-conflict struggles with recovery; however, when the stories are

read together, their experiences inform one another and reveal commonalities and

thematic connections.

All of these qualities of narrative inquiry make it an ideal method for this research

project which seeks to bring nature and embodied experience into peace and conflict

studies and seeks to understand what is gained in the presence of the wider, more-than-

human world. Narrative allows us to enter imaginatively and empathetically into the

experience of the veterans. In addition, the stories in this research would not likely be

included together in a positivist research framework. They are the stories of veterans

from different generations, different wars/conflict scenarios, some suffering from

distress, others not; but in including these stories together, there are important lessons

about the role of nature in human experience.

The Study

Connelly and Clandinin (1990) contend that a crucial aspect of narrative inquiry is

that it provides space for individuals to tell their story. It is stories that comprise the

research data, and all learning arises out of the stories (Creswell, 2012). Narrative inquiry

makes it possible to shed light on details and experiences often concealed or overlooked

by other research paradigms. Through narrative, it is possible to access a variety of

perspectives on these hidden issues, thus allowing the research topic to be explored in

complex ways that include multiple experiences (Schaafsma and Vinz, 2011).

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

In experience-centred narrative research, one important way of exploring a

particular phenomenon is to interview several people about the same experience (Squire,

2008). This thesis research employs an experience-centred narrative research design to

tell the stories of four individual veterans. It brings the voices of the veterans suffering

from stress or post-traumatic distress, often a marginalized population (or at least, a

seldom-heard population), to the forefront and encourages them to talk about their

experiences with recovery and nature. It values their embodied knowledge as important

and emphasizes the stories they live and tell, specifically highlighting their personal

accounts of post-military experience (and in most cases, post-trauma experience)

(Creswell, 2012). Through these personal experience stories, we encounter each veteran’s

personal suffering, and learn how upon returning to civilian life, his coping and

recovering from military, stress and trauma experiences have been tied to his lived

experiences in the more-than-human world.

In narrative research, in addition to the stories of participants, the researcher often

includes some of her own story and insights (Creswell, 2012). Nancy Taber (2011b) cites

Chase, who argues that “researchers need to understand themselves if they are to

understand how they interpret narrators’ stories and . . . readers need to understand

researchers’ stories . . . if readers are to understand narrators’ stories” (p. 334). And

Connelly and Clandinin (1990) describe how, in their approach to narrative inquiry, they

realized that they needed to tell their own stories, too: “Scribes we were not; story tellers

and story livers we were. And in our story telling, the stories of our participants merged

with our own to create new stories, ones that we have labelled collaborative stories”

(p. 12). As such, I have included several narrative interludes and reflections from my own

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

experience that are relevant to this work. For example, in the course of doing this

research, I became a mother for the first time in February 2010. Both being pregnant and

becoming mother constantly needed by my newborn child for comfort and food, as well

as watching my son grow and learn about the world, have profoundly affected my

understanding of embodiment and the ways human beings inhabit the world. As an

academic, it has often been easy to live ‘inside my own head’ but more recently I have

been compelled to recall and acknowledge my own and my child’s embodiment.

In addition, four months after the birth of my son, on the way to a family

celebration in honour of my grandmother’s 96th birthday, my 12-year-old nephew Isaac

died following a terrible accident. The trauma for me, my family, and all those involved

in responding to the scene of the accident has led me to a deeper understanding of the

experience of trauma and post-traumatic distress. My own suffering and the suffering of

my family in connection with Isaac’s death has deepened my understanding of and

compassion for the suffering of others, and has made me aware of the deep, complicated

and slippery ways that trauma can affect us, many of which we may not be immediately

conscious. At this point, the experience and trauma surrounding Isaac’s death is still

unspeakable for me—still beyond words, perhaps even beyond comprehension and

reason. But it is important to acknowledge this experience, since I have thought daily

about Isaac throughout this research and writing, about his love for the outdoors, and

about how his death has forever changed my family, and this has no doubt influenced my

writing in ways that I may not be conscious.

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

The Participants

I conducted eleven in-depth interviews for this thesis. All participants interviewed

were selected via a convenience and network sample. I first became familiar with three of

the veterans’ stories by reading about their experiences in news articles and research

books, while the fourth veteran was introduced to me by another veteran. In the case of

the CVAF, as described in the previous chapter, I also interviewed all members involved

in the board of directors. The make-up of the board changed during my maternity leave;

however, I was unable to interview its newest members, since the CVAF officially

disbanded before I could resume my research with them. I interviewed two additional

people to illuminate and complement the veterans’ stories: Kurt Hoelting, whose stories

of founding his sea-kayaking outfitter-guide business and of teaching Mindfulness-Based

Stress Reduction to veterans at the Seattle VA Hospital were shared in the Prologue; and

Andy Fisher, a psychotherapist and leading scholar within the field of ecopsychology.

Most participants were interviewed only once, although in the case of Capt. Gord

Cousins, C.D., we had two conversations together, since our first conversation was

focused on his involvement with the CVAF, and it was through that conversation that I

became aware of his personal experiences with nature and recovery. When necessary, I

followed up with participants by phone or e-mail in order to clarify any questions I had

from the interview.

Three of the veterans, Christian MacEachern, Tim Lewis, and Gord Cousins, live in

and around Calgary and these interviews were conducted in person, as were all my

interviews with the CVAF’s board of directors. My interview with veteran Shepherd

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

Bliss, who lives in California, took place over the telephone, as did my interviews with

Andy Fisher, who lives in Ontario, and Kurt Hoelting, who lives in Washington State.

All four of the veterans retired from the military, although later in life, Gord

Cousins rejoined and currently serves as a reservist. Three served in the Canadian Forces,

while one served in the United States Army. All are white males, ranging in age from

early 30s to mid-60s, and for three of them, it was clear from a young age that they would

join the military. Two of the men saw active duty overseas—one as a peacekeeper and

one as a combat soldier—while the other two completed training but were never

deployed—one due to an accident suffered in training while the other chose to leave the

military after hearing Martin Luther King Jr. speak at a peace gathering. Three of the

participants have allowed me to use their real names while one (Tim Lewis) requested a

pseudonym. All four men tell how their lives were changed by their military training

and/or service and describe suffering from stress, hypervigilance and/or distress resulting

from their military experiences, although only some have been medically diagnosed as

suffering from post-traumatic symptoms. None of the men’s experiences was identical—

yet despite their radically diverse experiences, all four veterans point to their relationship

with nature as important in their lives and in their ability to cope with the stress and

change resulting from their military experience. Further, they all point to the ways that

their bodies carried them forward and implied5 what was missing from their recovery

experiences—namely, it seems, interaction with the more-than-human world.

5 This notion of “implying” comes from the work of Andy Fisher, and is described in more detail in the

interlude that reflects my conversation with him at the beginning of Part III.

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

The Interviews

Jennifer Mason (2002) advises that flexibility and sensitivity are key factors in

conducting interviews, and she recommends keeping interviews open-ended in order “to

maximize the interview’s ability to produce situated knowledge about processes and

experiences” (p. 64). Accordingly, I used an unstructured and open-ended interviewing

style (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990; Rubin and Rubin, 2005; van Manen, 1998). My

conversations with the veterans each centred on how he came to realize that nature was

important in his own life and around the experience of his interactions with nature and

place during his ongoing recovery. The open-ended questions, alongside prompting

questions asking for examples and memories of particular incidents, allowed the

conversation to follow a trajectory mainly set by the veteran. I asked no questions about

symptoms or about the military experiences that led to his stress and/or post-traumatic

distress. Some of the veterans chose to talk about these experiences, while others did not.

At the end of each interview, I asked each veteran whether there was anything we didn’t

speak about that he thought we should, and that question, after a few moments of

reflection, usually brought forth additional insights. My interviews with the CVAF board

of directors were targeted more towards their involvement with the organization, but also

sought to understand the experiences that brought them to become involved with the

CVAF as well as their own nature experiences (in most cases, the two were linked). The

supporting interviews with Kurt Hoelting and Andy Fisher were semi-structured in order

to seek their knowledge and experience specifically related to this research.

All interviewees were informed that they did not have to answer any questions they

did not wish to answer, although none ever declined to answer a question. They were also

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

told that their participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw at any time. None

chose to withdraw. With each person’s consent, the interview was recorded and later

transcribed, and I provided a copy of the transcript for the participant’s review and

approval. Each interviewee was told that s/he could make as many changes as necessary

to the transcript as well as to inform me if there were portions of the interview which

should not be quoted or included in the resulting dissertation. Only one person made

changes to his transcript in order to clarify several aspects of our conversation. Several

others noted sections on which they did not wish to be quoted. I honoured all requests for

changes and exclusions.

Writing, Presenting and Analyzing the Stories

In academic writing, interviews are often broken into bits and pieces, and sorted

along the main themes deduced during the analysis. Sociologist Dorothy Smith (1999)

explains that most often “theory is deployed to pick out and tailor extracts from the

original events to appear conceptually reconstructed or as fragments of speech or writing

sustaining the discursive project” (p. 141). However, as I read and re-read the interview

transcripts, and reflected on each veteran’s subjective experience, it seemed inappropriate

to draw only on fragmented quotes and to selectively employ extracts to support my

analysis. After much thought, I decided to present each veteran’s story as a narrative.

This approach is supported by Connelly and Clandinin (1990), who reflect that “narrative

explanation derives from the whole” (p. 7). By presenting each interview as a narrative, I

sought to maintain the integrity of each story, to provide a sense of each veteran’s holistic

experience. In reading the stories together, the experiences are illuminated in both their

similarities and differences. In addition, while I had initially intended to use selective

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

parts of the interviews with Kurt Hoelting and Andy Fisher to support my reflections and

analysis, as I worked with the transcripts, it also seemed that these conversations were

best presented in narrative form.

When it came time to write the veterans’ stories, I considered and experimented

with several narrative writing approaches, including both story structure and first- or

third-person narrative. One example I considered was Julie Heifetz’s (1989) book about

child Holocaust survivors, in which she presents the survivors’ stories in uninterrupted

first-person narrative, a style she suggests brings forth an immediate emotional and

intellectual response in readers, similar to the one she experienced in listening to each

story for the first time. Her primary intent was for each story to provide catharsis for the

survivor, and she hoped that hearing or reading their stories in a first-person format

would empower each survivor by revealing from a new perspective what they had

experienced and survived. However, Heifetz’s purpose in writing the survivors’ stories

was different from mine as a researcher.

Due to the fact that the veterans’ stories of healing and recovery were being

included in the context of a research thesis, which also requires some thematic analysis

and reflection, I opted instead to make my authorial presence visible by writing myself as

the researcher into each story (Schaafsma and Vinz, 2011). Accordingly, I chose a third

person biographic approach to write the stories, since the interviews were primarily

focused on understanding each veteran’s experience with/in nature and recovering from

stress and post-traumatic experience. While writing the narratives, I also kept in mind

Creswell’s (2012) assertion that it is important for the final narrative to reflect the

participant’s story, not the researcher’s story. Accordingly, I relied heavily on the

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

interview transcripts in order to maintain each veteran’s voice print by using his words

and sentence structure wherever possible. Rather than reworking them into my own

words, which would involve my own interpretation, I included extensive quotes from

each veteran, since their own words are compelling and speak directly to their

experience. Because our conversations also moved around in time and space and some

stories were told out of sequence, I reorganized each story into a logical time sequence

(Creswell, 2012; Heifetz, 1989; Ritchie, 2003). While I did present the majority of each

interview, at the time of writing I made several decisions about certain aspects of our

conversation to leave out, particularly in cases where the details seemed too personal to

be included in a narrative that was not anonymous.

I hope that presenting the stories in this way enables readers to gain the context for

each veteran’s experiences and to better understand the ways in which he has found

nature to be important in his own life. Most of the stories focus solely on the veteran’s

account of his personal experience; however, because this research began through my

work with the CVAF, Christian MacEachern’s story also includes the voices of the board

members who were active in his organization. As recommended by Connelly and

Clandinin (1990), once I had written the narrative focused on our interview, I returned it

to the veteran for his approval. All the veterans’ stories are deeply personal, and it was

important to give each one the opportunity to make changes if necessary. None of the

veterans requested any revisions.

Within a narrative research framework, the researcher’s reflections are presented

following the participants’ stories (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990; Creswell, 2012). In

order to understand each interview on its own and in the context of the others, I immersed

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

myself in the veterans’ stories. I read and re-read each interview transcript many times,

reflecting on common themes and ideas amongst the veterans’ experiences. Using a

process of inductive analysis, I paid attention to the patterns and felt rhythms in the

stories, and the factors that could not be rationally accounted, created or planned for, but

that were still present. Chapter 10 of this thesis explores the thematic connections and my

reflections, as well as incorporates insights from the additional interviews and the

literature.

Gender and Ethnicity Imbalances

It is important to acknowledge the obvious gender and ethnicity imbalances in the

interviews and personal experience stories presented in this thesis. Each of the four

personal experience stories belongs to a white male veteran, and all but one of the

supporting interviews were also with white men; the only woman I interviewed was also

white. I attempted to schedule an interview with a female therapist and ecopsychologist,

but she declined because she did not feel she had the expertise to contribute to my study.

Although this thesis would ideally present the stories of both male and female

veterans from a diversity of ethnic backgrounds, the imbalances are perhaps easily

explained. First, because of the sampling method used to find participants—primarily a

convenience sample through stories in the media and academic texts—I did not encounter

the stories of either female veterans or visible minorities emphasizing their experiences of

recovery and nature. This does not mean these stories do not exist; I simply did not find

them! However, the reason that I did not find such stories may also be due to the fact that

white men predominantly comprise the Canadian Forces (CF). The CF has several

policies on equality designed to increase the recruitment of Aboriginal people, women,

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

and visible minorities. However, Captain Hans Jung (2007) cites a 2006 Report by the

Auditor General of Canada, which noted that despite equality policies, the recruitment of

members of these groups has actually declined in recent years. Military recruitment

efforts have traditionally focused on young men, aged 17-24, living in rural areas or

smaller urban centres with populations below 100,000. The rural population in Canada

tends to be of European descent, as does the population of smaller cities and towns across

the country. Typical recruits have thus tended to be young white men, often with family

histories of serving in the military. In 2006, only 2.8 percent of the Forces’ total members

were from visible minorities, and 1.5 percent were of Aboriginal descent (Jung, 2007).

Also in 2006 and still today, men comprised 85 percent of the Canadian Forces.

Annika Kronsell (2005) observes that “Military, defence and security-related institutions

. . . have historically been ‘owned’ by men and occupied by men’s bodies, which also has

influenced these institutions’ agendas, politics and policies” (p. 281). Joshua Goldstein

(2001), who examines the connections between war and gender, describes how while

theoretically all positions in the Canadian military are open to women, in reality, as with

elsewhere in the Western world, women tend to be assigned to non-combat roles. The

Canadian Forces’ (2011) official position is that “women members have the opportunity

to work any job in the Canadian Forces.” The CF notes that currently about 15% of its

service members are women (about 13,000), but the website implies that most of these

women work as operators or technicians.

The CF gender imbalance was confirmed during several of my interviews. For

example, Tim Lewis told me, “When I was in the military I didn’t work with females.

There were no females in my unit. There was one or two that were either medical staff or

Experience-Centred Narrative Research

clerks, but combat infantry is male-dominated almost 99.9%.” And when Christian

MacEachern spoke about the CVAF’s summer 2009 rafting trip, he noted that there was

only one female veteran amongst the participants.

The continued male dominance within the Canadian Forces is also confirmed by

scholar Nancy Taber (2005; 2009; 2010; 2011a; 2011b), who spent 13 years serving in

the Canadian Navy as a Sea King helicopter air navigator. Throughout her time in the

Navy, Taber (2005) was one of only two women on a ship with 200 men. In Taber’s own

experience as well as in her research with other women in the military (Taber, 2011b),

she notes that there is a difficulty inherent “in being a woman, a mother and a member of

the military” (p. 340), and that this may account for the small number of women in active

operational roles. Women in operational roles (which are typically seen as men’s roles)6

often feel forced to choose between their job and being a mother. For example, when

Kathy, one of Taber’s research participants, arrived in her first military unit, she was told

“You better not get pregnant when you’re here” (Taber, 2011b, p. 340). Writing of her

own time in the Navy, Taber (2005) states that “my experiences were unquestionably

different from those of my male colleagues due to my gender” (p. 299). Thus, based on

Taber’s experiences, and those of other women in the military, it is important to

recognize that my research narratives might have been more diverse, which may have

affected the reflections and analysis, had I been able to include the stories of female

veterans. Similarly, the research might have included additional insights and themes had I

been able to incorporate the narratives of veterans from visible minorities and Aboriginal

descent.

6 Taber (2005) defines an ‘operational role’ as “one that deploys and/or has a combat role” (p. 294).

Chapter 4

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict

Studies

In the West, most people have been trained to think of their mind and their

body as separate. Yet all of the body’s senses function to make sense of the

world.

—Lisa Schirch, 2005, p. 42

My interdisciplinary master’s research focused on ecological education, during

which time I spent two years immersed in the academic ecological literature. So when I

began my doctoral studies in peace and conflict studies, I was surprised by the human-

centric focus of the field and by the ways that topics related to ecology, nature, and/or the

environment tended to be overlooked or missing altogether from the conversations.

Throughout my PhD coursework and research, it has not been uncommon to read a peace

and conflict studies textbook or journal issue that contains no chapters or articles about

nature, and often not even a casual mention of, or reference to, nature.

In this chapter, I present the results of a modest study in which I analyzed all the

full-length articles in five international peace and conflict journals published over three

years to look more closely at whether and how nature is discussed in the peace and

conflict studies literature. In seeking to understand why peace and conflict studies tends

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

to exclude nature, the interpretive phenomenological framework provided in the work of

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty is helpful. Phenomenology starts from

what human experience is actually like, rather than how we might explain or analyze that

experience. As noted in the previous chapter, Merleau-Ponty was deeply troubled by the

ways in which the Cartesian worldview continued to underlie most thought, research and

praxis in Western society, and he directed his life’s work towards offering an alternative

philosophy of experience based on the role of perception and human embodiment in the

world. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology thus supports a critical examination of Western

culture’s deepest assumptions about bodies, minds, experiences and nature, many of

which are circulating in peace and conflict discourses. He also offers an academic

framework for situating experiences in nature. Accordingly, this chapter also briefly

introduces some of Merleau-Ponty’s main philosophical arguments to prepare the ground

for investigating the ways that nature is dismissed in peace and conflict studies.

This chapter then deconstructs the dominant the perspectives in the field of peace

and conflict studies. By deconstruct, I do not mean ‘destruct’ or ‘demolish’ as it is

sometimes interpreted; rather, as John Caputo (1997) explains, deconstruction is “a way

of releasing and responding, of listening and opening up, of being responsible not only to

the dominant voices of the great masters, but also to other voices that speak more gently,

more discreetly, more mildly” (p. 57). Deconstruction is useful as a method for becoming

conscious of what the discourses in conflict resolution and peacebuilding may be

repressing or overlooking. Thus, I use deconstruction for delving into the dominant

perspectives in peace and conflict studies, and the Western cultural meta-stories of

rationalism and progress, and for holding at bay any illusions of certainty about conflict

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

and peacebuilding, and for exposing the theories and ideas that underlie these various

perspectives currently operating in the West. I seek mainly to investigate the patterns of

thought and action towards nature that influence the Western academy and especially

those that orient research and praxis in peace and conflict studies.

Reviewing Peace and Conflict Journals for References to ‘Nature’

Because the observation about the lack of attention to nature within peace and

conflict studies is based on my own reflections and experiences while reading textbooks

and journals in peace and conflict studies, as part of this dissertation research, I

conducted a modest study to analyze all full-length articles in five international peace and

conflict journals published over three years (2008-2010). The aims of this study were to

provide a snapshot of the ways that nature is discussed (or dismissed) in the peace and

conflict literature. The five journals included were the Journal of Peace Research,

Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Journal of Peace Psychology, Peace and Change, and

Peace and Conflict Studies. I reviewed a total of 360 full-length articles published in all

journal issues from 2008, 2009, and 2010, but excluded publications such as letters, book

reviews, and editorials. To perform this review, I began by reading the abstract to

determine the focus of each article; in addition, I searched each article for the terms

environment, nature, earth, and ecology. Some of these terms came up frequently, but

they were rarely used in ways that alluded to the more-than-human world. Rather, there

were many references to the political environment, social environment, international

environment, or conflict/post-conflict environment, or the nature of peace talks, the

nature of the conflict, the nature of the threat, or human nature, or the ecology of

conflict, the ecology of peacemaking, or to scorched-earth policies. Accordingly,

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

searching for these terms also required reading and analyzing the text around each term to

determine the context. In each case where the abstract revealed that nature was a theme of

the article, or where the search terms revealed that nature was being referenced, I

carefully read the entire article to understand how the author(s) was referring to nature.

Overall, most articles in the five journals tended to be economic, political, and/or social

in focus. The majority of the articles contained no reference to nature or natural contexts.

Of the 360 articles, 39 articles (11%) referenced nature, but only 20 of those (5%)

included nature as a major focus or theme, while the other 19 included only brief or

casual reference to nature. (See Table 1 for a breakdown of each journal.)

Journal

Number of Number of

articles

references

reviewed to nature

J. of Peace Research 144

Conflict Res. Quart 60

J. of Peace Psych

Peace and Change 62

Peace and Conflict St. 38

Total

360

Table 1: Articles reviewed in each journal

Nature as a

major focus

or theme

Environmental security

or environmental

conflict resolution

Casual reference

to environment/

nature

This brief study of peace and conflict studies journals confirms that questions about

nature and humans’ relationship and interconnections with nature are rarely asked in

connection with conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Of the 20 articles that

included nature as a major theme or focus, 10 focused on environmental conflict—either

from an environmental security or environmental conflict resolution perspective. The

focus of each of the other 10 articles varied, including, for example, the effects of warfare

on the environment (Reuveny, Mihalache-O’Keef and Li, 2010), the use of treaties to

regulate cooperation over international rivers (Tir and Ackerman, 2009), the benefits of

post-war subsistence farming to increase the welfare of rural farmers in Northern

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

Mozambique (Bozzoli and Brück, 2009), the implications of ecotheology for peace and

conflict studies (Hrynkow, Byrne and Hendzel, 2010), the environmental origins of

Japan’s antinuclear activism (Higuchi, 2008), the intersections between peace education

and education for sustainable development/environmental education (Bajaj and Chui,

2009), and participatory mapping (social cartography) as a tool for use in resolving both

environmental conflicts and other conflicts (Bastidas and Gonzales, 2008). A large

majority of the articles—329 articles—included no reference to nature, and none of the

articles suggested that the more-than-human world might be an active participant in

conflict transformation and peacebuilding and recovery from conflict.

Why is it so difficult to attend to natural contexts and the more-than-human world

in peace and conflict studies? The overall lack of attention to context, particularly to

natural contexts, within peace and conflict scholarship points to a vital line of inquiry

taken up in this thesis. Peacebuilding scholar John Paul Lederach (2005) argues that

“when we think strategy, we should be thinking about what gives life and what keeps

things alive” (p. 100). Does this not imply that peacebuilding and recovery efforts need to

go beyond human individuals and communities, to involve the entire planetary

community? What might our work look like if we remembered these connections,

creating processes that listen and respond to the more-than-human world—that remember

and say where we are located?

The Phenomenological Interpretive Framework

Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty reflects, “tries to give a direct description of our

experience as it is, without taking account of its psychological origin and the causal

explanations that the scientist, the historian, or the sociologist may be able to provide”

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

(PP, vii). It is phenomenology’s focus on describing experience that separates it from

psychology, which emphasizes explanation and analysis of experience. All of Merleau-

Ponty’s work can be understood as a critical response to Descartes and the correlated

Cartesian worldview, since Merleau-Ponty proposes a philosophy that allows for “the

world which is revealed to us by our senses and in everyday life” (C, 31). Thus, his work

supports this thesis and research because it demonstrates the importance of including the

body and the sensible in academic inquiry.

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology has gained popularity in recent years in the

English-speaking academic world, particularly in disciplines that explore issues in

education and ecology; however, a brief search of major journals in peace and conflict

studies shows that there has been very little interest in Merleau-Ponty’s work by scholars

and practitioners in the field. Only seven journal articles, most of which were published

in the 1970s and 80s, make passing reference to his philosophy, while one draws on

Merleau-Ponty’s essay Humanism and Terror. Very few articles published in the last 20

years draw on his work at all.

Towards the end of writing this thesis, I was excited to read John Paul Lederach’s

new book co-written with his daughter Angela Jill Lederach. In When Blood and Bones

Cry Out: Journeys through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation, Lederach and

Lederach (2010) use a phenomenological approach to tell stories of lived experience of

conflict and social healing within local communities. While their focus is on stories of

sound, poetry, music, and mothering within communities affected by violence, I found

many parallels in our approaches, particularly in the use of phenomenology and narrative.

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

Philosopher Eric Matthews (2006) describes phenomenology as “the study of the

different ways in which the same things appear to different modes of consciousness, such

as thought, perception, fear, love, imagination, and so on” (p. 8). Phenomenology can

make an important and relevant contribution to peace and conflict studies, since emotions

such as fear and hate, perceptions of the other, and/or love of country often fuel conflict.

Moreover, phenomenology is not trying to describe an ‘objective’ truth, but rather with

its emphasis on human subjectivity and experience, phenomenology attempts to get at

what things “mean to us” (ibid.). As Lederach and Lederach (2010) reflect,

phenomenology helps to explore how modes of consciousness come to be, and gets at

“the meaning people attach to things in the social world of intersubjective shared human

experience” (p. 14). Importantly, Matthews (2006) observes that phenomenology is not

introspective, since understanding what objects means to us requires focus on both

individual consciousness and the objects outside of us—these cannot be studied

separately since they are all part of the world of experience.

The power of phenomenology, remarks philosopher Taylor Carman (2008), lies in

its ability to take us outside the temptation to categorize lived experience within the

abstract theoretical groupings traditionally provided in academic settings. He describes:

The idea of merely contemplating, entertaining, or grasping the contents of

our experience in a kind of phenomenological vacuum is itself an abstraction

arrived at precisely by ignoring the environmental contexts that always in one

way or another, directly or indirectly, invite, provoke, support, or frustrate our

attitudes. . . . [P]erception is not merely having something ‘in your head’, but

. . . being oriented in a surrounding world. (Carman, 2008, p. 35)

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology therefore provides a particularly compelling

perspective for peace and conflict studies, because he brings attention to how we are in

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

relation to one another, and more broadly to how we are in relation to the world. For

Merleau-Ponty there is no existing on one’s own, no dichotomies, no ‘us’ vs. ‘them.’ He

was a holistic thinker, interested in connections, reciprocity, intertwinings, crossingovers,

crisscrossings, overlappings, interrelationships—and his interest in these areas grew

towards the end of his life. No matter what we tell ourselves, Merleau-Ponty observed,

we are always in relationship, and everything is always characterized by a reversibility—

speaking and listening, perceiving and being perceived, touching and being touched,

seeing and being seen (ideas that are explored further in Chapter 5).

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, Carman (2008) writes that “prior to having a

perspective we can call our own, we are always already in a kind of unconscious

communion with the world” (p. 2). Merleau-Ponty’s thought therefore offers unique

insights that hold possibilities for transforming thought and praxis in peace and conflict

studies. He reminds us that “our engagement with the world is . . . not purely cognitive,

intellectual or theoretical. In large part, our interest in the world is emotional, practical,

aesthetic, imaginative, economic, and so on” (Matthews, 2006, p. 35).

Peace and Conflict Studies—Oriented by Cultural Meta-Stories

Richard Kool and Heather Eaton (2009) reflect that the worldview of a society

encompasses and tells meta-stories about what is important and what should be ignored,

about what we are, who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. These are

the myths we live by, and we do not spend much time thinking about our personal

worldview nor the worldview in which academic disciplines are situated. As David G.

Smith (1999) explains, this oversight stems from the fact that Western social theory has

arisen primarily out of the urban industrial environment, in which humans have focused

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

on “hyper-cultivating” and domesticating their surroundings. “Such a site for the

generation of theory and policy must inevitably ensure social outcomes that are driven by

the ambiences, rhythms and tones of their situational origin, characterised most clearly by

prediction, control and rationalization” (p. 82).

Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy and his critique of Cartesian thought presented in the

previous chapter illuminates two of the main meta-stories that orient the Western

worldview: 1) rationality, with its focus on the human mind as capable of rational thought

and human reason as providing a completely objective view and understanding of

external reality, and 2) progress, with its emphasis on never-ending industrial economic

growth and technological development. In understanding the perspectives advanced

within peace and conflict studies, it is helpful to consider the discipline’s origins and the

ways it tends to be guided by these two meta-stories.

Rationality

[The diplomatic and foreign policy community is] infused with traditionally

‘masculine’ values and behaviors—rationality, logic, stoicism, power

orientation, crisis management, competition, aggressiveness, adversarial

thinking—and with ‘male’ language, replete, in some cases, with locker-

room talk and sports analogies.

—Diamond and McDonald, 1996, p. 28

Peace and conflict studies represents a merging of peace studies, which arose in

response to fears about Cold War-related international armed conflict, and studies in

conflict analysis and resolution, which has emerged in the past 20 years out of disciplines

such as international relations, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, and

psychology (Cheldelin et al., 2000). All of the disciplines from which peace and conflict

studies is descended reside within the modern university structure, which Bill Readings

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

(1996) reflects, is organized around the Kantian conception of reason, which extends

from the Cartesian argument that thought is the most important aspect of human

experience. Indeed, one of the meta-stories that supports the Western worldview is the

notion that reason is what defines and sets human beings apart from other animals—that

is, rationality makes us human. Eric Zencey (1996) offers some insight into the ways that

nature has become displaced within the Western academy, observing that as academics,

“we’re supposed to belong to the boundless world of books and ideas and eternal truths,

not the infinitely particular world of watersheds, growing seasons, and ecological niches”

(p. 15). But feminist scholar, psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Luce Irigaray (2002)

argues that there is a need to move away from this “traditional manner of reasoning”

which has dominated Western culture (and hence academia) for thousands of years.

While this may be difficult and at times painful, she notes that “changing methods is

better than losing consciousness. It is a matter of renouncing the attempt to constitute a

consciousness through a domination of nature” (p. 97).

Matthews (2006) suggests that the Western philosophical tradition’s enamourment

with reason actually originated long before Kant, in ancient Greece, and has always held

“pure, impersonal reason” as the most important human characteristic. “We were at our

most human when we set aside our merely individual and local perspectives on the world,

infected as they are by our emotional and practical needs, and ascend to a more detached,

or ‘objective’, view of things” (p. 14). This separation tends to be considered a defining

feature of Western culture. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue that “reason has

traditionally been defined as our human capacity to think logically, to set ends for

ourselves, and to deliberate about the best means for achieving those ends” (p. 513). The

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

scholars observe that rational thought is defined as literal, logical, conscious,

disembodied and dispassionate. Furthermore, in Bruce Wilshire’s (1990) book, The

Moral Collapse of the University, he argues that in spite of academia’s immense

capacities for inquiry and knowledge production, “it exists in strange detachment from

crucial human realities” (p. 40). And this is inherently the tradition in which most

academic disciplines find themselves today, including peace and conflict studies.

Lisa Schirch (2005) explains that the traditional ‘rational’ approach to conflict

resolution has led many practitioners and scholars to emphasize the tangible dimensions

of conflict because they are easily observed. This rational approach suggests that humans

in conflict should separate themselves from their emotions during negotiations in order to

get to the root issues of a conflict (R. Fisher, et al., 1991). The theory is that emotions

often get in the way of finding the resolution best for all parties. In their recent article,

Jameson and colleagues (2009) suggest that it is possible to target positive emotions at

people and negative emotions at behaviour. This assertion, however, assumes that

humans are able to be conscious of and access emotions and specifically target them.

Meanwhile, research in cognitive science reveals that at least 95 percent of brain

processing is unconscious (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999).

Despite Western claims that reason needs to be dispassionate and separated from

emotion, reason has been found to rely almost entirely on emotions. In Descartes’ Error:

Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (2005) reviews

the case of Phineas Gage, who suffered a large and rather unique head injury during an

explosion in 1848. Aside from lost vision in his left eye, all of Gage’s senses seemed to

be intact and he was pronounced physically “cured” less than two months after the

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

accident. It was only later that doctors noticed his character change, which was brought

about by a brain lesion he had suffered in the accident. While neither Gage’s intellect nor

language was affected, the parts of his brain dedicated to personal and social aspects of

reasoning seemed impaired. Most strikingly, Gage demonstrated no consideration or

interest in his future, and especially his social future among other human beings. He was

unable to make good choices and to conduct himself according to the social rules he had

once known—that is, he was unable to draw on his pre-accident knowledge to make

decisions, a common occurrence for other patients suffering from similar brain damage.

What Damasio’s work goes to show, drawing on both Gage’s case and modern instances

from his own practice, is that people who have lost their ability to be emotionally

engaged through damage to the brain’s frontal lobe have enormous difficulty making

decisions, as well as responding in socially appropriate ways and in taking decisions to

completion. Overall, Damasio’s argument is that emotion is an essential component in the

human ability to reason, and without emotion, our rationality is impeded.

Indeed, neuroscientist Kelly Lambert’s (2008) research highlights the ways that

human emotions developed in the context of our evolution as a species, and should

actually be considered evolutionary adaptive responses. She argues that our brains

evolved in complex environments, in which our ancestors’ survival depended on constant

physical interaction with their natural surroundings. That is, humans did not evolve

independently, but rather, by interacting with other creatures, with the earth and skies, the

winds and rocks. David Abram (1996) reflects that human perception might thus be

understood as “the ongoing interchange between my body and the entities that surround it

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

. . . a continuous dialogue that unfolds far below my verbal awareness—and often, even,

independent of my verbal awareness” (p. 52).

To suggest divesting of our emotions is simply another attempt at separating or

objectifying our living breathing bodies from the world where they can never be separate.

As peace and conflict studies scholar Lisa Schirch (2005) points out, “humans do not

understand their world solely through one sensory vehicle. . . . Rather, communication

depends on multiple paths, both verbal and nonverbal, to transmit a single message”

(p. 43). She describes words as limited and verbal language as limiting, especially in

times of conflict when emotions are high, and she suggests that it is important in

peacebuilding contexts to find ways of engaging people’s whole bodies, including all

senses and emotions.

The rational approach to studying and intervening in social conflict, which

advocates that the conflict problem must be thought through rationally and participants

must separate themselves from their emotions, does not look holistically at problems.

This approach tends to view problems scientifically, as though they might be separated

and easily dealt with in individual components. It ignores the interconnected wholes of

life, particularly ecology and nature, and the ways that all of life is embedded in

ecosystems. Merleau-Ponty’s work offers a corrective to this tradition of rationalism,

since as Andy Fisher (2006) explains, “perhaps more than any other Western philosopher,

[Merleau-Ponty] offers a way out of our dualistic bind” (p. 158). The world is not only

something to be conceived rationally, but it is where we live our lives.

What Fisher (2002, p. 82) refers to as the human “world-entangled” body has been

missing for too long in scholarship on conflict, peacebuilding, and recovery. By bringing

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

people’s bodies—their senses, emotions and physical bodies—into inquiry and practice

in conflict transformation and peacebuilding and recovery, we can explore not only

traditional ‘methodologies’ such as negotiation, mediation, and dialogue, but also the role

of the arts, sports, ritual, storytelling, and other activities that engage whole human beings

involved in conflict. Conflict itself is sensual: people “perspire, their heart beats faster,

blood rushes to their face, and [their] knees knock” (Schirch, 2005, p. 44). Urging people

to divest of their emotions and senses is a futile and damaging attempt to separate or to

objectify living, breathing bodies from the natural world, a world from which we can

never be separated.

As with all of human and mammalian life, all experiences of conflict,

peacebuilding and recovery are embodied. Conflict situations, and the often resulting

humanitarian emergencies, recall the vulnerability and fragility of the body. Humans

living amidst conflict and violence often focus primarily on bodily needs—on keeping

their own and their children’s bodies alive through food, clothing, shelter, and other basic

physical needs. Peacebuilding, too, is embodied. Abu Ala, the chief negotiator for the

Palestinian Liberation Organization during the secret Norway Channel negotiations that

led to the signing of the Oslo Accords, commented that “When I negotiate, I negotiate

with my eyes, with my ears, with my nose, with my sense of smell, with my mouth. I use

my whole body – everything!” (Corbin, 1994, p. 139). And as will be explored later

through the veterans’ intimate stories of their post-military/post-conflict experiences,

recovery is embodied, too. Traumatic experiences, such as the ones lived through and by

the veterans in this thesis, tend to be categorized as “mental and psychological” injuries,

due to their “invisibility” and lack of distinct physical wounds (The Standing Senate

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

Committee on National Security and Defence, 2003, p. 2). Yet the bodily nature of stress

symptoms is indicated by the term “Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms

(MUPS),” which has been another way of considering the symptoms of soldiers and

veterans suffering from traumatic distress (English, 2000, p. 34).

As will be discussed later in this thesis, most of the symptoms associated traumatic

distress are lived and relived in the body. Indeed, within the context the veterans’ stories

of recovering from the stress and traumas associated with military training, peacekeeping,

and conflict, we come to understand the ways that traumatic experience, and recovery

from trauma, are fully embodied. And when the veterans describe feeling better when

they spend time in nature, this, too, is a profoundly embodied experience. Or, as Andy

Fisher (2006) might say, “that’s the body talking” (p. 167).

Progress

Ronald Wright (2004) suggests that the trust and belief in human progress has

become akin to a secular religion in the West, as well as around the world. A meta-story

of linear progress underlies many aspects of the Western worldview, including unfettered

industrial growth and wealth, technological prowess and power, and political, economic

and social development. But the idea of progress is situated outside ecological limits and

ecological implications for the planet (McNeill, 2000). Andy Fisher (2002) writes that a

“high-altitude narrative about progress is used to explain away obvious human, social,

and ecological losses as necessary costs along the way to a better future – those who

suffer are enjoined simply to ‘look for future deliverance’” (p. 157). We are told that we

“can’t stand in the way of progress, even if it kills us” (ibid).

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

The emphasis on economic growth within the progress meta-story reveals a view of

nature based in Cartesian thought. Nature is utterly detached from human life, considered

an ‘externality’ by most mainstream economists, and generally does not even feature into

theories or planning. If it features into economic discourse at all, ‘the environment’ tends

to a convenience rather than a necessity. Within the progress view, nature is something to

be studied, researched, understood, and controlled by superior human beings. Here we

also see the influence of the rationality meta-story, since economic markets are based

upon theories of ‘rational action.’ As explained by Lakoff and Johnson (1999), it is only

possible to regard nature as a resource, such as oil or lumber, within economic theory,

since nature itself is not a “rational actor.” The focus on monetary profits within

economic theory is profits for human beings—not for animals or plants. Environmental

damage and loss of natural functions are “not a ‘loss’ to any corporation—to any rational

actor in such a model, much less to them all” (p. 531).

The term resource came into English usage in the early 1600s, referring to a

“means of supplying a want or deficiency” (OED, 2001), while its first reference to the

wealth of a country occurred in the late 1700s. Its origins can be traced to the Latin

resurgere, meaning ‘to rise again,’ albeit resources are now divided into categories based

on whether they will rise again—that is, ‘renewable’ or ‘nonrenewable.’ Either way,

resources are seen as needing to be managed; however, this dominant view of ‘resource

management’ is inherently simplistic, and offers only a cursory “set of prescriptions for

the conservation and sustainable use of resources at the international, national, and local

levels” (Escobar, 1998, p. 56). If ‘resources’ are degraded, this is merely a problem of

improper ‘management,’ easily rectified through more management.

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

The term resource, both so-called natural and human resources, dominates the

progress meta-story; everything and everyone is a commodity to be bought and sold

(Abram, 1996; Fisher, 2002; Loy, 2000). This view forgets at both cultural and historical

levels that resources (both natural and human) are living entities—that it is, for example,

trees “whose breath gives us breath” (Cole, 2006, p. 132). Language also allows for the

earthly living origins of resources to be further erased, such as when a tree becomes

“paper,” “cardboard,” “wood,” “lumber,” “two by four,” “pencils,” or “flyers,” while the

act of killing trees is called “forestry or jobs” (ibid). When the word nature is used within

the progress meta-story, it almost always means “that which is not human nor produced

by humans” (Roach, 2003, p. 13). We might recall Descartes’ declaration that nature is

“simply a label which depends on my thought” (as cited in Merleau-Ponty, 2003, p. 14).

This ‘label’ allows nature to be constituted as a site of transaction, as “an ‘exploitable’

object” to grow the economy (Dussel, 1999, p. 19). For example, the terms ‘land’ and

‘territory’ refer primarily to commodities—to property that can be owned, bought and

sold, or in the case of imperialism, taken from those deemed less worthy (or ‘wild’) or

who don’t have a concept of private property ownership. Etymologically, it is likely that

the Old English word land (or lond) was always intended in this sense of ownership, as in

“a definite portion of the earth’s surface owned by an individual or home of a nation”

(OED, 2001). The word territory is used similarly to land, although there are two theories

as to its origins: one suggests that it comes from the Latin territorium, meaning “land

around a town, domain, district” and is related to terra (‘earth, land’); the other theory

suggests that territorium derives from the Latin terrere (related to the modern terrible),

meaning ‘to frighten.’ In this sense, territorium would refer to “a place from which

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

people are warned off” (OED, 2001). Either way, territory is something owned, and a

place where ‘others’ are not always welcome.

The imperialism of the last 500 years was inherently a drive for new territory, and

the resources therein. Nowhere was this more obvious, perhaps, than in Europe’s

“scramble” for Africa, which was, within half a generation (from the late 1800s to the

early 1900s), “sliced up like a cake” into 30 colonies comprising 10 million square miles

of territory, and filled with 110 million ‘human resources’ (Pakenham, 1991, p. xxiii).

Like other colonial subjects around the world, Africans were expected to provide new

markets for the products of European countries, while their lands were expected to

willingly offer up ‘resources’ to satisfy the growing desires in Europe.

Further, within the progress meta-story, damage to nature or depletion of

‘resources’ is named ‘scarcity,’ and seen primarily as a problem requiring a technological

‘fix.’ As Ronald Wright (2004) points out, “Technology is addictive. Material progress

creates problems that are—or seem to be—soluble only by further progress” (p. 7). This

view is championed, for example, by Thomas Homer-Dixon (1999), who focuses on

“adaptation” and more particularly “ingenuity,” which he refers to as the “ideas applied

to solve practical technical and social problems” (p. 109). As Harold Searles (1972) puts

it, “Nature has often been a bad mother to man, often rendered hospitable to man only

through the workings of our good mother, technology” (p. 369). Thus, any problems

associated with the destruction of ecosystems are postponed to some future day when

they will be solved by a new technology; we only need to wait until the right one comes

along. This view goes hand in hand with another popular economic growth narrative:

more technology leads to more happiness, or as Fisher (2002) puts it, “the good life is the

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

goods life” (p. 156). Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue that “disembodied scientific

realism creates an unbridgeable ontological chasm between ‘objects,’ which are ‘out

there,’ and subjectivity, which is ‘in here’” (p. 93). And within the Western worldview, it

is the disconnected objects out there that are important, that are believed to be the source

of human happiness.

Lederach and Lederach (2010) suggest that dominant cultural expectations also

situate peacebuilding and related disciplines within the meta-story of linear progress.

Conflict tends to be theoretically presented as involving linear movement from one stage

to the next, following which peacebuilding is also viewed as sequential. This linear,

sequential thinking, Lederach and Lederach reflect, tends to be driven by external forces

such as short-term funding cycles and government agendas. They admit that linearity and

sequentiality provide “useful ways to organise theory, thinking about the nature of

change, and most-importantly, agency, found in the construct of projects through which

peacebuilding funding is allocated” (p. 55). However, lived experience rarely falls into

such neat linear cycles or patterns—survival is hard and reality is messy. Violence does

not end or disappear just because an agreement is signed between high-level leaders.

Lederach and Lederach (2010) suggest that the linear focus that envelops

peacebuilding and conflict resolution processes, from initial program development to

ways of measuring success, conceals important aspects involved in the complex realities

of people living amidst conflict and violence. They also bring attention to how those

aspects of peacebuilding and conflict resolution that do not “easily fit the ways that

governments and non-governmental programs organise their funding, structures of action

and lenses of evaluation” tend to be disregarded. These disregarded facets then tend to be

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

100

thought of as secondary or even detrimental to the programs being developed. Thus,

Lederach and Lederach conclude that “the weakness of [linearity and sequentiality] as a

dominant metaphor lies in the degree to which, once accepted, it hides, does not account

for, legitimate, or explore competing and equally important aspects of the complex lived

reality” (p. 57).

Another way in which both the rationality and progress meta-stories influence

studies and praxis in peace and conflict is found in the predominant approaches to

addressing social conflict. One such approach is the rational or material approach driven

by human physical needs, such as access to food, shelter, water, and healthcare (Schirch,

2001; 2005). In the narrow sense where nature is understood as ‘resources,’

environmental conflict is also situated primarily in this material dimension. However, this

rational approach hides many aspects, including intrinsic values. For example, many

conflicts are not only about tangible objects but about deeper sentiments. The

Israel/Palestine conflict is a case in point, since it involves “relationships between groups,

their identities, values, perceptions of each other, and the symbolic actions such as attacks

on important religious sites made by both Israelis and Palestinians” (Schirch, 2005,

p. 35). Similarly, a community may have an attachment to a specific place because their

ancestors lived and were buried there, and the ancestral spirits still inhabit that land. For

those of us whose ancestral history is one of continuous migration, it can be difficult to

understand the attachments of place-based peoples. Yet for those who feel a specific

attachment to place, this attachment is real, whether or not it is tangible to others. Their

stories are tied to the land, the events and the people who have lived there, and the land

also inspires new stories.

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

101

The values associated with progress and its visions for economic growth became

increasingly dominant after World War II, a time of great prosperity as destroyed

European cities were being rebuilt and new industries were developed to sell wartime

products during peacetime. This post-war economic growth also brought “severe,

debilitating pollution” to most of the planet (Brown, 1999). Indeed, Silent Spring, first

published in 1962, was Rachel Carson’s effort to take on and expose what she saw as

“man’s war against nature” (p. 7). Carson (2002) was highly critical of the celebration of

technological prowess, especially in terms of the increased and pervasive use of

chemicals following World War II. She expertly traced the links between conflict and the

chemical industry to show that the chemicals invented to kill human beings in WWII

were being sold to those same people for a new war—against nature. The insecticidal

properties of these chemicals were known because before being unleashed on the enemy,

they were tested on insects. Carson also revealed how the surplus airplanes left over from

the war were put to work spraying the chemicals over farmland and forests.

Moreover, the Cold War led to entrenched realpolitik security- and competition-

based thinking in many academic disciplines, with an emphasis on struggles for and

access to power through military force, as well as maintenance of economic and political

influence (Gleditsch, 2007; Swatuk, 2006). In addressing issues of peace and conflict,

realpolitik considers security to be the primary aim of the state and, as Swatuk (2006)

reminds us, “a powerful state is made secure by the exercise of power” (p. 204). This

power typically rests on maintaining national territory, controlling the natural resources

within that territory, and gaining access to ‘resources’ held by other states. Brown (1999)

contends that this approach “leaves little room for the idea of environmental threats”

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

102

(p. 711). Thus, given the dominance of economic growth and security-based thinking in

this period when much of the scholarship associated with conflict resolution and

peacebuilding was emerging, it is no surprise that most issues became framed from

within a progress and rationalist perspective, while nature was generally excluded from

the dominant discourse.

The view of peace reflected in realpolitik approaches is one of ‘negative peace,’

wherein peace is simply the absence of war, and is a condition maintained by military

power and might (Galtung, 1969). This view justifies de-escalation of conflict by

whatever means necessary, including coercion, threat, and enforcement. Thus, the trend

for those with negative views of peace has been to simplify both conflict and peace, to

look for and address a ‘root cause,’ rather than exploring and understanding all the

complexities and interdependencies that make up a conflict situation, such as the effects

of history, physical, structural, and cultural violence, poverty and inequality.

Lakoff and Johnson (1999) reflect that notions of rational choice and game theory,

which tend to accompany realpolitik, affect our lives in seemingly invisible ways,

because within these rational models, the nation state (as well as corporations) implicitly

takes on the status of a person with interests. And within this model, nation states are

always seeking to maximize their individual interest and to increase their wealth and

political/military strength relative to other states. Lakoff and Johnson argue that this way

of thinking about the nation state hides “the real people and all the forms of well-being

they individually require. The metaphor also hides all ecological values that do not

translate into wealth and military strength” (p. 534).

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

103

Many peace and conflict scholars are now criticizing the realpolitik approach,

arguing that it perpetuates social injustices and is unable to inspire constructive societal

change. Lederach (2005) argues that “realpolitik is blind to the existence of social spaces,

relationships, ideas, and processes that do not fit its preexisting definition of what counts.

. . . [I]t completely misses some of the most significant elements of social process capable

of generating new relational patterns and structures” (pp. 59-60). Indeed, most recent

scholarship in peace and conflict studies emphasizes that since no conflict is a single

issue conflict, there is no single approach for resolution and transformation, but rather

multiple possibilities for seeking an end to conflict. Time and again it is being shown that

hundreds of elements go into reconciliation between parties. For example, in their Social

Cubism model, Carter and Byrne (2000) suggest that analysis of ethnoterritorial conflicts

must focus on six interdependent factors: “history, religion, demographics, political

activity, economics, and psychocultural symbolism” (p. 42).

Yet even a wider focus on complex factors and relationships in conflict continues at

the expense of ecosystems and more-than-human others. Despite some recognition that

“the earth, too, is the object of violence” (Jeong, 2000, p. 8), this type of violence and its

connections with human health and social conflict have had low priority (and status),

both in academic and peacebuilding circles. Brian Polkinghorn (2000) notes that

“physical and biological systems are delegated to a second-level status to the social

framing of the issues” (p. 89).

While many people around the world are today sharing an increased concern for

environmental degradation and global warming, these issues continue to take a lower

priority next to economic decline or conflict. For example, while some Palestinian and

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

104

Israeli NGOs were compelled to begin working together on environmental issues in the

late 1990s, their joint work almost completely stopped after the outbreak of the 2001

Intifada (Chaitin et al., 2002). And at the height of the ‘economic crisis’ in 2008, efforts

to reduce greenhouse gases and climate change stalled around the world (Cappiello,

2008), which tends to remain true today. With economies around the world once again

slipping (or tumbling) into recession, not only are we faced with pressures to address

ailing ecological systems around the planet, we also face daily and competing pressures

to deal with troubled economic and social systems, both locally and globally. Indeed,

ecological crisis now seems to be taking on less importance compared to the economic

situation, as individuals, corporations, and governments argue that environmental

degradation is worthwhile if it leads to economic growth and stability. Furthermore, the

global media coverage of climate change has declined 42 percent since 2009, despite a

global increase in severe weather in the past several years (Fischer, 2012). Meanwhile, a

joint study by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George

Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication demonstrated a shift in

attitudes towards climate change in the last few years, with a decreasing number of

American adults believing that climate change is caused by human activities. In 2008, 57

percent believed that humans actions were the main cause of climate change, while in

2011, this percentage decreased to 47 percent (Leiserowitz et al., 2011).

The privileging of economic discourses occurs not only in governments and

corporations, but also in universities. Questions about human embeddedness in

ecosystems tend to be neglected and even denied in the academy widely and especially in

connection with issues of conflict, peacebuilding, and recovery. For example, Brian

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

105

Polkinghorn (2000) shares that in his research about environmental conflict, “the data is

nearly silent” with respect to “the impact conflict has on the physical and biological

systems” (p. 89). Indeed, while the entire twentieth-century international system’s near

constant state of agitation and anxiety had “countless environmental ramifications”

(McNeill, 2000), the destructive effects of conflict on nature were—and continue to be—

rarely discussed. Recall, too, my brief journal search study presented at the beginning of

this chapter, in which only one article out of 360 mentioned the effects of warfare on the

environment (Reuveny, Mihalache-O’Keef and Li, 2010). When ecosystems are damaged

or destroyed by direct violence, it tends to be considered necessary for the protection of

‘national security,’ and justified as a casualty of war. Moreover, we do not often hear

about how conflict, peacebuilding activities, and recovery involve ecological contexts

(Westlund, 2010). Indeed, there is very little documentation at all about the significance

of physical contexts in conflict and peace processes (Schirch, 2005).

Meta-stories and Environmental Conflict and Security

While this chapter has shown that nature is often overlooked in peace and conflict

studies, when references to nature do exist, as noted in my study of the journal articles,

they often refer to ‘environmental security,’ a theory which suggests that environmental

change and degradation result in ‘resource’ scarcity, which has social outcomes,

primarily in the form of violent conflict (e.g., Cheldelin et al., 2000; Crocker, et al., 2001;

Crocker et al., 2007; Deutsch and Coleman, 2000). Peluso and Watts (2001) argue that

the 1990s interest in environmental security filled the geopolitical vacuum left by the end

of the Cold War. While previous definitions of security had focused on military and state

(and ideological) security, some people began to argue that the end of the Cold War

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

106

meant reconceptualizing security to account for the ways that environmental degradation

could lead to violent conflict between communities and countries (Swatuk, 2006).

In the mid-1990s, many armies and strategic centres around the world began to

develop environmental-security related strategies and policies. NATO undertook a pilot

study to analyze connections between environmental (i.e., resource) stress and violent

conflict (Swatuk, 2006), while U.S. security planning shifted its focus to “securing access

to vital materials” (Klare, 2001, p. 51). “Environmental degradation was, in short, good

for military business” since it gave new focus to militaries everywhere (Peluso and Watts,

2001, p. 11). Within environmental security, “scarcity is assumed a priori to be a ‘trigger’

for conflict” (ibid., p. 18). Accordingly, the understanding and conception of nature

within the environmental security framework tends to be a simple and shallow view in

which nature comprises only resources for human use and consumption. Nils Petter

Gleditsch (2007) suggests that rather than using the term environmental security, it might

be more accurate to call the approach “resource security” (p. 179).

The theory and language that dominates the rationalism and progress meta-stories is

found often in the environmental conflict and environmental security discourses. For

example, in his article titled ‘What do we know about environmental conflict resolution?’

E. Franklin Dukes (2004) situates environmental conflict as “a subset of the larger

category of public conflicts involving issues such as health and health care, race and

ethnicity, economic development, and governance” (p. 191). Throughout the article, he

uses manufacturing-related terms to divide environmental conflicts into those that occur

“upstream” (over policy, laws, or regulations) and “downstream” (over something that

has occurred in a particular location). Rather than focusing on environmental conflict,

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

107

Dukes focuses primarily on whether time and money were saved during resolution

processes. He cites a study by Leach and Sabatier, who suggest that in cases of

environmental conflict, “funding for a professional facilitator or coordinator is justified

only if the marginal value of the resulting consensus agreements and improved social

capital exceeds the opportunity costs of diverting the funds away from some other type of

intervention” (as cited in Dukes, p. 207). This economic language of “marginal value,”

“social capital,” and “opportunity costs” could be referring to almost anything.

Similar language is used in Thomas Homer-Dixon’s (1999) discussion of

environmental security, in which he argues that “to maintain satisfaction as

consumption/resource ratios rise, societies will need to run resource systems ever more

efficiently. System optimization will often demand tightly coupled and highly complex

horizontal and vertical management” (p. 113). In both cases, there is no sense that the

authors are writing about nature as the grounds for all life on Earth. Moreover, Dukes

(2004) contends that it is difficult to assess outcomes of environmental conflict and

resolution processes, and that trying to do so often holds them to a higher standard than

other resolution processes. He suggests the value of resolving environmental conflicts can

only be determined when there are “clear and easy” measurable outcomes (p. 213).

Meanwhile, Nils Petter Gleditsch (2007) presents a typical progress-based

argument for increased industrialization and affluence. He blames most environmental

degradation problems on poverty, and argues that when societies reach advanced stages

of industrialization and post-industrialization, environmental degradation decreases.

Accordingly, Gleditsch is in favour of economic development as a solution for avoiding

conflict over environmental issues. He writes that eradicating problems associated with

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

108

environmental security “requires long-term economic growth and technological progress”

(p. 186), and further that “moving from poverty to wealth is probably the most effective

means to improve all forms of human security” (p. 190).

William Rees and Laura Westra (2003) caution against blind acceptance of the

progress-based economic growth models, which they argue are “morally bankrupt” and

“ecologically naïve” (p. 120). It is only by ignoring human interdependence with the

ecosphere that Gleditsch can make such claims about progress, growth, and wealth, for it

is well-known that the Earth’s ecological carrying capacity is unable to support current

levels of ‘wealth’ for all people (and not even for the people who enjoy current levels).

Gleditsch ignores, too, that industrial development within wealthy countries is supported

by ecologically damaging practices in the South. The products of so-called ‘developing’

countries do not typically satisfy local needs, but rather are sold to wealthy countries. As

William Leiss pointed out in 1972 (an observation still appropriate for critiquing

Gleditsch’s argument today), despite increases in technological prowess, “the attractive

promises of mastery over nature—social peace and material abundance for all—remain

unfulfilled” (p. 194). Today, the gap between the rich and poor continues to grow and

humanity is now “on a collision course with biophysical reality [as] humans are literally

consuming the material basis of their own survival” (Rees, 2006, p. 221).

In these three examples of ways that nature is included in the peace and conflict

discourses, one perceives the ways that the meta-stories of rationality and progress

dismiss nature as the basis for all life. These meta-stories separate human beings from the

grounds of all life, something which psychotherapist and ecopsychologist Larry Robinson

(2009) names a form of “cultural madness” (p. 27).

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

109

Phenomenology, Perception, and Peace and Conflict Studies

The body is in the text of everyday life; by enacting that text it becomes not

a product, but the processor of everyday life.

—Anne Cranny-Francis (as cited in Neilsen, 1998, p. 261)

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, philosopher Eric Matthews (2006) reflects that all

views are situated. “We perceive always from some perspective. Our account of the

world is given from our own point of view” (p. 28). Recently, an approach to researching

and understanding conflict is emerging that is situated in the symbolic/cultural realm and

tends to be driven by cultural needs, such as the freedom to follow cultural and religious

practices. This approach has grown “out of an understanding that humans have a need to

symbolically understand who they are and how they relate to their environment”

(Schirch, 2001, p. 147). Thus, strategies for addressing cultural conflicts attempt to create

opportunities for transforming relationships through processes that engage adversaries’

bodies, senses and emotions, recognize identity needs, and find alternative ways of

communicating, such as through ritual, myth and storytelling.

This perspective is still emerging as more scholars and practitioners begin to

understand conflict and peace as holistic processes integral to human existence and

experience, and see resistance and conflict as sometimes necessary for changing unjust

relationships. Rather than being the absence of war, peace is defined positively as dealing

with the underlying issues and conditions that create conflict. The focus tends to be on

transforming issues of injustice and power asymmetry, rather than simply conflict

management and settlement (Sandole, 2003). Peace is not static, but “a source of energy

that impels action” (Jeong, 2000, p. 30). This more holistic view features in the work of

scholars who advocate art, culture, ritual, stories, and sport as activities for building

Deconstructing Peace and Conflict Studies

110

relationships and creating possibilities for living together. However, this view continues

to consider most concepts solely from the domain of human relationships, and as such,

the field has yet to come fully into an ecological perspective that opens conversations

about intersections with the more-than-human world.

In paying attention to ideas not previously attended in the literature and discourses

in peace and conflict studies, this research follows on and extends this emerging

approach. The meta-stories of rationalism and progress in Western culture have narrated

us ‘out of nature’. These powerful stories have enabled and encouraged human beings to

act as though we are not a part of nature—behaviour which has wrought extensive

damage all over the planet and which also reproduces itself in academic settings. In this

thesis, I am specifically interested in embodied/lived experience and ways that nature

features (consciously and/or unconsciously) into that experience. I explore the ways that

we as human beings inhabit nature, that we are nature. Merleau-Ponty was criticized for

being ‘anti-intellectual’ in his writing about the body. And conceivably writing about

nature, and humans as nature may also be considered anti-intellectual by those who have

deep faith in rationalism and linear approaches to peacebuilding and conflict resolution

and recovery. But Merleau-Ponty was especially critical of rationalism, of “the

assimilation of experience to thought” (Carman, 2008, p. 27). And I return again to

Lederach’s (2005) assertion that in peace and conflict studies, “we should be thinking

about what gives life and what keeps things alive” (p. 100). Thus, by exploring veterans’

stories of recovery from military training and combat, this thesis illuminates life-

giving/life-flourishing approaches and stories fully entwined in nature.

111

PART II – Embodiment, Nature and Narratives

112

Chapter 5

Bringing Back the Body

Our flesh calls us back to this earthly place whenever we are injured or sick,

whenever we need to wash the dishes by hand, or clean out the overflowing

roof-gutters, or simply to empty our bladders and bowels on the toilet.

Whenever we stumble and hurt ourselves. . . ; when one of our tools breaks

or one of our technologies breaks down, we must turn our attentions, if only

for a moment, to the bothersome constraints of this gravity-laden Earth that

grips our bodies.

—Abram, 2007, pp. 162-3

As described in Part I of this thesis, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology

provides one of the primary theoretical foundations for this study. In situating this

research within Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological interpretive framework, it is

necessary to further explore and understand his position on the human body. “What

difference does it make if there is no such thing as the disembodied mind?” ask Lakoff

and Johnson (1999, p. 563). This chapter delves into this question in more detail through

exploring more of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, with a particular focus on his views

on the body and his concepts of the ‘flesh’ and chiasm. I also provide a synopsis of some

of the theories and research in biophilia and ecological intelligence, neuroscience and

cognitive science, and ecopsychology, which similarly seek to reintegrate the body into

Western thought and inquiry. All of these theories and research combine to illuminate the

ways that human embodied experience comes before being rationalized, before being

Bringing Back the Body

113

explained by philosophical concepts or scientific models. We belong to the world through

our bodies, and all encounters in the world are reciprocal. Moreover, it is our terrestrial

roots, our experience of the earth that binds us to every other being (human and more-

than-human) in the world—that is, we “all inhabit the same ‘earthly’ space, in the

broadest sense” (Merleau-Ponty, RC, 122-123).

Merleau-Ponty—Life, Influences and Phenomenology

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) was born and raised in Paris, France

(Baldwin, 2004b). He began teaching philosophy in Paris lycées in 1930 and his first

doctoral thesis was published in 1942 as The Structure of Behaviour (Carman and

Hansen, 2005). Merleau-Ponty’s main influence while writing this first thesis was the

Berlin school of Gestalt psychology, which emphasized that human experience cannot be

divided into disconnected parts but must be understood as a coherent and relational

whole. For example, Gestalt psychologists emphasize that when I see a book on a table,

the book’s colour, shape, size, and images are not separate in my mind, but rather I see a

“solid object in an environment” (Carman, 2008, p. 19). In addition, within Gestalt

psychology, “perception is neither rational judgment nor the registration of meaningless

sense data” (ibid., p. 28).

Merleau-Ponty spent a brief time as an infantry officer in the French army from

1939-40, but after the Germans defeated the French army, he was demobilized and

returned to teaching in lycées (Matthews, 2006). During the early 1940s, he wrote a

second and higher doctoral thesis, which was published in 1945 as Phenomenology of

Perception, which became his most well-known work (Baldwin, 2004a; 2004b). While

Merleau-Ponty never met Edmund Husserl, often considered the founder of

Bringing Back the Body

114

phenomenology, Husserl had a profound influence on the direction of Merleau-Ponty’s

Phenomenology of Perception as well as the work that came after. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty

once described reading Husserl’s Ideas II as “une expérience presque voluptueuse”

(Baldwin, 2004a, p. 25).

A major objective of Husserl’s was to “get back to the things themselves,” which

meant invalidating the Enlightenment obsession with ‘objective reason’ (Smith, 2006). In

particular, Merleau-Ponty was profoundly taken with Husserl’s notion of the Lebenswelt,

or ‘life-world’—that is, the world as we immediately experience it, and our pretheoretical

awareness of living in the world, prior to thought, culture, and analysis, prior to science

and philosophy. Husserl believed that it was phenomenology’s responsibility to reveal

how all theory and science arises from and is sustained by “the forgotten ground of our

directly felt and lived experience” (Abram, 1996, p. 43). As David Smith (2006) reflects,

for Husserl categories of analysis are never separate from the world but rather “are

always already part of the world they may be attempting to explain or interpret” (p. 109).

Thus, my relationship with the world is always “one of ‘intersubjectivity’, a relation

between subjects” (ibid.). As Merleau-Ponty described, “Husserl wants us to understand

what is nonphilosophical, what is preliminary to science and philosophy . . . hence the

description of the role of the body in perception” (N, 71-72).

Merleau-Ponty’s early work was also influenced by Martin Heidegger. Both

philosophers shared a critical attitude towards Descartes, with Heidegger remarking that

Descartes’ famous dictum Cogito ergo sum “needs to be ‘turned around’ as Sum ergo

cogito in the sense that Sum – my being in the world – is prior to cogito – my ability to

have thoughts about things in the world” (Baldwin, 2004, p. 27). Merleau-Ponty was

Bringing Back the Body

115

particularly influenced by Heidegger’s Being in Time, in which Heidegger presents his

conception of ‘being-in-the-world’ (Baldwin, 2004; Matthews, 2006). Our own being,

Heidegger argued, is never separate from the world of our experience. “We experience

the world . . . not as detached subjects or pure reason, but as actual human beings who

exist at a particular time and place, and who interact with their surrounding world from

that position in space and time” (Matthews, 2006, p. 12). The main differences between

the ways that Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty use the notion of being-in-the-world lies in

the fact that while Heidegger moved increasingly towards an understanding of

philosophy as ontology, Merleau-Ponty remained within and wanted to deepen the

phenomenological framework. In addition, Merleau-Ponty was adamant that being-in-

the-world is inseparable from embodiment (Matthews, 2006).

In 1945, Merleau-Ponty took up a junior faculty position at the University of Lyon,

where he was appointed as full professor in 1948. This was followed in 1949 by a move

to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he held the chair in Psychology and Pedagogy

(Matthews, 2006). Then, in 1953, he was appointed as the chair in philosophy at the

Collège de France, a prestigious position7 he held until his early death from a heart attack

in 1961 at age 53 (Baldwin, 2004a; Matthews, 2006). At the time of his death, he was

working on another major work, which was posthumously published in its unfinished

state as The Visible and the Invisible. Merleau-Ponty became especially interested in the

topic of nature in the years leading up to his death. Nature was the focus of several

courses he taught at the Collège de France from 1956-1960, and was also prevalent in his

unfinished manuscript.

7 This chair position was once held by Henri Bergson, and was later held by philosophers such as Roland

Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu (Carman, 2006).

Bringing Back the Body

116

Merleau-Ponty’s Views on the Body

The human body is essential for experiencing and understanding the world. It is

“our anchorage in the world,” writes Merleau-Ponty (PP, 167). Moreover, “to be a body,

is to be tied to a certain world” (ibid., 171). For Merleau-Ponty, it is necessary to get

away from the temptation to view the world from a disembodied ‘objective’ stance, and

to come back to living in or inhabiting the world, to return “to the site, the soil of the

sensible and opened world such as it is in our life and for our body – not that possible

body which we may legitimately think of as an information machine but that actual body

I call mine, this sentinel standing quietly at the command of my words and my acts” (OE,

292-293).

In understanding Merleau-Ponty’s idea of perception, it is helpful to think of a

child, who “perceives before he thinks” (VI, 11). For example, one night while we were

walking outside after dark, my young son Cameron discovered the moon for the first

time. While we had often read books about the moon and talked about the moon, only

that night did it become real for him. And when we later went into the house, he could

see the moon from several different windows. As adults we know that there is only one

moon, but for Cameron, each time he looked out a different window he thought he was

seeing “another moon.” Thus, by perception, Merleau-Ponty does not mean some form of

human thought or knowledge. Rather, he is suggesting that the basis of thought and

knowledge “rests on and presupposes perception,” and perception itself is rooted in

individual experience (Carman, 2008, p. 12; Matthews, 2006). Perception, in Merleau-

Ponty’s view, “is not a science of the world, it is not even an act, a deliberate taking up of

a position; it is the background from which all acts stand out, and is presupposed by

Bringing Back the Body

117

them” (PP, xi). Accordingly, for Merleau-Ponty the only way to understand the human

body is as a perceiving body; perception is a bodily phenomenon (N, 214-215).

The Cartesian worldview stems from a position that as human beings we are limited

by our animal bodies—that is why within the Cartesian perspective it is useful to separate

mind from body, and to think of the body as merely one among many objects in the

world. But Merleau-Ponty reflects that mind and body are never separate; instead, we

might think of ourselves as “the compound of the soul and body”, and this compound

lives in the world—a world which itself comes before knowledge (OE, 309). He therefore

views science as both “naive” and “dishonest” in the ways that it neglects and takes for

granted this world—the world before science, the world prior to thought, the world that

we live through and live in (PP, 87). Following Husserl, Merleau-Ponty calls for a “return

to things themselves,” which is “to return to a world which precedes knowledge, of which

knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an

abstract and derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the country-side in

which we have learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie or a river is” (PP, x).

Merleau-Ponty argues that we can only get to know the world because we are a

mind with a body (as opposed to a mind and a body), and because our body is embedded

in the world we can “gain access to [external objects] through our body” (C, 43). David

Abram (1996) observes that contrary to Cartesian thought, “far from restricting my

access to things and to the world, the body is my very means of entering into relation

with things” (p. 47). My body is something that I ‘live,’ that I inhabit, and that is vital to

my engagement with the world (Matthews, 2006). Further, as Hamrick and Van der

Bringing Back the Body

118

Veken (2011) observe, “what it means to be a lived body is to be open to material things,

other people, and the world at large” (p. 23).

Merleau-Ponty brings attention to the ways that all of human subjectivity is

articulated through the body—seeing with one’s eyes, hearing with one’s ears, speaking

as an interaction between one’s tongue, breath and vocal chords, moving with one’s legs

and arms (Matthews, 2006). While on one level this may seem ordinary and simplistic, it

is perhaps quite profound, since the majority of academic traditions focus only on the

mental aspects of subjectivity (i.e., thought and knowledge). One discussion that is

particularly relevant to peace and conflict studies is Merleau-Ponty’s examination of

emotion, especially in light of the discussion in the previous chapter of the ways that the

dominant discourse and meta-story of rationality suggests separating ourselves from our

emotions. He emphasizes the ways that as part of the human experience, emotion is

bound up—or stuck—in the body, rather than simply existing in the mind. For example,

when a person is angry, that anger is often expressed through aggressive speech, hand

gestures, and a raised voice. Reflecting on the embodied nature of such anger, Merleau-

Ponty asks: “Where is this anger?” While some people might say the anger is only in the

person’s mind, the embodied response associated with anger shows that anger actually

takes place. If a person is angry with me, his anger “really is here, in this room . . . It is in

the space between him and me that it unfolds . . . [A]nger inhabits him and it blossoms on

the surface of his pale or purple cheeks, his blood-shot eyes and wheezing voice” (C, 63).

In reflecting on his own experiences of anger, Merleau-Ponty concludes that there is no

way to separate this emotion from his body. As with all emotions, the experience of being

angry is bound up in our bodies, an observation that is especially important later in this

Bringing Back the Body

119

thesis in the veterans’ narratives, which also highlight the ways that post-traumatic

experiences and recovery are bound up in their bodies.

Merleau-Ponty observes that art and the life of the artist (particularly painters)

might help us to fully understand the body and the role of perception. French

impressionist Paul Cézanne once commented that he “thinks in painting” (OE, 309).

Unlike scientists and philosophers, painters are free to observe the world without being

asked to assess and evaluate what they see. Further, French poet and philosopher Paul

Valéry commented that “the painter ‘takes his body with him’” (OE, 294). It is not the

mind that paints, but the body. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty suggests that a painter lends

his/her body to the world, “that body which is an intertwining of vision and movement”

(OE, 294), in exchange for which s/he is able to transform the world into a painting.

We are also always situated in the world at a specific place and in a specific time

and our personal experience is only ever part of a whole. Merleau-Ponty reminds us that

our vision and the location of our body provide our perspective on the world, and that

perspective is always limited. For example, when I sit at my desk, I cannot see the books

on the shelf behind me to the left, even though they are there. I can see them if I turn my

head, but that I can no longer see my desk! When I look out the window to the pine trees

atop the ridge across the river, the trees appear small, perhaps only a few centimetres

from my current vantage point. However, if I were to cross the river, walk to top of the

ridge and stand beneath one of the trees, it might tower over me by 50 feet. Similarly,

when I see an airplane in flight from the ground, it is often only a small dot arcing across

the sky. But when I see the airplane out the window of the airport terminal, I gain a

completely different perspective on the massive size of the machine.

Bringing Back the Body

120

In addition, our sight and location in the world give us the perception of depth—

that is, some objects are closer than others and some objects are concealed behind others.

However, as Merleau-Ponty explains, “it is never the case that things really are one

behind the other. The fact that things overlap or are hidden does not enter into their

definition, and expresses only my incomprehensible solidarity with one of them – my

body” (OE, 304). If I move to the other side of the room, the object that was once furthest

away will now be closest to me, and those that were hidden behind others become visible.

As such, Merleau-Ponty concludes that:

We must take literally what vision teaches us: namely that through it we

come in contact with the sun and the stars, that we are everywhere all at once,

and that even our power to imagine ourselves elsewhere . . . borrows from

vision and employs means we owe to it. Vision alone makes us learn that

beings that are different, ‘exterior,’ foreign to one another, are yet absolutely

together, are ‘simultaneity.’ (OE, 318)

What is most important in the context of this thesis, and for peace and conflict

studies more broadly, is Merleau-Ponty’s understanding that as embodied subjects, the

body is the essential background for our living. When we develop a new skill, and

particularly once the skill becomes habit, Merleau-Ponty explains, it is the body that

“understands” the new skill, not the mind. If I ask you to touch your head with your hand,

you will move your hand to the top of your head without actively thinking about your

hand or your head (PP, 167). Similarly, all of our past choices and experiences leave a

residue in the body—“are ‘sedimented’ in our body, in the same kind of way that past

geological changes now form part of the fabric of the earth as we experience it today”

(Matthews, 2006, p. 101). Our past experiences impart the background for our current

experiences. This is important for understanding post-traumatic experience, since for

Bringing Back the Body

121

many trauma sufferers, it seems that their trauma experience is never far from the surface

of their living. While the trauma suffered does not necessarily determine their conduct in

the present, it always provides the background for the present. As Taylor Carman (2008)

reflects, “thinking, judging, believing, remembering, imagining, expecting—all such

attitudes, however abstract—are anchored in the body and so bear traces, if only faint

ones, of the situatedness of perception” (p. 13).

The Flesh, the Chiasm, and Nature

In Eye and Mind, the last essay published before his death, Merleau-Ponty writes:

“Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is caught in the fabric of the

world, and its cohesion is that of a thing . . . . the world is made of the same stuff as the

body” (OE, 295, emphasis mine). Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, David Abram (1996)

argues that human bodies are “tuned for relationship” with the world (p. ix), and that

humans only evolved in engagement with their sensuous surroundings. This points to a

crucial aspect of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, for “to perceive is to have a body, and

to have a body is to inhabit a world” (Carman, 2008, p. 19). As Abram (1996) explains,

inhabiting the world means that perception does not exist solely within me—it is not

exclusively in my own brain and body—for without other beings and entities in the

world, there would be nothing to perceive. As Merleau-Ponty observes, the human body

is “a relation of being and not of knowledge” (N, 210). It is only in relationship with

others, human and more-than-human, that I am able to perceive at all. Thus, Merleau-

Ponty notes that there is always reciprocity in perception, an ongoing exchange and

overlapping relationship between our human selves and the surrounding world. Merleau-

Ponty was particularly interested in the way that all human senses work only in

Bringing Back the Body

122

simultaneous reciprocal interaction. In his course third on nature at the Collège de

France, Merleau-Ponty commented on “the body as a touching-touched, seeing-seen, the

place of a kind of reflection and, thereby, the capacity to relate itself to something other

than its own mass” (N, 209). I can touch something only because I can also be touched; I

see because I can be seen; I can speak and be spoken to; and so on. Moreover, this

interchange between my body and the world often occurs prior to conscious awareness—

in pre-reflective experience or pretheoretical awareness, or at what Abram (1996) calls

“the most immediate level of sensory perception” (p. 49). In this way, we are “completed

by an otherness that transcends us” (Fisher, 2006, p. 159).

While the body was always prominent in his philosophical thought, in the last years

of his life, Merleau-Ponty began turning his attention towards human sensorial

participation and experience in the earthly world and developing the concept of what he

called ‘the flesh,’ which he saw as a language to counter the dualisms inherent in

human/nature, body/mind, and so on. “My body is made of the same flesh as the world (it

is a perceived),” writes Merleau-Ponty, “and moreover that this flesh of my body is

shared by the world, the world reflects it, encroaches upon it and it encroaches upon the

world . . . they are in a relation of transgression or of overlapping” (VI, 248). Later, in his

working notes on the body in the world in The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty

suggests that “the body stands before the world and the world upright before it, and

between them there is a relation that is one of embrace” (VI, 271). It is through this

radical sharing of the same flesh, through being made of the same flesh, that our bodies

make contact with and embrace the world (Fisher, 2006). Thus, Andy Fisher believes that

Bringing Back the Body

123

in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the flesh, we find the possibility of going “beyond a

narrow world of human projections” (p. 159).

Hamrick and Van der Veken’s (2011) analysis of ‘the flesh’ is helpful in

appreciating the three varied but entangled meanings in the ways that Merleau-Ponty uses

the term. Firstly, Merleau-Ponty uses flesh to refer to carnality and flesh-to-flesh

relationships with others. For example, when speaking with another, “the other gets taken

up in my speech and vice versa. In very animated, intimate discussions, it sometimes

becomes impossible to establish clear boundaries between interlocutors, the speaking and

being spoken to” (ibid., p. 75). This relationship becomes even more understandable,

perhaps, when investigating the realm of emotion and desire. In particular, feelings such

as “anger, joy, fear, sorrow, and love” shared between two persons can become so

intertwined that it is impossible to establish where one person ends and the other begins.

Indeed, it is emotions such as love, hate, joy, and sorrow that lead to the deepest flesh-to-

flesh relationships, where “we cross over into the other as object of those feelings, and

the other similarly becomes part of us as the object of our feelings” (ibid., p. 92). Here,

the flesh gets at the inescapable nature of human vulnerability but also at empathy, in that

the suffering of others may “find its echo in our own flesh” (Kirkman, 2007, p. 22).

In searching for a name to designate flesh, Merleau-Ponty suggests the second

meaning of ‘flesh’—that it is not mind, matter or substance, but rather is equivalent to,

and should be considered an ‘element’ such as water, air, earth, and fire (Hamrick and

Van der Veken, 2011). He meant the flesh to be designated “in the sense of a general

thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate

Bringing Back the Body

124

principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being. The flesh is in

this sense an ‘element’ of Being” (VI, 139).

The third meaning of flesh comes from the reversibility, the overlapping and

intertwining between body and world, which leads Merleau-Ponty to develop the notion

of chiasm to refer to the reciprocity of seeing and being seen, touching and being touched

(Cataldi and Hamrick, 2007; Hamrick and Van der Veken, 2011). It is “this Visibility,

this generality of the Sensible in itself, this anonymity innate to Myself . . . and one

knows there is no name in traditional philosophy to designate it” (VI, 139). The word

chiasm comes from the Greek khiasmos, meaning “a placing crosswise, diagonal

arrangement,” and from the Greek letter chi, which forms the shape of an X (OED,

2001). Merleau-Ponty was particularly taken with the optic chiasm in the brain, which is

where the optic nerves meet and partially cross over to the other hemisphere of the brain

in order to transmit the images seen by each eye (Hamrick and Van der Veken, 2011).

Merleau-Ponty saw this chiasm as an appropriate analogy for expressing the seeing-seen,

feeling-felt, speaking-being heard, and other reciprocal sensory relationships. The chiasm

is thus always defined by a reversibility and an exchange. The core of Merleau-Ponty’s

observation was that perception is always echoed by other entities—that contact with

what is ‘other’ is possible because of the crossing over between my flesh and the flesh of

the world. As David Abram (1996) further explains:

Without this body, without this tongue or these ears, you could neither speak

nor hear another’s voice. Nor could you have anything to speak about, or

even reflect on, or to think, since without any contact, any encounter, without

any glimmer of sensory experience, there would be nothing to question or to

know. The living body is thus the very possibility of contact, not just with

others but with oneself—the very possibility of reflection, of thought, of

knowledge. (p. 45)

Bringing Back the Body

125

Further, Hamrick and Van der Veken (2011) bring attention to how “almost all the words

used to express the chiasm are topological: enveloping, overlapping, encroaching, coiling

over, the fold, and intertwining” (p. 95, emphasis in original). Merleau-Ponty writes:

We have to reject the age-old assumptions that put the body in the world and

the seer in the body, or conversely, the world and the body as the seer in a

box. Where are we to put the limit between the body and the world, since the

world is flesh? Where in the body are we to put the seer, since evidently there

is in the body only ‘shadows stuffed with organs’, that is, more of the visible.

The world seen is not ‘in’ my body, and my body is not ‘in’ the visible world

ultimately: as flesh applied to a flesh, the world neither surrounds nor is

surrounded by it . . . . There is reciprocal insertion and intertwining of one in

the other. (VI, 138)

In the working notes for his unfinished manuscript, Merleau-Ponty also wrote the

following: “Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the flesh, the mother” (VI, 267). Indeed,

at the same time that he was expanding his thought on the flesh and the chiasm, Merleau-

Ponty became increasingly interested in the topic of nature. While his earlier texts also

featured nature, particularly as the context or setting of human embodiment and

experience, in the mid-1950s he began drawing on Alfred North Whitehead’s depictions

of the temporal ‘process of nature.’ At this time, Merleau-Ponty began advocating for and

articulating a new vision of nature within Western philosophy, in which the human body

emerges at the intersection of nature and thought/reason (Vallier, 2003, p. xx). For

Merleau-Ponty, the human mind was not “an impartial observer of Nature,” but rather

human awareness was itself a process of nature (N, 117). He argued that there exists “a

sort of reciprocity between Nature and me as a sensing being. I am part of Nature and

function as any event of Nature: I am by my body part of Nature and the parts of Nature

allow for them relations of the same type as those of my body with Nature” (ibid.).

Drawing on Whitehead and describing nature as process, Merleau-Ponty argues that

Bringing Back the Body

126

“Nature is something that continues, that is never grasped in its beginnings, although

appearing always new to us” (N, 118). And he suggests that perhaps the best way of

conceiving of nature is as “the memory of the world” (N, 120).

Further, Merleau-Ponty observes that “there are no substantial differences between

physical nature, life, and mind”; rather, they arise together through reciprocal perception

(N, 212). Insects, birds, animals, winds, rocks, and waters—and even human skin!—do

not recognize human-imposed borders and boundaries, showing notions of objectivity

and separateness to be purely artificial and imaginary. As Andy Fisher (2006) explains,

Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of contact/interactions were not only referring to humans

but to the possibility of coming into contact with everything, including the more-than-

human world. “He spoke, for example, of a ‘kinship between the being of the earth and

that of my body,’ noting that the kinship extended to other animals and even stones”

(pp. 159-160). It is only in contact with what poet Mary Oliver (1986) in Wild Geese calls

the “family of things”—that is, in relation to what is more-than-human—that “thoughts,

images, emotions, percepts, or behavior . . . arise” (Fisher, 2002, p. 11). Perhaps what is

most important in Merleau-Ponty’s notions of the flesh and chiasm and his descriptions

of nature, is that the world and the body are never separate. It is through our bodies that

we are part of the world, and it is through our bodies that we understand and make

contact with the world.

Biophilia and Ecological Intelligence

The term biophilia was first suggested by psychologist Erich Fromm in the 1960s.

Bio-, from the Greek bio, meaning literally ‘one’s life’ but more generally referring to

anything living or alive, and -philia from the Greek philia meaning ‘affection’ and

Bringing Back the Body

127

stemming from philos, ‘love,’ so that biophilia quite literally means ‘love of life.’ Fromm

(1964) suggested biophilia as a term to refer to love of life, orientations towards self-

preservation or the life drive. He contrasted this term with ‘necrophilia,’ which he

suggested was the opposite human attraction and orientations towards death and

destructive behaviour as well as qualities of greed and self-absorption. As a psychologist,

Fromm’s concepts were targeted towards describing only human behaviours and

interactions, and one might acknowledge the similarities to Freud’s theory of life and

death instincts. However, as Bernard Landis (1975) explains, while Freud believed that

both life and death instincts were biological drives that existed in every human being,

Fromm believed that only biophilic tendencies were biologically given, and that

necrophilic tendencies developed “only when man is thwarted in the development of

biophilia” (p. 419).

Later, renowned biologist E.O. Wilson suggested expanding the notion of biophilia

to encompass the love of all life forms. Wilson (1984) observed that “the urge to affiliate

with other forms of life is to some degree innate, hence deserves to be called biophilia”

(p. 85). Humans exhibit biophilic tendencies from early childhood, and Wilson argues

that this affinity towards all life is programmed into the human brain—that this urge to

connect with other living beings expresses a deep-rooted genetic/biological need in

human beings. Both Wilson (1993) and Louv (2008) observe that humans today, despite

our technological prowess and increasingly urban lifestyles, are genetically the same as

our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Indeed, anthropologist Euclid Smith (2002) likens the rate

of biological evolution to “the speed of a glacier in comparison to the rate of change in

our culture” (p. 13). And E.O. Wilson (1993) recalls that “Humanity did not soft-land

Bringing Back the Body

128

into the teeming biosphere like an alien from another planet. We arose from other

organisms already here” (p. 39). As posited by evolutionary theory, every multi-celled

eukaryotic life form, including plants, insects and animals (humans are animals, too), are

descended from one common ancestor 1.8 billion years ago, which provided the

elemental cell structure and universal genetic code for all higher organisms. Wilson

(1984) suggests that evidence of this genetic programming in the brain is found, for

example, in the ease with which and interest humans show in learning about plants and

animals, something he says is “too consistent to be dismissed as the result of purely

historical events working on a mental blank slate” (p. 85). Indeed, for Wilson, our

humanity is defined by our interactions and kinship with other organisms, which

provided “the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and

they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought” (p. 139).

In the early 1980s, psychologist Howard Gardner (1983) advanced the theory that

there are multiple intelligences other than those measured by standard intelligence (IQ)

tests, and that such intelligences enable humans to perform well in different areas of life.

Author and psychologist Daniel Goleman (2010), perhaps best known for his work

advocating for emotional intelligence, has recently promoted another form of

intelligence, which he calls ecological intelligence: “our ability to adapt to our ecological

niche” (p. 43). Similar to Wilson’s conception of biophilia, Goleman argues that

ecological intelligence is an all-embracing receptivity and empathetic responsiveness for

all life. “Just as social and emotional intelligence build on the abilities to take other

people’s perspective, feel with them, and show our concern,” writes Goleman,

“ecological intelligence extends this capacity to all natural systems. We display such

Bringing Back the Body

129

empathy whenever we feel distress at a sign of the ‘pain’ of the planet or resolve to make

things better” (p. 44). In order to make use of our ecological intelligence, Goleman

argues that we need to stop thinking in dichotomies, which set human beings apart from

nature, and instead to remember and acknowledge that human life is inextricable from the

ecosystems we inhabit, and that all organisms mutually impact and affect one another, in

ways that are either beneficial or harmful.

Approaches in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

Neuroscientist Kelly Lambert (2008), the Chair of Psychology at Randolph-Macon

College, examines connections between the evolution of the human brain and modern

lifestyles. Like Wilson (1984; 1993) and Louv (2008), she argues that our brains evolved

in complex environments, in which our ancestors’ survival depended on constant physical

interaction with their natural surroundings. That is, humans did not evolve independently,

but rather, by interacting with other creatures, with the earth and skies, the winds and

rocks. Lambert’s main contention is that the ‘modern’ technologies associated with

contemporary lifestyles (which are supposed to improve our lives and make us happy),

from cell phones and microwave ovens to computers, may be leading to high rates of

depression in modern life. Despite the fact that human nervous systems are basically the

same as those of our long-ago ancestors, these new technologies require us to use our

brains very differently. Most importantly, Lambert’s (2008) research shows that our

bodies, senses, and emotions were crucial to human evolution and becoming, but today

increasing numbers of people all over the world are engaging almost exclusively in

cognitive tasks (such as writing a thesis!), which leaves our bodies behind.

Bringing Back the Body

130

Reflecting on Lambert’s research while writing this thesis as the mother of a young

toddler as compared to my pre-motherhood academic work, such as writing my doctoral

candidacy exam and my master’s thesis, is interesting. While this work has taken longer

than it might have without a child, life feels more balanced overall and I am generally

less stressed. Rather than engaging in the cognitive tasks of reading and writing for

upwards of twelve hours per day, I now spend a maximum of five to six hours, with the

rest of my day devoted to playing, cuddling, going to the park, making meals, and so on,

all of which engage my body in ways that thesis writing does not, and which also prevent

me from taking myself too seriously.

Lambert also shares the story of one of her colleagues, Jack Trammell, who after

years of suffering from depression bought a farm and returned to his rural roots. He

explains the ways that the farm has become like an antidepressant for him:

Even when I feel paralyzed with fatigue, anxiety and worry about my

complex life, the animals still need to be fed, and they don’t care about the

expensive unexpected car repair or the problems at work that must be

resolved. By tending to their needs, it forces me outside myself, and requires

me to physically exert myself. Inevitably, I always feel better after feeding

the chickens. (Lambert, 2008, p. 214)

Thus Lambert (2008) argues that “the environment around us is a critical variable in

determining the severity of our stress responses in different situations” (p. 243).

Meanwhile, linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson’s (1999)

Philosophy in the Flesh uses emerging lessons from cognitive science to show the

profound disjuncture between what Western philosophy tells us about the disconnected

human mind and body and the lived realities revealed by cognitive science. A scientific

discipline that arose in the 1970s, cognitive science draws on the body as a lived text and

Bringing Back the Body

131

establishes the interconnectedness of all things. The term cognitive refers to all elements

connected with visual and auditory processing, memory and attention, thought and

language, mental imagery, emotions, motor operations, and neural modeling (Lakoff and

Johnson, 1999, p. 11). Cognitive scientists suggest that at least 95 percent of human

thought is unconscious. Importantly, when cognitive scientists refer to reason and thought

as unconscious, they are not suggesting that it belongs to the realm of the “repressed” as

in the Freudian sense that it could be accessed through appropriate guidance and therapy,

but rather that it takes place at levels below our cognitive awareness and to which we

have no direct conscious awareness or access.

At its base, cognitive science works to counter the meta-story of rationality—the

disembodied view of human reason commonly espoused within the Western

philosophical tradition, which suggests that human reason provides a completely

objective view and understanding of external reality. In response, cognitive science

shows that the majority of human reason, rather than arising in our minds, is unconscious

and rooted in our bodies and in experiences in the everyday world. Further, rational

thought, which has been used to separate us from the ‘others’ (i.e., more-than-human

animals), is actually an evolutionary adaptation—that is, human reason arises from

animal reason since the basic principles of abstract reason “builds on and makes use of

forms of perceptual and motor inference present in ‘lower’ animals,” observe Lakoff and

Johnson (1999, p. 4). In the evolution of the human brain, rather than starting from

nothing, the newer parts of the human brain developed from and drew on older parts of

the animal brain. What is perhaps most interesting is that even with the new

understandings of the human body and brain provided through evolutionary theory, there

Bringing Back the Body

132

was little revision of the traditional concepts of reason, which has persisted as a key

Western cultural meta-story and has continued to define humans as separate from and

superior to the other animals.

Yet rather than rational thought being the basis for human existence, cognitive

science reveals that it is our embodied interactions in the world that offer the grounds for

“our sense of what is real” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 17). In line with Merleau-

Ponty’s phenomenology, cognitive science asserts that “the peculiar nature of our bodies

shapes our very possibilities for conceptualization and categorization” (ibid., p. 19).

Thus, when the findings of cognitive science come into contact with the rationality meta-

story, the Western worldview collapses in on itself. And the view that arises with the help

of cognitive science (as well as Merleau-Ponty, ecopsychology, quantum physics, and so

on) is that as human beings “we are coupled to the world through our embodied

interactions” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 93). Lakoff and Johnson argue (and one sees

echoes of Merleau-Ponty) that as human beings, all of our concepts are grounded in our

body’s sensorimotor system—indeed, we initially understand concepts only through our

bodies. Furthermore, reason itself depends on embodied understanding—the mind can

never be independent from the body.

Ecopsychology

Our humanity is incomplete until we have established our kinship or social

relations with the larger natural world and so satisfied our longing to feel at

home in or at peace with the cosmos as a whole.

—Fisher, 2002, p. 122

“Once upon a time, all psychologies were ‘ecopsychologies’” writes Theodore

Roszak (2001). “Those who sought to heal the soul took it for granted that human nature

Bringing Back the Body

133

is densely embedded in the world we share with animal, vegetable, mineral, and all the

unseen powers of the cosmos” (p. 14). Today, however, human health is taken outside its

natural contexts and placed solely in the urban-industrial context of the individual,

separate human being, while everything in the more-than-human world is considered

distant, threatening and unapproachable (Roszak, 1996; Fisher, 2002). Within this

context, psychology and psychotherapy are viewed as the best methods for helping

struggling individuals (Besthorn, Wulff, and St. George, 2010). The focus of such

therapies, observes James Hillman (1995), is the individual subject, “simply me in my

body and in my relationship with other subjects” (p. xvii). However, he argues, ancient

human truths go against the individualistic locus of western psychology. That is, “we

cannot be studied or cured apart from the planet” (ibid., xxii). Andy Fisher (2002)

therefore describes ecopsychology as an intervention that aims at “the regaining of lost

world-relations and life-meanings” (p. 187).

The purpose of ecopsychology is to “place all psychological and spiritual matters

within the context of our membership in the natural world” (Fisher, 2006, pp. 153-154).

Ecopsychology works to locate the human psyche within what psychotherapist and

ecopsychologist Larry Robinson (2009) calls “the complex, interconnected web of

humans, animals, plants, microbes, rocks, oceans, and stars” (p. 26). Indeed,

ecopsychologists regard urban-industrial society to be at the roots of much of the

suffering—grief, despair, and anxiety—in modern times, since our culture leads to

estrangement from nature by dismissing ecological instincts deeply rooted in the human

psyche, or what some refer to as the ecological unconscious (Smith, 2010). This

Bringing Back the Body

134

ecological unconscious, suggests Robert Greenway (2009), while repressed in modern

times and culture, lives “at the depth of our species’ memories” (p. 137).

Thus, also supporting this doctoral research is a growing body of philosophy and

research in ecopsychology, which explores the intertwinings between healthy ecosystems

and human health conditions (Hillman, 1995; Roszak, 2001), and the ways that day-to-

day human life, rooted in economic and technological systems, may be characterized by

chronic low-grade trauma (Fisher, 2002; Glendinning, 1995). The difficulty and struggles

inherent in this work requires finding a language that does not set humans outside of

nature but rather acknowledges that we are nature—we are embedded in ecosystems and

in a reciprocal relationship with everything that surrounds us. This search for new

language is something with which many scholars and practitioners working and writing

within the area of ecopsychology struggle, since the field occupies and seeks to bridge

the space between the natural and human sciences. Indeed, Robert Greenway (1995) has

suggested that ecopsychology itself is “a search for language” (p. 123).

Fisher (2006) argues that it is important to distinguish ecopsychology from

mainstream environmental psychology, which maintains an anthropocentric and

utilitarian view of nature, and continues to reinforce the cultural notion that nature is

solely a ‘resource’ for human living. Environmental psychology, he says, is unable to

account for or question the “profound estrangement of the human psyche from the larger

psyche of nature” (p. 155). The resourcist outlook to which Fisher refers is present in the

language around environmental decline, as seen in the previous chapter’s exploration of

environmental conflict and environmental security.

Bringing Back the Body

135

Perhaps Betty Reardon’s (1992) advice is warranted when she writes that “we

cannot achieve a change unless we can think it. And we cannot rally others to support the

changes if we cannot communicate our vision of change to them. Thus we need not only

images and maps but also effective and appropriate language” (p. 395). While Reardon is

referring to the pervasiveness of metaphors about war in contemporary language, her

argument is easily transferred to the context of ecopsychology. She describes how

changing the words we use changes the images that form in our minds, and thus to

transforming our metaphors. In this way, this thesis takes up the difficult task of finding a

different/new language that enables and includes the more-than-human world—the earth

and skies, winds and rocks. It is about creating a space for those voices by showing how

much those voices mean, by illuminating the power carried in those voices that have been

dismissed or relegated as unimportant within the modern academy, and by demonstrating

that those voices are part of the complex, interconnected web that we call life.

The most important contribution of ecopsychology to this project is its primary

notion that “genuine sanity is grounded in the reality of the natural world” (Fisher, 2002,

p. xiii). As with the other theories presented in this chapter, ecopsychology wholly rejects

the Cartesian dichotomies that fill our daily lives—the idea that humans are separate from

(and higher than) nature, the notion that mind is separate from body, the suggestion that

the ‘inside’ is disconnected from ‘outside.’ In particular, ecopsychologists’ interests lie in

envisioning and achieving a fulfilling and life nurturing/sustaining relationship and

kinship with what Fisher (2002) calls “the world of nature” (p. 33).

136

narrative interlude

on birthing and raising a child

When I was pulled away from academia for the first time in six years after the birth

of my son, I was deeply struck by the completely embodied the experience of

motherhood. David Abram (2010) writes, “this animal body, for all its susceptibility and

vertigo, remains the primary instrument of all our knowing, as the capricious earth

remains our primary cosmos” (p. 8). Being pregnant, birthing a baby and watching him

grow while working on this research and thesis gave me new insight into Abram’s

statement, and a more complex understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology as

well as the other theoretical work that orients this thesis.

During my pregnancy and afterwards, I became hyperaware of the interactions

between my body and the world. Would the shampoo with which I washed my hair or the

lotion I put on my skin affect the growing fetus? Was the food I ate laced with pesticides

and herbicides that would affect my child’s body? And as my belly grew and my body

changed, I remember being truly awed that I could grow another human being!

In the first few days after Cameron was born, I was consumed by the euphoria

connected with the tiny, beautiful perfection that had been birthed into the midst of our

Narrative Interlude

137

lives. But as the days wore on, the transition from academic to mother was difficult. A

week or two after Cameron was born, I told the doctor that mothering was the hardest

thing I’d ever done. She nodded, smiled, and said that most of the academics who come

through her office tell her the same thing. I relied almost solely on my body’s instincts to

soothe and comfort my baby in those first months. For the first six months of his life in

the world—and the nine or so months before that—my body provided the only

sustenance he needed, and it continued to provide sustenance as he nursed into

toddlerhood. There were many days in the first months, when Cameron seemed to nurse

almost constantly that I deeply understood my connection with all other mammals. I felt

truly animal. I became one amongst many mammals doing the same thing and realized

that so very little separates us in the end.

And every day now for the past two years, I have watched Cameron explore the

world through his animal body. His whole experience is about being in his little body,

learning how the world works one sense at a time—or usually through multiple senses

together. As a baby and young toddler with little language, he delighted in the different

textures of fabrics, rocks, leaves, grass, various toys made of wood and plastic. He would

pick up an object, and hold it close to his face. Sometimes he could see through it, and he

would hold it to his eyes again and again to look through to the other side, interested

perhaps in how it distorted what he saw. He would then put it in his mouth, lick it, taste

it, make a face if he didn’t like the sensation—then taste it again to confirm the

experience! He was amazed when he reached out to feel a plant or tree’s leaves and they

sprung from his hand. His ears always prick up when he hears new or unfamiliar sounds,

or when he hears the train across the river, or an airplane or helicopter in the sky. Now he

Narrative Interlude

138

begins to dance and move his body when he hears music he likes. He stops and waits

when the song ends, perhaps comments “Nice music” when a new song starts, and begins

to move his body once again to the beat.

When we are indoors, Cameron loves to play with small animal figures, talking to

them, imagining how they talk to one another, sharing his lunch and his books. But he

loves nothing more than getting outside. He becomes completely engrossed while playing

with rocks and sticks, watching spiders and ants, digging in and watering the garden,

plucking pieces of grass and flowers, touching leaves and plants. He is riveted by dried

leaves and pinecones on the ground, and together we have spent countless hours moving

leaves from one spot to another, gathering pinecones, and exploring their textures and

sounds. He loves the snow, too, making footprints and snow angels, sledding, and

building forts and snowpeople. Several weeks before he turned two, as we walked to the

playground, we realized that we could see the moon in the daytime sky. And Cameron

stopped, looked up at me with wide eyes, and said excitedly, “Let’s walk to the moon!”

And then he wondered aloud whether the moon could come to the playground with us,

and play on the slide with him.

Watching my son, I see that for him, nature is enchanted at every possible turn, in

stories and toys and embodied outdoor play. And I wonder, at what point does nature lose

its enchantment? At what point do animals and rocks and trees, pinecones and leaves, the

moon and stars, lose their voices and only become the passive backdrop to our human

lives?

139

Chapter 6

Connections between Nature and Healing

In ancient narratives, gardens, pastoral landscapes and natural environments

with small lakes and meadows are depicted as places where you can take

refuge—places to find shelter and relief from sadness and pain—places

where you can be restored both mentally and physically. These narratives

portray gardens and pastoral landscapes as healthy, healing places longed

for both in life and beyond.

—Ottosson and Grahn, 2008, p. 52

Incorporating nature into human healing and rehabilitation is not a novel idea.

Connections between nature experiences and human health have been accepted by poets,

sages, and indigenous peoples, amongst others, for thousands of years. Ancient Greek

healing places and temples were purposefully located on hilltops in the countryside with

views of the ocean, around the same time that Taoists in China were building

greenhouses and cultivating gardens as part of their approach for maintaining health and

wellbeing (Louv, 2008; Sternberg, 2009). Chinese mystics often escaped the activity and

clamour of towns for the countryside, where they sought to find and restore their souls,

while the Christian Bible tells numerous stories of holy men who retreated to the desert to

have contact with God (Greenway, 2009).

In the Middle Ages, gardens were deemed to be an important facet of human

healing, particularly in monastery settings. With its centrally-located water feature and its

Connections between Nature and Healing

140

open view of the sky, the traditional monastery cloister was designed to facilitate

meditation for both resident monks and patients (Messer Diehl, 2009). During the

Victorian era, gardens were often found in hospitals (Pretty, 2004). And beginning in the

nineteenth century, French churches advocated community gardens as a way to improve

the circumstances of the working poor (Di Iacovo and O’Connor, 2009). In the United

States, the Quakers’ Friends Hospital in Pennsylvania treated patients suffering from

mental ill health with gardening and walks in the surrounding lands (Louv, 2008). This

focus on nature and healing, however, was lost for much of the twentieth century, and

only in the past few decades have outdoor therapy and nature once again gained

popularity, with proponents now arguing that “nature should be seen as a fundamental

health resource” (Pretty, 2004, p. 71).

Ecopsychologist Andy Fisher (2006) warns about the “resourcist ontology” that

accompanies the type of the empirical research overviewed in this chapter (such as Jules

Pretty’s (2004) assertion above), which continues to maintain human/nature divisions,

and to see nature only as a resource, “now a psychological one” (pp. 155-156). In our

interview, Fisher expanded on this idea. While he believes the empirical research can be

helpful in that it points to the deep interconnections between humans and nature, he

asserts that it is always important to remember that this research is limited and “just the

tip of the iceberg.” He reflected that “we’re so confined by even just the way we move

and operate in the modern world and how we perceive things, and how we’re boxed in by

the structures of our society which shapes our perceptions, and shapes our sensory

abilities, I think we’re just very limited in trying to understand or bring meaning to these

experiences beyond the obviousness of them when we’re having them . . . I think better

Connections between Nature and Healing

141

ways will come.” Keeping in mind the limitations of these studies, and the ways they

tend to be framed by the resourcist ontology, this chapter provides a general overview of

the recent empirical research on connections between nature and human health.

Empirical Connections between Humans and Nature

Nearly 30 years ago in the prominent research journal Science, Roger Ulrich (1984)

described his discovery that hospital patients who had a view of trees from their hospital

beds required a shorter stay and fewer medications, and experienced fewer postsurgical

complications than patients whose windows looked onto a brick wall. A parallel study

found that prison inmates with a view of farm fields used prison health care services less

often than those who looked onto the inner courtyard (Moore, 1981). Research in

workplace settings demonstrates a similar pattern, where employees whose window

provides a view of trees or a park are sick less often as well as more satisfied with their

jobs compared to their peers without such a view (Kaplan, 2001). It seems, too, that even

pictures of nature can positively influence people’s moods and concentration (de Vries et

al., 2003).

Two experiments by Terry Hartig’s (2003) research team compared the emotional

and physiological effects of natural and urban settings. First, the researchers tested

participants while sitting either in a room with a view of trees or a room with no window;

they found that blood pressure decreased for the people in the room with the view, but

increased for those in the room with no window. Next, they took participants walking, in

either a nature reserve or a medium-density housing development. The participants who

walked in the nature reserve experienced a decrease in blood pressure and reported a

decline in feelings of anger and aggression, while those who walked in the urban setting

Connections between Nature and Healing

142

experienced an increase in all three areas. Researchers at the University of Essex

conducted a similar study, comparing the effects of an outdoor walk in the woods and an

indoor walk at a shopping mall on participants’ self-esteem, depression and tension. The

study found that the outdoor walk often improved all three emotions (Mind, 2007a; Mind,

2007b). Thus, like getting regular sleep, it is believed that “regular access to restorative

[natural] environments can interrupt processes that negatively affect health and well-

being in the short- and long-term” (Hartig et al., 2003, p. 122).

In another experiment, Hartig and Staats (2006) studied participants’ preference for

walking in the city or in a forest, and found that the more fatigued participants were, the

more likely they were to express a preference for walking in a forest. And a longitudinal

study by Hartig, Capalano and Ong (2007) found a positive correlation between cold

summer weather in Sweden and the levels of antidepressants prescribed to Swedish men

and women. The researchers hypothesize that in summers with cooler rainy weather,

Swedes were less likely to spend time outdoors and therefore did not benefit from the

restorative properties of nature, thus leading to increased levels of depression. Based on

such findings, some practitioners have once again begun to incorporate nature into a

variety of therapy settings, including treatment for brain injuries (Shanahan, McAllister,

and Curtain, 2009; Walker et al., 2005), personality disorders (Eikenæs, Gude, and

Hoffart, 2006), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Taylor, Kuo, and Sullivan,

2001).

Indeed, there is a growing body of academic scholarship dedicated to the topic of

restoration (also referred to as ‘stress recovery’). When people are tired and stressed and

their energies depleted, they often experience dark moods, heightened arousal in the

Connections between Nature and Healing

143

autonomic nervous system, and diminished capacities for focused attention. Restoration,

then, refers to renewing these diminished resources and faculties, to enhancing mood,

decreasing arousal, and regaining the ability to focus attention on specific activities

(Hartig, 2003). A wide range of empirical studies have been conducted over the past 20

years to explore the physiological and emotional benefits of natural settings, as well as

the ways nature contributes to and enhances humans’ attention spans, and how regular

experiences in nature seem to result in better mental health (for example, de Vries et al.,

2003; Grahn and Stigsdotter, 2003; Maas et al., 2006; Mind, 2007b; Mitchell and

Popham, 2007; Pretty, 2004; Pretty et al., 2006; Pretty et al., 2007; Ryan et al., 2009;

Sugiyama et al., 2008; Ulrich et al., 1991; van den Berg, Hartig and Staats, 2007). Even

viewing pictures of nature has been linked to restoring fatigued attention, while viewing

pictures of urban and concrete environments as well as pictures of geometric shapes was

not restorative (Berto, 2005).

Like many of the scholars whose theories were presented in Chapter 5, researchers

studying restoration propose that the importance of nature in human life stems from the

fact that the human brain co-evolved with other creatures and with rivers, rocks, winds,

skies, mountains, trees, and plants. And while over the years humanity has experienced

high rates of cultural and technological change, the rate of biological evolution has been

quite slow, leading human nervous systems today to be virtually the same as those of our

long-ago ancestors. Indeed, the role of nature in renewing humans’ ability to concentrate

is considered by many scientists to be an evolutionary adaptation. The type of constant,

linear attention to a specific task required within urban lifestyles and jobs increasingly

over the last 100 years would have been dangerous, even deadly, for our ancestors, since

Connections between Nature and Healing

144

they could have been easily surprised by predators (Kaplan, 2005). Instead of focusing

for a long time on one thing in particular, our ancestors needed to be constantly aware of

their surroundings and to frequently shift their awareness. Stephen Kaplan argues that

natural settings require a reduced amount of energy and effort compared with urban, or

what some might consider to be more ‘civilized’ settings, even if the latter settings are

more familiar to many of us today. Specifically, the human body is thought to respond

instinctively to nature in a way that it cannot to the built environment.

Thus, researchers such as Stephen Kaplan and Rachel Kaplan, among others,

suggest that nature requires a different type of attention than human-built environments,

leading it to play a restorative function for human attention (R. Kaplan, 2001; S. Kaplan,

1995). Other researchers, such as Roger Ulrich (1991) and colleagues, argue that nature

provides biological support for recovery from stress. No matter the explanation, however,

recent research shows that spending time in nature is genuinely important for human

beings (van den Berg, Hartig and Staats, 2007). It seems that nature—or even a window

view of nature—relieves anxiety and stress by sending out signals “that mediate rest and

relaxation” (Ottoson and Grahn, 2008).

Studies with both children and the elderly are pointing to the importance of nature

throughout a person’s lifecycle. James Sallis, the program director for the Active Living

Research Program for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told Richard Louv (2008)

that children with indoor, inactive upbringings are more likely to experience struggles

with mental health and wellbeing. And researchers Andrea Faber Taylor and Frances Kuo

(2006) assert that there is enough evidence from numerous studies of the relationships

between children and nature to support the thesis that nature is crucial for children’s

Connections between Nature and Healing

145

cognitive, social and psychological development. Han (2009) showed that the presence of

plants in a junior-high classroom in Taiwan positively influences students’ behaviour and

wellbeing. In particular, students in the classroom with plants tended to rate themselves

both as more comfortable in the classroom and as feeling more friendly towards others

than those students in a classroom without plants. And elsewhere, Taylor, Kuo, and

Sullivan (2001) have suggested that natural environments can support children with

attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In focus groups with parents, the

researchers discovered that urban environments and modern technologies often aggravate

a child’s ADHD symptoms, but natural settings never exacerbate—and often alleviate—

the symptoms. One parent shared that a Disneyland trip was too stimulating for her child,

but a camping trip to a state park resulted in a vacation the whole family enjoyed because

her child was relaxed, happy, and calm. Another parent described how his son’s struggles

with ADHD were minimal when he was engaged in outdoor activities such as hitting golf

balls or fishing. The researchers also discovered that the ADHD symptoms of children

who tended to play in indoor settings such as basements with few or no windows were

much more severe than the symptoms of children who played outdoors.

At the opposite end of the age spectrum, Mooney and Nicell (1992) followed

patients with Alzheimer’s disease at five different care facilities for two years. Two of the

care facilities provided patients with access to gardens, while at the other three patients

had no access to nature settings. Over the two years, violent assaults by Alzheimer’s

patients at the facilities with no access to gardens increased significantly (violence is a

common occurrence amongst Alzheimer’s patients because the disease causes a person’s

cognitive processes deteriorate over time). Meanwhile, at the two facilities with gardens,

Connections between Nature and Healing

146

levels of violence amongst patients with Alzheimer’s stayed the same or even decreased

slightly when patients were given regular access to the gardens. Meanwhile Susan

Rodiek’s (2002) study with elderly nursing homes residents also showed a number of

positive results for the residents who spent time in a garden setting, many of whom

reported significantly lower levels of anxiety and positive moods, compared with those

who spent time only indoors. Measurements of the residents’ cortisol (a stress hormone)

levels confirmed these findings, where the cortisol levels of garden participants were

reduced by two and a half times those of the study’s indoor participants.

Wilderness Therapy and Wilderness Experiences

Throughout the twentieth century there have been anecdotal accounts of the

benefits of ‘camping therapy’ in North America (Davis-Berman and Berman, 1989).

Indeed, ‘wilderness therapy’ is gaining increased attention as an approach that involves a

combination of cognitive therapy and/or humanistic therapy approaches within a nature

setting typically far away from urban contexts. The major studies in wilderness therapy

tend to report improved self-esteem and personal development as well as interpersonal

development and enhanced social skills (Russell, 2006). Many wilderness therapy

programs have concentrated on treating adolescents living in psychiatric environments as

well as those with emotional and/or substance abuse problems, and report significant

increases in participants’ self-esteem as well as improvements in delinquent behaviour.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, there were more than 700 wilderness

experience programs in the United States alone (Russell and Farnum, 2007) and those

programs specifically designed as wilderness therapeutic interventions numbered

somewhere from 60-100 (Russell, 2006). In Robert Greenway’s (2009) twenty-two years

Connections between Nature and Healing

147

of running a wilderness therapy training program at Sonoma State University, he has

become a deep believer in the power of nature to facilitate changed psychological

processes. In his experience, a wilderness encounter needs to last ten or more days in

order to promote meaningful and lasting change.

However, other researchers suggest that even experiences of a shorter duration are

worthwhile. David Cole and Troy Hall (2010) recently conducted a study to examine

whether the amount of time spent in a wilderness environment was important to

individuals’ experience of restoration as well as whether the number of people

encountered along a trail affected hikers’ experiences. They found that no matter the trail

congestion or the length of time, most participants reported substantial “stress reduction

and mental rejuvenation” (p. 817). Cole and Hall conclude that the restorative effects of

spending time in nature can occur in a relatively short amount of time, and whether one is

alone or in the company of others.

Horticulture Therapy and Green Care

The horticulture therapy movement, which focuses its work with a variety of

populations, including children, the elderly, and patients with physical and/or mental

health disabilities, first became organized in the United States around work with veterans

in veterans’ hospitals (Messer Diehl, 2009; Söderback et al., 2004). Influential American

psychiatrist Karl Menninger, who along with his father F.C. Menninger founded the

Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, was the first to advocate for horticulture

therapy to help U.S. veterans recover from their experiences in World War II (Lewis,

1996; Relf, 2006; Louv, 2008). Karl Menninger viewed horticulture therapy as holding

possibilities for bringing “the individual close to the soil and close to Mother Nature,

Connections between Nature and Healing

148

close to beauty, close to the inscrutable mystery of growth and development” (as cited in

Relf, 2006, p. 315). In the 1970s, the Menninger Foundation helped to establish the first

horticulture therapy program in the United States, at Kansas State University, after which

a number of similar programs blossomed at American universities.

In Canada, some post-traumatic distress sufferers are being referred to the

Homewood Health Centre in Guelph, Ontario, which prescribes horticulture therapy

(both in greenhouses and outdoor gardens) as part of its patients’ treatment (Hewson,

2001). In Germany, the Berlin Centre for Torture Victims (Behandlungszentrum für

Folteropfer Berlin) incorporates a garden project, ‘the Intercultural Healing Garden,’ as

part of its work with victims of torture and human rights violations from more than 50

countries (Berlin Centre for Torture Victims, n.d.). The Center for Victims of Torture in

Minneapolis similarly incorporates a garden (Wash, 2006). Clients, many of whom suffer

from post-traumatic distress, can wait for their appointments in the garden, and many of

the Center’s counsellors also spend time there to help them cope with the stress and

anguish that come from hearing stories of pain and suffering every day. Sarah Wash

reports that many of the Center’s staff have also taken up gardening at home. Further,

since trauma survivors often suffer from loneliness and isolation, the Center uses

gardening “to help people connect with one another and reestablish a sense of trust”

(ibid., ¶6). The Center’s garden designer, Betty Ann Addison reflected that:

Gardens are all about transition – whether it be from illness to healing or from

life to death. They change by the hour, week, month, and year. They require

us to relinquish control: A deep appreciation of life emerges with each

sprouting plant, even the weeds. And simply by embracing natural rhythms,

people from all walks of life, no matter the nature of their past experiences,

can learn to accept the inevitability of loss and find hope in the promise of

new life. (Wash, 2006, ¶7)

Connections between Nature and Healing

149

Horticulture therapist Elizabeth Messer Diehl (2009) further suggests that

interacting with plants is a powerful method for re-awakening and stimulating the senses,

through fragrance, colour, texture, taste and sound. This arousal of our senses and the

ways that a garden can completely engage a person’s corporeal experience has physical,

emotional and cognitive benefits. As a person embraces the embodied experience, Messer

Diehl suggests it becomes possible to connect more deeply to the garden, thus further

enhancing and bringing forth the healing properties of nature. Additionally, she reflects

on the power of particular scents to “stimulate bodily organs to release neurochemicals

that help eliminate pain, induce sleep, and create a sense of well-being” (p. 170).

In recent years, a number of European countries, including Norway, the

Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Slovenia, and the United Kingdom, have

begun to include ‘green care farms’ (also called ‘social farming’) in their mental and

social health programs (Hine, Peacock and Pretty, 2008; Mind, 2007a). Some doctors in

northeastern England now refer mental health patients to the 13-week Chopwell Wood

Health Project, where patients take part in walking, tai chi, cycling, and/or forest

conservation (O’Brien, 2006). In addition, or as an alternative, to drugs and/or therapy, in

a country that incorporates green care into its health approach, a doctor or psychiatrist

can refer a patient to work on a ‘care farm’ for a continuous period or as a weekly

activity. In some countries, social workers or occupational therapists may also suggest

that their clients seek out work on a care farm. Farmers are paid for providing this service

and also benefit from the added workers (Mind, 2007b).

In 2008, Therapeutic Communities Journal devoted an entire issue to green care.

The issue’s editor Joe Sempik (2008) writes that “what distinguishes green care from

Connections between Nature and Healing

150

other social or community-based approaches to mental health and other aspects of

wellbeing is the belief that the green component is fundamental to it” (p. 225). Sempik

argues that while some healthcare providers emphasize that the important aspects of

healthcare include providing “productivity, structure and routine” for patients, the clients

in green care programs instead emphasize that what is most important in their own

experience is their interactions with nature, both in terms of nurturing plants and/or

animals as well as developing a deeper connection with the more-than-human world.

A few countries are especially committed to green care, such as the Netherlands

where the number of green care farms recently rose more than a thousand-fold, from 75

care farms in 1998 to more than 800 in 2008 (Elings and Hassink, 2008). The target

groups of these Dutch programs has expanded over the years from a focus primarily on

people struggling with psychiatric difficulties and those with intellectual disabilities to

include people suffering from addictions, burnout, and chronic unemployment, as well as

the elderly and young children. The majority of participants in the Dutch programs are

male (Di Iacovo and O’Connor, 2009).

In Italy, many psychiatric institutions were closed in the early 1980s, which

coincided with the rise of social co-operatives, many of which incorporated agricultural

endeavours to assist former psychiatric patients. Similarly, since the nineteenth century

many Germany social programs have incorporated participants into their daily work, with

a special focus on working in the kitchen and gardens (Di Iacovo and O’Connor, 2009).

While this German approach waned in the 1960s and 70s, a new awareness of the

importance of nature in human life has recently led to a revival of such programs in the

country.

Connections between Nature and Healing

151

Many clients/participants at various green care farms/facilities have expressed the

importance of being involved in the entire lifecycle of plants, from seeds to harvest. For

example, the Lothlorien Community in South West Scotland incorporates an organic

garden, orchard and woodlands into its programs for residents suffering from ill mental

health. The manager at the Community, Brendan Hickey (2008), writes that for many

current and former residents, working with nature becomes a metaphor for their own

struggles and journeys in life as they notice and reflect on natural and seasonal cycles of

life and death. One Community member shared these comments:

Gardening helps me to feel grounded and helps to take away the negative

thoughts I might be having. It helps to stop me from becoming too

preoccupied. When I was most unwell gardening was difficult, but over time I

built up a strong relationship with it. It was about me and the natural world. I

liked working on my own in the garden. It helped calm my mind and allowed

my emotions to settle. (Hickey, 2008, pp. 267-268)

Landscape designer C. Colston Burrell (2000) points to the power of gardens to

stimulate the human senses of sight, sound, touch and smell. He argues that scent is

perhaps the most powerful aspect in a garden, and notes that while fragrances’ effects on

human beings are not fully understood, they are known to have psychological,

physiological and neurological benefits, and even to change hormone production and

brain chemistry. Indeed, this is the premise behind aromatherapy as part of alternative or

complimentary medicine practices. Some scientists hypothesize that the capacity of

fragrances to affect humans in these diverse ways derives from the human nasal

passage’s direct connection to the brain’s centre for emotions and memory (Burrell,

2000). Even at undetectable levels odours have been found to influence the central

nervous system. In their research on cut flower arrangements and lavender fragrance, Liu,

Connections between Nature and Healing

152

Kim and Mattson (2003) concluded that the senses of sight and smell played important

roles in reducing stress and producing positive emotional responses in college students.

Botanist and medical and agricultural researcher Diana Beresford-Kroeger (2003)

reflects that taking a summer walk in a mature pine forest has, for thousands of years,

been considered to be good for a person’s health. She brings attention to the biochemical

properties in plants, noting that “the fresh leaves [in a pine forest] exert a stimulant effect

on breathing with the addition of mild anaesthetic properties. There is possibly some mild

narcotic function also in pines” (p. 109). Further, the sound of winds blowing through

pine boughs has been found to soothe people suffering from illness. Beresford-Kroeger’s

work points to similar benefits provided by other trees to both humans and the wider

planetary community. Indeed, viewed from the context of Beresford-Kroeger’s research,

the emotional and physiological benefits that occur when people spend time in nature

may be related not only to the restorational benefits of the settings, but quite possibly to

medicinal properties released by the plants and trees around them.

Mental Fatigue and Aggression

Stephen Kaplan (1995) found that people whose directed attention is fatigued

become irritable and often seek to be alone. Researchers Kuo and Sullivan (2001) bring

attention to studies linking increased human aggression and violence with noise,

crowding, and high temperatures. And Terry Hartig (2003) and colleagues suggest that

the ways in which nature can be associated with a reduction in feelings of anger merits

special attention. Indeed, a study by Kuo and Sullivan (2001) found a connection

between a lack of exposure to natural settings and aggression/violence amongst inner-city

residents in Chicago living in poverty. They suggest that the ongoing stress associated

Connections between Nature and Healing

153

with poverty and the pervasive risks of crime and unpredictable violence for those living

in poverty-stricken neighbourhoods tend to contribute to heightened levels of mental

fatigue, since individuals are constantly on guard for signs of trouble. The researchers

reflect that “among inner-city inhabitants lacking ready access to attentionally restorative

settings, we might expect chronic high levels of mental fatigue and a heightened

propensity for aggressive behaviour” (p. 548). Kuo and Sullivan found significantly

lower levels of intrafamily violence amongst families living in public housing apartments

when those families had access to natural environments such as trees and grass

immediately outside their apartments compared with others whose apartments opened

onto barren lands or concrete.

While most of the research presented in this chapter has not included combat

veterans, it bears strong relevance to the veterans’ personal narratives to come. Kuo and

Sullivan (2001) warn against over-generalizing their research and urge caution in

extrapolating the results of their study to apply to other settings. They argue that further

research is needed to better understand the connections between aggression and mental

fatigue, and the influence of nature on reducing aggression. However, one might, for

example, draw parallels between people living in poverty in the inner city and soldiers’

experiences during combat, since soldiers are also under constant stress, vigilant for signs

of danger and/or situations of concern, and also often lack access to restorative settings.

Other parallels that come to mind are refugee camps and other communities affected by

violence, where people are constantly stressed by their life situation.

More generally, despite the increase in health and wellbeing approaches that

actively incorporate nature, including wilderness therapy, ecotherapy, care farming,

Connections between Nature and Healing

154

therapeutic horticulture, green exercise, and animal-assisted therapy, Hine, Peacock and

Pretty (2008) warn that “there is still limited acceptance from healthcare and other social

service providers, of the role that care farming and other green care approaches can play

in health” (p. 257). Throughout the course of a variety of research projects, three main

benefits from participating in physical activities in nature were identified:

1) improvements in mood and self-esteem and reductions in anger, confusion, depression

and tension; 2) benefits for participants’ physical health; and 3) facilitation of “social

networking and connectivity” (Mind, 2007b, p. 7). The researchers involved in these

studies concluded that the activities in the outdoors, “regardless of their type or level of

intensity and duration, yield significant mental health benefit” (Pretty et al., 2007,

p. 226). Overall, based on the empirical research, it seems that activities such as spending

time in the woods, rafting on a river, or talking around a campfire may decrease

participants’ stress and anxiety so that they can begin to connect once again with others at

the level of their shared human experience. I am reminded of Kurt Hoelting’s observation

included in the story that opened this thesis: “The primary way that we connect with

nature is through each other, through our human nature, through words, through

emotions, through shared experience . . . And then when it can be linked to the wider

nature that we actually come out of and that sustains us literally from one breath to

another and from one meal to another and it sustains our sense of being part of something

much bigger than ourselves, then all the better. But in a certain strange kind of way, it’s

all connected. It’s very much working with healing nature.”

155

narrative interlude

on political violence

Prior to beginning this research project, I knew relatively little about military

experience. Most of my knowledge came from the media, and from the experiences of a

few others: my two grandfathers who served during World War II, the army reservist I

dated a few times when I was 19, a friend’s partner in the Canadian Navy, and another

friend’s husband who fulfilled his national military service requirement before coming to

Canada. Indeed, until a few years ago, I would never have imagined that I would

interview veterans as part of my dissertation research. However, as I began to read and

hear in the news and elsewhere about their experiences with nature and recovery from

stress and post-traumatic distress, I felt compelled to learn more.

A common idea that comes up in the literature and news stories about soldiers and

veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress is that Canadians tend to have very little

idea of the activities that Canadian soldiers are involved in overseas, and even less

awareness of the ways that many of them are changed by their experiences. The

peacekeeping and combat missions in which they take part are so far away and removed

from everyday life in Canada that we don’t think about them often. However, over the

Narrative Interlude

156

course of my studies and this research, one thing that has become clear to me is the ways

in which many Canadians’ lives have been touched by political violence. I recall an

assignment in one of my doctoral classes in which we were invited to explore the life of

one family member. And I was struck by how many of my classmates’ stories involved a

family member who had lived through political violence, and many of my classmates had

themselves also experienced such violence. Therefore, while political violence is not

generally front and centre in our lives and experiences in Canada, for many Canadians it

is never far away. It is present in our families, in past or current generations, and perhaps

carried in our own bodies. And so while we may not know what life is like for Canadian

soldiers on a day-to-day basis, we might be able to envision or even personally recall

what it is like to live amidst conflict.

Born in Canada in the mid-1970s, I have been fortunate not to live through political

violence in my own life. However, like many others, I grew up in a family affected by

such violence. My father was born in Berlin only a few years before the start of World

War II, and my mother in Neumünster immediately following the war. Both my maternal

and paternal grandfathers served in the German army during the war. And I was not very

old, perhaps 9 or 10, when I realized what it meant to be the child of German immigrants.

A school friend bluntly commented one day that both my grandfathers had been Nazis.

“No they weren’t,” I retorted. “They must have been,” he said. “They fought for the other

side, for the good guys,” I remember saying. “Not possible,” my friend told me. This

conversation is one of the few from my childhood that has stuck with me over the years. I

did not ask my parents about it—even as children there are some things to which we do

not want an answer.

Narrative Interlude

157

As a pre-teen and teenager in school in Canada, when we were asked each

Remembrance Day to remember those who had sacrificed their lives for our freedom, I

was always unsure of what to do or how to feel. It did not seem appropriate to celebrate

the actions of my ancestors, so who was I to remember? To think about the Canadian

soldiers who fought against my family also seemed inappropriate and disloyal somehow.

So I kept this confusion and angst to myself. Today when I think of my ancestors, I do so

with more distance and appreciation for how most of the foot soldiers in the world wars,

and even those in today’s wars, were caught up in a political system much larger than

themselves, about how they were boys and young men ordered to do something in the

name of their country. I think, too, about how individually many of the soldiers on both

sides probably had more in common than they realized, and that rather than fighting one

another, they were fighting a national faceless ‘enemy.’

Growing up with the stories of my father’s childhood during and after the war, as

well as the knowledge that my paternal great-great grandmother, Therese Dautz, was

murdered in the Holocaust, has sensitized me to others’ suffering.8 In 2004, while

researching my great-great grandmother’s marriage certificate, I came across her name in

Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. I still recall the extreme cold

that passed through my entire body when I found her name there, on the list of Shoah

victims from Germany, the list of deportations from Berlin, and the list of Theresienstadt

camp inmates. For the rest of the day, I could not stop shivering. The emotional impact of

discovering these details about my great-great grandmother was immense, and consumed

my thoughts and energies for weeks afterwards. It was at this time that I realized the real

8 At the age of 82, Therese Dautz was arrested by the Nazis in Berlin on January 10, 1944, and transported

to the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia, where she died on January 27, 1945.

Narrative Interlude

158

impact of political violence, the ways that it could affect me emotionally and that I could

feel it in my whole body, even though the victim was someone I had never met, who died

30 years before I was born. It is as though my body stores and remembers the stories of

those who came before me.

Knowing the effects of war and violence and the emotional scars left on many of

those who survive—as well as how these effects are often transmitted to others who did

not experience them directly—is partly what has informed my desire to work for peace

and justice. Additionally, it has inspired me to work towards an increased social

understanding of the world as a shared ecological and interdependent space.

159

Chapter 7

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic

Distress

For most Canadians today, the word ‘veteran’ invokes the image of men from a

different generation—an elderly man, perhaps a father or grandfather, who served in

World War II.9 And while this image was by and large true for decades, many of today’s

veterans in Canada, as journalist Les Perreaux (2011) describes, are young men and

women who have been to war and come back, and are now trying to determine their place

in civilian life. Many are at the beginning of their adult life, from their late teens to early

20s, as well as some in their 30s, and 40s. They are from my generation, and the

generations below mine. Some served as peacekeepers in the 1990s, while others have

served more recently as part of the Canadian contingent of troops in Afghanistan. Indeed,

there are some similarities to the Vietnam War, in which most of the infantry were young

males in late adolescence or early adulthood who were still forming their identities

(McCarthy, 1977).

9 Unlike soldiers, who are men and women currently serving in the military, veterans have left active

military service and are seeking to reintegrate, or have already reintegrated, into civilian life.

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

160

All soldiers who serve are changed by the experience (Alpert and Goosenberg

Kent, 2010). Many veterans make a successful transition back to civilian life, but others

struggle. This chapter works to develop a deeper understanding of trauma and the

experience and symptoms associated with post-traumatic distress. I do not wish to rely

extensively on the science and medical explanations of post-traumatic experience in this

thesis and I do not want to generalize the experience of suffering; however, an

understanding of the various ways that distress is experienced and suffered is perhaps

helpful for contextualizing the veterans’ stories presented in Chapter 8.

Invisible Wounds and Post-traumatic Experience

For thousands of years, symptoms of acute stress have been associated with and

understood as part of a soldier’s war experience. The English word ‘trauma’ is the same

as its Greek word of origin, trauma, meaning ‘wound,’ and in Western society there has

long been an understanding of the trauma brought by violent conflict. Homer’s Iliad (800

BCE), which chronicles Achilles’ experiences during the Trojan War, is an excellent

account of the stress and trauma experienced by combat soldiers. Psychiatrist Jonathan

Shay’s (1991) work with Vietnam veterans reveals that many post-traumatic distress

sufferers report living through most or all of the experiences documented in the Iliad: “a

leader’s betrayal of ‘what’s right,’ blunted responsiveness to any emotional, social, or

ethical claims outside a tiny circle of combat-proven comrades, grief and guilt for

death(s) in this circle, lust for revenge, renunciation of ever returning home, seeing one’s

self as already dead, berserking, dishonoring the enemy, and loss of humanity” (p. 562).

Another story about the traumas of war was chronicled by Greek historian Herodotus

(484-425 BCE), who described how the Athenian warrior Epizelus was blinded during

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

161

the Battle of Marathon “without blow of sword or dart” when the soldier next to him was

killed:

A strange prodigy likewise happened at this fight. Epizelus, the son of

Cuphagoras, an Athenian, was in the thick of the fray, and behaving himself

as a brave man should, when suddenly he was stricken with blindness,

without blow of sword or dart; and this blindness continued thenceforth

during the whole of his after life. The following is the account which he

himself, as I have heard, gave of the matter: he said that a gigantic warrior,

with a huge beard, which shaded all his shield, stood over against him, but the

ghostly semblance passed him by, and slew the man at his side. Such, as I

understand, was the tale which Epizelus told. (Herodotus, 440 BCE, ¶11)

While the wounds associated with armed conflict tend to be thought of as physical

wounds, including injury and death, there is growing awareness of the ways that invisible

wounds are a significant cause of suffering for soldiers, veterans, and civilians living in

communities affected by violence. According to the United States government, for

example, approximately ten percent (101 per 1000) of U.S. soldiers in World War II

suffered from combat-related fatigue (Nordheimer, 1972). Meanwhile, the Director of the

Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, Richard F. Mollica and his colleagues suggest that

twice as many soldiers suffered psychological wounds as physical wounds in World War

I, and in World War II, thirty-three percent of all wounds were of the invisible kind

(Mollica et al., 2004).

In the 1960s and 70s, as psychiatrists worked with Vietnam veterans, they became

increasingly sensitive to and sought to better understand how wartime experiences

continued to affect the veterans once they’d returned home. Reporter Jon Nordheimer’s

front page New York Times story on August 21, 1972, told how “a significant number of

Vietnam veterans are encountering serious readjustment problems on return to civilian

life that for some at least, is as severe a test of emotional stability as any stress they

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

162

encountered in the service” (Nordheimer, 1972, p. 1). More than 80 percent of the time,

what was then referred to as “post-Vietnam syndrome” was not manifested in the combat

zone but instead became part of the veteran’s experience only once he had been

discharged from the military and was trying to reintegrate into civilian life. While some

Vietnam veterans were able to reintegrate into American society with relative ease, it was

estimated that between 400,000 and 700,000 combat veterans encountered tremendous

difficulties (Harris, 1980). By the late 1970s, many U.S. veterans were experiencing clear

signs of distress. Unemployment was high (48 percent for black combat veterans and 39

percent for white combat veterans), 45 percent gave accounts of poor family

relationships, 41 percent of veterans had alcohol problems, and many more had drug

problems (59 percent of black veterans and 67 percent of white veterans) (McCarthy,

1977). Some studies estimate that fifty percent of Vietnam veterans suffered from some

form of distress after returning home (Hendin and Pollinger Haas, 1984).

U.S. Army psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Borus suggested that one difference between

WWII and the Vietnam War had to do with the fact that after WWII, U.S. soldiers had a

three-week trip home on a troop ship, which gave them time to decompress and debrief

with fellow soldiers, and helped them to gain perspective on their wartime experiences.

“Now events move too rapidly,” Dr. Borus told Nordheimer (1972). “My God, the

Marines even bring them home in jungle fatigues” (p. 24). Shigemura and Nogura (2002)

reflect that this rapid transition from soldier to a civilian continues today, when soldiers

can travel from a war zone to their home country in approximately 24 hours, and are

expected to re-adjust quickly to civilian life.

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

163

Since its addition to the DSM-III in the early 1980s, post-traumatic stress disorder

(PTSD) has become recognized as a condition that affects not only combat soldiers and

veterans, but also persons subjected to other forms of violence and trauma, including

sexual and domestic violence, political violence and terror, and those who have lived

through a natural disaster (Herman, 1997). Shepherd Bliss (2006) writes that “those of us

who are part of military families often have post-traumatic stress, even if we did not

continue the family tradition and go into the service” (p. 27). Complex humanitarian

emergencies, in which many people are exposed to life-threatening events, also bring an

increase in psychological suffering and post-traumatic distress (Ager, 2002, p. s43).

Witnesses to a violent act or accident, such as a motor vehicle accident, an airline

disaster, a nuclear accident, and so on, as well as those who learn that something terrible

has befallen a close relative or friend, may also suffer symptoms associated with post-

traumatic distress (Lamprecht and Sack, 2002). In Canada, recent reports show that a

growing number of emergency professionals, such as firefighters and RCMP officers, are

receiving a medical diagnosis of PTSD (CBC News, 2011, Oct. 4; Freeze, 2011).

Importantly, not everyone who survives these situations will suffer from persistent

post-traumatic distress, although symptoms can take months or years to emerge

(Lamprecht and Sack, 2002; Satel, 2011). In general, the greatest risk for suffering seems

to be exposure to interpersonal violence—particularly rape and combat exposure for men,

and rape and being threatened with a weapon for women—while living through a natural

disaster is associated with the smallest risk (Benedek, 2011). In addition, the more

traumatic events to which a person is exposed, the greater the likelihood of their

experiencing and suffering from distress (Eytan et al., 2004).

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

164

Trauma and Suffering amongst Canadian Soldiers and Veterans

During our conversation, Christian MacEachern told me that the Canadian veteran

who is “healthy but maybe stressed out” is perhaps the most common veteran. But there

are also veterans who have been physically injured, and those who suffer from invisible

injuries such as post-traumatic distress or traumatic brain injuries (Perreaux, 2011).

According to Tadzio Richards (2010), amongst former members of the Canadian

military, “PTSD is now the number one pensioned psychiatric disorder” (p. 40). In an

interview with Rick MacInnes-Rae on CBC Radio’s Dispatches, Brigadier-General

Richard Giguere, who spent 18 months in Afghanistan as Deputy Commander of the

Canadian Task Force, commented that many veterans suffering from post-traumatic

distress related to their service in Afghanistan will take time to come forward about their

suffering (MacInnes-Rae, 2011). Still other soldiers and veterans may not be suffering

from traumatic experiences or brain injuries, but nevertheless feel changed by their time

in the military and are experiencing reactions in their own lives that they don’t always

understand, as described by Tim Lewis in Chapter 8.

For many Canadians, unless they have direct contact with someone who suffers

from post-traumatic distress, it is difficult to understand such suffering and why recovery

isn’t a more immediate process. Andy Fisher (2006) describes the life of a typical trauma

survivor in Western society: “[They] often look unperturbed on the surface but are

meanwhile living in a private hell of nightmares, flashbacks, suicidal preoccupations,

crippling shame, gastrointestinal difficulties, chronic illness, and so on. Their distress is

less visible and more interiorized” (pp. 166-167).

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

165

Judy Jackson’s (2011) film War in the Mind follows several young veterans who

recently participated in the University of British Columbia’s Veterans Transition

Program, an innovative program that uses role play and re-enactment approaches to assist

veterans suffering from depression and post-traumatic distress. One of the young men

interviewed in the film is Wayne, a soldier who served in the Canadian Forces in

Afghanistan. Reflecting on his experience as a soldier, Wayne tells Jackson how “Being a

basic human being conflicts with being a soldier in some circumstances. Because you

know as a human being what you should be doing, but as a soldier, it may be different.

So there’s a lot of inner conflict.”

According to a 2003 report by the Canadian Standing Senate Committee on

National Security and Defence, since September 11, 2001, large portions of the Canadian

Forces “have been suffering from levels of stress and overwork that transcend ‘abusive’”

(pp. 18-19). One of the ways for dealing with such stresses is for soldiers to shut down

their feelings, something which often doesn’t serve them well once they return home to

Canada (CBC Radio, 2011, Nov. 11). The Senate Committee’s (2003) report also

suggested that most soldiers and veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress have not

sought treatment or compensation due to fears about being stigmatized by fellow military

officers, veterans and the public as weak, crazy, or “malingerers and fakers trying to

escape their duties” (p. 21).

By the Canadian Forces’ own estimates, approximately 2,000 of the 35,000

Canadian soldiers who served in Afghanistan will suffer from post-traumatic distress

(Ballantyne, 2011). However, The Globe and Mail (May 30, 2011) used access to

information laws to obtain post-deployment screening reports, which found that one in

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

166

four soldiers returning from Afghanistan engages in high-risk drinking or other

experiences ranging from depression to thoughts of suicide. In addition, according to a

CBC News report, an increase in domestic violence on Canadian military bases in recent

years is attributed to soldiers returning from Afghanistan with both physical and

psychological injuries (CBC, March 31, 2011).

Judith Herman (1997), a clinical professor of psychiatry with expertise in trauma

exposure, explains that events causing trauma are “extraordinary . . . because they

overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life” (p. 33). And LGen (ret.) Roméo

Dallaire argues that the Canadian military is not good at recognizing and assisting

soldiers and veterans with invisible injuries. Dallaire tells filmmaker Judy Jackson (2011)

that the military is a:

conservative bastion of society that is also Darwinian in nature. It is

essentially based on a competitiveness and an ability to overcome. It is also a

culture that is very visual—we’ve got to see a map of the ground. So if they

don’t see it, they’re going to have a hard time understanding it. So an injury

that is visible is recognized immediately as an honourable injury . . . But

those that have injuries ‘between the ears,’ how do you handle them? How

does an organization that is totally foreign to that concept adjust to that?

Dallaire explains that soldiers are specifically chosen and trained to handle a high

level of stress; however, over the course of several missions, many soldiers live through

multiple experiences of stress and distress, which compound over time. He describes the

suffering from post-traumatic distress as “an intolerable level of pain, and the pain is not

in your leg or arm.” In Dallaire’s experience, he tells how medication and therapy can

help sufferers to “build a prosthesis of things to avoid. The viciousness of this injury,

however, is that every now and again something takes away your prosthesis—a sound or

something—and you are found helpless. When you have a physical prosthesis you decide

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

167

when you don’t need it anymore . . . but with PTSD . . . your defensive mechanisms

disappear on you.” As such, Dallaire continues to advocate and bring public attention to

what he calls “the most vicious of injuries,” since he believes this is one of the best ways

of changing the military’s attitude and capacities for helping veterans (Jackson, 2011).

During this research, I spoke with board members from the Canadian Veteran

Adventure Foundation (CVAF), many of whom eloquently described how during the

course of their involvement with the CVAF, they arrived at a deeper, more sympathetic

understanding of the suffering that comes from trauma. For example, Ian Sherrington,

who taught Christian MacEachern in Mount Royal College’s ETOL program, and who

was active on the CVAF’s board of directors, recalls how it was meeting and getting to

know Christian that finally made the issue of post-traumatic distress real for him. “You

hear about it on the news, or forever and ever about people who are shell-shocked or who

have problems coming back, but it doesn’t really sink in. You’re still separated, you’re

still detached, it’s there but then it’s gone,” explained Ian. “But when you actually live it

with someone, and you sit in a canoe with them going down a river in the dark on an

expedition, and you hear them having a real panic attack and you find out later through a

debrief that this is what was going on in their mind, that sits pretty close, that makes it

real, it makes it totally in touch and in reach of what you can do for them. Christian

brought that to me.” Another board member commented that “perhaps as we understand

more about PTSD we’re going to learn that this isn’t something that you just give a pill

for and treat over half an hour and it’s over, but that this is something that’s very long

lasting and it’s going to need support for a long, long time.”

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

168

Monica Culic, who founded the CVAF along with Christian MacEachern,

suggested that most of the veterans who were involved with the CVAF will suffer from

post-traumatic distress for their entire lifetime. “And they know that,” she said. “They

can’t undo what they’ve had happen to them, in terms of combat stress and exposure to

traumatic events.” Monica also reflected on how the veteran’s suffering affects more than

just him/herself: “It’s not just the Forces member that struggles, it’s his entire family, it’s

his kids, it’s his wife, it’s his best buddy, because when he’s great, it’s great . . . and then

when he has an episode or is struggling, or flashbacks, or he’s not sleeping or his

medication gets changed, or something’s triggered him, he’s difficult, he manifests all the

symptoms, he isolates, he’s angry, he’s all these things.” Author and photographer Penny

Coleman (2006), whose ex-husband Daniel was a Vietnam veteran suffering from post-

traumatic experience and who later committed suicide, echoes Monica’s observation,

noting that “living with a PTSD vet is its own traumatic experience” (p. 5).

The effects of trauma beyond the primary sufferer are confirmed by a number of

research studies. For example, the Australian Ministry of Veterans Affairs has reported

that in Australia, the children of Vietnam veterans are three times as likely to die of

suicide as members of the general population (VVAA, 2000). Catherine Panter-Brick and

colleagues’ (2009) study with school children in central and northern Afghanistan found

that in addition to direct trauma exposure, an important predictor in Afghan youths’

mental wellbeing was the mental health of their adult caregivers. Betancourt and Khan

(2008) found similar results in other war-affected countries, reporting that caregivers who

are suffering the effects of stress greatly affect children’s ability and resilience in coping

with war-time stressors. All of these findings are consistent with Vamik Volkan’s (1997)

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

169

description of the transgenerational transmission of trauma, in which an older generation

externalizes past experiences of trauma onto their children, who become reservoirs “for

the unwanted, troublesome parts of an older generation” (p. 43). This trauma is passed

through the generations and becomes part of a group’s collective memory. While the

trauma itself was once tangible for those who experienced it, the children continue to

mourn something that they did not themselves experience, yet which they still feel in

their bodies through intense anger, sadness, and/or humiliation.

As Monica Culic also observed, the effects of post-traumatic distress are long-

lasting. While not every person exposed to a traumatic stressor will suffer from post-

traumatic distress, those who do will likely suffer from symptoms associated with

traumatic stress for a long time, or even a lifetime (Weiss et al., 1992). More than three

decades after the Korean war, 90-100% of the veterans who were prisoners of war

continued to suffer from post-traumatic distress (Sutker et al., 1991), and at least 50% of

Cambodian refugees have been found to suffer from distress, with up to 71% showing

symptoms of major affective disorders (Carlson and Rosser-Hogan, 1991). It is estimated

that somewhere between 1.4 and 1.9 million German women were raped by invading

soldiers at the end of World War II (Kuwert et al., 2010), and that approximately 10% of

those rape victims committed suicide (Messerschmidt, 2006). In a study with 27 elderly

German women who were raped in 1945, Kuwert and colleagues (2010) found that nearly

half of the women still suffered from post-traumatic distress more than 60 years later.

Today, the mortality rate amongst Vietnam veterans in the U.S. continues to be

approximately double that of members of the general public (Crawford, Drescher and

Rosen, 2009). Vietnam veterans with post-traumatic distress are also more likely to die

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

170

than those veterans not suffering from post-traumatic symptoms. Causes of increased

death amongst the veterans include both external causes such as suicide, homicide,

accidents and substance abuse, but also medical causes such as cardiovascular disease

and cancer. The increased mortality rate is thought to be caused by increased substance

use, chronic stress, and a general lack of self-care among Vietnam veterans suffering

from continued distress.

Shigemura and Nomura (2002) suggest that United Nations peacekeepers have a

high risk of developing symptoms of distress related to both direct and indirect

experiences of trauma. However, post-traumatic distress amongst peacekeepers is not

well understood. Souza and colleagues’ (2011) meta-analysis of 12 studies involving

peacekeepers revealed that varying methodologies led to varying reported levels of

distress, from 0.5% to 25.8%. The authors suggest the overall prevalence may be

underreported because soldiers are concerned about how reporting psychological

problems will affect their career, including fear of being stigmatized and ostracized by

peers and superiors. For example, a Canadian study revealed that 15% of peacekeepers

returning from missions to the former Yugoslavia in 1992 and 1993 suffered from post-

traumatic distress (Shigemura and Nomura, 2002). The author of that Canadian study,

psychiatrist Dr. Greg Passey, told Tadzio Richards (2010) that he and his colleagues

found that “one out of five people had PTSD or major depression or a combination of

those coming home from the tours [in Yugoslavia]” (p. 41). However, at the time the

Canadian military disputed Passey’s findings and told him that his statistics were flawed.

The difficulty with understanding trauma experiences and post-traumatic distress

amongst peacekeepers may stem from the fact that each peacekeeping mission varies in

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

171

both intensity and the types of jobs peacekeepers are required to undertake. Some

operations may be more distressing than others, in terms of the circumstances to which

soldiers are exposed and how they are able to respond. Souza and colleagues (2011)

explain that while the general public might perceive the modern peacekeeper’s role as

less life-threatening and demanding than would occur during war, a peacekeeper often

faces additional burdens. For example, “it is not rare during [a peacekeeping] operation to

be attacked by the same population they are supposed to be helping. This kind of threat

leads to a situation that is one of the most notable differences between soldiers as

warriors and soldiers as peacekeepers: the necessity of upholding restraint” (p. 309).

Shigemura and Nogura (2002) observe that the restraint and passivity expected of

peacekeepers, even when their lives are threatened, offers no opportunities to release their

aggression. Further, peacekeepers often face situations in which there is very little they

can do for the population they are charged to protect. In such situations, “while the

workers feel powerlessness, helplessness and anger, they also vicariously experience the

victims’ feelings of rage, powerlessness and despair, resulting in secondary traumatic

stress disorder” (p. 486).

Symptoms Commonly Associated with Post-Traumatic Distress

As defined in both the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (currently the DSM-IV) and the World Health

Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (currently the ICD-10), the

symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder include disturbing memories,

nightmares, thought intrusions and physical sensations that may be triggered by sights,

smells, and sounds and include flashbacks, which cause the sufferer to re-experience the

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

172

event as though it is happening in the current moment. While many sufferers have

intrusive memories, others may have little or no memory of the trauma event(s). Either

way, a person suffering from PTSD often avoids situations and people that tend to trigger

memories or sensations associated with his/her trauma and distress; however, a person is

often unable to predict memory triggers, which leads them to become increasingly

avoidant, behaviour that tends to be accompanied by a disengagement with the outside

world as well as difficulties with intimacy. Sufferers also experience increased arousal,

which can include problems falling and/or staying asleep, inability to concentrate,

irritability and eruptions of intense anger, and hypervigilance. A person is medically

diagnosed with PTSD only after their symptoms and distress have endured for more than

one month (Benedek, 2011; Hewson, 2001; Lamprecht and Sack, 2002). Symptoms may

come and go, and can be triggered by various life events (Ozer and Weiss, 2004).

Roméo Dallaire tells Judy Jackson (2011) that in his own experience, the

flashbacks to his time in Rwanda are “digitally clear and often it goes in slow motion,

and it comes at different random times. And what it does it is makes you re-live the

experience. And so for me, the Rwandan genocide—and for my colleagues—isn’t 16

years ago. If I sit down and think about it, it happened this morning. I can bring the

vividness. I can bring the smell. I can bring that trauma and the sounds back.”

Sleep disturbances and anxiety (or distressing) dreams are especially common for

people suffering from post-traumatic distress. “Veterans with PTSD generally report

awakening from a dream that involves reliving the trauma, experiencing strong emotions

that would have been appropriate reactions to the original traumatic event—usually rage,

intense fear, or grief” (Ross et al., 1989, p. 700). While some symptoms seem to abate

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

173

over time, sleep disturbances tend to continue over the long term for chronic sufferers.

Judy Jackson’s (2011) film War in the Mind includes footage of an Operational Stress

Injury clinic meeting for Canadian veterans from World War II to Afghanistan. John

McGowan, who performed reconnaissance in WWII, describes how for the last 60 years,

he has woken up every morning at 4:00 a.m. with the sensation that he is somewhere he

shouldn’t be—and that he is back in the war and crawling around in the dark. A study by

Jules Rosen and colleagues (1991) found that for as many as two-thirds of the Holocaust

survivors who participated in their research sample, “impaired sleep and frequent

nightmares are considerable problems even 45 years after liberation” (p. 62). In 1992,

fifty years following the Canadian Forces’ assault at the beaches of Dieppe, it was

estimated that 30-43% of the surviving veterans continued to suffer from post-traumatic

distress (The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, 2003).

Studies with U.S. combat veterans from World War II have shown that post-traumatic

symptoms are not static and do tend to improve over time, although as described by John

McGowen above, “even after four decades, exposure to war-related trauma has a

significant influence on the emotional functioning of veterans” (Rosen et al., 1989,

p. 68). The researchers found that while symptoms such as flashbacks and nightmares

tended to decrease or disappear over time, other symptoms such as sleep disturbances,

anxiety and sensations of estrangement, tended to remain although with reduced severity.

In Jackson’s (2011) film, no matter how old they are or which war(s) they were

involved in, the veterans describe being devastated by the death of fellow soldiers in the

field, and upon their return to Canada, suffering from lack of sleep, anger, feelings of

edginess, and flashbacks. One soldier described how after he returned from Afghanistan,

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

174

he no longer felt safe in Canada; every person he encountered seemed to pose a threat.

Another described a brief “honeymoon stage” when he returned home to Canada but once

that phase was over, he had an overwhelming sense that he no longer ‘fit’ into society

(Jackson, 2011). Another veteran who participated in the Veterans’ Transition Program

spoke with Jim Brown on CBC Radio’s The Current and reflected on the disconnect he

felt after returning home from Afghanistan, particularly when people would ask him how

many people he’d killed and whether “it was cool” (CBC Radio, 2011, Nov. 11).

Greg Prodaniuk, the western regional coordinator for the Operational Stress Injury

support program, explained to Tadzio Richards (2010) that despite the common public

perception, veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress are generally not a risk to their

communities. “The vast majority of them suffer in silence and in their basements, and

they don’t hurt people . . . But they do destroy relationships . . . They have difficulty

controlling their emotions. They have reactions they’re not in control of” (p. 42).

Prodaniuk describes how he always tells post-traumatic distress sufferers that their lives

are incompatible with alcohol, that drinking is “like throwing gasoline on the fire.”

However, as noted earlier in this chapter, many veterans turn to alcohol as their respite of

choice. Indeed, post-traumatic distress is often accompanied by other illnesses, such as

substance abuse and depression, and it has been suggested that co-morbidity rates

amongst veterans with post-traumatic distress may be significantly higher than amongst

other sufferers (Richardson, Elhai and Sareen, 2011). Post-traumatic distress has also

been correlated with homelessness (Tanielian and Jaycox, 2008). For example, in the UK,

25% of the homeless population are veterans, while in the United States, 200,000

veterans are homeless (Jackson, 2011).

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

175

In addition, suffering from post-traumatic experience is associated with an

increased risk for attempting suicide (Tanielian and Jaycox, 2008). And suicide, reflects

Roméo Dallaire, “is the extreme expression of the stress and this injury” (Jackson, 2011).

Dallaire has been open and honest over the past 10 years about his own experiences

during and following the failed UN mission in Rwanda, including his struggles with

substance abuse, cutting, and suicide attempts. Nine of Dallaire’s comrades from the

Rwandan mission have since taken their own lives (Jackson, 2011). In the documentary

Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (2004), Dallaire describes

how once he returned home to Canada, he couldn’t sleep. “I couldn’t stand the loudness

of silence,” he says. And in those moments, he became suicidal—he couldn’t live with

the pain, and death seemed to be the only option.

The Canadian Forces does not keep medical statistics for soldiers who have left the

army, nor does it keep information on reservists who have attempted or committed

suicide following a mission. Mr. André Marin, Ombudsman, Department of National

Defence told The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence (2003)

that the fact that the Department of National Defence and Veterans Affairs Canada does

not keep statistics related to soldiers and veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress

created “a self-fulfilling prophecy. People conclude that since there is no data, it is

questionable that PTSD exists” (p. 30). In its report, the committee called this lack of

information and data “disturbing and insupportable” (p. 32).

Other countries do keep statistics on both soldiers and veterans. For example,

during the United Kingdom’s participation in the Gulf War, 24 soldiers died in combat,

but 107 have since committed suicide (Jackson, 2011). Approximately 58,000 U.S.

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

176

soldiers died in the Vietnam War, but 102,000 Vietnam veterans have since committed

suicide. Indeed top U.S. officials have declared a “military suicide epidemic,” since

veterans account for 20% of the suicides in the United States each year. This means that

18 veterans commit suicide every day (Jackson, 2011).

Traumatic experiences and responses to trauma also cross species borders. For

example, Gay Bradshaw and colleagues (2008) work with chimpanzees subjected to

experiments in laboratory settings, and have found that they suffer in similar ways to

humans who have been traumatized. Their research paper examines the symptoms of two

chimpanzees now living at the Fauna Foundation sanctuary in Québec, and they note that

like many human trauma survivors, the chimpanzees exhibit hypervigilance,

hyperarousal, anxiety, dissociation, violent self-attacks, and ritualistic behaviours. These

chimpanzees often avoid social situations and interactions and tend to be prone to

emotional outbursts and unpredictable anger. Elsewhere, Bradshaw (2009) points to

research being done with other animals, including elephants, polar bears, cougars, and

turkeys, who have also been diagnosed with trauma symptoms. And a recent article in the

New York Times tells how at least five percent of the military dogs that served alongside

soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are showing behavioural symptoms of canine post-

traumatic distress (Dao, 2011).

Treatment and Coping with Post-traumatic Distress

Psychiatrist Sally Satel (2011) writes that “anyone who fights in a war is changed

by it” (p. 52), and she draws attention to how the changeover from military to civilian life

is a profound time in a soldier’s life that may be accompanied by intense and

overwhelming confusion, instability, and restlessness. The veteran not only needs to

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

177

make sense of his/her experiences in the military, but also to develop a new identity

outside the military and to imagine a new future. Satel is a proponent of early

intervention for veterans, particularly in the crucial period of readjustment to civilian life,

and she suggests that many veterans may need professional help during this time. Satel’s

suggestions are interesting in light of the fact that many indigenous societies host

important rites and rituals for soldiers returning to the community after war. While in

Western society, we tend to regard trauma as an individual experience, Lisa Schirch

(2005) reflects that “many traditional and indigenous communities view trauma as a

collective experience needing symbolic group healing and purification rituals” (p. 10).

Alcinda Honwana (1998), for example, describes in detail the healing and

purification rituals undertaken to bring a nine-year-old Mozambican child soldier back

into his community, which included setting fire to a hut from which the boy’s family

helped him to escape, and inviting him to breathe an herbal remedy, take a ritual bath,

and drink medicine. Finally, an animal was sacrificed beneath a tree, and then roasted and

shared with the entire community. Many other soldiers in Mozambique also underwent

purification rituals after the war, intended both to restore links with the ancestors as well

as to provide the first steps towards social and collective reconciliation. Honwana

acknowledges that such rituals have limits, particularly in that traditional practices often

suggest that violence and war should be erased from the collective memory through

ritual, which poses the risk that human rights will once again be violated. However, she

suggests that the ability of the ritual practices to restore stability to communities after war

and to provide social support to those who have returned from war is very powerful at the

local level.

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

178

Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay (1991) who works with Vietnam veterans echoes the

importance of community griefwork. He believes that “thwarted, uncommunalized grief

is one important reason there are so many long-term psychological casualties of the

Vietnam War” (p. 578). Shay acknowledges that the battlefield is not the place for

griefwork, but he actively encourages that griefwork be incorporated into military units

once soldiers have exited a combat situation.

In the past, treatment programs for veterans with PTSD have been found to be

limited in their effectiveness. However, Richardson, Elhai and Sareen (2011) recently

suggested that treatment has evolved in the past decade to be more helpful. The

researchers followed the treatment response of military veterans who had suffered from

post-traumatic distress for more than 10 years. Many of the veterans were seeking

treatment for the first time and the researchers found that with an intensive course of

outpatient treatment (medication and psychotherapy) over one year, there was a decrease

in the severity of distress symptoms. However, they caution that chronic distress

symptoms tend to fluctuate and that there needs to be additional longitudinal studies to

follow veterans into the future to determine whether their symptoms continue to abate

and their health continues to improve.

The University of British Columbia’s Veteran’s Transition Program is receiving

accolades for its therapeutic approach that sees depression rates dropping to minimal or

no depression at all amongst participants. The program uses a re-enactment approach to

role play events, which the program director says “helps undo the wiring that military

training has implanted in their brain” (Jackson, 2011). One of the participants comments

that the program “turns on its head the idea that men aren’t supposed to feel, and that the

Invisible Wounds and Post-Traumatic Distress

179

acceptable emotions for a man are anger and that you can express that by fighting or

yelling . . . The rest of the emotions are said to you, in the military context, ‘That’s your

personal problem. Bottle that up inside, don’t go telling other people about it because

you’re weak if you do.’” Another young veteran in the program describes that “the only

people that can help me are the people that have been there [to Afghanistan]—the people

that know” (Jackson, 2011). In a conversation with Jim Brown on The Current (CBC

Radio, 2011, Nov.11), Dr. Marvin Westwood described how in the Veteran’s Transition

Program, the participants share their stories with others who have lived through similar

circumstances, and through this process, “they start to feel lighter.” However, the

program helps only 12 veterans per year.

As will be told in the stories that follow, veterans’ lives and experiences do tend to

fall into patterns that often include isolation, avoidance, anger, and so on. And their

stories suggest another approach to healing and recovery that each veteran came to on his

own: spending time connecting with nature, ranging from climbing and hiking to

canoeing and farming. While most of the veterans find that their nature experiences are

important in combination with other forms of treatment, they all emphasize the ways that

nature has been crucial in their own recovery and coping with stress and post-traumatic

distress. Overall, the story each veteran tells and wants to make available to others is

about how his recovery is wholly and inextricably interconnected with nature—he feels

best and most human when surrounded by and inhabiting the more-than-human world.

180

Chapter 8

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

There’s a myth of recovery,

that you put it behind you,

remember the good times,

let bad memories fade.

—Michael Parmeley (2006), Vietnam combat veteran

from Meditation on Being a Baby Killer, p. 414

What does recovery mean in the context of this thesis? The four men who share

their stories have experienced the unspeakable—they will never be able to escape these

experiences, stresses, and traumas. Each one is working to find ways of living with how

he has been trained in the military and with what he has seen, done and/or experienced.

As Michael Parmeley (2006) observes further in his poem excerpted above, recovery

does not involve simply erasing or forgetting the events and traumas that have happened,

but rather these events provide the context—the bones—of one’s present living. The

memories “stand up to be counted. They’re part of what’s true” (p. 414).

Many veterans, including the ones whose stories follow, live with daily challenges

and memories—with the images of past experiences burned into their minds, as well as

automatic responses from military training. So what is recovery? It might mean fewer

flashbacks, or fewer nightmares, fewer experiences of anger or hypervigilance. It might

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

181

mean less isolation, less loneliness. It might mean better sleep, or even sleeping through

the night. Or it might just mean experiencing a few moments of peace or joy or wonder in

the face of the world once in a while. Recovery is extraordinarily complex. It is a back

and forth, up and down process, not a linear one. From my understanding, there is no

‘progression’ of recovery, because sufferers can and do encounter many obstacles or

unexpected difficulties. Recovery does seem to involve a process of time, but as Judy

Jackson (2011) examines in her film, War in the Mind, many WWII veterans experience

as much distress today as they did 60 years ago: they still don’t sleep, they still have

flashbacks and nightmares, they still weep over their experiences, and many recall the

war as though it happened this morning.

What follows are the stories of four veterans, ranging in age from early 30s to mid-

60s, and with a wide range of military experiences. Some of them actively took part in

peacekeeping and/or combat missions, others never made it to the front lines, but all have

had their lives forever changed by their military service. All suffer from invisible wounds

left by military service and war. Their stories are both sad and hopeful, as they contend

with the sadness of experiences to which most of us may never personally relate, and

with the hope and new possibilities for life that each of them has found in the more-than-

human world.

In this research, I have deliberately not entered the veterans’ stories of trauma—not

because these stories are unimportant but because many of them are unspeakable—or if

they can be spoken, I do not have the background and training to support the men in

telling me such stories. For this reason, I let each veteran take the lead and tell me what

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

182

and how much of his story he wanted to. Accordingly, these are primarily the stories of

what happens after conflict, stories of post-military experience.

While the veterans’ experiences are unique, each holds that there are broader

implications for the story he tells—for other veterans and civilians alike. In the end,

connecting with the more-than-human world is not about treating post-traumatic distress

or about helping sufferers to erase or forget their trauma, but rather it is about finding

ways of living a more balanced life, with less anxiety and an increased sense of wellbeing

and connection with the wider world.

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

183

Christian MacEachern

It’s one of those warm January days that occasionally bless us on the east side of

the Rocky Mountains. As I drive southwest of Calgary, I’m awed by the stunning beauty

in this part of the world—by the brilliant sun and cloudless winter blue sky against the

crisp white snow-covered mountains. I am about to meet with Cpl. (Ret.) Christian

McEachern, C.D., at the house he rents near Priddis with a housemate. Christian meets

me by the barn at the top of the hill, where I park my car. I’m eight months pregnant, and

he doesn’t want me to fall on the icy pathway leading down to the house. He also makes

sure that I’m not bowled over by his two large dogs who rush to greet me.

After a few minutes of casual conversation, we settle into his living room, with its

wall of windows overlooking the foothills and the mountains. “I was a good soldier. I

was doing everything everybody else was,” Christian tells me. Now in his early 40s,

unshaven with greying hair, fit and wearing casual outdoor clothing, Christian presents an

image similar to many of the avid ‘outdoorsy-types’ living in and around Calgary. If I

passed him in the street, it would not occur to me that he is a veteran, or that he suffers

from post-traumatic experiences. He is soft spoken, but I can hear the frustration in his

voice. “For the most part, I was outstanding with the top marks you could get as a soldier,

but after a couple of tours, I was partying hard like everybody else and started losing

focus.”

Christian, who joined the Cadets when he was 12, spent 14 years serving in the

Canadian Forces, as a member of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry,

including UN-sanctioned peacekeeping missions in the former Yugoslavia and Uganda.

On both missions, Christian witnessed or was subject to a number of horrifying events,

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

184

leading to his post-traumatic stress diagnosis in 1998. He is animated and candid as he

speaks about his experiences as a young soldier in training and on peacekeeping

missions.

“When I did my leadership course in ’93 before I deployed to Yugoslavia, it was

three months of high stress. We started with almost 60 people and graduated with 12, and

most of them were medical or physical failures. It was 24-hours-a-day, 5-day-a-week

sleep deprivation. You’d go home, sleep Friday night, live fire all day Saturday. . . .

Sunday was kind of a recoup day, although it was cleaning gear and getting yelled at and

lockers being thrown around and shit like that, but after three months I came home and

my girlfriend at the time was like, ‘You’re a fuckin’ mess!’”

One night, Christian got up to use the toilet and realized only later that he was

peeing on the plant in the corner of his bedroom. He would also find himself shaking his

girlfriend awake. “I’d be trying to wake her up for her shift, saying, ‘Come on, get up, it’s

your fucking shift,’ just strange things where she’d find me crawling around on the floor

trying to find my rifle . . . because if it’s anywhere farther away from you than grabbing

distance, you’re in serious trouble. They train you so hard that it’s instinct after a while

. . . and this isn’t even combat, this is just what they’re training guys to do, and it starts to

affect your home life.

“So then you go on a tour, like Yugoslavia, where pretty much you’re working 22

or 23 hours a day on the front line, being shot at or guys are getting killed or wounded

with land mines, so by the time I came home after about a year and a half in Yugoslavia

and with all the leadership training, I was pretty wired. And the thing was it wasn’t just

me, it was everybody. They trained us hard for Yugoslavia as if we were going to war,

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

185

and then we come home from Yugoslavia and we’re pretty disgusted with the blue beret

and the United Nations, and the rules of engagement. Not that we wanted to go over and

shoot people, but we did want to go over and make a difference.”

He remembers coming home from Yugoslavia at age 24 with $35,000 in his bank

account. There had been no opportunity to spend money on the front lines, other than a

weekend break in Budapest and a week in Holland. “For the most part you come home,

you’re young, you’re completely wired, you’re feeling invincible . . . It wasn’t that we

were bad people or that we wanted to hurt anybody, but when you do the sleep

deprivation stuff, I’ve driven vehicles so tired that drunk driving is easy. The guys just

start to push themselves. I don’t have any trouble talking about this, I’m ashamed of

some of the stuff that I did but you have to realize that it was also a lot of the

environment that we were in.”

Shortly after coming home from Yugoslavia, Christian and his army buddies were

partying hard, and they began getting into bar fights. “It wasn’t that I was starting them,

or some of my buddies were starting them, but when you get these civvies pushing you

and pushing you and pushing you, and you get an army guy who’s that close to being

wired already—and so we finished a few fights pretty good. And then the assault charges

started coming in—assault causing bodily harm and all this kind of stuff—and at the time

I didn’t think too much of it. In fact, nobody thought anything of it, that a lot of guys

were getting violent charges and stuff against them. I don’t know anything about the

statistics about what was going on in home lives with families obviously because I wasn’t

a family guy, but as a single guy, I was seven-days-a-week partying. You could still do

your job, but the home life—you were making more self-destructive decisions . . . . When

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

186

you look back at my dossier at when I got in trouble at particular times, it was all related

to either right after an operation or after a significant event within the military or things

like that.”

In 1998, Christian decided to see a military psychiatrist. “The only reason I went in

was because I was starting to get panic attacks to the point where I’d be training guys out

in the bush and I’d come back off a night patrol at four o’clock in the morning, and

usually I’d get about an hour’s sleep before first light or the sun starts coming up, which

kicks everything awake again, and I’d be rolling over having nightmares, and my recruits

would look over and I’d be drenched in sweat, sitting on my pack, with my rifle up, and

the guys were like, ‘Are you ok?’ You kind of have to shake your head and go, ‘Ok,

right, I’m in Canada.’ So it starts to blend together. I literally just thought I was having a

heart attack, until I started going in [to see a military psychiatrist]. So yeah, it took a few

years, but when you look back at the progression of it, there were definitely a lot of signs

that I wasn’t right in the head when I got home.”

Christian was honourably discharged from the Canadian Forces in 2001. He knows

that his post-traumatic struggles are likely to be part of his life’s journey for a long time,

and throughout our conversation, he provides insight into what life is like for him at the

moment. “Sometimes I just get really tired,” he admits. “I’m not good with the emotional

rollercoaster stuff, the highs and the lows.” He discloses that like many others suffering

from post-traumatic experiences, he does not sleep well, often getting only a few hours of

sleep each night for months at a time. And then there are the “nightmares, which happen

nightly, they never go away, I wish they would.” After hitting “rock bottom” in 2001,

Christian has been coping better over the years, but admits that he’s still “not out of the

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

187

woods.” He still feels isolated, and prefers spending time with animals over people, and

all in all, Christian confesses that the last ten years have been lonely: “You start to feel

pretty alone on the journey.”

A few years after leaving the Canadian Forces, Christian began studying for a

Bachelor of Applied Ecotourism and Outdoor Leadership (ETOL) at Mount Royal

College (now Mount Royal University) in Calgary, Alberta. Ian Sherrington, an associate

professor in the ETOL program, remembers meeting Christian and having him in his

classes. “He was a phenomenal student from the beginning,” says Ian. “Obviously very

different from the other students, with an incredibly different perspective. He was much

older, at least 10, 12, 14 years older than all the other students, and also had this myriad

of life experiences that the other students didn’t have—that most people in the world

don’t have. So I think he struggled in some ways, and he tried to fit in in others.”

Christian confesses that he initially felt worried and anxious (something common

amongst veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress) about how he would do in the

ETOL program. “I was quite worried about performing for some of the bigger tasks, like

climbing a mountain again and having a panic attack,” he tells me. “When you go from

being able to do anything you want to taking a knee in Safeway because you’re having

panic attacks, it really gives you some severe performance anxiety because you’re used to

being up at this level [motions high with his hand] and you’re crawling on the ground like

a baby.”

He recalls training hard for the course’s first expedition. “It was almost like I was

going out for a mountain warfare course with the army, which is pretty hard, and of

course, once I got there, I quickly realized that I wasn’t out of my element, and that I was

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

188

starting to fit in a little bit. It was just nice. We started off on the Columbia River, it’s not

a fast or a hard river, it’s quite placid, but there’s a huge amount of wildlife in the area

because it’s a big wildlife corridor, and just after a couple of days, I thought, ‘Wow, this

is amazing!’ and I’m enjoying the activities with the group, and the activity of being

outside . . . It’s sunny, in BC, how can you go wrong?”

As he participated in the program’s outdoor expeditions, Christian began to notice

positive changes in his life. Ian Sherrington, who was Christian’s instructor on that first

expedition as well as subsequent ones, saw a change in him over a short period of time,

and Christian, too, noticed that he was feeling different. “It was almost as if I realized I

could still do it,” says Christian. “I went from being really quiet, in the background, to

starting to become a prominent leader in the program . . . I was trained out here, so I’m

good at it, but the confidence wasn’t there and once the confidence started coming back,

that’s where I started noticing lots of changes.”

After going through the entire veteran side of the military system, including

counselling and medication, Christian describes how it was as he sat on the banks of a

river that he felt “at peace with life for a moment” and he “realized that this was a gap

that could be filled and maybe it would be helpful for other [veterans] to be able to sit

here on the river bank, too.”

In the second year, the ETOL program offers a number of classes to help students

plan and market programs that they design themselves. Rather than coming up with an

imaginary program for the purpose of the assignment, Christian began to work towards

his idea of providing outdoor programs for veterans. His professors encouraged his

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

189

passion and the basic structure of what would eventually become the Canadian Veteran

Adventure Foundation began to take shape.

Christian, along with his then-partner Monica Culic, founded the Canadian Veteran

Adventure Foundation (CVAF) in 2006, which they envisioned would provide another

tier in the care and treatment of Canadian Forces veterans suffering from post-traumatic

distress through outdoor programming and adventure training. Monica remembers the

day that Christian told her they were going to found the CVAF: “It was almost like I

didn’t have a choice . . . It’s sort of like a partner saying, ‘We’re going to take dance

classes, honey, and it’s going to be great’ and you kind of smile and say, ‘Sure we are,

yes,’ and then we were.”

In 2007, the CVAF was officially incorporated as a non-profit corporation with

Industry Canada. While Veterans Affairs Canada currently treats veterans with post-

traumatic distress with prescription drugs and personal and group therapy, Christian and

Monica’s vision was that the CVAF would provide a third course of treatment and

support for veterans through outdoor programming. They did not see the CVAF’s

outdoor programs as a ‘fix’ to all the veterans’ problems, but rather as compatible with,

and capable of enhancing, the effects of medication and therapy.

Importantly, Christian emphasizes that they did not aim to provide gruelling

outdoor experiences to veterans. “Outdoor pursuits doesn’t have to be going and climbing

a mountain right away. I’m not going to be taking a guy with panic attacks and hanging

him off the side of the mountain and telling him to get over it.” Rather, through the

CVAF he sought to facilitate programs that met the physical fitness levels of the veterans

it serves. Christian shares that it is important to consider both the veterans’ physical and

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

190

emotional fitness levels, and to pay careful attention that programs and expeditions do not

exceed these levels. “The guys that I’m dealing with, they’re too beat up and too abused,

they don’t want to be pushed,” he explains. He further imparts that “leading these kinds

of activities doesn’t put the physical attributes to the forefront. The physical is part of it,

but knowing how hard and how far you can push people is pretty important.”

Christian also reflects on the low level of trust amongst veterans suffering from

post-traumatic distress. “If you don’t have face time with them, they’re not going to trust

you. If you don’t have the opportunity to address their concerns face to face, or explain

what’s going to happen, they automatically think I’m going to take them out and drag

them through a commando course in the mountains, so the guys aren’t going to show up.

And especially if they don’t trust you, they don’t want to go out there and look stupid,

having a panic attack on the river, so that’s why a lot of the guys will turn down activities

like this, because they’re so worried about looking stupider than they already feel.”

As such, Christian worries about similar-style programs being run by organizations

or people who don’t have a good understanding of veterans’ post-traumatic experience.

“It wouldn’t surprise me that somebody gets pushed too hard, too fast, by somebody who

doesn’t know exactly the parameters.” Christian says, “Because of where I’ve come

from, I have a real understanding of what they [other veterans with post-traumatic

distress] are going through.”

In 2007, CVAF’s first activity involved putting a float in the Calgary Stampede

Parade for the families of veterans. Monica Culic, the CVAF’s secretary and

communications director, recalls that day. “We got a couple of veterans’ families through

connections at the OSI [Operational Stress Injury] clinic here in town and they came out

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

191

and they were thrilled . . . It was a beautiful day and hot, and one of the veterans had just

come back from Afghanistan. And he said, ‘You know, a month ago, I was like: ‘I was

home, no one knows, no one cares what I’ve done.’ And now I’m walking down the

Parade with my family and being treated like I’m important and that really meant

something to me.’ So we made a difference in two families’ lives, and that was it, we

were hooked, it was better than any drug that any human being could take—just helping

people and giving them the recognition that they needed.”

That summer Christian and Monica also organized several day-long rafting trips for

reservists from the Calgary Highlanders and their families. Monica shares, “We couldn’t

really measure what it did for them, being outdoors together with their families and with

their comrades, back from combat, but they knew they felt better, being outside, being in

the fresh air, being in the water as cold as it was, just made them feel good. We knew we

were on the right track, and that we couldn’t just let this go, we couldn’t stop being the

CVAF.”

Then, following some time spent solidifying itself as a non-profit organization, the

CVAF ran a weekend-long program for veterans from the Saskatoon OSI clinic in August

2009. The participants, all veterans who had served in the Canadian Forces in various

locations, including the Balkans, Somalia, and Haiti, and all of whom were suffering

from post-traumatic experiences, arrived on a Friday night to a campsite that Christian

had set up in Kananaskis Country, a provincial park approximately an hour away from

Calgary. Also accompanying the group were Dr. Susan Brock, the leader of the

Saskatoon OSI clinic, and Dr. Greg Passey, who leads an OSI clinic in Vancouver.

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

192

Saturday involved a full day of rafting, with the morning spent on the Bow River

and the afternoon on the Kananaskis River. Saturday night, all the participants returned to

the campsite for dinner and sat around the campfire for the evening, talking and

reminiscing. On Sunday, the group took a trip into the mountain town of Banff, including

visits to Bow Falls and the Banff Hot Springs. Christian describes how already “after the

first river in the morning on Saturday, you could see the guys melting, starting to relax

and smile and have a little bit of fun . . . They were quite happy that they could be

successful at something again.” Ian Sherrington, who was also on the trip, similarly

reflects that “you could see life flowing back into [the veterans] over the two and a half

days that we had them, and at the end, they were all completely charged . . . . You could

see the benefits—you don’t need to be a sociologist or a psychologist to see it, it was just

there.” In the end, Monica reports that the weekend was “a big success,” noting that “We

[at the CVAF] measure it as a success because the [veterans] who came measured it as a

success—that’s the important factor.”

The success of the weekend was backed by several participant testimonials posted

on the CVAF’s website.10 For example, one participant wrote: “It’s nice to feel like part

of the team again. As a serving member with PTSD you don’t feel like part of the team

and sometimes because of the way PTSD affects us we are treated like and told . . . we

aren’t part of the team and then we are released which rips us from the team. Christian,

Monica, Ian and board of directors, thank you for the new team.” Another participant

shared that “it was the most fun, most relaxed, the first time in a long time that most of us

10 http://www.canadianveteranadventurefoundation.com/Guest-Book.html

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

193

weren’t angry, worried, on guard or overwhelmed. For myself, it felt like I actually felt

important, that I wasn’t forgotten and that someone actually cared how I felt.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Greg Passey, who runs an OSI clinic in Vancouver wrote the

following:

The CVAF program provides a rare opportunity for Veterans with physical

and OSI type injuries to engage in outdoor activities that they may have

otherwise thought they were incapable of doing. The variety of special

Canadian natural settings and adventure activities that the CVAF uses can

provide a calming effect and a sense of peace in veterans that are often

struggling on a day to day basis. CVAF provides a safe environment with a

focus on the activity of the day. This encourages interaction with other

veterans with similar health issues which helps to diminish their sense of

isolation and difficulty connecting to others. The sharing of their current and

past experiences in this type of environment can form an important part of

their healing/recovery process. Having experienced it first hand and

witnessing the positive effect it had on all the participating veterans, it is a

program that I would recommend.

As demonstrated by both the participants’ and the psychiatrist’s comments,

Christian emphasizes the importance of the camaraderie that developed over the weekend

amongst the veterans, many of whom did not know one another, or who had only met at

their group therapy sessions. As one CVAF board member told me, activities in the

outdoors bring people together and create the context for them to share something

special. And according to Monica, the veterans in the 2009 summer program told the

organizers that “finally they felt like there was someone here who actually gave a damn,

who wanted to listen, who cared enough to hear their stories and share, and smile and nod

and go ‘yeah.’”

Sitting around the campfire with the other veterans on Saturday night after the day

of rafting, Christian comments, “It’s probably one of the first times that I’ve sat around

with a group of army guys who had a good time when alcohol wasn’t involved.” By

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

194

about 10:00 pm, as the veterans’ talk around the campfire turned to the subject of war and

their involvement in the former Yugoslavia, Christian recalls that several of the

participants were “starting to trigger a bit . . . the ‘fucks’ started coming out and the swear

words and all that kind of stuff.” However, despite increased levels of tension and

“edginess” within the group, Christian reflects that unlike an indoor therapy setting, “it

was really easy to diffuse it because everybody was having a good time.”

The notions of tension and negative energy are something that Christian reflects

upon often in his own life. He has personally noticed that when he grooms his horse

while talking about incidents or events related to his military service “it just takes the

edge off it a little bit and makes it a lot easier to talk about and doesn’t have that lasting

effect. Normally guys can get ramped up [in indoor therapy settings] and they’ll stay that

way for days, so that’s one of the benefits about the outdoors.”

Further, Christian tells me, “I’ve done a lot of thinking about the energy that’s

involved with trauma and trying to get people going, and my theory has been that sitting

with a group of guys that are angry in a room with nowhere for all that energy to go [isn’t

always helpful].” He recalls how rather than reducing his anger, such group therapy

sessions often led him to become angrier than he was before the session. Christian

continues, “One of the things [I began to ask] when I was on that expedition [on the

Columbia River] . . . was why does [group therapy] have to be in an office or a clinical

situation? What’s wrong with having a group of guys talking about the same traumatic

stuff around a campfire after a day of canoeing, or something like that? With being

outside, that energy has a place to go.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

195

In my interviews with the CVAF board members, I asked each of them about the

reasons they chose to become involved in, and their commitment to, the CVAF. In

response, all of the board members spoke about their involvement as a humanistic calling

and a societal responsibility to Canadians who had developed post-traumatic distress in

service of their country. More important, perhaps, is that most CVAF board members

also attested to being compelled by Christian’s story because of their own personal

experiences working in some capacity in the outdoor industry, whether with children and

teenagers at summer camps or with adults in various settings. The clear pattern that

emerges when listening to each board member’s story is that all of them spoke to the

benefits of spending time in the outdoors. All shared stories of what one person described

as “the incredible changes that can occur over the length of a trip,” and all CVAF

members saw these benefits as being extendable to veterans suffering from post-

traumatic distress.

After our conversation, on the way back up the hill to my car, Christian takes me to

meet his horse, Sozo, at the barn. In the past decade, he believes that his relationships

with his dogs and his horse have been of primary importance, so much to the point that

Christian tells me, “For me having my animals has replaced people literally.” It was

through Monica, a horse enthusiast and equine therapy advocate, that Christian was first

introduced to Sozo, an ex-racehorse. Monica notes the important changes that have come

about from Christian’s relationship with Sozo. “I’ve certainly seen a difference in

Christian over the past few years since he got his horse. It’s been a big difference. He’s a

lot more grounded, he’s a lot more cognisant of his own behaviour. He thinks about

something else first instead of himself, he has to put that creature first.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

196

Including an equine component had recently become another dream for the CVAF.

In the 2009 weekend program for the Saskatoon veterans, many of the veterans spoke

about their interest in horses and suggested that they would love to come back for a

weekend or week-long trailride. As Monica describes it, the equine program the CVAF

planned to establish would be more casual than clinical. “It’ll be partnering a guy with a

horse for a week, and hang out, and learn to groom it, and we’ll do a little riding here and

a little riding there, and learn about the equine brain, and how it’s in some ways similar to

humans and in some ways it’s not.”

In August 2010, while I was still on maternity leave, the CVAF ran a second

mountain retreat for the veterans from Saskatoon who had attended the previous summer.

Then unfortunately, in July 2011, just as the organization really seemed to be getting its

feet and had planned a variety of programs for veterans, the Canadian Veteran Adventure

Foundation officially disbanded due to a lack of funding; however, using the knowledge

and learnings gained over the years, Christian is hopeful that he will eventually be able to

start a similar program that continues to serve veterans. Based on his personal

experiences, he has a deep belief in the importance of nature for all human beings. “There

are benefits across the board for everybody, whether they’re healthy or they’re totally

sick.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

197

Tim Lewis11

The summer after Tim Lewis returned from his tour in Afghanistan, he and his wife

drove to the United States for a holiday. “I made the mistake of deciding to drive for

twelve hours in an SUV that was essentially similar to the one I was driving in

Afghanistan,” Tim explains. Earlier in the day, they nearly had a head-on collision. Then

that night, they couldn’t find a place to stay. “It was holiday season, everything was

booked up,” Tim says. “I had a stress reaction, I had a full on three-year-old tantrum that

we couldn’t find a place to stay and that it was the end of the world . . . . I’d never had a

reaction like that before that I can recall as an adult. It was completely inappropriate to

the situation. We were going to have to get a hotel room. We weren’t going to camp, no

big deal. What I felt after that was embarrassed, and I couldn’t really explain why it had

happened. I had never done something like that in front of my wife. I thought I was this

switched on army guy who was in control of his emotions but all of a sudden . . . I’m

punching the steering wheel in the truck and having a tantrum, which I couldn’t explain

at the time.”

***

It’s a beautiful, warm July morning, and I’ve driven about an hour west of Calgary

to meet with Tim Lewis in the mountain town of Canmore, Alberta. Tim doesn’t come

into Calgary often and I welcome the opportunity to get out of the city for a morning.

Surrounded by the Rocky Mountains on all sides, and with an overall focus on recreation,

the pace of life feels slower in Canmore than in the city.

11 Name has been changed.

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

198

We settle in for our conversation, and Tim tells me that from the time he was

young, it was clear that he would be the third generation in his family to join the military.

He recalls the large woodlot behind his house where he spent a lot of time “playing

army.” Now in his early 30s, young and fit, the perfect picture of an outdoorsman in

Canmore, Tim looks back to the hundreds of days he spent in the woods as a preteen,

both by himself, and with friends. During summer breaks, Tim’s parents ushered him and

his siblings outside by 7:00 a.m. and they didn’t usually come home until dinner. Rather

than indoor sports, Tim always preferred being outside and early on took up sliding

sports such as skiing and skateboarding. At a young age, Tim also began hiking and

backpacking in national parks, and went on his first multi-day solo backpacking trip in

his teens. He remembers telling his father that he wanted to go hiking by himself and his

father never questioning him, simply saying, “Okay, you’re going,” and dropping him off

at the national park. This solo trip was an important rite of passage in Tim’s life.

His parents divorced when he was 11, and Tim jokes that climbing saved his life as

a teenager—that he was heading down the path of juvenile delinquency after his parents’

divorce, and when he discovered climbing, he found a place to channel his energies and

spare money. He was already used to spending a lot of time in the outdoors, but all of a

sudden this time was spent “being vertical and being with a group of males who were

different, who thought differently, and who spoke their own language around climbing.”

Tim equates it to entering a new culture unlike anything he’d experienced before and it

became everything he put his energy into—and is something he has continued putting his

energy into for the last seventeen years.

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

199

In his 20s, as a member of the Canadian infantry, Tim served in Afghanistan in

2004 and 2005. He recalls that he and his fellow soldiers were given no decompression

leave at the end of their tour in 2005. “We came straight home to Canada. I went from

being in a hostile environment to 48 hours later being back in Canada.” Upon returning

home, Tim describes feeling a clear need to go climbing in the mountains. He spent a few

days with his wife and then told her, “I’ll meet you in Canmore. I’m going climbing.” He

suggests that his strong urge to go to the mountains was his own way of creating much-

needed decompression time. “It just made sense, after that tour, to come into the

mountains.”

Around that time, both Tim and his wife fell in love with Canmore, which he

describes as “a town that embraces all outdoor activities.” Tim’s post-military dream was

to become a full-time alpinist, and to have a job on the side to sustain that lifestyle.

Shortly after releasing voluntarily from the Armed Forces in September 2005, he and his

wife moved to the mountain town.

Tim does not suffer from post-traumatic experience but still describes himself as

“changed” by his military service. In the years following his release from the army, Tim

began to notice some examples of hypervigilance. He shares a story about sitting at home

in his Canmore condo late one night when a driver began honking a car horn outside,

most likely to get the attention of a friend. Tim became increasingly agitated as the driver

continued to honk the horn for the next 10 to 15 minutes, at which point Tim stormed

outside, wearing only his underwear, and carrying a baton and bear spray. As he walked

toward the car, its occupants saw him and drove away before an altercation could occur,

but Tim remembers being baffled. “I went from pretty much calm and collected and then

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

200

ramped it right up to—that’s essentially deadly force, if you’re going to spray and baton

somebody. I thought, okay, what’s that all about? At that time, I didn’t have any

knowledge of what that could really be.”

After years of reflection, Tim considers the examples of hypervigilance and stress

reactions he has experienced to come from his military training rather than his time in

Afghanistan. “You’re trained to respond to situations in a certain way,” he tells me.

“From a combat arms background, the ideal response in a stressful, dangerous situation is

speed, aggression, violence. So you’re going to respond with maximum speed,

aggression and violence to take out the enemy or the threat. That serves you great on the

battlefield, that’s what keeps you alive, that’s what it needs to be. When you leave the

military and become a civilian again, those things very rarely serve you. There are rarely

situations where aggression and violence are the key. The speed part, sure. You can be in

a situation where you need to move quickly and act quickly, absolutely. But just

becoming aware of those things—it was hugely important for me to start making sense of

what’s gone on in my training and my experiences.”

Tim believes that it was through doing outdoor activities, and particularly doing

such activities with other veterans, that he first became aware of the changes in his life. In

his time spent with other veterans over the years, many have spoken about similar events

and responses in their civilian lives. And through these conversations with other veterans,

Tim realized that his personal experiences seem to be a “normal” response, but he asks,

“Why is it normal? Why are the guys going through the same thing? . . . My service has

changed me. I need some answers. Why has my service changed me?”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

201

When I ask about the importance of spending time with other veterans and realizing

that many of them—even those not suffering from post-traumatic distress—are

experiencing stress responses in their day-to-day lives, Tim clarifies. “I think it’s

important that it’s spending time with other veterans in the outdoors,” he says. “I found

what the outdoors has done for me, and for some other veterans that I’ve done activities

with, is it allowed us to create some space outside that essentially is a safe space for us to

just talk about this stuff. I’ve spent a lot of time with veterans in other situations, whether

it’s drinking at the bar or socializing but not being outdoors and the same types of

conversations don’t happen.”

In ordinary social situations, if the topic turns to military service and experiences,

Tim reflects that veterans’ conversations are not always “honest” and tend to be filled

with bravado. He describes his realization one day that it was in nature that the good

conversations were taking place. “In an outdoor setting a lot of those walls and barriers

are taken down and you get what people really think, or people really feel about certain

situations.”

Tim recalls one experience after he retired from the Canadian Forces when he was

working as a ski and avalanche instructor and training the Second Battalion Princess

Patricia’s Light Infantry (PPCLI) for their role in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. “I

ended up going to the backcountry with them quite a bit, doing avalanche scenarios all

day, going out skiing all day and then in the night spending some time in the tents with

the guys—again, drug free, sober . . . . I’d come into the big heated Arctic tents at night

and hang out and not really pose any questions. I was just in there warming up my hands

and cooking my meal on their stove and socializing, yet these conversations were coming

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

202

up. And the light bulb moment for me was that I was putting them in stressful scenarios

all day, in perceived-stress scenarios of avalanches and digging people out and protecting

themselves against avalanches. And somewhere that’s triggering or mimicking a military

experience, which is then allowing them to reflect in the evening on whatever it is they’re

reflecting . . . My boss and my mentor at the time noticed the same thing.”

Further, Tim reflects on how, at the end of the training week, at the PPCLI’s

graduation party from their ski and avalanche training, the conversations were completely

different from those that took place in the Arctic tents. At the graduation party, “We

would all drink way too much alcohol and then these really awkward, weird

conversations would happen. And I wondered, how is it that all week we can do this in a

pretty healthy way, and then at the end of the week, the guy who’s been quiet all week

gets three or four or five beers into him and then he’s on my shoulder crying or I’m doing

the same thing?”

It was around this time that Tim began to reflect deeply on the power of nature for

helping veterans to cope with the stress and changes stemming from military life. “I

would argue that being outdoors and doing what we’re doing works most of the time,”

Tim tells me. Furthermore, he argues that spending time outside is healthy, which he

says, “is the key. Even if somebody isn’t really opening up and talking, at least it’s not

destructive.” Tim does caution that spending time in nature is not a panacea for veterans.

“If someone is going down a destructive path, they can also participate in risky and

destructive activities outdoors.”

After training the PPCLI in the mountains, Tim went to the desert on a climbing

trip and spent a lot of time by himself, during which he reflected further on the insights

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

203

he’d gained during the training session and on his own personal experiences. “There’s

something about the outdoors that’s helped me move on from my service and look inside.

And to become—I wouldn’t say whole again, but just not so military, if you will. The

outdoors has allowed me just to move on and get healthy—not that I wasn’t healthy

before, but to keep doing something that’s healthy and that’s just been really good for

me.”

Tim recalls another ‘aha’ moment that came a few years later when he participated

in a ski trip for veterans on the Wapta Icefields. On that trip, Tim met a fellow veteran

from Afghanistan with whom he’d lost touch. The weather was terrible and instead of

skiing, the group spent a lot of time in the alpine hut. One day, the conversation turned to

Tim’s personal life and his at-that-point unexplained stress and hypervigilance

experiences. He told the story of travelling with his wife to the United States the summer

after he returned from Afghanistan—a story he’d never divulged to anyone before—and

after hearing this story, Tim’s friend shared some insights about stress. “He was able to

explain to me how stress works in combat soldiers. It’s like a cup of water and the

military likes you to be right on the edge of overflowing when you’re in combat, or when

you’re in theatre. They want you right on the edge all the time so when something does

happen, you don’t have to wait for that cup to be full, you spill over with speed,

aggression, violence . . . . But then when you come back to Canada from your combat

mission, or you become a civilian . . . you don’t need to be at that level. Daily stresses of

life also fill up that cup, whether it’s work related, home related, something happens on

the street—if you don’t have a way of draining that cup, you’re right on the edge, just

like you were in Afghanistan or wherever.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

204

So when he heard Tim’s story about his holiday with his wife and his outburst over

not being able to find a camping spot for the night, the friend explained, “Well, that’s

your stress cup. That’s simple. You’re going on holidays to get de-stressed. You get in

the car. You drive all day. Things don’t work out. You almost have an accident. You

need a safe place to stay for the evening. You’re stressed out. Cup overflows, you have a

stress reaction.”

Tim believes that like him, many infantry soldiers have a love for the outdoors

before they enter the military. “The majority of the people who make a long career of

specifically the infantry, which is my background, have a love for the outdoors

somewhere. It’s your office, it’s where you work. So if you didn’t like camping and

hunting, the recruiter probably would have sent you to the navy or the air force or

somewhere else, but if you were foolish enough to say, ‘Yeah, I love camping,’ they

probably would have said, ‘Infantry for you, son.’ Young men that are from an

‘outdoorsy background’ can be drawn to more the combat arms—the infantry, the

armoured corps, which is the tanks, or the artillery, which is the big guns. Because those

three trades, 99% of the time, are working outside . . . I’ve spent hundreds of days outside

sleeping in the dirt under the stars in the outdoors,” reflects Tim. “So there’s a deeper

connection there that probably happens with everybody. Is the military overtly speaking

about it? No. Is there still beauty when you’re outside in a war zone? Absolutely. There

are things that you’re affected by. I always remember being on duty at night and looking

up at the stars and it’s always amazingly beautiful, it doesn’t matter where you are when

you look up.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

205

Tim reflects further on the experience of talking with his friend about the ‘stress

cup’ in the alpine hut. “I think in order for us [veterans] to have some of these

conversations about how we’re trained, it’s hugely helpful that when we are outdoors, we

feel safe. Combat soldiers work outdoors, train outdoors, play outdoors, and the flip side

is you put them into a room perhaps with an expert and then try to explain this stuff to

them, it doesn’t sink in [in the same way] as when it’s your battle buddy who’s sitting

down with you in a tent or a hut somewhere up on a glacier.”

I am interested in the idea that nature creates a place to feel safe, since it has come

up in my other interviews as well, and I ask Tim to tell me more about it. “To me a big

part of it is that the outdoors doesn’t care,” he explains. “It doesn’t care if you’re dealing

with issues or you’re doing good or whatever. The outdoors, Mother Nature, is going to

throw whatever it wants at you. So, in a sense . . . it kind of puts a lot of things in

perspective for me. If I’m not mindful about what’s going on with my environment and

with me when I’m in the outdoors, especially in the mountain environment, I could be at

risk. I could be walking right into a dangerous situation. For me it definitely increases my

sense of awareness. It brings down a lot of the barriers to being fully present. And you

leave the watch at home. You leave technology behind and you get a chance to slow

down and be present . . . You’re on a different clock when you’re outside. You have to be

fully present when you’re climbing and skiing and doing all these things. And I think it

really just allows for a lot of stuff to be left behind, a lot of baggage that you don’t want

to take with you . . . It’s almost like disarming. Does it happen instantly? No. Can it be

facilitated? Yes. Can it happen on its own? Absolutely. It was happening on its own for

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

206

me for a number of years before I met some different people and they put some words

behind it and some ideas behind it, but I was doing it for a long time.”

Tim believes, too, that the benefits of spending time in the outdoors exist whether

or not a person is aware that it creates possibilities for self-reflection. “If you’re going out

because you need some peace and quiet, to get out of your own head, that’s fine. You

don’t need to go any deeper than that . . . . I think that’s the beauty of the outdoors—it

meets you where you’re at. It’s not like a clinical setting where there’s essentially a list of

questions and a list of things to be checked off. The outdoor environment doesn’t care

about any of that, it can often be a mirror just for where you’re at.”

Tim recalls a point where he realized that nature was mirroring his own personal

emotions and space. He suddenly found himself feeling scared every time he went

climbing, having fears of getting hurt, of falling and dying. Looking back, Tim believes

that these fears were irrational but they were “a mirror to where I was in my own life with

stress and things that were not dealt with and transitions that were happening.” He took

this as a sign to look inward and to begin finding ways to deal with his stress and

transition to civilian life.

Similar to his own personal experience, Tim has come across many other veterans

spending time in the mountains, fishing or climbing or skiing, often on their own and not

as part of a program. “They don’t have the words to attach to it, but they’re doing it.

They’re doing it almost full time and there’s a reason why they’re out there. So I think

that’s the beauty of it. You don’t need all of a sudden this awareness of, ‘Wow, I need to

be on this healing journey, or I need to recover from something.’ When there’s a lot of

stuff swirling around, and you just want to get out of your head in a healthy way, I think

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

207

going into the outdoors and doing whatever high energy activity it is for that moment, can

be really helpful. It allows you to come back and just be a bit more present with what you

need to be present with. You’re not as distracted.”

Tim also comments on the sense of accomplishment that comes from doing

activities in the outdoors, such as climbing mountains or canoeing down a river, and

wonders whether it taps into a biological need in human beings. “It doesn’t save the

world. It doesn’t change the socio-economic diversity of your neighbourhood,” he tells

me. “But it changes people and it leaves you with this sense of accomplishment. You feel

better. Maybe you go out and you’re able to resolve conflict in your own home then . . . .

Surfing is the same way. How pointless is it to ride a wave on a board? Yet people have

been doing it for thousands of years. Whenever I get out of the water I’m a better person

for being out in the waves for the day, so it is important. It has value. It’s not the great

hunt that’s going to feed the village but I think somewhere inside it taps into some of the

same basic needs. And I can’t explain it. I’m not sure if I really want to explain it either.

It’s good that there’s mystery around. I just feel better when I do this.”

As Tim gets older, he has noticed that his risk tolerance is decreasing, and he no

longer spends as much time climbing as he once did. However, he still spends as much

time as possible in the outdoors. “Fly fishing seems to be a lot better right now—a lot

safer option. There are probably some hidden dangers with fly fishing, too, but none that

I can see compared to climbing. It’s just interesting to see my interaction with the

outdoors change as I get older.”

Importantly, Tim advocates that spending time in nature is not the only important

thing for some veterans and they may need psychological and emotional support in other

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

208

ways. He attributes the time he has spent in the outdoors with other veterans to helping

him gain the courage to see a counsellor to explore some of his own experiences and

responses. “Unfortunately one of the last big taboos in our society is mental health,” says

Tim. “For me to finally take the steps to go see a therapist in a clinical setting was a big

deal for me. And if it wasn’t for the outdoors, I don’t think I ever would have gone. If it

wasn’t for all the work I was able to do on myself using outdoor activities, I’d probably

still be too chicken to go.”

While he is an advocate for the importance of outdoor activities for veterans, Tim

expresses that nature is important beyond that—it’s important for everyone, he tells me,

whether it’s a CEO, an immigrant transitioning to a new life in Canada, or someone else.

“I think that’s where the common human connection is. [At its most basic level, spending

time in nature is] fulfilling a lot of the same basic needs.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

209

Gord Cousins

The first time I meet Capt. Gordon Cousins, C.D., as I extend my right hand to

shake his, I’m struck by momentary paralysis and unsure what to do. Gord, a tall slim

man in his early 60s with short greying hair and a friendly smile, chuckles kindly. It’s not

the first time in the last 40 years he’s been greeted by this reaction. He gently guides my

right hand to meet his, showing me that we can still shake hands, despite the fact that he’s

missing all five fingers on his right hand.

Unlike the other veterans I interviewed, Gord did not grow up with plans for a

military career. Rather, he joined the Lorne Scots regiment of the Canadian Forces’

Reserve Army after a falling out with his Boy Scouts’ troop leader. He had been active in

the Scouts until age 14, but after leaving the organization, Gord wasn’t sure what to do

with himself. Then, in 1963, when he was 15, Gord met some other teens who were

parading with the Lorne Scots, and he told his father, “I’d like to go, too.” So the two of

them went together to explore more carefully the requirements for and commitments

involved in joining the Lorne Scots. Because of his father’s experience as a naval officer

during World War II, he was initially not keen on the idea of Gord joining the Canadian

Forces. However, his father eventually consented and enlisted him, since it would keep

Gord him away from the television and off the streets. Unlike his father’s own war

experience, it also did not seem particularly dangerous, since his son would not be going

overseas.

His father’s conviction to keep his son out of combat was made clear a few years

later when Gord was 17. His father was offered an opportunity to move to Camden, New

Jersey, to become the head of Engineering for the Campbell Soup Company. However,

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

210

the Vietnam War had just started, and as the father of two teenage boys, his father

declined because his sons would have been drafted into the U.S. Army. While he initially

considered taking the job and leaving the boys to live with their uncle, in the end Gord’s

father decided it was more important to stay together as a family. “I was well aware of

the impact [that decision] had on my dad,” Gord tells me. “It was the end of his career.

He never got promoted again.”

And so Gord continued serving as a part-time soldier with the Lorne Scots while he

finished high school, and over time he describes, “It grew on me.” However, his father’s

conviction that his son would not be going overseas when he enlisted was proven wrong

when Gord volunteered for the extra training required to become a peacekeeper in

Vietnam. Then, on May 7, 1968, at the age of 19, during one of those extra training

sessions, Gord was accidentally blown up by a “Booby Trap” simulator. He lost all the

fingers on his right hand, and severely damaged the hearing in his right ear. In addition, a

21-inch-long piece of shrapnel pierced his right collar bone in two places, opened the top

of his right lung, and stopped within a quarter of an inch of his spine. During surgery,

when the doctors removed the shrapnel, they couldn’t stop the bleeding and Gord went

into cardiac arrest, nearly dying before the doctors were able to restart his heart with

adrenalin.

He spent the next fifteen months recovering in and out of hospital, including one

period of six months in a row, during which time he suffered from staph infections,

shingles, pain and nausea, among other symptoms. Gord describes all of these

experiences as “one form of stress that builds.” In 1971, once he was considered to be

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

211

“patched up,” Gord was discharged from the Reserves with the status “Struck Off

Strength” (SOS), and received a financial settlement to compensate for his injuries.

In addition to his physical injuries, Gord suspects that he also suffered from post-

traumatic distress as a result of the accident. “The Armed Forces in the ’60s didn’t

articulate it well,” he tells me, “But in hindsight I figured it out.” He recalls one instance

when he was out of the hospital on leave and driving down the street in his friend’s car.

Another car backfired and Gord immediately ducked below the window. Another time,

he was standing in line when someone nearby stomped on a paper cup, causing him to

wince and duck. During the years following the accident, Gord often woke up, tense and

sweating, from nightmares in which he was “approaching some catastrophe but not going

through with it. Or committing some gross thing . . . I can remember in the immediate

post-op period, vivid and morbid situations of me garrotting people, running people over

with a vehicle, sliding off a roof and not being able to hang on because of no fingers on

my right hand.”

Gord also recalls his experiences of tremendous anger, and what he refers to as “a

killer instinct coming out,” despite never having been on the front lines of combat. In the

years after his accident, Gord often threw things out of frustration. The army had

designed a number of prostheses especially for him, including special pens, eating utensil

holders, and ‘carry systems,’ but he soon stopped using them because he was too

frustrated. “I decided that I would start the journey of doing without the stuff. And I

guess in hindsight that helped, but there were frustrating times and embarrassing times.”

Gord remembers many clumsy and awkward moments in those early years. “I’d be

out on a date with a girlfriend and I’d be cutting my steak, and the methodology was such

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

212

that it would sometimes slip and so my peas would go on the next table and maybe a few

minutes later the potatoes would go in the opposite direction.” He remembers feeling

both embarrassed and frustrated while he excused himself to clean up the mess. And

overall, this period when he was learning to do everything with his left hand caused “a

build up of anxiety—or anger would probably be more accurate. I didn’t take the anger

out on other people as much as it was a stress-reliever for me but it hurt people or

bothered people when they saw it happen.”

In 1967, the year prior to his accident, Gord had spent the summer working in the

parc national de la Gaspésie, a national park in the Gaspé region of Québec. As he

describes the experience, “I was out pretty much by myself on Mountain Jacques Cartier

. . . I did prospecting there and I found a gold mine.” Gord was looking forward to

continuing his work the next summer, and one of the first things that flashed through his

mind after the accident was that he had messed up his summer job. “I felt really bad

because as a student and a reservist, every summer I was going out to the bush, and I

wasn’t going to be able to go . . . That was a major thing that flashed through my mind: I

screwed up my summer! And I knew it instantaneously because I could just see the

tendons dangling there on my hand.”

Gord’s boss came to visit him in the hospital and told him to concentrate on getting

better and that he could always return to work in the bush the following summer. As it

turned out, in the summer of 1969, his former boss arranged for Gord to be hired as part

of a geophysical exploration team with another company based out of Thompson,

Manitoba. Gord was discharged from the Canadian Forces’ Barriefield Hospital in

Kingston, Ontario, and a few days later, he arrived in Thompson. “I had this sudden

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

213

transformation from parading every morning in gray flannels and a white shirt at the foot

of my hospital bed for the Matron to inspect,” he explains, “to three or four days later I

was in Thompson, Manitoba.”

As the logistics coordinator for a team of field workers collecting soil and mineral

samples, Gord ensured that the team received all necessary field supplies, and he then

repackaged all their samples to be shipped back to Toronto. “Because I had been in

hospital and I was in poor shape physically and I was skitterish, gun shy, underweight,

etcetera, I didn’t have to live out there but I chartered aircraft and I flew out there,” he

tells me. Gord believes this job was an essential part of his recovery. “That immersion

really rapidly put things behind me and I felt useful. I felt I was engaged. It was the

beginning of a feeling that I really had a role to play . . . I was able to get back into

feeling useful and getting back into shape during the three months I was able to work

before I went off to university.”

After spending the summer of 1970 as a cross-cultural exchange student in Ghana,

in 1971, Gord returned to work for the same man for whom he’d worked in 1967. “He

took me to the Ungava Region in northern Québec and then [in 1972], I went to the

Albany River district flowing into Hudson’s Bay. We canoed and we flew by helicopter

and we would set up a wall tent and stay in this location for three weeks and then we

would move to another location and do some more stuff, so constantly outdoors . . . And

other than the fact that I would cut my hand and snag it on trees and I couldn’t feel it and

blood would flow, I had a great time. And nothing held me back and so that was a

therapeutic experience—it just erased pretty well all the skitterishness I had about having

been hurt.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

214

After completing his degree at Brock University, Gord moved west to Calgary,

where he boarded with his aunt and uncle. During the winters, he often took solo trips out

to the Rocky Mountains. “I would snowshoe in, pitch a tent, stay for the weekend, maybe

do some target practice with my .22, and then I would hike out and get back in the car

and come back to Calgary.” In the summers, Gord regularly snorkelled in the mountain

rivers, “just free flow . . . like a tourist, looking and fetching whatever I found on the

bottom.”

“And so I would stay close to nature in those areas,” he reflects. “I found it relaxing

and rewarding. It was an environment [where] there was no lid on the pot, so there was

no pressure build up and it was easy to do what I wanted when I wanted to for those short

stints of time.”

At the time, Gord didn’t make the connection between nature and his recovery from

physical and psychological trauma. He explains that it is only more recently that he’s

begun to wonder whether his recovery and adaptability are associated with all the time he

spent out of doors. “[Nature] gave me a chance to prove myself again . . . And I didn’t

really dwell on it very much other than the fact that I was looking to soak up every new

experience I could to adapt . . . I had no counselling. I didn’t have any understanding of

what could happen and so on. So at that point it was more personal proving myself, just

like an educational program, as opposed to anything therapeutic. But it’s only in

retrospect now that I feel I reintegrated pretty well because of that.”

Gord credits both the Boy Scouts and the Reserves with his love for nature.

Reflecting on his decision to enlist in the Reserves once he’d left the Boy Scouts, Gord

knew that he wanted to be outdoors. “I felt more comfortable in the big outdoors than I

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

215

did confined—the concept of being confined in a ship or in a plane above ground with

gravity issues bugged me. So I thought of that as the happy medium. And so I continued

aspects of the outdoors all those years. That’s one commonality that continued before,

through and after my rehabilitation time . . . And I feel that I accommodated myself to

my situation better because of it.”

Recovery, however, is rarely a straightforward process, as Gord explains. “You

make much progress forward, then something happens and you’re three paces back.” In

the 1980s, with the busy-ness of working and raising a young family, Gord got away

from his active outdoor lifestyle and experienced what he calls “throwbacks to that anger

thing.” He recalls times when touched by one of his four children while he was asleep, he

struck out automatically and was then horrified by what he’d done. He remembers other

times when his anger would suddenly boil over while he in the living room, and he would

put his coffee cup in the kitchen sink about 10 feet away by throwing it like a grenade. “I

didn’t raise my voice, didn’t hit my wife, but that was an expression of built up

frustration . . . No more cup, followed by tears, embarrassment . . . I don’t do that now,”

he tells me. “Other times I’d slam the door. One time my son didn’t hear me speak and I

bashed down the door to his bedroom. I felt like a heel afterwards, yay tall,” Gord says,

showing a one inch space between his left index finger and thumb. “He’s crying, I’m

embarrassed, and so on . . . And so those were some things that I’ve pretty much

overcome.”

In the early 1990s, the movie Legends of the Fall was filming in the foothills west

of Calgary. When the producers put out a call for extras with previous military

experience, Gord volunteered as an amputee. However, he quickly found that his work on

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

216

the film was triggering his previous traumatic experiences. “I’d come home in the

morning after filming all night, and I’d close my eyes and this flash would go off

between my eyeballs. I started to react in ways I had not for years. . . . I would wake up

suddenly in a ‘panic state.’ Now, that’s not serious but it was interesting how something

like explosions on a movie set triggered these flashbacks and these thoughts. . . . ‘Stuff’

returns with simple, stupid little things,” he explains. And then reflecting on the ways that

his personal experience might apply to other veterans, Gord shares, “I think there can be

a recidivism rate there that needs to be understood and not frowned upon. There

shouldn’t be a lot of sanction brought against a person who is recovering over various

lengths of time.”

When I ask Gord how he overcame his anger and outwardly antagonistic reactions,

he tells me that even though filming Legends of the Fall triggered his traumatic

experiences, the film also rekindled his love for the outdoors and provided the impetus

for him to begin volunteering with the Cadets and eventually to re-enlist in the Reserves,

all of which led to his spending more time outdoors once again. In 1994, shortly after the

filming was finished, Gord signed his sons up for Cadets and became a parent volunteer.

He saw the Cadets as creating a positive environment for his sons, where they would

learn important skills such as time management, prioritizing, and developing focus, skills

he believes they carry with them to this day.

For the first few years of his volunteer experience with the Cadets, no one asked

Gord about his missing fingers. Then, late one evening, the Commanding Officer (CO) of

the Calgary Highlanders Army Cadets Corps came out to Gord’s bivouac site under a

pine tree and sat down. He said, “Cousins, you know something about this stuff. What

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

217

did you do before?” After hearing about Gord’s experience with the Lorne Scots, the CO

asked him to re-enlist. Gord recalls being surprised. Since the Canadian Forces’ policy to

that point had been, as Gord describes it, “If you were hurt, you’re out . . . I thought they

were teasing me because I thought and assumed that they wouldn’t take somebody with

‘missing parts.’” However, the CO’s request was serious, and Gord, feeling proud and

happy to be allowed back in, re-enlisted in the Reserves in early 1997.

Gord found that his new role in the Reserves gave him “something to focus upon. I

was able to go out in the bush more and more . . . I did like all the exercise. And we did

some creative stuff. And so that was a very good replacement.” He also started

snorkelling and playing underwater hockey again, among other things. “I found that I was

now once again useful and so I think quote ‘the military’ helped in having a role,” he tells

me. “It helped stem a lot of that issue. Abruptness—sudden anger . . . sudden outbursts. I

didn’t wake up in the night. I slept right through. Little things like that.”

Gord was the first amputee to ever take a canoe course with the Canadian Forces,

and some of the course instructors were surprised to see him there. He recalls that he was

clumsy with some of the strokes, but he persevered to become competent in a canoe once

more. “If I didn’t master it the first time, then I would say, ‘I didn’t do that right. I want

to do it again.’ And [the instructors] said, ‘Okay, what didn’t you do right?’ ‘Oh, this, this

and this.’ And they would allow me to redo it and I eventually mastered it to their

standard . . . And that was a further confidence builder. It made me feel useful and I was

fulfilling a practical task that they wanted and I still do it.”

Today, Gord is a Logistics Officer with the Cadet Instructors Cadre and an

Instructor in Canoeing and Swift Water Rescue with the Cadet Corps’ regional expedition

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

218

centre in Calgary. When needed, he also trains Cadets in Calgary and the surrounding

region in skills such as bushcraft, navigation and cold weather survival. Each summer, he

goes up to the Yukon for three weeks for the Cadets’ Long Paddle, which Gord describes

as “therapeutic but in a different way . . . I get out of the desk, I get paid to be outside,

having a thousand kilometre canoe trip that’s good for the soul. But it’s not because I

need it therapeutic wise, it’s because I enjoy it. I’m putting something into the kids and I

get paid to do it.”

When I ask him about the outdoors and what nature means to him, Gord thinks for

a moment and then tells me, “The outdoors, regardless of what you do—you climb,

canoe, hiking, those types of semi-physical activities—it’s something that places you in

control of your own self. You’re not encapsulated in the city. You’re not having a general

routine. You’re not doing predictable, repetatory things, and you have to use some of

your wits and some of your personal skill sets. And so it has the ability to quickly

separate you from the things, the stress of the city, accommodating your life to either

your circumstance or your community. And you’re out and away. And it doesn’t matter

whether it’s winter or summer, I think that it’s that separation that allows you to have a

measure of control over your own life again. That’s kind of how I can articulate it. . . .

[You just feel more] fulfilled, in control . . . You’re more aware of the things around you

rather than having to respond to every circumstance.”

Towards the end of our conversation, Gord expands on his thinking. “I like the free

flow environment of being out in the bush, doing something I’m familiar with. There’s a

certain tempo and schedule and there are always exceptions and something suddenly

might change, but it’s not something that’s beyond your ability to control . . . When

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

219

you’re out you just go by the rhythm of the outdoors, of the soil, of the season. Day turns

to night, you stop. Light comes in the morning, you get up. There’s a rhythm that’s much

different than somebody yelling at you to do this or that, or you’ve got to punch a clock

at a certain time.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

220

Shepherd Bliss12

It’s a mid-summer morning when I arrange to talk by phone with Shepherd Bliss, a

U.S. Army veteran, part-time college professor, and owner and operator of Kokopelli

Farm in Sebastopol County, California. His gentle, peaceful voice comes through the

telephone line, as he describes the view from his window. “I’m looking out on beautiful

trees now. They’re waving at me, their partner the wind comes along, we’re here in the

Redwood Empire. Life is good. It hasn’t always been that way.”

At 66 years old, Shepherd reflects on his life. “Demilitarizing myself has been

forty-some years. I was militarized the first twenty, twenty-five.” The first of five

children, he was born Walter Shepherd Bliss III at the end of World War II into a long-

time military family. (Fort Bliss, the United States Army post in Texas, is named after his

family.) Shepherd’s father, a military officer, was away at the time of his birth, and his

mother was a peasant woman from Iowa. Due to his father’s military career, Shepherd

and his four siblings were raised on military bases and moved on a three-year cycle.

Coming from a long line of military officers, and named “Walter” after his great-

grandfather, a naval officer, Shepherd never questioned that his destiny was also to be in

the military. As the first born, he was often called “Number One” rather than by his first

name. Shepherd admits that he was raised to be a warrior—taught chess and military

strategy at age four, often yelled at and marched around by his father. When he was old

enough, he enlisted in the army and did basic training at Fort Reilly, Kansas. He began

12 Shepherd Bliss has written a number of articles about his experiences. This story combines our

conversation with insights from his writing. Unless otherwise referenced, the story presented here comes

from our conversation.

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

221

serving in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and had requested a post in Vietnam,

which he saw as a way to move up quickly through the ranks (Bliss, 2006).

All this was changed, Shepherd tells me, by the first woman he “ever really loved.”

It was the 1960s after he had been commissioned in the United States Army, and

Shepherd’s then-girlfriend took him to a gathering at which Martin Luther King, Jr., was

the keynote speaker. After hearing King speak, Shepherd underwent a radical personal

change, and eventually resigned his commission before going to Vietnam. Around that

time, he also found out that his given name Walter means ‘warrior,’ and asked himself:

“Do I want to be called that the rest of my life? Or could I use the name Shepherd, which

is my great-great-grandmother’s name?” He refers to his decisions to leave the army and

to begin calling himself Shepherd as the “first major adult decisions of my life.”

Reflecting on his family’s views about his leaving the military, Shepherd says, “I’m

kind of a black sheep. When I left the military they were not happy . . . . I basically

resigned from the military and the family.” And while he has worked carefully to

demilitarize himself over the past four decades, Shepherd accepts that his military

upbringing will always be a part of who he is. “I honour the military virtues like

discipline, organization, working in teams, country love, sense of mission. I just don’t

appreciate the context in which those are applied. I’m not anti-military. I think for some

people it’s the right thing . . . . I honour the role of the protector and the guardian, while

not agreeing with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

After leaving the military, Shepherd earned a doctorate from the University of

Chicago School of Divinity. He then spent time in Chile during Salvador Allende’s

democratic government and had planned to become a citizen there until Augusto

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

222

Pinochet’s military coup in 1973. Shepherd had already left the country, but after the

coup, his fiancée was tortured and his best friend was tortured and killed. Reflecting on

his military upbringing, his own military service, and his experiences in Chile, Shepherd

shares that “there is a whole lot of conflict and trauma that comes from the military for

me.” And he tells me how, for a while, he “escaped into academic excellence” through

various academic positions, including at Harvard and New College of California.

However, the various traumas that Shepherd suffered earlier in his life led him to suffer

from post-traumatic distress—in particular from what he terms “sound trauma.” In

‘Sound Shy,’ the personal story he wrote for Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace,

Shepherd describes himself as “usually oversensitive to noise, but even more so when . . .

under stress” (Bliss, 2006, p. 23). He also writes:

Much of my behaviour is sound avoidant. I often feel a misfit in our

increasingly noisy society. If I go into a room with a battery-powered clock, I

can hear it ticking. If someone has an old, predigital watch on their wrist and

is close enough, I can hear it ticking, ticking, ticking, so methodically. I leave

such loud rooms. Those ambient sounds become magnified to me; they

thunder and produce headaches. And most refrigerators are too loud for me. I

usually build a little room outside the house to contain the refrigerator.

(pp. 23-24).

In the same story, Shepherd reveals that while he values his solitude, at times he craves

contact with other people, and will venture off his farm into local towns. “Sometimes the

interaction with people goes smoothly. But at other times a few sounds can touch me off,

overwhelm me, and create a ‘Get me home!’ feeling” (Bliss, 2006, p. 24).

As a result of psychic numbing, Shepherd does not remember much of his time in

the military nor his time in Chile. This type of memory loss can protect trauma victims,

but as Shepherd explains, “sometimes, something—often a sound—triggers me. I go to

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

223

an uncomfortable place. But after years of counselling, rather than a flashback or

dissociation, I tend to just go cold, chilly, distant, or numb. I’ve gotten better at managing

these moments, though I try my best to avoid them” (Bliss, 2006, p. 25).

During our conversation, Shepherd shares the very personal story of the end of his

marriage that came about primarily due to his military upbringing and his family’s long

military history. “I had a wonderful marriage. Before we got married we agreed not to

have children because I was afraid I would not be a good father. It was her second

marriage, my only one . . . But then she got to a certain age and she decided she did want

children. So I agreed to renegotiate the contract but I realized that I didn’t trust myself. I

didn’t have a good model of fatherhood . . . My [other] fear was that it would be a son

and that the [warrior/military] genes would prevail in spite of [my wife’s] sweetness and

her Buddhism, and then I’d have a killer on my hands. Even if it was legal killing. I

decided, ‘I’m not going to perpetuate these genes.’ Now, as it turns out, all the children of

my brothers and sisters tend to be more like where I am—not quite in this extreme, but

. . . they’re less conflictual than we were raised to be. Sometimes I think: Was it the

biggest mistake of my life not to have a child? But then I think: No, I wasn’t ready in my

30s and 40s and this is fine.”

In his early 40s, while living in Berkeley, California, and yearning for something

different, Shepherd began to reflect on where he had been happiest in his life, and found

himself reminiscing about his time spent on his maternal uncle’s farm in Iowa during his

youth. He realized that he “felt better with fewer people around and more plants, animals,

and natural elements such as water and rocks” (Bliss, 2009a, p. 174).

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

224

During our conversation, Shepherd shares other memories about his time on his

Uncle Dell and Aunt Alva’s farm. “We used to stack the hay. We didn’t have electricity.

People don’t realize that in the late ’40s, early ’50s there wasn’t electricity in the rural

Midwest, so we had an outhouse, no running water, but an ice box and a windmill, gas

lanterns. At night we had stories instead of TV. Life was good. And just getting up while

it was still dark and milking the cows and then coming back to huge pancake breakfasts

and cinnamon rolls. It was a wonderful life—slow, contact with animals and plants and

bees and good friends. It was different than the more violent family military into which I

was raised . . . At the farm I got away from all [my military upbringing]. It was a

different scene, animals and plants and hanging out with chickens and piglets and

watching their community.”

While he had fond memories of the farm, however, Shepherd did not set out to

become a farmer. Rather, his initial plan was to find a country home in Sonoma County

in Northern California. After spending a full year searching for the right place, he heard

that a 93-year-old woman had recently died and her small piece of rural land might be for

sale. “I came over here. I turned into the driveway and I said, ‘I’m home.’” He made an

offer and ten days later, moved into the place he would eventually name Kokopelli Farm.

“It was a mess, of course,” Shepherd tells me. “I needed to burn off a lot of

prunings. I needed to fix the roof . . . . It’s a humble, simple place. It’s not big. It’s not

elegant. It’s just minimal. It’s big enough for me.” He eventually decided to leave his

college teaching position and to become a full-time farmer (although he recently returned

to part-time teaching at Sonoma State University.) In a recent blog entry, Shepherd

connects his time on his Uncle Dell’s farm with his current life as a farmer: “I remember

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

225

enjoying playing in the dirt, mud, and puddles as a boy. Farming gives me an excuse to

continue such play” (Bliss, 2011, ¶18).

Indeed, while he acknowledges the helpfulness of both individual and group

counselling in his life, Shepherd (2009a, 2009b) credits farming as one of the most

beneficial activities in managing his trauma experiences (the other beneficial activity is

his continued participation in the Veterans’ Writing Group led by writer and poet and

peace activist Maxine Hong Kingston13). Farming is, in many ways, the opposite of

conventional therapy. It is, Shepherd explains, “not a ‘talking cure.’ In fact, it is the very

opposite: it is not-talking” (Bliss, 2009a, p.178).

When I ask about the particular moment he realized that being on the farm was

helping his recovery, Shepherd shares his experience with first encountering a rare lily:

“We have a rare plant here that exists nowhere else in the wild, and it’s protected by the

federal government and the state government. It’s not on my farm, but at the bottom of

my farm. And I’d heard about it but when I first saw it—it’s a lily, big, and it looks like

it’s bowing down. And I just fell to the ground and wept when I saw it. What a treasure.

There was something about the wholeness of this, about the connection of this, about

everything—the sounds.”

Shepherd also believes that growing food for other people has been important in his

recovery. While he garden-farms for his own personal consumption, he also grows and

sells organic boysenberries and keeps chickens and sells their eggs. “When I came here,

the place was a mess. It had never really been farmed. It had been gardened but the

berries were not up on trellises, they were mowed every year. There was something about

13 “In our group,” Shepherd tells me, “we don’t judge people. They tell their story. We let them tell their

story. And then sometimes we write somebody’s story because they can’t.”

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

226

the recovery of the fruit that enabled my recovery. And financially, even though I charge

a lot for the berries because they’re very labour intensive, I don’t make a lot of money

from them,” he tells me. “[The farm] helps integrate my writing life, my physical life, it’s

my best health insurance . . . It enables me to think, have a lot of solitude, be my own

boss, be independent. I think military veterans like that. They like not having a boss. I

mean, there are lots of differences, of course, but they like the freedom. So I like the

freedom here. Nobody tells me what to do.”

Shepherd knows that sound trauma will continue to be part of his life’s journey. He

uses only hand tools, such as scythes and machetes, on his farm. He tells me that on

occasion, he still gets triggered by the power tools on both properties adjacent to his

farm, and he sometimes wonders whether he shouldn’t move, whether he shouldn’t try to

find a quieter place. From our conversation, though, Shepherd’s love for and devotion to

Kokopelli Farm is clear. He describes his life as a farmer, and as guardian and protector

of his chickens. “I get up early every morning, before the sun, I have a good sense of

time. I’m punctual. I pull weeds out of the ground even though they’re anchored. I yell

back at my livestock, because if you don’t they won’t follow your orders. They want the

freedom, I provide the structure. If they fly the coop, they stay out there, the predators

will eat them. There are predators in the world. Some nation states are predatory. Some of

them have drone airplanes that are predatory and kill whole villages. So one has to be a

guardian and a protector. And have those different archetypes within them.”

Shepherd continues, “In farming you have to protect your animals. You have to

have weapons, whatever they are—pellet guns, BB guns, .22s, depending on what kind of

predators you have. Here we have mountain lions, coyotes, great horned owl. Of course

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

227

all of those are wonderful animals, but you have to build a structure that they can’t

penetrate but then there are others, like raccoons and skunks, that it’s really hard to keep

out. So what is the balance? . . . I have a scythe that I mow with and a machete, so I have

weaponry. But it’s hand, it’s not automatic weapons like the terrorists have. The real

terrorists, all of them, on both sides.”

Some of the main benefits of farming, both for him and other veterans, Shepherd

believes, are in the ways that “it gets us away from people. You have some contact with

people but basically you have to re-direct your energy to the plants and/or animals. And

it’s not talk therapy. It’s the bees who work together, the ants who work together, the

gopher snakes who eat the gophers, the badgers who make holes. In this case it’s the

wildlife as well as the farm life and also in this case it’s in the wetlands, it’s in the

uplands of a marsh, which has a rare plant. So it’s the whole community of the land.”

Elsewhere, Shepherd has written that “farming has moved energy from my brain

into the rest of my body” (Bliss, 2011, ¶3). “Over time I have felt some of the walls

within me recede,” he writes (Bliss, 2009a, p. 177). “By interacting more with the plants,

animals, elements, I find that I have improved my relationships with other people and

with the community around me. My friends inform me that I have become a better person

because of my work in the soil and with farm animals.”

When I ask him to reflect further on the ways that energy moves from his brain to

his body, Shepherd shares some of his experiences from the Veterans Writing Group led

by Maxine Hong Kingston. “One of the things that Maxine leads us in is a walking

meditation. We go out, where we meet, where there’s giant eucalyptus, and we walk,

slowly. Now, for some of the vets, that was hard at first because they’re used to walking

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

228

point, which means you’re in the front when you’re going into the jungle looking for the

so-called enemy, or you feel it in your body that you’d be the first one to be shot at. But

after a while, you really get into the wonderment of knowing that you are protected and

there is no threat, so you walk it out. Your body sees the land, not as a place to be

scorched with napalm or that’s concealing somebody who could hurt you, but it’s

welcoming. And so you begin to transform that.”

The sensory stimulation provided by farming is also made clear through Shepherd’s

various personal accounts. He writes, “When the wind sweeps through the bamboo, it

soothes me, as if it were a harp” (Bliss, 2009a, p. 175). He also shares: “I enjoy watching

and hearing chickens dance, talk to each other, clown around, dig into the Earth with

glee, and herald the dawn” (Bliss, 2009b, ¶12). In our conversation, Shepherd reflects on

how he loves watching his chickens. “Chickens have a lot to teach. They have chicken

wisdom. They’re also prey . . . They’re very curious but they’re flighty. They can get hurt

and everybody wants to eat them. So they have prey wisdom, which is, they’re kind of

batty and loony, much smarter than people think . . . One human on one chicken, the

chicken will usually prevail unless the human has a tool.”

Owning the farm has also brought youngsters into Shepherd’s life in a way he

never thought possible, given his decision earlier in life not to have children. He shares

that many parents bring their young children when they come to the farm to buy berries,

and the farm provides an important context for both work and play. “All of a sudden, at

66, I’ve been captured by the grandfather archetype. And these toddlers just keep walking

into my life . . . I’m being re-parented by toddlers.” One of the toddlers who comes to the

farm regularly told his parents that he plans to move in with Shepherd when he grows up.

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

229

And Shepherd finds great joy in these newfound relationships with children: “It’s safe,

intimate contact, which has been hard for me, maintaining relationships. In the military

you move every three years. So, not being on a three-year cycle is hard for me. And being

in an ongoing relationship is hard for me. I would theoretically like one, and I find these

appropriate women but either they or I, at a certain point, opt out.”

Over the years, based on his own experience Shepherd has become a strong

advocate for the healing power of nature. He has recently become involved in the Horses

Building Communities program in Sebastopol County, which uses equine therapy to

support military men and women and their families at all stages, from pre-deployment to

re-integration into civilian life. Shepherd also belongs to the Farmer-Veteran Coalition in

the United States, whose mandate is to create agricultural work opportunities for veterans

returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. “It is the belief of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition that

our farms can play a unique role in offering healthy places for those physically, mentally

and emotionally injured from their war experience” (Farmer Veteran Coalition, n.d.). In

an article Shepherd wrote for Countercurrents, he reflected further on the benefits of

farming:

Sometimes dealing with people is just too much, especially when they are

mean, cruel, and even deadly. Times come to take it to the trees, vegetables,

animals, and elements. They can hold it. Weeds help me. Pulling them out

can release anger—better than punching someone. Livestock appreciate

attention and vigorous conversation. They bark, bellow, howl, scream, and

make all kinds of sounds; they listen better when one yells back, which can

be a release. (Bliss, 2009b, ¶18)

Shepherd often hosts others on his farm, including veterans, and provides what he

calls “agro-psychology or agro-therapy,” which he equates with the larger Care Farms

movement in Europe. “Here we hang out, we do something productive, we go for walks.

Narratives of Nature and Recovery

230

We value solitude. We let people be. We get things done.” When possible, he also does

some informal facilitation work. “I love working informally in groups around the picnic

table. And so sometimes the men will open up when it’s not a clinical room or clinical

environment. It can also happen in the clinical ways, but there’s something about the

healing power of the regenerative earth, the grass, the leaves, the flowers, the bees,

whatever wanders in, the ants while they’re doing their work, the honey bees that don’t

sting.”

231

Chapter 9

Other Stories from the Edges of Violence

In Chapter 4, I explored and deconstructed how the roots and habits of rational and

linear thought in peace and conflict studies have led nature to be overlooked or missing

altogether from mainstream conversations and praxis in the field. This does not mean,

however, that the more-than-human world is always excluded from practices on the

ground. Indeed, as with the veterans whose narratives were told in the previous chapter,

the people themselves, including trauma survivors, victims of violence, and perpetrators,

as well as some local practitioners seeking creative approaches to reconciliation and

peacebuilding, often do incorporate and acknowledge their relationships with the natural

world into both personal recovery and peacebuilding rituals. This approach, however,

tends not to be recognized within the mainstream academic literature and theory.

This chapter presents thirteen short vignettes from around the world from contexts

of trauma, violence and conflict and/or processes aimed at transforming conflict in which

the more-than-human world was remembered in peacebuilding and post-conflict

recovery. The significance of these stories, which include former soldiers and civilian

trauma survivors, as well as people from peacebuilding contexts, is that I obtained many

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

232

of them by reading between the lines—that is, in the original articles or books in which

these stories are featured, the role of nature tended to be downplayed (if noted at all), in

favour of the connections and relationships that are built between adversaries; however,

when faced with these examples altogether, one can’t help but notice the significant role

of, and relationships and interconnections with the more-than-human world.

Veterans-Turned-Farmers in the United States

American psychiatrist Karl Menninger became the first advocate for horticulture

therapy to help U.S. veterans recover from their experiences in World War II (Lewis,

1996; Relf, 2006; Louv, 2008). And green care and social farming advocates and

researchers, Di Iacovo and O’Connor (2009) explain that farming provides people with

possibilities for interacting “in the varied rhythms of the day and the year, be it in

growing food or working with domestic animals” (p. 11).

Today there is a growing movement in the United States to provide opportunities

for veterans to move into farming after they leave the military. Many of these veterans

are gravitating towards small-scale, often organic, farms. The broader incentive of getting

veterans involved in farming is that it provides succession planning for American food

security, since many of the current farmers are expected to retire during the next 10 years

(Farmer Veteran Coalition, n.d.). However, farming and working outdoors provide

possibilities for engaging with plants and animals, nurturing and cultivating new life, and

providing healthy foods to feed other people. Indeed, the University of Nebraska -

Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture (NCTA) recently began offering a Combat

Boots to Cowboy Boots program to help veterans become farmers, ranchers and business

entrepreneurs. The NCTA “manages the education and training of participants, helps

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

233

coordinate all funding, and maintains contact with participants to train them as future

mentors” (University of Nebraska, n.d.). In addition to their work with nature, what the

stories of some of these farmers show is their reaching out to other people, particularly to

other veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress.

For example, Archi’s Acres is an organic farm in Southern California run by Colin

and Karen Archipley. Colin Archipley is a former Marine Corps infantry sergeant who

served three tours in Iraq. Together with his wife, Mr. Archipley now runs the Veterans

Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) program from his farm, offering a six-week

course in Organics, Hydroponics, and Sustainable Agriculture for other veterans

interested in new careers as farmers (VSAT, n.d.). In addition to teaching farming skills,

such as planting and irrigation, as well as designing a business plan to facilitate a career

change for veterans, the Archipleys reflect that “six weeks immersed in the VSAT

program at Archi’s Acres provides the down time that facilitates a much smoother

transition out of urban warfare” (Archi’s Acres, n.d.). “Farming offers veterans a chance

to decompress,” Mr. Archipley told New York Times reporter Patricia Leigh Brown, but,

more importantly, it provides a sense of purpose. “It allows them to be physically active,

be part of a unit,” he said. “It gives them a mission statement—a responsibility to the

consumer eating their food” (Brown, 2011). Brown also interviewed a graduate of the

Archipleys’ VSAT program, Mike Hanes, who returned from Iraq suffering from post-

traumatic distress, depression, and a traumatic brain injury. Hanes told Brown that

“Being outside was my comfort zone—still is.” He also noted that “One thing I’ve

noticed about agriculture is that you become a creator rather than a destroyer.”

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

234

Another example is the Veterans Farm, an organic blueberry farm in Central

Florida started by Adam Burke, a U.S. Army combat veteran and Purple Heart award

recipient. He returned from Iraq suffering from both a traumatic brain injury and post-

traumatic distress, and Burke was urged by his psychiatrist and psychologist to find ways

to alleviate his stress. Having grown up on a farm, Burke recalled that some of his best

times were spent there: “I remembered being in the outdoors and enjoying working with

others. I remember the sound of the birds and the mist from the sprinklers, the wind and

the calming effect it had on me” (Farmer Veteran Coalition, 2010). With help from the

Farmer Veteran Coalition, Burke started the handicapped-accessible Veterans Farm,

which draws on principles from horticulture therapy to provide “a Prescription without

Medication” to disabled veterans. Specifically, the Veterans Farm offers a 14-week

program that teaches wounded combat veterans to grow organic fruits and vegetables,

with the mission of providing “a place of sanctuary as well as help [veterans] regain that

sense of purpose in their life while working on the farm” (Veterans Farm, n.d.). Talking

to New York Times reporter Patricia Leigh Brown (2011), Burke shared that “Squeezing

a ball in physical therapy gets monotonous . . . And you don’t get the mist from the

sprinklers or a cool breeze in a psychologist’s office.”

In a YouTube video posted on the Veterans Farm website, Burke tells the story of

sitting with another veteran under a tree on his farm. The other veteran was suffering

from a panic attack, and the two men sat together and talked for two hours, feeling a light

breeze on their skin under the shade of a tree. At the end of their conversation, the other

veteran turned to Burke and said: “Adam, this is the most peace I’ve felt since I’ve been

back from war. I can sit in a conference room, I can sit in a medical setting, I can see

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

235

psychologists all day, but nothing compares to sitting in this chair under this tree on this

farm” (Veterans Farm, YouTube, August 1, 2010).

Matthew Mccue, a former U.S. Army Infantry soldier, runs the Shooting Star CSA

in Northern California with his partner Lily Schneider (Shooting Star CSA, n.d.). Their

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program delivers a box of fresh organic

produce weekly throughout the summer and fall growing and harvest seasons to members

who have pre-purchased a share in their CSA. Talking with Patricia Leigh Brown, Mccue

commented that he had learned how to face death during his military service in Iraq;

however, through farming, he learned that “there was life all around” (Brown, 2011).

Still other examples include the 15-acre Veterans’ Garden in West Los Angeles,

where veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress and other injuries sustained during

their military service cultivate fruits and vegetables in the middle of the city and sell their

produce to local restaurants (Seymour, 2009). And in Brockton, Massachusetts, the

Veterans Administration (VA) Medical Center provides a horticulture therapy program

for veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress (Papadopoulos, 2008). Twenty-four-

year-old Afghanistan veteran Chris Pina told reporter Maria Papadopoulos that working

in the garden at the VA Center has been important for him: “I’ve learned a lot about

plants so far, and actually I’m starting to do it at home now. I see a brighter light.”

Meanwhile, several other veterans who work in the garden interviewed as part of

Papadopoulos’s news story described how the plant life showed them the way forward,

the ways that life can continue beyond their military experiences.

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

236

Farming Together in the Buduburam Refugee Camp

In When Blood and Bones Cry Out, Lederach and Lederach (2010) tell the story of

Morris, a young man living in the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana. When he was 13,

Morris’s father was murdered by rebels, and soon after Morris became a child soldier in

the Liberian civil war. Later he also trained other child soldiers to fight in Sierra Leone’s

civil war. When finally struck by the realization that his fighting had turned him into an

empty shell and that he no longer felt human, Morris escaped to the Buduburam Refugee

Camp. As part of his own healing—from both his roles as victim and as perpetrator in the

Liberian civil war—and to give back to the community in the refugee camp, Morris

assembled other child soldiers also living in the camp, and the youngsters built a farm

together. Today, approximately 200 former child soldiers grow and harvest fruits and

vegetables in the camp. All of them, including Morris, continue to carry the stigma of

their former roles as combatants and many others in the refugee community continue to

see them as rapists and murderers. Accordingly, the healing and recovery process for

these young people is anything but easy. They have lived through horrific violence, and

many have committed unimaginable acts. As Morris remarked, “It is so hard . . . All you

have in your mind is violence. You have been living in violence for so long . . . It doesn’t

matter where you are. It’s embedded in you. And it is creative. You can do unimaginable

things, terrible things with this creativity, because you have seen so much violence. It

takes willpower to transform that. Some of us are working hard to change” (p. 19).

And so as they work to change themselves, and to overcome the community

stigmatization, the former child soldiers continue to work the land and work towards their

own healing. The youths find comfort in both their relationships with one another and in

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

237

cultivating new life together, and carry hope that the others in the refugee community

will see that they have the power to change, to do good, and will one day accept them

again into the community (Lederach and Lederach, 2010).

Into the Forest with Srebrenica Survivors

In January 1996, in Perth, Australia, a group of 104 male survivors from Srebrenica

arrived as refugees, more than half of whom were between the ages of 15 and 24

(Burgess, 1998). Organizations such as Assisting Torture and Trauma Survivors

(ASeTTS) provided support and counselling services, which some of the older refugees

accessed; however, although clearly suffering, most of the young men in the group

neither spoke of their experiences nor sought treatment. Later in the year, ASeTTS

arranged to take fourteen of the young men to the country town of York, an hour outside

Perth. As ASeTTS worker Catherine Burgess describes, “It was spring and the Western

Australian wildflowers were in full bloom. The delight on the young people’s faces as we

drove into York was incredible as it was the first time we had seen some of them smile”

(p. 146). Over the course of four days, along with four ASeTTS workers and an

interpreter, the young men participated in a camel trek in the desert, dance lessons, and

Australian football. They spent one morning touring a local farm. They also learned ways

of coping with their traumas, including breathing techniques, walking by the river and

closing their eyes to imagine a positive place, which for most ranged from a beach to a

forest to a mountain. According to Burgess, “One young man said that he didn’t need to

close his eyes because he was seeing the most positive scene he could imagine” (p. 147).

Then on the third morning:

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

238

[W]e asked the group to close their eyes and imagine themselves as a tree.

Were they a young tree or an old tree? What was their bark like, and their

leaves? Were they standing alone or amongst other trees? Were there nests in

their branches or maybe fruit? What were their roots like?

The group was then asked to draw the tree that they had visualised. They sat

in silence for over an hour as they drew powerful images of themselves as

trees. The pictures were then collected into a collage that covered almost the

whole courtyard of the hotel.

Each person took the time to describe their tree and we were introduced to

‘old trees that nobody visits anymore’, ‘lonely trees’, ‘trees with broken

branches’ and ‘trees that were weighed down’. Some of the trees were

starting to experience growth; ‘it’s finally spring’ and ‘my tree is happy on

the top of the hill’, but there were few leaves, fruit or deep roots.

The session concluded with the young people saying that they were actually a

forest. The strong trees would support the weak trees as long as they needed

it. The forest would survive. (Burgess, 1998, p. 147)

Burgess describes those four days in York as a turning point for many of the young

male participants. Although they faced a long journey ahead in finding ways to cope with

and recover from their unspeakable experiences of trauma, many had fun and found a

new community of support, with whom they continued to meet afterwards. Two of the

young men even found work in and moved to York.

Wilderness Therapy Project of Kathorus, South Africa

Gavin Robertson and Stephen De Kiewit (1998) tell the story of the Wilderness

Therapy Project of Kathorus in South Africa which was created in 1996 by the National

Peace Accord Trust. In the early 1990s, the African National Congress had created Self-

Defence Units (SDUs) as alternative policing services to defend black communities who

were not being protected by the official police in South Africa. In response, the Inkatha

Freedom Party set up Self-Protection Units (SPUs). As Robertson and De Kiewit

describe, “the youths involved in these informal structures perceived their key identity to

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

239

be that of ‘defenders of their communities’” (p. 139). Thousands of people died in

fighting between the two parties, and at the time, the young men and women in both the

SDUs and SPUs were considered to be heroes by their respective communities. However,

as the violence abated and a new order came to South Africa with the end of apartheid,

these youths for whom violence had become the norm shed their hero status and became

marginalized; instead, their communities came to regard them as enemies.

In 1996, the National Peace Accord Trust sponsored the Wilderness Therapy

Project of Kathorus. The Project served the dual purpose of reconciliation between

formerly warring youths and positive reintegration into their communities. It brought

together young men and women who had been involved in either the SDUs or the SPUs

for reconciliation and healing by taking them on a seven-day “trail” (trek) in the Dragon

Mountains. Over their week together, the youths’ relationships transformed. They began

to support one another and members from the opposite sides began to reconcile as “the

group internalise[d] the underlying notion that the group’s well-being depends on each

individual’s well being” (Robertson and De Kiewit, 1998, pp. 142-143). According to the

authors, the seven-day experience helped many of the youths to begin the process of

reintegration into their communities. Some began to use counselling services they had

previously not accessed, and because of the significant changes in the youths’ perceptions

and behaviours, they were no longer seen as a threat to their communities.

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

240

The Butterfly Peace Garden14 in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s east coast has, since 1983, been the site of a violent armed conflict

between the region’s Muslim and Tamil populations, characterized by massacres, rapes,

and displacement (Santa-Barbara, 2004, p. 232). According to Chase et al. (1999), the

ongoing conflict has affected more than 500,000 children and “represents the single most

debilitating and pervasive factor affecting the lives of children and women” (p. 379). In

the early 1990s, a team of Canadian medical practitioners was planning a vaccination

campaign for Sri Lankan children. However, they soon found that in spite of the conflict,

the Sri Lankan government had maintained its immunization programs. But the team then

realized that little consideration had been given to children’s psychological wellbeing,

despite the fact that the typical family life of a child in Batticaloa “involves household

displacement, separation and loss from death, refugee migration, and extreme poverty”

(Chase, 2000, p. 2).

In 1994, with the help of both Canadian artist Paul Hogan and a Jesuit priest in

Batticaloa, plans were undertaken to create the Butterfly Peace Garden, and in 1996, the

Garden was opened with the “dual objectives of trauma-healing at the child level and

peace-building within the community” (Chase et al., 1999, p. 387). Modelled after

Toronto’s Spiral Garden15 program for children, which Paul Hogan had also helped

found, the Butterfly Garden created a “‘peace zone’ to provide children affected by

14 The activities of the Butterfly Peace Garden ended due to the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in

2004. The Garden was unaffected by the tsunami, but became a site for thousands of people seeking

assistance after their homes and livelihoods were destroyed (Osborne, 2005; War Child Canada, 2007).

15 The Spiral Garden was created in 1984 to offer an opportunity for outdoor summer play, art and

gardening for disabled and able-bodied children in Toronto (Chase, 2000; Bloorview Kids Rehab, 2008).

Today, the Spiral Garden program continues to operate, guided by a belief that “the patterns, processes, and

rhythm of the natural world provide the context for healing” (Spiral Garden & Cosmic Bird Feeder, 2005,

p. 2).

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

241

armed conflict with a sanctuary where they can heal through engaging their creativity in

play, artwork and earthwork” (ibid). Tamil and Muslim children, aged 6 to 16, who were

experiencing difficulties at home or school were referred by their schools or orphanages

to attend the Garden one day per week.

Children who came to the Butterfly Peace Garden engaged their imaginations

through play and art and developed friendships across ethnic lines (Chase, 2000). The

program also cultivated medicinal herbs, which had almost vanished in the region due to

conflict-related environmental damage. The children were involved in planting the seeds,

and tending to and harvesting the plants. They also helped care for ailing birds and

animals within the Garden setting (Santa-Barbara, 2004). While no formal research was

allowed in the Garden, the anecdotal stories suggest that this combination of activities

within the Garden setting had important effects in the lives of the children who spent time

there (Ashoka, 2003; Chase et al., 1999; Chase, 2000; Santa-Barbara, 2004).

Workshop with Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis

Peacebuilding scholar Lisa Schirch (2005) shares her experience with a twelve-day

workshop that brought Hutu and Tutsi community leaders together in Kenya (p. 11). The

group setting was fraught with tension and hostilities, and several death threats were

made. However, on the sixth day of the workshop, everyone went on an all-day safari

together. On the way home, Schirch noticed that people were calmer, relationships

seemed more “harmonious” and tensions briefly dissolved when participants began

singing Christmas carols. She suggests that the experience of spotting animals together

helped overcome, “if only temporarily, the participants’ deep tension and trauma” (ibid.).

Reflecting on this, Schirch wishes they had been able to spend more time together

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

242

beyond the formal workshop setting. What is of particular interest to me is the activity

that brought them together—viewing wild animals. Although Schirch does not go into

detail about the experience, one might easily imagine it: participants sitting together in an

open-air vehicle, feeling the warm sun and a light breeze on their skin from across the

savannah, seeing local birds and wildlife ranging from lions to ostriches and giraffes

interacting in their natural habitats. It is perhaps noteworthy that of all the activities

within the workshop setting in which the group took part over the twelve days, this was

the one that seemed to bring them most together.

The Football for Peace Project

The Football for Peace Project (F4P) began in 2001 in northern Israel as a project to

bring children (ages 10-14) from both Arab and Jewish communities together to play

football as well as to participate in an outdoor education program.16 The original purpose

of F4P was to create connections and promote cooperation between socially segregated

communities (Stidder and Haasner, 2007). Children in the program take part in a wide

range of outdoor activities, including “activities that encourage collaborative group work

such as route planning, expedition, orienteering, raft building, trust games, team building,

problem-solving and joint decision-making tasks” (pp. 135-136). After experimenting

with whether to begin immediately with the football coaching or to first introduce

children to one another through other outdoor activities, organizers realized that outdoor

activities such as trust-building and problem-solving games broke down some of the

barriers and anxieties between the youths, thus enabling them to learn and play football

16 F4P has expanded its operations to include 24 communities in Israel, as well as in Jordan and a cross-

border project between children in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

(http://www.football4peace.eu/)

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

243

together more cooperatively. In particular, the orienteering aspect of the program was

found to be very popular with the children and was amongst the most successful activities

for breaking down barriers and building bridges. While researchers Gary Stidder and

Adrian Haasner never explain in their article why the outdoor setting is important, they

contend that outdoor education holds powerful possibilities for transcending cultural

boundaries.

American-Soviet Walks

In 1987, 230 Americans and 200 Soviets came together for five weeks to walk from

Leningrad (now Saint Petersberg) to Moscow. Following on the heels of the 1986

Reykjavík Summit, when Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met for two days at the

Hofdi House in Iceland,17 the walk was a peace march in favour of nuclear disarmament,

and is hailed as a “pioneering act of citizen diplomacy” (Brigham, 2010, p. 595). While

Steve Brigham, a participant on the walk, does not address many details about the setting,

his article includes a number of pictures from the walk showing that participants were

immersed in the Russian countryside. Every night the walkers set up a tent city in the

open air, and every day they trekked side-by-side in the outdoors. Between the villages,

Brigham reflects, “we found mostly open or wooded land. As a Russian, if you lived in

the countryside, you likely lived in a small village or hamlet” (p. 602). Many of the

American and Soviet walkers had never encountered a member of the ‘other’ side, and

most changed their perceptions of one another over the five weeks, discovering that there

17 Although the two-day Reykjavik Summit to discuss issues of disarmament ended in a stalemate, it is

often described as paving the way for later talks and eventually the end of the Cold War. When I see

pictures of the Hofdi House and the beautiful views surrounding it, I wonder about the role of nature and

how such views may have affected Gorbachev and Reagan.

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

244

were many similarities amongst them at the level of their basic humanity. Another

walker, Jessica Tracy describes: “The walk was about communication on a very basic

level. It was meeting our ‘enemy’ face to face, wart to wart, personality to personality

and talking about the price of chicken, or how to raise a batch of healthy kids or giving

advice or encouragement if that’s what happened to come up” (p. 616). The walkers were

welcomed in most towns by a crowd of people, and were often presented with a loaf of

bread and salt. Brigham reflects that the Russians believed that “once you have shared

bread and salt with a person, . . . he or she can never be your enemy” (p. 617).

To Reflect and Trust

Dan Bar-On’s (2000) edited volume Bridging the Gap draws on participants’

stories and journal entries to describe the experience of the To Reflect and Trust (TRT)

group’s meeting in Hamburg in 1998. The group uses storytelling—specifically the

telling of participants’ personal life stories—to create connections and to facilitate

understanding, if not reconciliation, between adversaries. Founded in 1992 to bring

together the descendents of Holocaust survivors with the descendents of Nazi

perpetrators, the TRT has since met and held seminars in many different settings

(Chaitin, 2003). The Hamburg seminar was the first time that people from other conflict

groups were invited to join the process. Shifra Sagy (2000), who participated in the

Hamburg seminar’s Palestinian-Israeli sessions, wrote about how her entire group spent

one morning walking together in the woods. While the storytelling sessions were divided,

tense and filled with anxiety, Sagy reveals that during their time in the woods, “the

strongest feeling was that we were a joint group. . . ‘It was so beautiful here, and green

and blue . . . it’s good for us to enjoy ourselves. To breathe in a lot of clean air’” (p. 104).

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

245

Seeds of Peace

The Seeds of Peace camp brings together teenagers from conflict zones (such as

Palestine, Israel, and Egypt) for three weeks in Maine (Wallach, 2000). Set “on the shores

of Pleasant Lake and [surrounded by the] beauty of the Maine woods” (p. 24), the

mission of the camp is “to help humanize a conflict that has thrived partly because both

sides have so successfully dehumanized each other” (pp. 8-9). After three weeks, the

camp’s founder John Wallach describes how most teens develop “a new level of

compassion for one another as human beings” (p. 13). While Wallach focuses on the

coexistence sessions and the changed relationships between campers, the camp’s natural

surroundings also seem to play an important (if unconscious) role in preparing the

campers’ hearts and minds for making good contact with one another.

The Cyprus Consortium Peacebuilding Project’s Youth Camp

Throughout Ritual and Symbol in Peacebuilding, Lisa Schirch (2005) draws on her

1997 participant observation study at a summer camp, in which forty Greek and Turkish

Cypriot teenagers came together for two weeks in a wooded area of Pennsylvania that

was “rustic but tranquil . . . nestled in . . . rolling hills” (p. 123).18 The camp consisted of

four very basic wooden cabins. Cabin groups were divided by gender, but mixed

ethnically so that Turkish and Greek youth, most of whom had never encountered a

member of ‘the other side,’ slept side-by-side. The days were filled with peacebuilding

workshops in the mornings, and recreational activities in the afternoons and evenings,

ranging from soccer, boating, and swimming in the camp’s outdoor pool, to campfires,

18 The camp was run by Cyprus Consortium Peacebuilding Project, which was operating at unofficial levels

in Cyprus, mostly by bringing adults from both sides together for conflict resolution training workshops.

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

246

outdoor cookouts, talent shows, shopping, and dances. Schirch focuses her analysis and

reflections on how the combination of peacebuilding workshops and social activities led

to interactions and personal relationships between Greek and Turkish campers, as well as

how regular activities such as “eating, dancing, and playing became symbolic ways of

communicating about shared humanity and human diversity” (p. 27). As I have described

in more detail elsewhere (Westlund, 2010), it seems likely that the camp’s rural setting

played an important role in the relationships that developed between the Greek and

Turkish Cypriot teens.

For example, of all the activities in which the youths participated, they reported

three as most important: 1) an outdoor group problem-solving exercise, in which each

group built a twenty-foot tower and designed a way to drop an egg from the top to the

ground without breaking it; 2) an all-day outdoor ropes course experience where campers

worked in teams to travel along ropes strung between trees twenty to thirty feet above the

ground; and 3) their efforts to cope with a large number of spiders sharing their living

space. All of these required interactions not only with one another but also with elements

of nature. In all three cases, it seems that nature perhaps helped to stimulate the youths’

creativity and to decrease any previously held anxieties and stress connected with

working together. In the first two activities, the youths had more space than they would

have indoors, beneath the skies, interacting on and with the earth, perhaps with the winds

blowing through the trees and against their skin, and the rocks underfoot. Moreover, the

youths reported that two other activities—going to a carnival and doing arts and crafts—

held the least significance for building their relationships with one another (p. 167).

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

247

In addition, all campers were initially quite challenged (and disgusted) by the many

spiders living in their cabins. Schirch suggests that the common act of killing spiders

became “symbolic and transformative,” and spider references soon permeated the camp,

from the group of girls who began to call themselves the “Spider Girls” to when the

entire group of campers began to refer to themselves as the “Spider Camp.” Camp

director Louise Diamond was able to capitalize on this spider imagery, telling stories

about ‘Grandmother Spider’ and eventually using the spiders as an example of ecological

relatedness, sharing her own experience with breast cancer and how bug sprays and

pesticides are being linked to such cancer. Thus, Diamond “prompted the campers to see

the spiders not as their enemies, but as part of the ‘web of life’” (p. 115). After two

weeks, many campers reflected on their newfound appreciation for spiders and insects,

including one who wrote in her evaluation, “I learned to love insects and to live with

them” (p. 116). In addition to learning to love spiders, campers also came away with a

new understanding of their adversaries. Over the two weeks, as the they interacted with

one another in the natural environment of rural Pennsylvania, more often than not they

realized that their ‘enemy,’ whether a Greek or a Turkish Cypriot, was in many ways like

them, with the same hopes and dreams for the future.

Ending Apartheid and Negotiating a New Constitution in South Africa

While there had been racial tensions in South Africa since the arrival of the first

Dutch settlers in 1652, a formal system of apartheid was not developed until 1948, when

legislation introduced into the constitution by the Afrikaner-led National Party resulted in

an “all-but-total separation of the races as part of a regime in which the minority White

population brutalized everyone else” (Hauss, 2001, p. 82). This brutally repressive

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

248

regime dominated the country for the next 45 years. It is estimated that more than forty

thousand people were killed by the police during this time, while many more were

terrorized, became political prisoners, or were exiled.

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw political change in South Africa, including

negotiations to end South Africa’s system of apartheid, to create a new constitution, and

to hold the country’s first democratic elections. Many of the negotiations involved

significant interactions between participants within natural contexts. For example,

throughout his presidency, F.W. de Klerk took various cabinet members and other

officials and advisors, and even occasionally members of the African National Congress

(ANC), to the D’Nyala game reserve in Transvaal near the Botswana border for

bosberaad (bush conference) to discuss and brainstorm strategies for change in South

Africa. At the end of each day, the politicians and advisors often sat around a campfire

under the surrounding tamboti trees and the African night sky getting to know one

another. Many of these meetings had a significant impact on developing the new

constitution that would lead to South Africa’s first democratic elections in April 1994.

Another important event occurred in the spring of 1991, between two men from

opposite sides who played vital roles in bringing forth the country’s new constitution.

Roelf Meyer, South Africa’s then-Deputy Minister of Constitutional Development, and

his two young sons, were invited by his friend Sidney Frankel to spend the weekend at a

remote fishing lodge in Transvaal Lowveld. Also invited was Cyril Ramaphosa, then-

secretary general for the ANC (and later the chief ANC negotiator). Frankel thought the

remote and relaxed location would create an occasion for these two men to meet and get

to know one another. Ramaphosa and his wife, Nomazizi, arrived at the lodge first, and

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

249

Frankel kept Meyer’s invitation a secret until the night before his arrival (Sparks, 1995,

pp. 3-4). The next morning, just as Meyer and his sons were arriving by helicopter,

Frankel’s daughter broke her arm. Frankel and his family immediately left in the

helicopter for a hospital in Johannesburg. This turn of events meant that Ramaphosa and

Meyer, along with Nomazizi and Meyer’s sons, were on their own for the weekend. At

first, the two men awkwardly tried to make conversation in the lodge. Meyer’s sons grew

bored and Ramaphosa, an avid fisherman, offered to teach them to fish. The men and

boys headed to the nearby dam, where Meyer also decided to try fishing for the first time;

however, while casting his line, he got the fishing hook deeply embedded in one of his

fingers, which Nomazizi Ramaphosa, a nurse, tried unsuccessfully to take out. After an

hour, Cyril Ramaphosa determined he would need to use a pair of pliers to remove the

hook from Meyer’s hand. Saying to Meyer, “If you’ve never trusted an ANC person

before, you’d better get ready to do so now,” Ramaphosa powerfully pulled the hook out.

As Nomazizi worked to stop the blood from flowing, Meyer replied, “Well, Cyril, don’t

say I didn’t trust you” (p. 4).

Throughout his book, Sparks invokes this lesson of the trout hook. Both he and

Schirch use the example as a ‘symbol’ of the trust and recognition of mutual

interdependence required for Afrikaners and the ANC to negotiate an end to apartheid

and to develop the new constitution together (Sparks, 1995, pp. 176-196; Schirch, 2005,

p. 7). The power of this symbol is undeniable, especially as we learn about how the trust

that began that day enabled Meyer and Ramaphosa to work with one another on behalf of

their parties, and eventually became “the hub around which the entire negotiation turned”

(Sparks, 1995, p. 187). It is noteworthy that the men’s sense of mutual trust did not

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

250

develop in the context of a sterile negotiating room, but rather in nature and in an act of

engagement with nature. The action that led to the symbolic event (the trout hook

embedded in Meyer’s finger) would not have happened in a meeting room. Thus, both the

setting and the activity facilitated their mutual realization of interdependence, which gave

them something to build on in the years that followed.

A third example from the South African context involves a series of eleven secret

meetings between influential Afrikaners and exiled ANC members at the secluded Mells

Park House on a large an estate near Bath, England (Sparks, 1995, p. 82). After formal

morning meetings, the afternoons usually saw groups walking together in the woods,

coming together for dinner, and then retiring to the House’s library around a log fire.

Sparks describes how the conversations around the fire sometimes went into the early

hours of the morning, and “that is when the real business of mutual discovery took place”

(p. 83). The organizer of these secret meetings, Willie Esterhuyse, an academic and

member of the verligte (the reformist wing of the Afrikaner National Party), told Sparks

that the experience at Mells was amongst the most liberating of his life. Both the

Afrikaners and the ANC gained insight and understanding of the other side’s positions,

and fundamentally changed their perceptions of one another. In other words, the Mells

meetings, and particularly the informal walks in the woods, meals taken together, and

fireside chats, created an atmosphere for dialogue and mutual understanding, and led to

real change in the relationships on both sides.

The Norway Channel and the Oslo Accord

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long roots in the histories of two peoples

connected to the same land. However, the conflict became formally entrenched with the

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

251

creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel occupied

the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula (Hauss, 2001,

pp. 133-143). Over the years, countless world leaders have sought to intervene and ‘bring

peace’ to the region. Thus, a celebrated moment in recent history involved the famous

handshake in 1993 on the Whitehouse lawn between Palestinian Liberation Organization

(PLO) leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, where the two

leaders also signed the ‘Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government

Arrangements’ for Palestinians and exchanged letters of mutual recognition.

While two years of talks between the Israelis and Palestinians had been sponsored

by Washington prior to this handshake, the informal name of the agreement signed—the

Oslo Accord—pays homage to the fact that the ‘Declaration of Principles’ was actually

negotiated in Norway during from fourteen secret meetings between lower-level Israeli

officials and the PLO. Journalist Jane Corbin (1994) paints a clear picture of these secret

meetings in the Norwegian countryside, producing what is perhaps one of best

documented cases of nature’s role in peacebuilding activities.

From January to September 1993, meetings were held at an old mansion south of

Oslo called Borregaard (a spot favoured by all participants), a manor-house on a farm

north of Oslo near Gressheim, and the Thomas Heftye cottage and Halvorsbole Hotel and

Conference Centre, both near the Holmenkollen ski-jump. Rather than sitting at

negotiating tables in sterile boardrooms, the negotiators came together in sitting rooms

with a roaring fire, or in rooms with panoramic views of the countryside. Most

importantly, the men not only spent time together in these comfortable and intimate

indoor settings, but on many occasions went outside, walking together in the woods,

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

252

along lakes, and at the fjords, in what Corbin calls “the Norwegian way of solving

problems by communing with nature” (p. 87). Indeed, at the group’s first meeting in

January 1993, the negotiators spent much of their time walking and talking together in

the woods surrounding the Borregaard house. Sometimes the entire group went out

together, while at other times a Palestinian was accompanied by an Israeli. Corbin tells

how “the Israelis and the Palestinians, roar[ed] with laughter in the quiet woods, [and]

saw that the same things made them laugh” (p. 87), and also about the time that at 3:00

a.m., when Israeli Joel Singer and Palestinian Hassan Asfour left in the middle of a

negotiating session at Halvorsbole to take a long walk together on the shore of the fiord.

After the negotiators reached a consensus and secretly signed the Declaration of

Principles on August 20, 1993, in Oslo (prior to Arafat and Rabin’s public signing of it in

Washington on September 13, 1993), the Israeli team leader Uri Savir reflected that the

“Oslo spirit – this special harmony you conveyed to us, between man, nature and conduct

– was contagious in creating a new Middle East spirit” (p. 169). And while the

negotiators were reluctant to attribute their success to the intimate approach (as opposed

to the formal negotiating process) taken in Norway, the participants did talk about “the

strange impact on their spirits of discussing death and conflict in the sunlit, tranquil

surroundings of the fiords” (p. 211). Once again, the earth and skies, the winds and rocks,

featured prominently in this peacebuilding process.

·

Other Stories from the Edge of Violence

253

In reflecting on the narratives and stories presented in both the previous chapter and

this one, David Abram (1996) might say that the more-than-human world engaged

participants and provoked their senses in a way that urban, indoor settings could not.

Theodore Roszak (1995) suggests that “it is homely common sense that human beings

must live in a state of respectful give-and-take with the flora and fauna, rivers and hills,

the sky and soil on which we depend for physical sustenance and practical instruction”

(p. 6). And perhaps it is this homely common sense, which is often far from our daily

reality, that takes hold of the veterans, trauma survivors, victims and adversaries alike in

these natural settings, and allows them to connect with one another at a new level. While

the stories presented in this chapter involve very different groups of people, settings, and

situations, all of them reveal the ways that interactions with/in the more-than-human

world can change people and change relationships. In many of the cases, the

circumstances involved traumas and various other life-denying or life-threatening

situations, and it seemed that nature offered an alternative for the people involved, and

pointed to a path that would enhance life, cultivate life, move life forward. With this in

mind, this thesis now turns towards an analysis of the narratives, and reflects on the

implications of these stories for theory and practice in peace and conflict studies.

254

PART III – Reflections, Implications, and Conclusions

There is a kinship between the being of the earth and that of my body (Leib)

which it would not be exact for me to speak of as moving since my body is

always at the same distance from me. This kinship extends to others, who

appear to me as other bodies, to animals, whom I understand as variants of

my embodiment, and finally even to terrestrial bodies since I introduce them

into the society of living bodies when saying, for example, that a stone

‘flies.’

—Merleau-Ponty, RC, 122

255

interlude

A Conversation with Andy Fisher

Our bodies . . . still carry the knowledge of our buried needs, of our

unactivated interactional patterns.

—Fisher, 2002, p. 109

Andy Fisher is a leading scholar in the field of ecopsychology as well as a

psychotherapist in private practice in Eastern Ontario. Reading his book, Radical

Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life several months into my PhD studies

was critical in determining the direction of my work and research over the next six years.

My insight at the time was that peace and conflict studies, while it focuses on issues of

direct and structural violence, neglects ecological violence—the connections between

environmental decline and what this does to the human (and more-than-human) psyche. I

came to understand that what is missing from the academic discussions of complexity

and interdependence is the ways in which all human activity—including conflict and

peacebuilding—takes place within a shared, interconnected and interdependent global

ecosystem. And I realized that ecopsychology could directly complement and extend the

approaches within my new discipline, since ecopsychology is “fundamentally a response

to violence (for to violate something is precisely to insult its nature). . . [T]he goal . . . is

to work toward the recovery of our ability to perceive and answer back to this violence,

and to engage in nonviolent modes of relating” (Fisher, 2002, p. 55). As I conducted this

A Conversation with Andy Fisher

256

research and reflected on the experiences described by the veterans and other

interviewees, I contacted Andy Fisher, and he agreed to help clarify my understanding of

his work and to illuminate from an ecopsychological perspective some of my findings.

Early one morning in October 2011, I spoke with Andy by telephone.19 Much of

our conversation centred on the ways that the human body responds in different

environments, and the ways that after certain experiences, our bodies might call for

different things. After an experience of trauma, Andy tells me, the body and the psyche

need to regain their sense of security. And the body is capable of recognizing when it is

in the presence of what it needs, what it’s implying. “I’m very big on this idea of

implying,” Andy says. “If I’m hungry, then my body’s implying food. And if I’m

traumatized, my body’s going to be implying certain experiences that will help restore a

sense of security or calm or peace or life. So if my body’s implying that all the time, it’s a

matter of what enters into my experience and does that match with what I’m implying?”

In particular, Andy reflects that the veterans’ stories of their experiences in nature

suggest that what is being called for—what their bodies are implying—is vitality and a

more-than-human experience to carry life forward. “In order to complete these trauma

experiences, or recover from the trauma experiences, [when the veteran] comes across the

river, [he has a] shift in his experience. His body is saying, ‘This is it! This is what I’m

19 The morning of our telephone conversation, I had been up with Cameron since 5:00 a.m., and was not

feeling as alert as I would have liked. Before placing the call to Andy, I tested my recording device;

however, I must have forgotten to turn the recorder on at the beginning of our conversation, something I

only realized with a sickening feeling about 35 or 40 minutes into the telephone call. As such, some of what

is presented in this section comes from my notes. Direct quotes are only put around portions of our

conversation that were recorded, although it may be that some of the other sections are very close to

Andy’s own words; however, since they are taken from my notes, I cannot attribute them as direct quotes.

Andy was very kind and at the end of the interview, he took the time to return to some of the main points so

that there would be a better record of what he said.

A Conversation with Andy Fisher

257

implying.’ So that takes our thinking of the healing process beyond the therapy office

into a more-than-human field of what might be called for in the healing process.”

Andy emphasizes the ways that ecology studies the relationship between an

organism and its environment, and this ecological way of thinking can be helpful in

understanding the differences between a therapy room and a natural setting. The therapy

room is limited in space, he tells me, and it tends to require a particular posture of sitting.

“That really limits the possibilities of healing by thinking in terms of that organism-

environment field,” Andy says. Meanwhile, ecopsychology asks about and brings

attention to what other organism-environments are possible, and shows that natural

settings bring other possibilities, other postures beyond the sitting position required in a

therapy room. “It’s quite a risk for therapists to step outside the office; that’s the place

where there’s a kind of comfort zone for therapists,” Andy reflects, but he observes that

the veterans’ experiences are demonstrating that other organism-environment fields are

both possible and essential. “[It] would be important to recognize for how [these other

fields] perhaps take us to a deeper place in terms of that resonance with the world . . . that

really draws on a very deep memory of our place in the world.”

As our conversation goes on, we both describe the importance that getting out of

doors has in our own experience. Andy relates that when he is feeling irritable or restless,

his wife often encourages him to go out for a walk. And in his experience, the change in

mood and sensation are almost immediate when he gets outside. This leads Andy to

express his curiosity about the “the rapidity of the shift of the experience, when just

simply walking out the door and how quickly that takes you, in my experience, into a

whole different mood and sensibility and how there’s something about the contact with

A Conversation with Andy Fisher

258

something other than human that seems to have very, very deep roots and takes you there

very quickly.” This is similar to my own experience, and especially now as the mother of

a toddler. If we are indoors, and Cameron is becoming ill-tempered or impulsive, going

outside is nearly always my first course of action, and as soon as we get outside, I see the

change in him: he becomes happier, less irritable, more accommodating and engaged, and

he even tends to sleep better after the experience.

“I think there are just very, very deep resonances,” Andy reflects. “This is the

mystery of it, but if this is the world that we’ve emerged from or that’s made us

somehow—that on a level that’s not necessarily cognized there are these profound

resonances.” But because of the ways that the modern world and particularly Western

society shapes and structures our perceptions and sensory abilities, “we’re very limited in

trying to understand or bring meaning to these experiences beyond the obviousness of

them when we’re having them.” However, Andy believes that better ways of talking

about and describing these experiences will come. Accordingly, he considers the

phenomenological method to be very important in conducting research about experiences

in nature, “especially in these territories where we don’t have conceptions or language to

right away make sense of things, that we need to follow the lead of our experience and

then find a language that describes this experience.”

The value of phenomenological research, Andy explains, is that “it forces us to pay

attention to the actual experiences people are having, even if they don’t fit the categories

of the normal discourse. And then that forces a stretching of the discourse or a

reconceptualization. We typically conceptualize the natural world as inanimate; it’s just

so much matter or inert stuff that we can then use for resource purposes one way or

A Conversation with Andy Fisher

259

another, whether it’s a visual resource or a material resource for industry, it’s a resource

somehow. But if people are having the kinds of experiences that [the veterans in your

research] are describing, well then that forces a different kind of conceptualization and

within ecopsychology, the idea is that the more-than-human world has its own interiority,

its own life, that it’s animate somehow, that it has agency, that it has its own creativity,

and perhaps even has a will of its own, and that to place ourselves in that psyche—to get

out of the indoor environment and place ourselves in that psyche—will automatically

place us in a different mindset, in a different psychological field and then different things

can happen.”

Andy brings attention to how part of the task of ecopsychology is to bring an

earthly understanding to developmental psychology. He describes one theory, based in

attachment theory, in which during middle childhood, we graduate from having a secure

base in our parents/caregivers to finding a secure base in nature. “One of the ideas I like

is that in our own psychological development, especially in middle childhood, the natural

world just becomes so attractive and you just want to be out there and building forts and

playing in creeks and things, that there’s a moment where we really bond to the natural

world, and graduate from the security of our parents to the security of the larger natural

world,” Andy reflects. A child can return to his parents or caregiver for emotional

refuelling and sense of security anytime, “but if the security with mom or dad is good

enough, then we graduate to this larger field of security, which is the more-than-human

field, and then that becomes a secure base, and we learn to rely on the places where we

are and our knowledge of them to ground ourselves and to feel a sense of security in the

world.” It is this security in nature, in a certain place or landscape, that gives adults the

A Conversation with Andy Fisher

260

grounds for providing security back to the children. This is one of the reasons, Andy

explains, that “if you dislocate people who very much have that relationship with a place,

it’s so traumatic for them because you’re removing them from the ground of their

security. And I think there’s a way in which perhaps people who have these healing

experiences in the natural world, who are coming from a place of trauma, are

reconnecting with that sense of security that I think is normal in us to experience in

middle childhood.”

The veterans’ stories point clearly to their bodies saying that the natural world is a

place they feel secure. And, as Andy says, “if people phenomenologically are

discovering, well look how easily we make contact within this psyche compared to

another psyche—and this is kind of a new way of talking, where we don’t talk about the

psyche as being inside us, but we’re in a psyche. What is the psyche of this place and

how does this compare to the psyche or the soul of a therapist’s office and what is

possible here versus what is possible there because it’s a different psychological field,

sitting in a different soul in a way.”

Another part of our conversation focuses on the ways that natural spaces foster

social interaction. It’s just a phenomenological fact, Andy tells me, that social

interactions occur in natural spaces, and that these experiences point to the unity of body

and the environment. He and his wife, Jill Dunkley, offer wilderness quest retreats

several times per year, and Andy reflects that on each of these retreats, even though many

of the participants have never met before, they often find it easy to come into contact and

connect with one another in natural spaces. This is because, Andy suggests, the world

itself is ensouled. It has the power to affect us, to move us. When we do not separate

A Conversation with Andy Fisher

261

ourselves from the world, different things will happen, which he suggests implies the

possibility for change in the world much broader than what we are currently doing.

Indeed, Andy comments that this is a radical way of re-envisioning life and experience.

“If we’re having certain experiences in the natural world, well that implies a

reconceptualization of reality, and if we’re reconceptualising reality, well that’s radical.”

262

Chapter 10

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

My terrestrial roots . . . nourish everything else.

—Merleau-Ponty, RC, 122

Maurice Merleau-Ponty asserts that all experience is prior to thought or theoretical

attempts to explain it. Andy Fisher (2006) writes about the ways that the body—not the

mind—“is always implying further steps of living that will carry our experiencing

forward” (p. 165). All of the veterans, and many of the supporting interviewees, shared

with me that their relationship with the natural world often came before conscious

reflection and theorizing—they each realized that they were feeling better, and only

following that realization did they reflect on where and in what context they felt better.

Merleau-Ponty notes that “reflection does not withdraw from the world . . . [but rather] it

slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world and thus brings them to our

notice” (PP, xv). Based on this understanding, it is likely impossible to completely

analyze pre-reflective experience; however, in this chapter I work to bring attention to the

various threads in the narratives in this thesis that demonstrate our human attachment to

and interconnections with more-than-human nature. In doing so, I keep in mind Norman

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

263

K. Denzin’s (2009) observation that interpretation itself is a form of storytelling. In

choosing to present the veterans’ stories in narrative form, rather than partitioned into

themes as is common practice in qualitative research, I am situating this research within a

particular story—one that asserts the veterans’ experiences are more understandable,

contextualized, and situated when presented as a narrative. I am also presenting

possibilities for each reader to reflect and form her/his own interpretations, and am

suggesting that there is more to learn from the veterans’ experiences than I could ever

illuminate through interpretation alone. Further, I suggest that the more-than-human

world itself comes into consciousness by reading and experiencing each veteran’s story in

its entirety. As Fisher (2006) writes, “we also need to let nature speak again, by allowing

our bodies to have a voice” (p. 164). Ideally, by presenting the experiences in as many of

the veterans’ own words as possible, I am suggesting that they are more qualified to

speak about their experiences than I am. However, as the writer and researcher, I am still

responsible for crafting the story, for choosing those parts of the interview to include and

those to exclude, as well as which parts of the stories are highlighted. This is the reason

that I have also included and reflected on my own experiences throughout this thesis—to

make more visible my role as researcher and storyteller. Together, all of the stories and

conversations co-mingle to create a new (and more ecological) story.

Connelly and Clandinin (1990) warn about the danger of the “Hollywood plot” in

narrative inquiry, where participants’ stories are smoothed and moulded by the researcher

to show that despite hardships, everything worked out and ended well. It is important to

remember that the stories told by Christian MacEachern, Tim Lewis, Gord Cousins, and

Shepherd Bliss are ongoing. These are the stories they continue to inhabit every day.

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

264

Their experiences in nature have not ‘cured’ their stress reactions and/or post-traumatic

distress, and all of them spoke of their need for more than one avenue of recovery. For

Christian, in addition to spending as much time as possible in the outdoors and with his

animals, the path has also involved medication and therapy. Tim described how, in

addition to spending time in nature settings, he eventually sought counselling to help

understand some of his own behaviours and reactions. Gord believes that re-enlisting in

the reserves and once again having a larger purpose in life was important for his own

recovery. And Shepherd reflects that his involvement in the Veterans’ Writing Group has

been a crucial part of his healing, as well as some individual and group therapy over the

years.

As I read and re-read the interview transcripts, and reflected on the veterans’

experiences as well as on the insights from the supporting interviews, I realized that their

stories, while different and individual, shared a number of commonalities. The first of the

four research questions outlined at the beginning of this thesis was: In what ways do

veterans’ narratives of post-conflict recovery highlight nature as important for physical

and/or psychological and spiritual wellbeing and survival? This chapter returns to this

question to examine the main thematic connections between the veterans’ stories as well

as across my other interviews and the other stories and anecdotes uncovered in this

research. Specifically, it takes up the theme of sensory experience in nature and how each

veteran spoke to the ways that the rhythms in the more-than-human world provide a

greater structure such as night and day, and the turning of the seasons, which serve as a

reminder that the world is larger than his military experiences. The theme of the sensory

experience involved in interacting with/in the natural world also contributes to

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

265

mindfulness and living in the present that often eludes trauma sufferers. I also explore the

safety and security that each veteran found in nature, which is important since many

veterans, and particularly those suffering from the effects of stress and/or trauma,

describe not feeling safe in their post-military experience. Another theme that runs

through the stories is the way that encounters with/in nature helped the veterans to work

towards regaining their confidence and a sense of purpose that had been lost after their

military service. In addition, an important theme emerged in the ways that camaraderie

and social support arise out of spending time in the outdoors with other human beings,

and particularly with other veterans who share and can relate to their military experiences

in ways that members of their family or friends might not. For several of the veterans,

relationships with more-than-human beings, such as animals and insects, were especially

important. Furthermore, all of my interviewees asserted their belief that contact with the

more-than-human world is a basic human need. All of these themes lead to the central

connection between all the stories and experiences in this research, which involves the

regaining of humanity through connecting with the more-than-human world, and the core

remembrance that we are nature. These themes and insights hold important meanings for

theory and praxis in peace and conflict studies, which will be explored in more detail in

Chapter 11.

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

266

Sensory Experience in the More-than-Human World

Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with

mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned

knees.

—Louv, 2008, p. 97

Earlier in this thesis, I summarized Kate Soper’s (1995) “lay” or “surface” concept

of nature, in which nature is depicted as the opposite of what is urban. Timothy Beatley

(2000) argues that the vastness of the North American landscape contributes to the

urban/nature dichotomy, in which the nature viewed as important tends to be seen as the

nature that is far away from cities, “in national parks, national seashores, and wildlife

areas” (p. 224). And while I am working in this thesis to advocate for a more holistic

conception of nature, it is important that for many of my interview participants, these

places ‘away’ were significant—it was these places that took them away from the

pressures of everyday life and modern technologies, that opened space for their energies

to dissipate, to explore their wounds and to find stillness.

Accordingly, an important connection between the veterans’ stories lies in the way

that their sensory experience in the more-than-human world, and particularly in these

places ‘away,’ leads to increased mindfulness, and lends to a feeling of being more fully

present in the world. As Merleau-Ponty observes, “we have an access [to nature] . . .

through the vital relation that we have with a privileged part of nature: namely, our body,

through the ‘natural inclination’ whose lessons cannot coincide with those of pure

understanding. It is life which validly comprehends the life of the human composite”

(RC, 70). The mainstream psychological literature tends to focus on what is happening in

the brain of the trauma sufferer, but is not always good at exploring the

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

267

phenomenological experience of trauma, Andy Fisher told me. And in hearing the

veterans’ stories, I was struck by how that phenomenological experience is often the

opposite of feeling present. Through flashbacks and panic attacks, sufferers are easily

drawn into the past—a past which seems to be happening in the present. Furthermore,

through Christian MacEachern, Tim Lewis, Gord Cousins, and Shepherd Bliss’s stories,

as well as in reading about the experiences of other veterans, I came to understand the

ways that stress, anxiety, and post-traumatic distress are themselves sensory experiences

manifested in and through the body.

Connecting with the more-than-human world seemed to provide each veteran with

an alternate sensory experience, in which he described becoming more present to his

surroundings. As Roméo Dallaire observed in the film Shake Hands with the Devil, when

he visited that hillside in Rwanda, he came to feel human again. And journalist Robert

Poole (2010) describes how the Pathway Home, a private, non-profit residential treatment

center for U.S. soldiers and veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury and/or post-

traumatic distress, encourages veterans to go for walks in the hills every morning, and the

program gradually re-introduces them to community life through physical activities,

which include fly-fishing and bicycle tours through the California countryside.

In listening to and re-reading the veterans’ stories, I was struck by how their

embodied experiences in the natural world have turned their attention back towards the

ways that nature is regulated by cycles and seasons, by birth and death, by relations

between animals and plants, and so on. As Tim Lewis reflected, “There’s something

about the outdoors that’s helped me move on from my service and look inside. And to

become—I wouldn’t say whole again, but just not so military, if you will.” Tim also

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

268

shared how since he was a young teenager, climbing has “been where I’ve always gone

to, to be myself, to feel present, to put myself in real situations, real decisions.” He

commented that being in nature often helps him to put life and his experiences into

perspective. “If I’m not mindful about what’s going on with my environment and with

me when I’m in the outdoors, especially in the mountain environment, I could be at risk. I

could be walking right into a dangerous situation. So for me it definitely increases my

sense of awareness. It brings down a lot of the barriers to being fully present. You leave

the watch at home. You leave technology behind and you get a chance to slow down and

be present . . . you’re on a different clock when you’re outside. You have to be, like I

said, fully present when you’re climbing and skiing and doing all these things.”

Gord Cousins spent a lot of solo time in the mountains after moving to Calgary in

the 1970s, and he observed that spending time in nature leads him to feel more “fulfilled,

in control, you’re responsive to the things around you . . . perhaps a better way of saying

it, you’re more aware of the things around you rather than having to respond to every

circumstance.” As Gord spoke, he emphasized the physical/embodied aspects of spending

time in nature, and the ways that human experience itself takes on a different rhythm in

the natural world that contrasts sharply with the constant demands of modern urban life.

Rather than going by the rhythm of urban lifestyle or demands of other people, nature

presents its own rhythm, Gord explained. “Day turns to night, you stop. Light comes in

the morning, you get up. There’s a rhythm that’s much different than somebody yelling at

you to do this or that. Or you’ve got to punch a clock at a certain time.”

Shepherd Bliss sought to recreate some of his childhood experiences on his uncle

and aunt’s farm when he bought his own farm in the early 1990s, a place where he now

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

269

interacts daily with plants and animals and the community of the land. He remembered

his uncle and aunt’s farm as “a different scene, animals and plants and hanging out with

chickens and piglets and watching their community.” The sensory experience available

through farming and working the land became clear in Shepherd’s description of using

only hand tools, such as scythes and machetes, on his farm. He pulls weeds by hand, and

enjoys hearing the wind blowing through the nearby bamboo, as well as watching and

listening to his chickens as they dance and talk to one another and dig in the dirt.

Similarly, Shepherd’s description of his and other members of the Veterans Writing

Group’s slow walking meditations beneath the canopy of the giant eucalyptus forest

points to the ways that nature opens possibilities for mindfulness. Shepherd observed

how difficult the walking meditations were for veterans who were used to walking point

in the jungles of Vietnam. “But after a while, you really get into the wonderment of

knowing that you are protected and there is no threat, so you walk it out. Your body sees

the land, not as a place to be scorched with napalm or that’s concealing somebody who

could hurt you, but it’s welcoming. And so you begin to transform that.” I recall, too,

Shepherd’s experience of coming across the rare and delicate lily at the bottom of his

property shortly after he’d moved there, the way that it evoked for him the

interconnections between everything, that it reminded him of the wholeness of all life.

Indeed, he credits farming as one of the most beneficial activities in his learning to live

with and move towards recovery from his trauma experiences (Bliss, 2009a; 2009b).

Farming, in many ways, is the opposite of conventional therapy; it is the opposite of a

“talking cure”. It is, Shepherd explains, “not-talking” (Bliss, 2009a, p. 178).

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

270

In Christian MacEachern’s narrative, he shared how one of his first moments of

feeling “at peace with life” in his post-military experience came while he sat on the banks

of a river. Moreover, in remembering the CVAF’s summer 2009 weekend trip for

veterans, both Christian and Ian Sherrington described how they could see palpable

differences in the other veterans after just one morning of rafting on the Bow River. They

both described the participants as seeming more relaxed in their bodies. Christian said,

“You could just see the guys melting, starting to relax and smile,” while Ian commented

more generally that over the weekend he could “see the life flowing back into [the

veterans].” Even psychiatrist Greg Passey, who participated in the weekend’s activities,

observed in his comments on the CVAF’s website the “calming effect and sense of

peace” instilled for many of the veterans.

It seems that in their sensory interactions with the elements, with the earth, air,

water, and with more-than-human beings, the veterans began to transform their

experiences. Their encounters with/in the natural world provided alternative experiences

to those manifested during their stress reactions and/or through their symptoms

associated with post-traumatic distress. As Andy Fisher (2006) observes, “Against the

historical interiorizing of the psyche, our bodies call for a re-establishment of safe and

loving world-relations” (p. 167). Further, he writes that “the voice of traumatic pain in

our own time is thus asking for a more loving, human, spiritualized world. That’s the

body talking” (ibid.). The body speaks clearly in each of the veterans’ narratives.

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

271

Safety in Nature

The Nature in us must have some relation to Nature outside of us; moreover,

Nature outside of us must be unveiled to us by the Nature that we are . . . By

the Nature in us, we can know Nature, and reciprocally it is from ourselves

that living beings and even space speak to us.

—Merleau-Ponty, N, 206

Many veterans, and particularly those suffering from the effects of stress and post-

traumatic distress, describe not feeling safe once they return home to Canada or the

United States. Their wartime and/or peacekeeping experiences are forever imprinted on

their psyche and body, and become the new vantage from which they experience the

world, which leads many to feel constantly threatened by the people and situations they

encounter in daily life at home. In the Foreword to Outside the Wire: The War in

Afghanistan in the Words of its Participants, which tells Canadian soldiers’ stories of

experience in Afghanistan, LGen (ret) Roméo Dallaire (2007) writes about the realities

that most soldiers have lived through:

[E]xperiencing the intensity of battle; being the cause of the destruction of

villages, of putting people’s homes in the target cross-hairs; being able to do

little to address the extreme poverty and deprivation of the children;

witnessing the burden and abuse of women in this male-dominated social

order; hearing the suffering and cries of the wounded, military and civilian

alike; seeing the cold and cruel face of death on your enemy as well as your

comrade. (p. ix)

When soldiers return from peacekeeping missions and combat zones, they must contend

not only with such experiences, but also with the dramatic contrasts to life at home,

including the affluence of our industrialized society and the easy ways which most people

go about their daily lives with few or no worries about their personal security (Dallaire,

2007). Dallaire reflects that as the adrenaline high associated with being in a combat zone

slowly subsides, “the hurt rises in your stomach and buckles your shoulders under the

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

272

weight of sorrow and grief. You’re surprised to feel the deep ache of lonesomeness as

you sit once again at your family dinner table—where you longed to be” (p. x). He

describes how combat itself becomes drug-like—it delivers a “rush” that is unequalled in

ordinary human experience, from the smells to the sense of pure power to the exhilaration

that comes from defying death.

Robert Poole’s (2010) article in Smithsonian Magazine tells the story of the

Pathway Home treatment center for U.S. soldiers and veterans suffering from traumatic

brain injury and/or post-traumatic distress. The center’s director, Fred Gusman, describes

the common experience of veterans living at the centre:

You shut down emotionally except when you’re raging with anger. You are

hyper-vigilant because you don’t know where the enemy is. You look for

signs of trouble in the line at Wal-Mart, or when someone crowds you on the

freeway, or when there’s a sudden noise. They are very, very watchful. This

kept them alive in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it becomes a problem when they

come home. It’s not like a light switch you can turn off or on. (Poole, 2010)

In Judy Jackson’s (2011) film, one soldier described how after he returned home to

Canada from Afghanistan, every person he encountered posed a threat to his person.

Similarly, Christian MacEachern described “taking a knee” in Safeway during a panic

attack, while Tim Lewis shared the story of how he rushed out of his condo with a baton

and bear spray towards the occupants of a car who were honking their horn outside.

What does it mean to feel safe? The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines the word

safe as “free of danger or injury” (Barber, 2001). When we do not feel safe, our body

becomes tense, constantly on alert. Our heart might pound as increased adrenaline

courses through our veins, and we may react in ways that take us by surprise, as in

Christian and Tim’s examples. Meanwhile, the feeling of safety is also something that we

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

273

experience in our bodies. Indeed, an etymological examination of the term ‘safe’ reveals

important insights and connections. Its Latin root salvus, which means ‘uninjured,

healthy, safe,’ is related to the Latin salus, meaning ‘good health,’ and saluber meaning

‘healthful.’ Furthermore, all of these words share an ancestral tie to the root sol, from the

Proto-Indo-European ancestral language, meaning ‘whole,’ and are thought to be

connected to, among other words, the Sanskrit sarvah, ‘uninjured, intact, whole,’ and the

Greek holos, ‘whole’ (OED, 2001). Therefore, a sense of safety refers not only to an

experience of freedom from danger or lacking injury, but also a state of good health, and

a sense of wholeness.

Accordingly, an important thematic connection amongst the veterans’ stories is the

way they each describe finding safety and/or security in the more-than-human world. For

example, Tim Lewis reflected on the difference in the quality of the conversations that

occur between veterans in outdoor spaces compared to indoor spaces. He commented that

“in order for us [veterans] to have some of these conversations about how we’re trained,

it’s hugely helpful that when we are outdoors, we feel safe” (emphasis mine). Further,

Tim shared that spending time in nature “allowed us [veterans] to create some space

outside that essentially is a safe space for us to just talk about [experiences of post-

combat stress reactions]. I’ve spent a lot of time with veterans in other situations . . . but

not being outdoors, and the same types of conversations don’t happen.”

Christian MacEachern reflected on the notions of tension and negative energy and

the ways that in his personal experience, it is much easier and feels safer to talk about

military incidents and events to a friend or another veteran when both of them are

grooming their horses. He contrasted this with his experiences of indoor group therapy

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

274

sessions, after which he often found that his agitation and anger had increased rather than

decreased. And as he came to notice the ways that spending time outdoors seemed to ease

his suffering, Christian began to ask why therapy sessions could not be held outside,

around a campfire after a day of canoeing or something similar. His own experiences

support his belief that “with being outside, that [negative] energy has a place to go.”

Gord Cousins observed that from his childhood through to his rehabilitation and

even today, spending time in nature has been the commonality that has carried through

his life, and he believes this interaction helped him to adjust to his changing life

circumstances. He shared his struggles with frustration and anger during the 1980s, and

during our conversation suggested that perhaps there is a link to the fact that when he had

young children in the 1980s, he wasn’t able to keep up his active outdoor lifestyle. In the

1990s, as he once again became active in the outdoors through his new roles with the

Cadets, Gord describes how his angry outbursts and waking periods in the night began to

subside.

Shepherd Bliss shared that in his experience the main benefits of farming lie in how

it redirects energy to the plants and animals, and there is (or can be) limited contact with

other human beings. He has written about how his relationships with other people have

improved because of his work on the farm (Bliss, 2009a). Additionally, in Shepherd’s

narrative, the theme of safety came up in the ways that his farm provides possibilities for

new relationships with children. Even though he has no children of his own, Shepherd

described himself as newly captured by the grandfather archetype, and observed that his

interactions with the children who come to his farm provide “safe, intimate contact,

which has been hard for me, maintaining relationships.” Furthermore, Shepherd reflected

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

275

that the farm—the earth, grass, winds, leaves, flowers—the whole community of the

land, provides safety for others, who spend time there. In describing some of his informal

facilitation work with the veterans who visit his farm, Shepherd noticed that the men

sometimes open up around a picnic table in ways they might not in a clinical setting. In

this context, Christian McEachern’s question “why does counselling and group therapy

have to be in the office all the time?” becomes very important.

It seems to me that the veterans are each describing the ways that the natural world

calls forth their experience, their negative energy, their suffering. The more-than-human

world is big enough to hold their stress and distress. Drawing on attachment theory, Andy

Fisher observed that the more-than-human world can become a secure base for children

in middle childhood. He reflected that “we learn to rely on the places where we are and

our knowledge of them to ground ourselves and to feel a sense of security in the world,”

and he suggested that this security, while developed in childhood, is something we can

return to in adulthood. Thus, when the veterans describe feeling safe and secure in natural

spaces, it might be interpreted as their bodies speaking, their bodies saying, ‘I feel safe. I

feel ok. Let’s do more of this.’ Indeed, understood within an ecopsychological

framework, the experiences and safety the veterans are describing are demonstrating a

“life-forwarding directionality.” As Fisher (2006) has written:

When we drop down into our body’s silent conversation with the world and

join with it, what we find there is nothing arbitrary but rather implied steps of

living that move in the direction of an increase in vitality, a resolving of

conflicts, a forming of satisfying new meanings, a healing of old emotional

wounds, a softening of frozen or structure-bound experiencing, an increase in

awareness and feelings of wholeness, and many other possibilities that feel

right. (p. 165)

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

276

Tim Lewis observed that rather than having expectations about what should be

talked about or what needs to happen next, nature “meets you where you’re at.” And

Fisher (2002) has noted elsewhere, “Bearing pain is always a matter of placing it in a

larger context so that it both loses its overwhelming power and is given the space it needs

to move” (p. 192). In the veterans’ narratives, it seems as though the more-than-human

world calls forth each one’s suffering and says to them, ‘You don’t need to feel alone. Let

us help you hold this suffering. We are bigger than you and we can hold this pain.’ Thus,

this sense of safety and security found in nature might be one of the best ways of

understanding Merleau-Ponty’s assertion about the relation and reciprocity between the

nature inside us and the nature outside us, of how “the Nature in us must have some

relation to Nature outside of us; moreover, Nature outside of us must be unveiled to us by

the Nature that we are” (N, 206). At its base the security found in the more-than-human

world leads to a sense of good health and wholeness held within the etymology of the

word safe.

A Renewed Sense of Purpose through Experiences in the Natural World

My body is a sort of open circuit that completes itself only in things, in

others, in the encompassing earth.

—Abram, 1996, p. 62

Another theme that connects the veterans’ stories is the way that as each of them

spent time in the natural world, he redeveloped a sense of purpose, regained lost

confidence, and realized that he had a valuable role to play in his community (which

often included helping other veterans, as will be discussed in more detail in the sections

still to come). Through spending time in the more-than-human world, the veterans began

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

277

to connect mindfully to their surroundings and to find purpose and meaning outside the

institutional context of the military, and possibilities for integrating into the wider

community.

In exploring the issue of lost confidence and lost purpose, it is perhaps helpful to

consider the military, and especially contexts such as military academies, basic training

(or ‘boot camp’), and missions away from home, within the realm of what sociologist

Erving Goffman (1962) names a “total institution.” Goffman defines total institution as

“a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals are cut

off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time together lead an enclosed

formally administered round of life” (p.xii). Such institutions provide an all-

encompassing experience for those working and living inside them. Goffman (1962)

observes that in total institutions:

First, all aspects of life are conducted in the same place and under the same

single authority. Second, each phase of the member’s daily activity is carried

on in the immediate company of a large batch of others, all of whom are

treated alike and required to do the same thing together. Third, all phases of

the day’s activities are tightly scheduled, with one activity leading at a

prearranged time to the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed

from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials.

Finally, the various enforced activities are brought together into a single

rational plan purportedly designed to fulfill the official aims of the institution.

(p. 6)

Through military training, members learn very specific ways of being and acting in

the institution’s context. Joshua Goldstein reflects that the key goal of basic training

implants in soldiers a deep sense of discipline and an “instinct to obey orders” (p. 203).

This instinct was conveyed in Christian MacEachern’s observation that “they train you so

hard that it’s instinct after a while.” Similarly, it is found in Tim Lewis’s comment that

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

278

“you’re trained to respond to situations in a certain way . . . [and] the ideal response in a

stressful, dangerous situation is . . . with maximum speed, aggression and violence to take

out the enemy or the threat.” It also becomes clear in Shepherd Bliss’s description of

being born into and raised in a long-time military family and growing up living on

military bases. He commented that “Demilitarizing myself has been forty-some years. I

was militarized the first twenty, twenty-five.” In addition, militarization as Goldstein

(2001) observes, involves training and disciplining soldiers to suppress their emotions,

particularly fear and grief, since “cultural norms [in the military] force men to endure

trauma and master fear, in order to claim the status of ‘manhood’” (p. 264).

This awareness of the military as an institution that totally orients the lives, bodies,

and emotions of soldiers is helpful in understanding the sense of loss and lack of purpose

upon leaving the military that was described in some of the veterans’ narratives. In

addition, as explored in Chapter 7, lost confidence is common for veterans suffering from

post-traumatic distress, because flashbacks and panic attacks are unpredictable.

Experiencing a flashback and becoming incapacitated in an everyday life situation, such

as shopping at the grocery store, can lead post-traumatic distress sufferers to increasingly

avoid such situations, and to withdraw and disengage from community life. After all,

panic attacks and post-traumatic suffering might be viewed as the opposite of what

Nancy Taber (2011a) defines as the “archetypical (ideal) military member” who is “a

strong, capable, courageous man who is willing to give up his life to protect the freedoms

and way of life of western citizens” (p. 1). Indeed, Christian MacEachern observed that a

common sentiment amongst veterans is that their flashbacks, panic attacks and anxiety

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

279

make them feel “stupid,” and they are always worried about “looking stupider than they

already feel.”

Christian, too, described a sense of lost confidence and lost purpose after being

discharged from the military. And it was a number of years after leaving the military, as

he participated in Mount Royal’s ETOL program’s outdoor activities, that Christian

describes a moment of sudden insight after which his confidence started to return: “It was

almost as if I realized I could still do it.” As his confidence in his own abilities began to

return, Christian felt able to take on more of a leadership role amongst his peers. He also

began to trust in his ability to provide support to other veterans also suffering from post-

traumatic distress, which led him to found the CVAF.

Shepherd Bliss believes that growing high-quality food for other people—organic

boysenberries and chicken eggs—has been especially important in his life. “There was

something about the recovery of the fruit that enabled my recovery,” Shepherd told me.

Not only did he, through painstakingly hard work, recover his farm from its previous

state of disarray, he also began to provide food to nourish the bodies and souls of others

living in his community. Furthermore, he takes on the role of guardian for his chickens,

protecting them from predators such as mountain lions, coyotes, and great horned owls.

In addition, Shepherd has a prominent role as an advocate for the Farmer Veterans

Coalition, hosts other veterans on his farm, and recently began volunteering with the

Horses Building Communities program, which supports soldiers, veterans and their

families.

When Gord Cousins was discharged from the hospital, he recalls being “in poor

shape physically, . . . skitterish, gun shy, underweight.” He believes that the sudden

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

280

transformation from being in the hospital to working in the bush in and around

Thompson, Manitoba, for the summer was crucial to his recovery. “That immersion

really rapidly put things behind me and I felt useful. I felt I was engaged. It was the

beginning of a feeling that I really had a role to play.” And in the summers that followed,

Gord continued to work outdoors. He recalls the experience of getting back into a canoe

in the years following his accident: “In each case, I was the bowman. I wasn’t in charge

of the canoe. But I was able to portage it and paddle and do the different strokes, like a

crossbow draw and stuff like that quite well.”

While Tim Lewis did not expressly speak about lost confidence or a lost sense of

purpose, he did describe his clear need to go climbing in the mountains immediately upon

his return from Afghanistan. This urge to go climbing was his way of creating

decompression time, since his unit did not receive decompression leave at the end of their

tour. “It just made sense, after that tour, to come into the mountains,” Tim told me. In the

context of his interview, one might interpret Tim’s time in the mountains as him

demonstrating his ability and competence to succeed at something outside of the military,

while also connecting with the more-than-human world.

In each of these cases, the veterans describe remembering or reacquainting

themselves with skills and activities that they had known outside the military—or even

that they had learned in the military but perhaps forgotten or not used in their post-

military experiences. Andy Fisher (2002) writes that “our bodies . . . still carry the

knowledge of our buried needs, of our unactivated interactional patterns” (p. 109). It is

important that the areas and activities to which each was drawn involved connecting with

the wider world, rather than withdrawing inside themselves. As each veteran immersed

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

281

himself in the more-than-human world, and opened up to that experience, his buried

bodily needs became known, became once again present in his life. In many of the

stories, the veterans described feeling separate from the human communities in which

they were living, but as their bodies remembered their role, it would seem that they

remembered their humanity, and gained a purpose in life beyond the institutional context

of the military. It was the wider world of nature that enabled them to once again

connect—with their own bodies, with other humans, and with the more-than-human

world. Both Christian and Shepherd described how it continues to be difficult for them, at

times, to be part of the human community, but in those times, the wider planetary

community—plants and animals in particular—provides the support to ground their lives

in the present and carry their living forward.

Relationships Facilitated in More-than-Human Settings

Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot

occur in isolation.

—Judith Herman, 1997, p. 133

The veterans’ narratives also reflect the importance of social support and

camaraderie that are found and facilitated in more-than-human settings, and particularly

the importance of these experiences with other veterans. Kurt Hoelting observed that the

veterans who take his mindfulness-based stress reduction course get great benefit “from

doing this work with others who have been where they are.” James Hillman (2004)

stresses how even situations of war often bring forth a tenderness and fellow-feeling

amongst comrades. He recalls the words of a French soldier who wrote that his

experience in the trenches was “the most tender human experience that he had ever

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

282

enjoyed” (p. 147). Hence, Hillman reminds us that despite the violence and cruelty

inherent in war, there is also beauty in the ways that one soldier’s soul responds to

another’s, and that soldiers find community in fighting together—and even in dying

together. The military becomes akin to a second family for most soldiers. For example,

Sergeant Russell D. Storring (2007), who served in Afghanistan, describes how the

Canadian military “prides itself on being like a family, and the soldiers I have been

working with and for prove to me that they care for me as one of their own” (p. 13).

Indeed, the ways that the military becomes like a second family can complicate a

soldier’s experiences and sense of responsibility towards their biological family, since the

families tend to have different and often conflicting requirements (Taber, 2011b).

Therefore, when a soldier leaves the military, it is comparable to leaving a family.

And in Shepherd Bliss’s case, he describes how the experience was like leaving two

families, since his decision to resign from the military was not well-received by his

biological family. In her discussion of traumatic stress, Judith Herman (1997) indicates

that “disconnection from others” is a core experience associated with psychological

trauma. Recent research indicates that stress and isolation are harmful to human health

and can lead to slower healing and both magnify and multiply illness outcomes; thus,

Esther Sternberg (2009) reflects, “positive social interactions are important buffers

against stress” (p. 230). Social interaction is an important part of human experience, since

as Fisher (2002) observes, “Only a being who essentially belongs with others can suffer

from isolation” (p. 78).

The experience of isolation, as described in Chapter 7, is common amongst

veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress, and during my research, several

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

283

interviewees commented on the fact that many veterans spend a lot of time in their home

basements. Psychiatrist Dr. Susan Brock, who leads an OSI clinic in Saskatoon, and who

also participated in the CVAF’s 2009 weekend, wrote the following on the group’s

website:

Avoidance, withdrawal, and social isolation are often the most treatment

resistant symptoms of PTSD, and the hardest to challenge within a traditional

therapy setting. Outdoor adventure programs such as the ones offered by

CVAF provide a much needed adjunct to the Veteran’s healing by providing

opportunities in which the Veteran’s fear and anxiety regarding their ability

to tolerate social/recreational activities is challenged in a positive and

meaningful way. It was a truly rewarding experience as a therapist to witness

first-hand the transformation that occurred in this group over the course of the

weekend; anxiety transformed into smiles and expressions of joy.

Recent studies have shown the importance of social support in reducing rates of

post-traumatic distress among those affected by war (e.g., Ahern et al., 2004). “As human

beings we have a need for a place,” writes Larry Robinson (2009), “where we can be

connected to a community of people, plants, animals and the land” (p. 29). Richard Louv

(2008) argues that experiences in nature can be likened to social glue, and that

experiences such as gardening together create the possibilities for bonding and creating

community. One of the teachers interviewed by Louv noted that when she takes students

in her class out to work in the school’s garden, no matter what their day has been like,

“there is a feeling of shared joy and peace” (p. 217). The more-than-human world, it

seems, provides an important context for people to connect at the level of their shared

experience. I return again to Kurt Hoelting’s remarks about the ways that veterans

connect with one another during his MBSR course: “The primary way that we connect

with nature is through each other, through our human nature, through words, through

emotions, through shared experience.”

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

284

Indeed, while Western society tends to treat trauma as an individual disease or

disorder, Lisa Schirch (2005) observes that in indigenous societies, trauma is often

considered a collective experience. And in each of the veterans’ narratives, one finds

examples of how it is this collective experience that supports veterans in helping one

another. For example, Christian MacEachern described how on the first morning of

rafting together as a group, the veterans on the CVAF’s 2009 summer program began to

relax. Indeed, Christian’s whole purpose in starting the CVAF was to provide support for

other veterans who, like him, were suffering from post-traumatic distress. In Tim Lewis’s

story, when veterans came together in the outdoors, their conversations often turned to

their post-military experiences with anger and hypervigilance, which provided them with

insight and understanding into the ways they had been changed by their military service.

While Shepherd Bliss focused on the ways that farming can provide solitude when a

veteran needs it, he also described how the veterans sit together and find comfort in one

another’s experiences and stories, both on his own farm when talking together around the

picnic table as well as in the Veterans’ Writing Group to which he belongs. And Gord

Cousins described how it was first volunteering for the Cadets and then being invited to

re-enlist into the Reserves—into his old family—that gave him a new sense of purpose in

the 1990s, which also coincided with reduced angry outbursts and better sleeping.

Merleau-Ponty brings attention to the fact that “we do not start out in life immersed

in our own self-consciousness (or even in that of things) but rather from the experience of

other people” (C, 65). He argues that it is only through contact with others that we come

to be aware of and understand our own existence. And it is this common understanding

and contact with others that seems particularly important in the veterans’ stories. But as

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

285

Tim Lewis emphasized, in his experience the more-than-human world facilitates

interactions that do not happen within more urban or indoor contexts; however, Kurt

Hoelting’s opening story highlights that through mindfulness practice, changes can and

do occur, even in bleak contexts such as a hospital basement. Hoelting asserts that our

inner human nature makes sure that we can connect with one another in any environment,

but that being in a natural setting facilitates and makes the process easier. As Andy Fisher

described, it is simply a phenomenological fact that being in the natural world opens

human beings to the possibility of making good contact with one another. He suggested

that this is related to the ways that the more-than-human world provides a secure base

from which we can feel safe enough to make contact with others in a supportive way.

Robert Greenway (2009) recalls that human evolution took place in a tribal setting,

in which mutual care and the sharing of activities were important for the very survival of

human beings as a species. He argues that spending time together in nature, and

particularly in situations that require mutual trust and care, such as camping together, as

well as preparing and eating food in a communal setting “arouse this tribal

consciousness” (p. 136). And as the veterans expand their sensorial experience of the

world, Merleau-Ponty’s notions of the flesh and chiasm perfectly encapsulate the moment

when they come to realize they are in relationship with one another, that they are indeed

human, not so different from one another, and their lives overlap and are intimately

intertwined with human and more-than-human others.

In addition, Andy Fisher (2002) writes that “making healing connections with

nonhuman others can involve the simplest of acts. Plainly put, any practice that helps

reembed us within the society of nature, or expand the field of our care, cannot but help

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

286

us bear our pain and suffering” (p. 192). Fisher’s reflection is borne out in both Christian

MacEachern’s and Shepherd Bliss’s descriptions of the importance of more-than-human

beings in their lives. For Christian, who has often felt isolated since he left the military,

his dogs and horse have provided great company and important relationships. Further,

Monica Culic observed that Christian has become more grounded and aware of his

reactions through spending time with and caring for his horse Sozo, which she implied

has helped his relationships with other human beings. And throughout our conversation,

Shepherd Bliss referred often to animals and insects. When he remembers the time spent

on his uncle’s farm, Shepherd recalls milking cows, and making good contact with the

animals and bees, watching the community of the chickens and piglets. On his own farm

today, he loves to watch his chickens dance and play, and advocates that they have

something to teach him. During our conversation, Shepherd also told me about his

involvement with the Horses Building Communities program in Sebastopol County,

which uses equine therapy to support military men and women and their families at all

stages.

Fulfilling a Need to Carry Life Forward

As André Marchand says, after Klee: “In a forest, I have felt many times over

that it was not I who looked at the forest. Some days I felt that the trees were

looking at me, were speaking to me. . . . I was there, listening. . . . I think that

the painter must be penetrated by the universe and not want to penetrate it.”

—Merleau-Ponty, OE, 299

Another commonality across all my interviews, and suggested by the other stories,

philosophies and research drawn on in this thesis, is that remembering and connecting

with the more-than-human world fulfills a basic need, and as Andy Fisher commented,

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

287

creates the possibilities for carrying life forward. Further, ecopsychologist Robert

Greenway (2009) suggests asking the following questions: “If healing takes place in the

wilderness, what is disease? Does this healing really take place in the wilderness more

efficiently than elsewhere? If so, why? And lastly, how?” (p. 133).

Reflecting on some of conditions upheld as ‘disorders’ in modern Western

society—‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder’, ‘seasonal affective disorder’, ‘post-

traumatic stress disorder’—one sees that the symptoms are manifested in the body and

we might wonder whether our own Western view of the body needs to be reviewed and

revised, rather than suggesting that the individual people suffering with these ‘conditions’

are themselves a ‘disorder.’ For example, Richard Louv (2008) reflects on the ways that

spending time in nature tends to reduce the symptoms of children with attention deficit

hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). He argues that this insight suggests inverting our

understanding of ADHD. If ADHD is “a set of symptoms aggravated by lack of exposure

to nature,” Louv proposes that “the society that has disengaged the child from nature is

most certainly disordered, if well-meaning” (p. 109). Perhaps society is disordered—or

pathological even—in its expectation that we dismiss the natural impulses of our bodies.

These conditions might instead be understood as the body speaking—the body seeking to

gain a voice and to bring attention to the disordered society in which we live.

Yet, in our technologized and economized society, the problem attributed to these

‘disorders’, which generally involves the inability to carry out what is considered a

‘normal routine,’ is attributed to the individual person’s body. Rather than

acknowledging that our bodies, too, are natural, and affected by the soil and the rhythms

of the seasons, it is implied that there is something wrong with the person who feels this

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

288

way. Yet it is interesting to reflect on other possibilities provided by the world, and ways

of incorporating rather than ignoring our bodies. Jackie Seidel (2006), for example,

describes taking her elementary school students outside to do some writing, and she

observed that a child who struggled in an indoor environment was able to concentrate and

write as his body connected with the soft grass:

On the east side of our school yard is a little rise, with a few straggly

struggling trees, grass, litter. It is not very nice, but we go there anyway. A

warm breeze softly blows against our skin. Each child has chosen a

comfortable space. . . . Their bodies are grounded. A child who is never

settled inside the school, writes and writes as he lays sprawled widely on the

soft grass. (pp. 1904-1905)

Similarly, drawing on the stories of the veterans in this thesis, one might also

wonder if post-traumatic distress is perhaps aggravated by lack of exposure to the natural

world. Each of the veterans described individually coming to the same realization—that

he feels better when he’s outside and interacting with the more-than-human world. Tim

Lewis shared that he has come across many other veterans, often on their own, also

spending time in the mountains, fishing or climbing or skiing. “They’re doing it almost

full time and there’s a reason why they’re out there,” he observed.

Indeed, this was a common theme across all my interviews, not only with the

veterans but also with all of the CVAF board members, and with Kurt Hoelting and Andy

Fisher, as well as in my own personal and family experience. All the CVAF board

members spoke about the ways that in their experience with groups in the outdoors, they

had personally observed remarkable changes in participants over the length of, for

example, a camp experience or a mountain climbing trip, and how these types of

experiences bring people together. Moreover, all of the veterans asserted their belief that

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

289

experiences in the more-than-human world are important for every human being, not just

those suffering from stress and distress. As Tim Lewis commented, “I think somewhere

inside it taps into some of the same basic needs. And I can’t explain it. I’m not sure if I

really want to explain it either. It’s good that there’s mystery around. I just feel better

when I do this.”

Regaining Humanity through the More-than-Human World

A human being is a servant of nature, a plain member of the community of

all life . . . As a psychotherapist I know that all people need to love and be

loved, that they all suffer in some way or other, and that they are all

basically good. As an ecopsychologist, I can now say with equal confidence

that all people need to experience themselves as part of the natural world,

need to understand their own naturalness.

—Fisher, 2002, p. 193 (emphasis mine)

None of the themes explored to this point stands on its own; rather, they all work

together to contribute to the veterans’ experiences. Moreover, all the themes culminate in

the main theme underlying this research: that through the more-than-human world, it is

possible to regain one’s lost sense of humanity. This lost humanity seems to be a

common experience amongst those living in the midst of violence and conflict. In Judy

Jackson’s (2011) film War in the Mind, Wayne, a young veteran, observed that “being a

basic human being conflicts with being a soldier in some circumstances. Because you

know as a human being what you should be doing, but as a soldier, it may be different.”

Meanwhile, Morris the former Sierra Leonean child soldier, whose story was told in

Chapter 9, reflected that what led him to escape from his former life was that he felt

empty, he no longer felt human (Lederach and Lederach, 2010). And I return to the scene

in the documentary Shake Hands with the Devil, when LGen (ret) Roméo Dallaire stands

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

290

on that verdant hilltop in Rwanda and tells his wife Élizabeth, “C’est ici que j’ai

redevenu humain” (“It’s here that I became human again”). Outside a military context,

John Wallach (2000) contends that most of the teens who come to the Seeds of Peace

Camp in Maine develop over the course of three weeks together “a new level of

compassion for one another as human beings” (p. 13). All of these reflections share a

similarity in that all comment on being human, and imply that war and violence can lead

a person to lose their sense of humanity.

Indeed, when reading accounts of soldiers in both training and combat, one realizes

the inhumanity involved in becoming and being a warrior—that both the training and the

actual act of being a soldier tend to go against a person’s very nature. To be clear, in

suggesting this, I am not advocating for a romantic view of the blissful and harmonious

“peaceable kingdom” in which there is an absolute lack of conflict and violence. Nature

itself involves a certain amount of violence in a world where, as Ursula Le Guin (1994)

reminds us, “we eat each other in order to live . . . When lions and lambs lie down in the

wilderness, the lamb ends up inside the lion. That’s how it is” (p. 110). However, I am

also not basing my reflections in the view popularized by ethologist Konrad Lorenz, who

described human beings as inheriting through evolution an “aggressive instinct”

(Mansfield, 1982, p. 3).

In the trauma literature focused on soldiers and veterans, an area that seems

generally lacking is the way that military training itself might contribute to the trauma

response; instead, the focus tends to be only on the specific traumatic events that result in

experiences of distress. Yet the UBC Veteran’s Transition Program director commented

to Judy Jackson (2011) that part of the purpose of the program is to “undo the wiring that

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

291

military training has implanted in [the veterans’] brain.” And as noted earlier, Christian

MacEachern, Tim Lewis, Gord Cousins and Shepherd Bliss all spoke about their military

training and/or upbringing as influential in their lives. While each described gaining

many skills and a sense of discipline through his training, I was often struck by the ways

that their training, such as sleep deprivation training, being marched around to the point

of exhaustion, being constantly yelled at, and being taught to respond with speed,

aggression, and violence, also involved ignoring their bodies and what their bodies were

signalling. As Jungian psychoanalyst James Hillman (2004) reflects, “The eventual

unbearable division between the engine of war and human warrior commences in the drills

learned in basic training performed as ceremonies of separation. The hard-ass drill sergeant

hollering at recruits is one way to imagine the beginnings of stress” (p. 63). Ryan Flavelle,

a reservist in the Canadian Army and a student at the University of Calgary, who

volunteered to go to Afghanistan in 2008, provides an example from the combat zone. In

Flavelle’s (2011) book, The Patrol, he reflects that he came home to Canada a completely

changed person, and he writes: “I left behind a lot of what was good about me in the

grape fields of Panjway” (p. 7).

Andy Fisher (2002) suggests that when we, as human beings, are alienated from our

body’s naturalness, our body is in conflict with itself. He describes how “kinship with the

rest of nature has traditionally been won by admitting boundaries and then dialoguing

with the nonhuman presences on the other side of them, through ritual, dream, myth,

nonordinary states of consciousness, skillful everyday interaction, and so forth” (p. 96).

And the veterans’ experiences themselves spoke to the ways that their training often went

against their instincts. Tim Lewis described how his training taught him to respond with

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

292

speed, aggression, and violence to situations he encountered in the battlefield, but how

these responses did not serve him once he left the military. Christian MacEachern, too,

spoke about the training he received on the leadership course: “They train you so hard

that it’s instinct after awhile . . . and it starts to affect your home life.” Shepherd Bliss

described being raised in a military family, in which he was marched around, called

“Number One” rather than his real name, taught military strategy at age four, and moved

every three years. As Shepherd reflected on these experiences later in life, his realized

that during his youth, his only respite came during the time he spent on his uncle’s farm

in Iowa. It was on his uncle’s farm that he felt most at home in his own body and being.

Coming back to the theme of losing and regaining one’s humanity, it is important to

then ask: What is it to be human? Dallaire answers that question, at least in part, later in

the documentary, when he returns to that hilltop in Rwanda and tells filmmakers, “I want

to show you where in all this I could find myself. I could find the solace and be one with

my soul, with my heart, with my being.” In Viktor Frankl’s (2006) account of life in Nazi

death camps, it seemed, too, that encounters with sunsets, mountains, and trees, no matter

how brief, reminded concentration camp prisoners of their humanity. Many of the young

Srebrenica survivors who participated in the ASeTTS program came to a personal turning

point after their time and interactions in the Australian countryside (Burgess, 1998). In

the Wilderness Therapy Project of Kathorus, formerly warring youths began to transform

their relationships by taking part in a seven-day trek through the Dragon Mountains, and

also transformed their relationships with their communities (Robertson and De Kiewit,

1998). And during the American-Soviet walks, Brigham (2010) noted that it was in the

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

293

act of sharing bread and salt together (both of which come from the earth) that the

Russians and Americans came into a new relationship with one another.

In looking at these examples, it is helpful to return to the etymological origins of

the word ‘human,’ the Latin humus, which quite literally implies that humans are of the

earth, soil or ground. Similarly, the Hebrew word for ‘man,’ adam, comes from the

Hebrew adamah, meaning ‘ground.’ Indeed, this notion of being human, as connected to

the earth and soil, points to the central insight of this research—that our bodies and minds

are inseparable from the sensible world. To be human is to be nature. As Merleau-Ponty

observed, “There is no break in this circuit; it is impossible to say that nature ends here

and that man or expression starts here” (OE, 319). The Western habit of mind, however,

resists this insight, since the separate self is a defining feature in our individualistic

worldview. Drawing on the work of Alan Watts, ecofeminist philosopher and theologian

Catherine Keller (2002) observes in an interview with Derrick Jensen that “one of the

prime hallucinations of Western culture—and I would add the paradigm of dominance—

is the belief that who you are is a skin-encapsulated ego” (p. 274).

Amongst the symptoms associated with post-traumatic distress are feelings of

isolation, loneliness, and helplessness, resulting in increasingly avoidant behaviour and a

disengagement from the outside world, and an overwhelming sense of being able to do

nothing. The word ‘alone’ itself is a contraction of ‘all one,’ and comes from the Old

English all ana meaning ‘unaccompanied, all by oneself.’ Similarly, ‘isolate’ stems from

the Latin insulatus, meaning ‘island.’ To be alone and isolated thus implies that we are

unrelated. Meanwhile, the word ‘humanity’ refers to kindness and graciousness, and

stems from the Old French humanité, which referred, in part, to life on earth, and

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

294

originally came from the Latin humanitatem, also suggesting philanthropy and kindness

(OED, 2001). These notions of kindness, graciousness, and philanthropy that lie at the

heart of the word ‘humanity’ are all opposites of feeling alone and isolated—they suggest

moving outside oneself, an engagement and relationship with others and with the world.

A restored sense of humanity thus implies coming back to participation in the (more-

than-human) world.

Within Western thought, nature is sometimes metaphorically thought of as

‘mother.’ However, Leroy Little Bear (2000) shares that from an Indigenous perspective,

“Earth is our Mother (and this is not metaphor: it is real)” (p. 78). Similarly, when I write

that we are nature, this is not metaphor. All the narratives in this thesis demonstrate the

realness of this statement in a profound way. As David Abram (1996) observes, “We are

human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human” (p. 22).

So many of the stories in this thesis have been tales of lost humanity—amongst war

veterans, former child soldiers, refugees, and other peoples affected by conflict. And in

each of the cases, what helped to recall their humanity, and to reimbue life with new or

remembered meaning, was intimate contact with more-than-human nature. It was through

intimate embodied contact with/in nature that they remembered they are part of the

world, that they are anchored to the world, and that they began to make sense of their

experiences. It seems, perhaps, that it is only in contact and deep relationship with the

natural world that we become most human (humus—of the earth). Indeed, Catherine

Keller (1990) has suggested revising Western views of ourselves as human beings and

instead adopting the concept of earthlings in a “matrix of relations to all the other

earthlings” (p. 221). While those of us who have grown up surrounded by the language

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

295

and culture of science fiction may feel slightly uncertain about this term earthling, the

original meaning of the term refers to an ‘inhabitant of the earth’ (OED, 2001). Indeed, it

seems that this is the overall direction pointed to by the veterans’ stories and the other

narratives in this thesis.

The movement from aloneness to humanity is vivid in all the narratives. For

example, there was Morris, who brought together other former child soldiers living in a

refugee camp in Ghana, to start a farm together, and build relationships with one another

as they work the land, as well as continue to reach out to the others living in the refugee

community. Christian MacEachern started the CVAF with the specific intent of working

with other veterans suffering from post-traumatic distress. Shepherd Bliss hosts other

veterans on his farm and is involved in community programs for soldiers, veterans and

their families such as Horses Building Communities. And Tim Lewis and Gord Cousins

are also active with reaching out to other soldiers and veterans.

Catherine Keller (2002) comments that, “We know that on a physical level, one is

not ‘on one’s own,’ that we have to breathe and eat and excrete, and that even on a

molecular scale our boundaries are permeable. The same is true psychically. Life feeds

off life” (p. 274). During our conversation, Kurt Hoelting reflected on the moment on his

kayak retreats when participants move beyond their intellectual understanding of nature

and realize that “at a cellular or visceral level, we’re part of something really huge.” Kurt

described how this experience is catalytic for participants. Similarly in the veterans’

narratives of recovery, one can appreciate their realization that the more-than-human

world is deeply implicated in their own life and experience. The veterans’ stories point

clearly to their bodies saying that nature is a place they feel secure, and that it is in

We Are Nature: Reflections and Analysis

296

contact with the wider world that they find hope and possibilities for carrying their

human living forward.

Each in their different ways, the veterans seem to be describing their innate

desire—perhaps both conscious and unconscious—to go beyond human communities and

to connect with the more-than-human world. As Robert Greenway (2009) writes, “the

ecological unconscious is as ‘ecological’ as it is psychological—it connects to our

surroundings, to the balances, cycles, patterns, and relationships that are described by

ecology and that we can experience by staying outside” (p. 137). Moreover, as Andy

Fisher describes, each veteran’s body is implying its need to connect to the larger world,

which is demonstrated by the shift in their experiences when they spend time in nature.

Each veteran’s narrative provides an overwhelming sense of presence, mindfulness, and

awareness, as well as the calmness and peace that comes with that experience. Indeed,

perhaps the veterans are describing what Kurt Hoelting remarked is “the boundary

between self and world softening,” the ways that he describes the heart and mind can

open more easily and quickly in nature. In the next chapter, I explore why this and the

other themes and insights presented in this chapter are important for peace and conflict

studies.

297

Chapter 11

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

Story has the power to bring soul back to the world: old stories about the

Earth and its landscape, new stories that give us fresh ideas about

connecting to the Earth and to each other.

—Larry Robinson, 2009, p. 29

This chapter begins with an exploration of why the themes in the previous chapter

and the overall research in this thesis matter to peace and conflict studies. Then, to

explore the broader theoretical implications of this research, I return to the three

remaining research questions outlined at the beginning of this thesis to examine the role

that narrative plays in bringing nature to consciousness in peace and conflict studies, the

ways that nature might be considered an active participant in recovery processes, and the

ways that veterans’ narratives might inform the stories of civilian survivors.

Why Does this Research Matter for Peace and Conflict Studies?

A theme running through the veterans’ narratives and other stories throughout this

thesis, as well as a purpose of this thesis, involves contemplating and bringing

remembrance to our bodies and minds as inseparable from the sensible world. By

extension, this entails working against Western culture’s general forgetfulness that we are

nature. The question that now arises is the significance of this remembrance within peace

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

298

and conflict studies. Why does contemplating and remembering that we are nature matter

for those working within the areas of peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and trauma

recovery?

In his book The Nonhuman Environment: In Normal Development and In

Schizophrenia, psychoanalyst Harold Searles (1960) argued that most studies in

psychoanalysis have been limited to understanding inter- and intra-personal processes in

personality development and have considered nature to be irrelevant, “as though human

life were lived out in a vacuum—as though the human race were alone in the universe,

pursuing individual and collective destinies in a homogeneous matrix of nothingness, a

background devoid of form, color, and substance” (p. 3). In response to these studies, and

drawing on his work with schizophrenic patients, Searles began articulating his vision

that nature is of primary importance to the human psyche, since the human personality

matures within a “total matrix” comprising “predominantly nonhuman elements—trees,

clouds, starts, landscapes, buildings, and so on ad infinitum” (p. 53). Accordingly, he

observes that when humans ignore the connections between their psyches and nature, it

endangers their psychological well-being.

At the end of Chapter 4, I briefly pointed to the importance of recent work by some

peacebuilding scholars and practitioners, who are advocating art, culture, ritual,

storytelling, and sport as activities for building relationships and creating possibilities for

living together (e.g., Bar-On, Kutz and Wegner, 2000; Cohen, 2003; Lederach, 2005;

Lederach and Lederach, 2010; Schirch, 2005; Senehi, 2000, 2002; Shank and Schirch,

2008). And Chapter 9 featured stories from around the world which showed how in

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

299

practice, more-than-human nature does feature into peacebuilding and processes aimed at

recovery from trauma, violence, and conflict.

In his lectures on Canadian public radio on the topic of “Becoming Human,” Jean

Vanier (1998), a philosopher and the founder of the international network of l’Arche

communities for people living with intellectual disabilities, reflected that “the discovery

of our common humanity liberates us from self-centred compulsions and inner hurts; it is

the discovery that ultimately finds its fulfillment in forgiveness and in loving those who

are our enemies. It is the process of truly becoming human” (p. 5). This notion of coming

into relationships with others—even with those who are our enemies—is an important

theme peace and conflict studies theory and praxis. A central focus of the field is on

building and changing relationships between adversaries and people living in the midst of

violence and conflict, and finding possibilities for nonviolent ways of relating. For

example, John Paul Lederach and his daughter Angela Jill Lederach (2010) recently

reflected on their growing admiration for the role of love and the tangible impacts of

loving relationships in peacebuilding contexts, but they note that love tends to be

overlooked and dismissed in the scholarship associated with healing and reconciliation.

They suggest that peace research is often considered a ‘soft’ science, which causes it to

struggle for legitimacy amongst other established disciplines, and they argue this struggle

may be part of the reason that love does not feature into the discourse, for “to directly and

openly discuss love enters the slippery slope of the intangibles that lie outside the

scientific endeavour” (p. 231). Lederach and Lederach, however, believe that it is

unconditional love in the face of violence, hatred, and animosity that changes

relationships and opens spaces for individual and social healing. Indeed, their musings

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

300

about the overall dismissal of love within academic disciplines parallel my own

experiences of trying to discuss nature.

Two recent Canadian studies involving children whose school grounds incorporated

diverse aspects of nature settings, such as food, wildflower, and/or butterfly gardens, and

other natural play spaces including ponds and trees provide important insights (Dyment,

2005; Bell and Dyment, 2006). Not only were children in these play settings more

physically active and had a better understanding of nutrition and where their food came

from (compared with children playing on the conventional asphalt and turf spaces found

at most Canadian schools), the children in the green school grounds also showed

tremendous increases in civil behaviour and cooperative, collaborative, and respectful

play, and were much more likely to demonstrate increased curiosity and wonder about the

world, as well as to think more creatively. The children who played in these natural

spaces were also much more likely to integrate groups traditionally excluded from their

play, and to overlook the habitual divisions of gender, socio-economic status, physical

ability, and ethnicity, so that all children played together (Dymant, 2005). Concepts such

as civility, cooperation, collaboration, respect, curiosity, and creativity are all important

in peace and conflict studies, for they are considered key aspects in changing and

fostering different and better relationships between human beings.

In revisiting Kurt Hoelting’s assertion that it is the nature inside each veteran that

connects outward, and that helps them connect with one another and facilitate their own

healing, one finds deep resonances with the central ideas in peace and conflict studies.

Kurt reflected that the human connection that develops between him and the veterans is

“actually a manifestation of healing nature . . . That our human nature wants to connect.

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

301

And the primary way that we connect with nature is through each other, through our

human nature, through words, through emotions, through shared experience.” Most

importantly, Kurt’s observation lends itself to understanding why this research matters

for peace and conflict studies. Reflecting on his comment opens the current the focus on

human relationships within peace and conflict studies to broader conversations about

intersections with the more-than-human world: that it is because of the fact that we are

nature that we seek and are able to establish connections and relationships with other

humans (and with more-than-human beings, too), including with our adversaries and

those who have harmed us. It is our very (human) nature that connects us—and that

enables and impels us to connect.

A frequently expressed idea within the field is that peacebuilding requires people to

recognize their common humanity. Based on this thesis research, I propose that the

recognition of common humanity, at its base, is a recognition of the nature inside one

another. Accordingly, when people develop changed relationships with one another

(including with their adversaries), these relationships are the biggest manifestation of the

ways our human nature wants to connect beyond ourselves. And then as Kurt further

commented, when this desire to connect with others “can be linked to the wider nature

that we actually come out of and that sustains us literally from one breath to another and

from one meal to another and it sustains our sense of being part of something much

bigger than ourselves, then all the better.”

To further explore the theoretical implications of these insights and stories for

peace and conflict studies, I now turn to examining the questions of: 1) What role does

narrative play in bringing nature to consciousness in peace and conflict studies? 2) How

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

302

might nature be considered an active participant in recovery processes? and 3) In what

ways might the veterans’ narratives inform the stories of civilian survivors?

Narrative: Bringing Nature to Consciousness

Human beings have lived out and told stories about that living for as long as

we could talk. And then we have talked about the stories we tell for almost

as long.

—Clandinin and Rosiek, 2007, p. 35

Narrative has a holistic quality, and is capable of getting at experience in ways that

other forms of research are not (Connelly and Clandinin, 1991). In Chapter 6, I explored

some of the recent empirical studies into the ways that interactions with the natural world

lessen stress, anxiety, depression, anger, aggression, and overall tension in human beings.

This thesis research, however, has come at the connections between nature and recovery

in another way—through the use of narratives and stories of embodied experience.

Human life might be thought of, at least in part, as a quest to make meaning.

Storyteller Ben Okri (1997) reflects that “we are storytelling beings” (p. 114), while

Thomas King (2003) declares that “the truth about stories is that’s all we are” (p. 2).

According to Linda Hogan (2002), the vital quality of stories stems from the way they

create “a shortcut to the world of emotion, a direct path to the mythic and unconscious, to

meaning” (p. 124). Thus, the stories we tell, and the stories we are told tend to determine

the future directions and possibilities for our society (R.T. Lakoff, 2000). As noted

earlier, one of the factors that inspired this research involved the ways in which the

dominant narratives in peace and conflict studies, and in the academy more broadly,

overlook and dismiss context, place, and more-than-human nature. I have described the

tendency in academic accounts of peacebuilding processes to disregard context in favour

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

303

of reporting the methods used and relationships changed. Based on a shallow view of

nature as ‘resources’ for human wealth and consumption, stories tend to be told

independent of their locale, as though they might have occurred in any place. Yet David

Abram (1996) reminds us that events are always specific to the places where they occur,

that “each place has its own dynamism, its own patterns of movement, and these patterns

engage the senses and relate them in particular ways, instilling particular moods and

modes of awareness” (p. 182).

Recent years have seen a newfound appreciation for narrative within Western

academic contexts, which has created openings for the stories of the long-marginalized

‘other’ to be heard (Berger and Quinney, 2005; Cohen, n.d.). There are increasing

examples of the use of personal stories throughout Western society, including as a

research method in conflict resolution and peacebuilding, as well as a method to support

suffering. For example, Svetlana Alexievich (2005) collected and published Voices from

Chernobyl, an entire book of stories—no analysis—of the first-person experiences of

people who lived in Chernobyl at the time of the 1986 explosion and fire at the nuclear

power plant. Oral historian, therapist and writer, Julie Heifetz’s (1989) collection, Too

Young to Remember, tells the stories of child survivors of the Holocaust who had never

before told their stories. In her work with the Suicide Prevention Action Network, Heifetz

has also worked to gather and write the stories of people whose lives have been affected

by the suicide of a close relative (www.spanusa.org). Another example is the Jerusalem

Stories Project, started by Carol Grosman, which aims to harness the “power of personal

stories and portrait photographs to promote empathy, a critical component of sustainable

peace,” to present “a human perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” and to share

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

304

“the deeply moving experiences of a broad variety of Jerusalem residents” (Jerusalem

Stories Project, n.d., ¶1).

There is also increasing interest within peace and conflict studies in using narrative

to understand conflict issues and provide possibilities for understanding and

reconciliation between adversaries (e.g., Bar-On et al., 2000; Cohen, 1994; Heifetz, 2003;

Jerusalem Stories Project, n.d.; Lederach and Lederach, 2010; Senehi, 2002; Wallach and

Wallach, 2000). Cynthia Cohen’s (n.d.) research points to the powerful effects that

sharing stories can have on former adversaries. The ultimate possibility, in terms of

conflict resolution and peacebuilding, is that sharing stories can help adversaries “to

understand each other’s experiences, the meaning each community attaches to historical

events, and their moral sensibilities” (p. 15). It seems, too, that story holds the potential to

bring peacebuilding and ecology together, since stories not only can help adversaries find

ways of empathizing with one another, but stories are always place-bound and rooted in

ecosystems (Westlund, 2010).

Rinda West (2007) contends that when we are exposed to stories that differ from

the dominant cultural narratives (for example, stories that reveal the deep connections

between human life and the ecosphere versus those that exclude nature or that shallowly

include nature as resources for human exploitation), we begin to see other possibilities

beyond those once assumed universal. Perhaps, then, it is important to unleash narratives

that counter the dominant stories independent of locale and nature, since once a story is

told, “it is loose in the world” (King, 2003, p. 10). Unleashing such counternarratives has

the potential to open spaces for new dialogue and possibilities for living differently with

one another and in the world.

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

305

Many scholars, philosophers and activists now acknowledge and are harnessing the

potentials of narrative to connect humans and more-than-human beings, both past and

present, in ways that are concrete and lived, rather than the abstract generalizations that

come from theory and generalized accounts (Peterson, 2001). Story engages our

imaginations; it allows us to imagine ourselves as another (Kearney, 1997). Story is

capable of moving people to action, precisely because it integrates bodies and lived

experience (Neilsen, 1998). Lorri Neilsen (1998) reflects that stories grounded in real

lives have the power to move people from being spectators to being actors. Indeed, Julie

Heifetz (2008) observes that stories “are a powerful way to understand the experience of

others. Stories teach us about another’s situation at the same time as they affect us

emotionally” (¶1). As political theorist Hannah Arendt (1968) observed, “the more

people’s standpoints I have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and

the better I can imagine how I would think and feel if I were in their place, the stronger

will be my capacity for representative thinking” (p. 241).

Thus, unlike the world of statistics and norms which have become commonplace

for making and sharing meaning within the contemporary meta-stories of rationality and

progress, storytelling cannot be controlled and has important capacities for contributing

to social change. Accordingly, the veterans’ narratives in this thesis seek to give space to

the former soldiers’ personal experiences and to their realizations that their embodied

interconnections within the more-than-human world provide alternative experiences to

their military training and combat exposure. In examining the possibilities of narrative for

bringing nature to consciousness in peace and conflict studies, one finds that through the

veterans’ narratives, their bodies have a voice, and beyond that, nature has a voice

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

306

through their bodies. It may not be that narrative can story nature into sense, especially in

modern Western thought and language, which often depict our bodies as entirely separate

from or outside of nature; however, narrative provides a move towards storying nature in

modern experience.

Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue that “our body is intimately tied to what we walk

on, sit on, touch, taste, smell, see, breathe, and move within. Our corporeality is part of

the corporeality of the world” (p. 565). Further, nature is not an ‘other’ or an assortment

of objects we might stumble upon. It is the basis of our being, “the locus of our existence

and identity. We cannot and do not exist apart from it” (p. 566). This research therefore

suggests a holistic move towards an understanding of human beings as embodied minds,

as animals who respond to the world in certain ways, for whom context, surroundings,

and the more-than-human world are essential to our experience. As Merleau-Ponty

commented, “nature and consciousness can only truly communicate in us and through our

incarnate being” (RC, 77).

Since he was born, my son Cameron and I have spent a lot of time looking at and

reading books together, and I’m often struck by the vast number of children’s stories that

feature animals, insects, plants, rocks, the moon and stars, oceans, rivers and lakes. Most

of the animals talk and have relationships with one another, with human beings, and with

the readers. The animals are not the passive animals that we adults tend to think them to

be—they are animated and wise, cunning and clever with wonderful senses of humour.

They do both fun and foolish things when the humans aren’t watching—talk to one

another, play together, and make fun of the humans. Indeed, in this way, there is a

similarity between children’s stories and the stories told by indigenous peoples around

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

307

the world. Yet, unlike for many indigenous peoples, for most of us living in Western

society, nature at some point loses its voice and the enchantment that it held during

childhood. Still, as seen in the narratives in this thesis, the rhythms of the more-than-

human world become part of and leave traces on each person’s story. Thus, one of the

strengths and possibilities provided by narrative is that it can open space for the long-

marginalized ‘other’ to be heard—the other, including bodies, including nature, who has

fallen outside our consciousness.

Historian Simon Schama (1995) argues that “our entire landscape tradition is . . . a

tradition built from a rich deposit of myths, memories, and obsessions” (p. 14). He

reflects that these myths and memories lay generally beneath the surface of consciousness

but that they are accessible with some work. And within this thesis, one might begin to

see the ways that narrative can bring nature to consciousness. Each story is embedded in

a set of ecological relationships and the locations themselves become participants in the

story. Nature speaks through the veterans’ bodies and through their stories of embodied

experience as they come into relationship with one another and with the natural world.

The other importance of paying attention to narrative and stories of experience

comes from the enormous difficulty that exists in describing and articulating the

importance of nature using contemporary English (and other Western) language and

thought. As noted in the introduction to this thesis, I have at times struggled (and still do

to struggle) with finding the right words, and with using words, such as nature, that are

deeply embedded in certain discourses and therefore, it has been difficult to transcend the

dualistic categories that first come to mind: inside/outside, human/nature, mind/body, and

so on. Indeed, much of what I have been working to describe in this thesis is beyond

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

308

language. It is about a depth of feeling, about embodied experience, about something

beyond the traditional words and language we rely on in both the academy and in

everyday life. This is why Merleau-Ponty was seeking a new language towards the end of

his life, working to express his thought using concepts such as the flesh and chiasm and

exploring these notions using topological terms such as enveloping, overlapping,

encroaching, coiling over, the fold, and intertwining (Hamrick and Van der Veken,

2011). Similarly, Robert Greenway (1995) has suggested that ecopsychology involves a

search for new language to “reveal the dynamics of the human-nature relationship”

(p. 123). During our conversation, Andy Fisher expressed his belief that new and better

language will come for talking about our experiences with/in nature. At the moment,

however, we’re limited by our Western perceptions and language, and Fisher emphasized

the importance of the phenomenological method, “especially in these territories where we

don’t have conceptions or language to right away make sense of things, we need to

follow the lead of our experience and then find a language that describes this

experience.”

I have struggled in this thesis to articulate the dynamics and depth of the

relationship and what occurs when we have experiences within, and connect to, the more-

than-human world. This is why it is necessary to read and hear stories of experience,

because these stories enable us to imagine ourselves in the place of another. For example,

when Shepherd Bliss described his first encounter with the delicate and vulnerable lily at

the bottom of his property and how he fell to the ground and wept—his response was

beyond language, yet we can perhaps imagine ourselves in his place and understand what

this might have been like. When we learn of Christian MacEachern sitting on the banks

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

309

of the river, after experiencing years of isolation, depression, anger and other difficulties

associated with post-traumatic distress, and his description of feeling at peace with life

for a moment, we can imagine ourselves in his place, and know that this was a moment

beyond words. There are similar moments in each of the narratives in this thesis, ranging

from the former child soldiers who are working the land together and we might imagine

their joy and excitement as they cultivate new life, to the Palestinians and Israelis who

walked, talked, and laughed together beneath the trees in that Norwegian forest. All of

these examples demonstrate the power of stories of experience to shift us out of our old

paradigm into a new one, and hopefully as this shift occurs, we can also cultivate a shift

in language to represent our new understanding.

Nature as an Active Participant in Peacebuilding and Recovery

Another of the questions asked at the beginning of this thesis was: How might

nature be considered an active participant in recovery processes, rather than a passive

backdrop? All of the narratives explored in this thesis demonstrate the power of what

happens when this inner human nature is linked to the more-than-human world. Deep

change can occur, both of the fleeting and lasting varieties. The veterans’ stories, as well

as the other interviews conducted for this research, have emphasized the importance of

the earth and skies, the winds and rocks in Western frameworks for recovery from

conflict. In telling these different stories together, it seems that the more-than-human

world really does matter for post-conflict recovery—and also matters for peacebuilding

and conflict transformation. By telling these stories, I am arguing that remembering

nature, and remembering human beings as nature, in any and all endeavours, including

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

310

peacebuilding and trauma recovery, hold powerful possibilities for change and for life on

earth, for human beings and the more-than-human world.

Through embodied interactions with/in the natural world, Christian MacEachern,

Tim Lewis, Gord Cousins, and Shepherd Bliss, as well as the veteran-farmers mentioned

in Chapter 9, were set on a path of recovery from their stress and/or trauma. Through

farming together in their refugee community, former child soldiers are working towards

their own healing and attempting to heal relationships with their wider community.

Young male refugees and survivors of the Srebrenica massacre now living in Australia

found new ways of coping and recovering from their unspeakable traumas through time

spent in the Australian countryside. Formerly warring youths in South Africa developed

new relationships both with one another and with their communities following their

experience trekking together and caring for one another in the Dragon Mountains. In the

Butterfly Gardens in Sri Lanka, Tamil and Muslim children developed friendships across

ethnic lines. Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis experienced a brief moment of calm and

harmony together after an all-day safari. The outdoor orienteering aspect of the Football

for Peace Project was found to be the most successful activity for breaking down barriers

and building bridges between Arab and Jewish children. During the Cold War, in walking

through the Russian countryside and breaking bread together, American and Soviet

walkers developed new relationships and came to recognize their many similarities.

During a walk in the woods together as part of the To Reflect and Trust seminar in

Hamburg, participants in the Palestinian-Israeli session experienced a sense of

togetherness that was absent from their indoor sessions. At both the Seeds of Peace Camp

in Maine and the Cyprus Consortium’s Youth Camp, teenagers from conflict zones came

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

311

to new understandings of one another and developed deep and lasting friendships with

those they once considered their enemy. And in both the negotiations to end Apartheid in

South Africa and the talks between Palestinians and Israelis that led to the Oslo Accord,

many of the transformative moments and opportunities came when the adversaries spent

time together in the more-than-human world.

Indeed, in exploring nature’s role as an active participant, this section connects with

the previous one, in terms of understanding narrative’s role in bringing nature to

consciousness in peace and conflict studies. It seems that narrative also offers the best

possibility for considering nature as an active participant in recovery and peacebuilding.

As Merleau-Ponty points out, the body is what provides the most immediate access to

nature. And narrative is able to explore embodied experience, which counters the meta-

stories of rationalism and progress in contemporary Western society.

In addition, in Richard Louv’s (2008) work with children and nature, he advocates

that schools should build relationships with “agricultural associations, nature centers,

environmental organizations, and bird sanctuaries, rather than using them for one-shot

visits” (p. 222). And I wonder whether those working in the areas of peacebuilding and

recovery would also benefit from working with such organizations and associations? It

may be that building relationships with the more-than-human world taps into the

ecological unconscious and the innate need to connect with the wider world. And it

would be my hope that as the ecological unconscious moves into conscious memory, and

we realize that nature is what connects us with one another, with our ancestors, and all

other past, present and future life on the planet, that new ways would be found of

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

312

interacting and exploring relationships with the more-than-human world. As David

Abram (2007) writes:

The one world we all have in common is the very world that we share with

the other animals and the plants—this earthly dimension of wind and water

and sky, shivering with seeds and warmed by the sun. Hence, it seems

unlikely that we will locate a lasting ethic without rediscovering our

solidarity with all those other shapes of sentience, without remembering

ourselves to the swallows and the meandering rivers. (p. 175)

If we can escape the power of the rationality and progress meta-stories, and instead

replace them with ones that recognize the interdependence between humans and more-

than-humans, it is possible that this not only leads to increased wellbeing amongst all

human beings but also to finding better relationships with one another. We might once

again be in touch, quite literally, with the seasons, the trees, the rivers and oceans, the

soil, the pebbles and mountains that support all life.

Expanding the Veterans’ Narratives to Civilian Trauma Survivors

Human lives and relationships are harmed and destroyed by extended cycles of

violence and conflict. Lederach and Lederach (2010) argue that “an inquiry into healing

requires that we think about how to recoup what has been lost” (p. 203). This research

with veterans has illuminated that, at least in part, what has been lost during their training

and/or combat experiences is the connection with the wider world. It also suggests that

the veterans’ healing and recovery is best understood when located in the context of

nature—human nature and the more-than-human world. Moreover, the veterans’ stories

show the need for constantly nurturing this relationship with the more-than-human—it is

not a one-time process, but rather one that sustains them through continual interaction

with the wider planetary community. Lederach and Lederach write:

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

313

There is no ‘and-they-lived-happily-ever-after’ in the real world of deep-

rooted conflict. In fact the rise of resonance may last for fleeting moments

only. What can last and remain more permanently available are the elements

that permit the creating and re-creating of meaningful conversation, the bases

from which resonance may rise, alongside other experiences of dissonance

and silence. From this perspective there is a need to nurture the context within

which a mixing of vibrations can happen, not as a one-time event but as a

continuous engagement, constantly in need of renewal. (p. 207)

Trauma does not disappear when peace agreements are signed. Often the agreement is

just the beginning. Lederach and Lederach (2010) reflect that healing and recovery are

experiences and journeys that are “unique and highly idiosyncratic and varied” (p. 204).

They require courage and strength. It is well-known that war and violent conflict deeply

affect the human psyche, for soldiers and civilian populations alike. Indeed, refugees and

internally displaced peoples have suffered high levels of exposure to severe traumas and

commonly suffer from post-traumatic symptoms and depression (Carlson and Rosser-

Hogan, 1991; Mollica et al., 2007). In Somalia, for example, which has been ravaged by

war and extreme violence for the past two decades that has forced many people to flee

their homes, up to one-third of the population suffers from ill mental health, and many of

them from post-traumatic distress (York, 2011).

The effects of post-traumatic distress amongst conflict survivors also last long after

a conflict is over and peace agreements are signed (Prince et al., 2007). For example,

amongst Bosnian refugees, 45% were found to suffer either from depression or post-

traumatic distress, or both (Mollica et al., 2004). Steel and colleagues (2002) found that

amongst Vietnamese refugees who had been resettled in Australia, those who had been

exposed to three or more incidences of trauma (which is considered high exposure to

trauma) were likely to continue to suffer from mental distress even ten years after

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

314

resettling in their new country. And more than twenty years after refugees from the

Cambodian civil war were resettled in the United States, many of them continue to suffer

from the effects of trauma (Marshall et al., 2005).

In De Jong, Komproe and Van Ommeren’s (2003) study of four post-conflict

settings (Algeria, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Palestine), peoples who had been exposed to

violence during conflict as well as to other stressors, such as those associated with living

in refugee camps, commonly reported suffering from post-traumatic distress. Catherine

Panter-Brick and colleagues (2009) recently found high levels of depression, anxiety and

post-traumatic distress amongst Afghan adults. And Derluyn and colleagues (2004) found

extreme rates (97% or 69 out of 71 children in their study) of post-traumatic distress

amongst former child soldiers in northern Uganda who had been part of the Lord’s

Resistance Army. Almost all of the children had experienced multiple incidences of

severe trauma. Thus, in most post-conflict settings, high levels of suffering amongst

many different sectors of a population continue for a long time after the end of the war.

Simon Schama (1995) suggests that “the cultural habits of humanity have always

made room for the sacredness of nature” (p. 18). Importantly, while post-traumatic stress

has been medicalized in the West, in other regions and especially amongst indigenous

cultures, there are different responses to post-traumatic distress. Researching and writing

this dissertation has been a reminder of the fragility of all life, as well as how personal

resilience within indigenous worldviews is intimately tied to/with/in nature. In reading

accounts of indigenous peacebuilding and reconciliation approaches, I am often intrigued

by the presence of the more-than-human world as the context for the human contacting

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

315

and connections that develop. For example, Elizabeth Hoffman (2008) describes a

reconciliation ceremony between two young Sierra Leonean men:

On a warm late-March evening, the sky still swirling with the afterclouds of

an unexpected storm, two young Sierra Leonean men stood before a bonfire,

surrounded by their families, elders, and neighbors from surrounding

villages. Once the closest of friends, Sahr and Nyumah had been brutally

torn apart by Sierra Leone’s vicious civil war while still in their early

teens—one boy forced by rebel soldiers to beat his friend and kill his

friend’s father.

The two came face to face that night, with each other and with their pasts. One

man testified about his suffering; the other admitted his guilt and begged for

forgiveness, which—in an astonishing act of grace—was freely given. (p. 129)

Hoffman (2008) tells how after the two young men embraced, the other villagers sang

and the men danced together around the bonfire. In early 2008, dozens of similar bonfire

ceremonies were held throughout the Kailahun district of Sierra Leone. In addition, in

order to facilitate ongoing dialogue between community members following such

reconciliation ceremonies, a village tree was designated as the “peace tree” to provide a

meeting place for ongoing and future conflict resolution dialogues. In the same article,

Hoffman describes another reconciliation ceremony in Bormaru, in which villagers came

together to walk through the woods to a sacred rock that had long been used as a place to

communicate with the ancestors and to ask for their help and blessing in facing coming

challenges. However, villagers had not visited the rock since the outbreak of war in Sierra

Leone and it had been overgrown by the surrounding brush.

Meanwhile, during Alistair Ager’s (2002) work in Angola, he and his colleagues

found that post-war strategies for addressing suffering “made extensive use of African

traditional medicine and African indigenous church movements” (p. s44). Additionally,

there was Alcinda Honwana’s (1998) description of the ceremony to bring the nine-year-

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

316

old child soldier back into his community, which involved interactions with all four

more-than-human elements: earth (the herbs and medicines, the sacrificed animal, and

the tree under which the sacrifice took place), fire (setting fire to the hut, preparing the

sacrificed animal), air (breathing the herbal remedy), and water (the bath, the medicine

drink). And I am reminded, too, of the indigenous Mayan priest’s words to John Paul

Lederach (2005): “In a traditional Mayan view, if there is a problem in the community,

the first thing we would ask is: Did you greet the sun today? Did you thank the earth for

the corn?” (p. 140).

These examples point to how responses to address suffering need to be culturally

relevant. These responses are situated in long traditions, even if these traditions have not

been used for a long time or seem to have been forgotten. Based on the stories from the

edges of violence presented in Chapter 9, it seems that more-than-human nature is always

relevant, in every circumstance. As Cynthia Chambers (2008) observes, particular places

provide nourishment for people who go there: “they feed human beings with knowledge,

spirit, and with bodily sustenance” (p. 116). It may be that the sitting posture taken in

many Western contexts, whether the therapy room or the negotiating table, is not always

the most helpful posture, but rather that change and movement and turning points

oftentimes come when humans interact with the wider world around them. Lederach and

Lederach (2010) define ‘social healing’ as representing “the capacity of communities and

their respective individuals to survive, locate voice and resiliently innovate spaces of

interaction that nurture meaningful conversation and purposeful action in the midst and

aftermath of escalated and structural violence” (p. 208).

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

317

The stories of the veterans find echo in Lederach and Lederach’s statement. In their

experiences, connecting with the more-than-human world gave them the space to voice

(and possibly let go, if only momentarily) their suffering, to develop resiliency, to have

meaningful conversations about their experiences, and to find ways to continue living

their lives. And through their individual work, each one is creating a social foundation for

helping others suffering from post-traumatic distress to also move towards

healing/recovery. In looking at the relevance of the veterans’ stories for civilian trauma

survivors, however, I am reluctant to provide a list of ways that the veterans’ narratives

can be expanded to work with civilian trauma survivors. Indeed, there is a danger that

this entire thesis will be taken up within the view of the Western progress meta-story, and

nature will be viewed and used as simply another ‘resource’ for peacebuilding and

assisting trauma victims in their recovery. Rather, I am arguing for a remembering of our

human embodiment, that we are in and of the world and affected by our surroundings.

Linda Chalquist and Craig Buzzell (2009) write:

If we can learn to see nature as a partner in human healing and humans as

partners in the healing of the natural world, we can shift from the exploitative

posture of human domination of the Earth—a position encouraged by the

social paradigm based on industrial growth—to a more truthful and

restorative relationship of mutual interdependence with the nonhuman world.

This re-education includes practices for going outdoors and finding

ourselves. . . It also includes relearning as a species how to be in the presence

of other living things with whom we share this planet. Insects, plants,

animals, and even entire landscapes then become co-therapists and wise

teachers as well as beloved relatives. (p. 131)

And returning for a moment to Kurt Hoelting’s comments in the prologue, one might

then think of social healing as the ways that human nature connects—both with other

human natures and with the more-than-human world.

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

318

Detractors: Nature as Antitherapeutic for Post-Traumatic Distress?

During this research, I encountered one detractor arguing against the incorporating

the wider world into recovery from post-traumatic distress. Nature therapist Ronan

Berger (2010) contends that while nature therapy holds many benefits, it may not be

appropriate for those suffering from post-traumatic experiences. Indeed, Berger goes so

far as to suggest that nature settings can be antitherapeutic for post-traumatic distress

sufferers. He bases his argument on the story of a young girl, Jessica, who participated in

a nature therapy program in Israel. Jessica lived through the first Lebanon War and was

suffering from post-traumatic distress. Towards the end of the nature therapy program,

the group to which Jessica belonged went on a day trip to the Gamla nature reserve on the

Golan Heights. However, the group leaders were unaware of Jessica’s post-traumatic

suffering, and the nature reserve was situated in range a military training zone. The

group’s visit initially went well, and for the first few hours, Jessica was interacting with

the other participants and she seemed to enjoy the experience. Then suddenly, shelling

drills could be heard from the military zone nearby, and Jessica became overwhelmed

and hysterical, and ran around searching for shelter. Berger concludes:

This example shows how an unpredictable element in the [Nature Therapy]

workshop environment can reactivate a posttraumatic episode. More than the

sound of the bombing itself, it was the unpredictability of an event related to

the person’s experience that triggered the trauma. This example highlights a

situation in which [Nature Therapy] can actually be antitherapeutic. (p. 73)

However, it is my opinion that Berger’s example shows a lack of attention to Jessica’s

needs. The problem in Jessica’s case was not nature, or even the unpredictability of

nature. The problem was that a child suffering from war-related post-traumatic distress

was taken into range of an army training zone.

Bringing Nature to Consciousness

319

The veterans’ stories in this thesis provide compelling counter-examples to

Berger’s assertion, and show the ways that more-than-human nature supports their

recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress. Shepherd Bliss did acknowledge that his

sound trauma is sometimes triggered by his neighbours’ use of power tools; indeed, post-

traumatic distress symptoms can be triggered anywhere, by anything, ranging from sights

to smells to sounds. As Roméo Dallaire commented, it is part of the viciousness of post-

traumatic distress, that the sufferer never knows when s/he will be reminded of and led

down the path of revisiting previous trauma experiences. This does not strike me,

however, as a suitable rationale for keeping post-traumatic distress sufferers from

interacting with/in the world, and particularly the world of nature.

320

Chapter 12

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for

Praxis

If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle,

lonely and confused.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, II,16 (2005)

Throughout this thesis, I have been illuminating the ways that peace and conflict

studies’ discourse and praxis focus primarily on the conscious aspects of human

experience. The realist and rationalist roots of peace and conflict studies are often

preoccupied with issues such as security, competition and economics, and resources and

trade, topics that are deeply entrenched in the violent and dualistic Western tradition of

separating minds from bodies, humans from nature, reason from emotion. These

preoccupations are situated within an ontology that renders nature silent and speechless—

one that is shut off from the corporeal world, and that gives “a fantastic image of man,

spirit and history” (Merleau-Ponty, RC, 62). French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-

Ponty, however, showed that all activities in which humans engage, from language and

history to science and politics (which includes peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery),

are precisely that—human activities. They are all creations of the human mind, and they

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

321

need to be understood as “situated activities grounded in the everyday world” (O’Neill,

1970, p. xiv-xv).

Accordingly, drawing primarily on the narratives of veterans suffering from post-

traumatic distress but also on other stories from the edges of violence, I have been

weaving together these dualisms, to show that reason and emotion are intimately

connected, minds and bodies are intertwined, and humans and nature are one and the

same. I have laid the groundwork to re-embed peace and conflict studies in the everyday

world, the sensible world, the flesh of the world—the world beyond the boardroom or

negotiating table, the world that sustains us and all life on earth. I have argued that nature

is an active participant in all life, but in the more particular context of this research, in

post-conflict recovery as well as in peacebuilding and conflict transformation.

Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology has been significant in this project precisely

because of his focus on the lived body. In particular, his work on nature and his

philosophy of embodiment open up an important intellectual as well as a grounded space

for thinking about and understanding experiences with/in nature. In contrast to the meta-

stories of rationalism and progress that pervade Western thought, in which nature is

viewed as an object outside human being(s), Merleau-Ponty’s focus on the lived body,

and his notion of the ‘the flesh’ develops an intercorporeity that overcomes subject/object

dichotomies. It is through our bodies that we have access to nature—indeed, it is through

our bodies that we are nature. And the body—the natural body—is now being shown as

profoundly implicated in conflict, peacebuilding and conflict transformation, as well as

recovery from trauma and conflict (e.g., Cohen, 2003; Lederach, 2005; Lederach and

Lederach, 2010; Schirch, 2005; Shank and Schirch, 2008).

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

322

Intersections with Indigenous Perspectives and Other Traditions

My aim in this thesis has been to uncover and explore an understanding of nature

primarily from within the Western framework, both because the academic field of peace

and conflict studies is deeply situated within the Western tradition, and because those I

interviewed are situated and living within this tradition. Moreover, as depth psychologist

James Hillman (2006) observes, the ideas advanced in this thesis about interconnections

with the wider world of nature have been perhaps “repressed” but have still continued to

exist throughout the history of Western thought:

It is affirmed in differing ways in Plato, the Stoics, Plotinus, and in Jewish

and Christian mystics; it appears splendidly in the Renaissance psychology of

Marsilio Ficino, in Swedenborg; it is revered in Mariology, Sophianic

devotion, in the Shekinah. We find notions of it in German and British

Romantics and American Transcendentalists; in philosophers of various sorts

of panpsychism from Leibniz through Pierce, Schiller, Whitehead, and

Harshorne . . . Anima mundi reappears in further guises as ‘the collective

unconscious’ in Jung, as physiognomic character in the Gestalt psychology of

Koffka and Kohler, in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, of van den

Berg, . . . and of course, ever and again in the great poets, specifically of this

century in Yeats and Rilke, Williams and Stevens. (pp. 47-48)

Further, I take very seriously arguments by Indigenous scholars, such as Peter Cole

(2006), who are wary of outside interest in their traditions. Cole asserts that rather than

looking at Indigenous perspectives as an alternative to Western thought and seeking to

adopt (colonize) ideas from an entirely separate context, Westerners ought to look inside

their own traditions for alternatives. Many other Indigenous scholars have begun to voice

doubts about whether Indigenous philosophies can be fully and properly articulated in

English, since English was at the heart of colonial practices in North America, and is

embedded with an ideology often at odds with Indigenous languages (Duran and Duran,

1995; LaRocque, 1999; Turner, 2006).

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

323

However, at times in this thesis, I have drawn on specific examples from

Indigenous contexts and it is important to acknowledge that many traditions, including

Indigenous perspectives and philosophies, as well as many other wisdom and mystical

traditions, hold similar values and viewpoints to those expressed in this thesis. When

speaking and writing about Indigenous peoples’ perspectives, it is important to emphasize

the diversity of cultures grouped together under the label ‘Indigenous.’ The term literally

enfolds thousands of different languages, customs, and spiritual beliefs, none of which

can be generalized across the many peoples in the world considered to be Indigenous

(L.T. Smith, 1999). But while Indigenous perspectives are anything but homogenous,

many Indigenous scholars do point to some similarities, especially in views about nature.

Winona LaDuke (1999b) suggests that most Indigenous peoples share an understanding

that “all societies and individuals are accountable to natural law” (p. 266). While both

Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) and Winona LaDuke (1999a) warn that Indigenous peoples’

relationship with the land is romanticized, LaDuke suggests that a certain truth may

underlie this romantic notion since “the ongoing relationship between Indigenous culture

and the land is central to most Native environmental struggles” (p. 88).

In the speeches to the United Nations in 1993 by nineteen leaders from Indigenous

peoples around the world, a common theme was the perspective that the world comprises

an interconnected community of living beings, and there are deep ties between

Indigenous peoples and nature (Ewen, 1994). A similar view is expressed, for example,

by Richard Atleo (2004), who presents the Nuu-chah-nulth theory of Tsawalk that

“everything is one” (p. xi). Leroy Little Bear (2000) observes that from a Plains Indians

philosophical perspective, “interrelationships between all entities are of paramount

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

324

importance” (p.77). Giichi Nomura reflects on the Aina word Ureshipamoshiri, which

represents the “concept of the world as an interrelated community of all living things” (in

Ewen, 1994, p. 71). The centrality of land in the lives of Indigenous peoples derives from

their philosophy that “power flows from respect for nature and the natural order” (Alfred,

1999, p. 60). And as Joe Sheridan (2001) observes, the oral tradition itself involved “a

chorus of rocks and trees and an animal choir” (p. 203). Often within Indigenous

contexts, stories and words themselves are articulated as originating from the natural

world.

The Buddhist worldview also holds at its heart a teaching of interdependence, and

the notion that all things are connected (Gross, 2000). Indeed reflecting on various

wisdom and Indigenous traditions around the world, Harold Coward (2000) observes that

“in traditional Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese and Aboriginal societies self-

identity is constructed not by individual choices but by participating in a ‘family’ that

may extend out to include caste, tribe, and all humans as well as plants, animals and the

cosmos” (p. 44). Accordingly, while in this thesis I focused primarily on Western

discourses and did not follow the thread of Indigenous and other traditions’ knowledge

and perspectives about the more-than-human world, a future project may involve looking

more closely at these perspectives and the possibilities for integrating them with the

stories narrated in this thesis.

Meanings for Praxis

This research unmasks and counters the tendency to tell conflict, peacebuilding and

recovery stories out of context, by showing that place and nature do feature prominently

into all areas of human life. The narratives counter the dominant culture and training in

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

325

Western society, and open up the insularity that has dominated peace and conflict studies,

to show that no one path or approach is the significant path, but only ever part of a larger

system (Diamond and McDonald, 1996). While research in peace and conflict studies

often concludes with programmatic recommendations and suggested solutions, such

recommendations and solutions are not in line with the approach taken in this thesis.

Indeed, such thinking arises out of the realm of the rationalist and progress meta-stories,

which assert there is a masterful solution to resolving issues of conflict, strategies for

peacebuilding and conflict transformation, and for post-conflict recovery. In contrast, I

am arguing that there is no masterful solution.

However, as many scholars and activists are pointing out, it is crucial that the

academy comes to recall and act on, rather than ignore, humans’ dependence on the

natural world. Ecofeminist philosopher and theologian Catherine Keller (1996) notes that

“only a theoretical construction which gets off the stage of the academy and into

practice—which performs its counterpoint—can make any difference” (p. 277). What

might the university and other educational settings look like if we remembered this? If

such thinking was incorporated into and enacted through our daily memories, schedules,

and activities? Certainly, as these questions enter my imagination, I see that places of

education would be very different from those we know today. Indeed, in his research on

the Aboriginal wilderness education program ‘Rediscovery,’ David Lertzman (2002)

describes his conversation with a Kwaguilth Nation elder and cultural educator, who

observed that “the teachings of the elders are different than in schools today. With the

elders, it’s hands on: you touch, you smell, you taste, and breathe it in” (¶2). Is it possible

to incorporate such an approach into schools and universities, and into peacebuilding and

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

326

trauma recovery programs, to create a more holistic model that listens and responds to the

more-than-human world?

Paul Shepard told Derrick Jensen (2004) during an interview that living on an

endangered planet leads human beings to attempt to control other living beings as a way to

demonstrate our superiority. However, Shepard observed that there is an alternative to this

dominating behaviour: “to live in such a way that the rest of life is not endangered”

(p. 259). And so perhaps it is no coincidence that many writers in both the ecology and the

peace movements are pointing to practices in which we examine both who and how we are

in the world. E. F. Schumacher (1973/98) wrote: “Everywhere people ask: ‘What can I

actually do?’ The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us, work to

put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in

science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it

can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind” (p. 252). This is similarly

reflected in the bumper sticker Thich Nhat Hanh (2005) recalls seeing in New York City:

“Let peace begin with me.” And his further reflection that “let me begin with peace”

(p. 113). Accordingly, in this thesis, I, too, am advocating the necessity of shifting our

attention and disentangling ourselves from the dominant stories and approaches in

Western society. Below I reflect on what this research has meant personally in my own

life, as well as the implications it holds more generally for praxis in peacebuilding,

conflict transformation, and trauma recovery.

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

327

Personal Implications

As we listen to, write or tell stories we are changed by them and something

new is formed.

—Etherington, 2003, p. 180

Through story, change can happen for both the teller and the listener/reader

(Levine, 1994). In the previous chapter I explored the ways that the process and

experience of sharing stories not only holds the potential for helping to heal those who

share them, but can also affect those who listen to or read them. In this context, doing this

research and writing this thesis has also changed how I think, both personally and

professionally. Overall, this research has led me to seek out areas and creative ways, in

both my personal and professional life, to connect with and engage the wider world, both

human and more-than-human, as much as possible.

For example, this research has changed the way my partner and I parent our son

and the way we interact in the world. We are constantly on the lookout for opportunities

to engage both Cameron and ourselves in the world, with the planet, with other species,

and we actively work to cultivate Cameron’s interest in the more-than-human world. Our

son’s daily time out of doors, exploring in nature, has become sacred time, and we often

rearrange our schedules and plans to ensure that he gets quality long-term time to connect

and integrate himself in the one nature that is inside and outside our bodies. And we

know that this time outside is important for us and our bodies, too. Cameron’s ceaseless

wonder in the face of the world and his child’s eye and mind have opened the world to us

in new ways—to experience and re-cultivate our own wonder and joy in the more-than-

human world, to remember how truly amazing and beautiful the moon is, to see pine

cones in a new way, and to find simple pleasure in wading through and jumping in

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

328

puddles, playing with sticks and stones, standing beneath a grove of pine trees and

breathing in their fresh scent, sifting sand through our fingers.

After a number of years without a garden, I was inspired to once again plant a small

vegetable garden (and am in the process of expanding that garden this year), to facilitate

Cameron’s understanding of the cycle of food production from seed to consumption, but

more importantly as a way of connecting with the world, the soil, the plants and insects

and birds and small mammals that pass through our yard, and with our neighbours (since

we’ve found that giving neighbours organic, nourishing vegetables from our garden is

one of the best ways to connect and build relationships with them!). In the summer of

2011, while Cameron was primarily interested in digging in the garden soil, by the end of

the summer, around 18 months of age, he began to make connections between the

zucchinis, pumpkins, and snap peas growing in the garden and the food he ate. He would

climb into the raised bed to pick the few end-of-season peas, which he would then bring

to one of us (or his grandmas) for help with eating. We’ve also become active in building

relationships with local food providers, and have bought grain, egg, poultry, and

vegetable shares through several Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs run

by local farmers.

After interviewing Kurt Hoelting, I also enrolled in an eight-week mindfulness-

based stress reduction (MBSR) course, which piqued my interest in the possibilities of

mindfulness and further areas to explore, both in my own life and in my professional

praxis. Furthermore, as I prepare for my teaching this spring, I am constantly thinking of

and planning ways to incorporate this research into my (windowless) university

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

329

classroom, including possibilities for engaging students’ bodies by taking them outside

for part of the class time, and perhaps eating good food together.20

There are days when I feel tired, when it seems easier to go with the flow of

modern life. On the one hand, while it can be easy to connect to the wider world, it can

also take great effort to escape the patterns and habits of the Western mind. Sometimes I

experience great sorrow and despair over the state of the world and the planet, and am

sucked into thinking that what I do does not matter. But most days I find great hope that

change is possible—that each of the veterans’ stories, as well as the other stories and

interviews comprising this research show the power of connecting with the world, of

remembering and returning to the things themselves, to the grounds of all life, and I

remember that all of these pockets of experience matter.

Challenges and Opportunities for Peace and Conflict Studies

While I have been critical of peace and conflict studies for its emphasis on linear

thought and rational action, and especially its lack of attention to nature, peace and

conflict studies is also the field that has inspired and created the space for this research,

and made this work possible. Indeed, I believe that peace and conflict studies, with its

focus on relationships and interconnection is in a unique position to examine and bring

attention to urgent questions about how social conflict, peace and reconciliation, and

post-conflict recovery might be envisioned as inextricably interconnected with nature.

20 As I make the final edits to this thesis, I am now well into my spring teaching, and have been taking my

students outside for our small group readings discussions whenever the weather allows. Inside the

classroom, most students are continuously “plugged in” to their electronic devices, such as laptop

computers, tablets, and cell phones; however, when we go outside together, to sit in small groups on the

grass, surrounded by pine and deciduous trees, feeling the sun and a light breeze on our skin, the students,

of their own accord, put these devices away and genuinely focus on one another. On the days when we go

outside together compared with the days we stay in the classroom for discussion, it is my impression that

students engage in better discussions and develop deeper and more intimate connections with one another.

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

330

John Paul Lederach (2005) writes that “breaking violence requires that people embrace a

more fundamental truth: Who we have been, are, and will be emerges and shapes itself in

a context of relational interdependency” (p. 35). And Elise Boulding (1988) writes that

humans “come into the world needing the other, dependent on the other for nurturance,

feeling a common bond of unity with the other in our humanness, in our need, and even

in our isolation from each other” (p. 140). Indeed concepts of interdependence and

interrelationships are increasingly prevalent in the peace and conflict studies discourse.

Boulding (2000), too, envisions that a culture of peace “involves living gently on the

earth, in tune with the planet’s regenerative capacity” (p. 192).

In the previous section I reflected on the ways that this research has affected my

own life, as a person, a parent, a citizen, and a teacher. These reflections extend into

important questions, challenges, and opportunities for praxis in peacebuilding, conflict

transformation, and trauma recovery. Most importantly, the veterans’ narratives in this

thesis, as well as the other stories, point to the significance of paying attention to lived

experience within conflict settings, and for people recovering from conflict. What are

their experiences telling us? If we listen carefully to their stories, what is learned? What

do we gain by casting sideways glances and paying attention to aspects that dominant

culture and training in Western society suggest we ignore, such as our human

interdependence with nature? Nature, Merleau-Ponty says, “presents itself always before

us, and yet as new before our gaze” (RC, 65).

In seeking to weave together dualisms and re-embed peace and conflict studies in

the everyday world, this research suggests asking the following questions as often as

possible, including in academic teaching, in mediation settings, or when working with

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

331

small groups in conflict, in larger contexts affected by conflict and violence, or in

association with small- or large-scale peacebuilding and/or trauma recovery processes:

1) As community members, peacebuilders, and earthlings, what are ways of

cultivating our own humanity (our human nature) and engaging the world?

2) In group contexts, what are possibilities for spending time together in more-

than-human nature?

3) If the traditional sitting posture taken in negotiation and trauma healing contexts

limits our capacity to engage with one another and with the world around us,

what are the possibilities for remembering our bodies? In what ways can such

processes engage our bodies to facilitate approaching and connecting with one

another on different levels and in different ways? For example, is it possible to,

among other things, incorporate walking together, gardening together, and

eating good food together?

4) What other possibilities exist for resisting the Western habits to quantify and

rationalize peacebuilding and conflict transformation, and to instead centre

efforts and processes on creating opportunities for the nature inside each of us

to connect with the nature of the other, as well as the broader nature out of

which we have arisen?

5) What are the possibilities for paying attention to interconnectedness and

interdependence, not only between human beings but with more-than-human

nature? What are ways for intentionally deconstructing and destabilizing the

Western construction of the individual? For remembering our relationships with

the world around us?

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

332

Furthermore, it is important to take into account the element of timing and how it

relates to this research. The questions listed above, for example, may not be appropriate

at the height of a crisis, such as ongoing violence, genocide, or all-out war. At the same

time, the more-than-human is always there, is always before us and part of us, in every

situation. This is clearly demonstrated in Roméo Dallaire’s description of his experiences

visiting that hillside in the midst of the Rwandan genocide. And as the Mayan priest

alludes in his conversation with Lederach (2005), “the earth and skies, winds and rocks”

are always there. Similarly, during our conversation, recalling his experience with the

Canadian military in Afghanistan, Tim Lewis observed, “Is there still beauty when you’re

outside in a war zone? Absolutely. There are things that you’re affected by.”

In asking these questions, I am not offering ‘solutions’ or ‘recipes’ for recovery,

nor any grand theoretical explanations about nature that transcend boundaries and space,

but instead am suggesting finding ways to be closer to the ground—both metaphorically

and physically. I am wary of approaches that offer certainty, since humans and the more-

than-human world are nearly always uncertain and unpredictable. I have not sought to

‘explicate’ or reduce nature to something readily knowable, nor to describe absolutely

what happens when veterans spend time in the woods, paddling on a river, climbing a

mountain, or digging in the soil. Embodied and emotional engagement with both the

human and natural worlds does not guarantee transformation in recovery and

peacebuilding settings and processes. Accordingly, this research and the questions above

only illustrate possibilities for ways that nature might be brought to consciousness and

remembered in future research and praxis in peacebuilding, reconciliation and conflict

recovery.

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

333

Dorothy Noyes (2008) suggests that “all our work is essay, in the etymological

sense: a trying-out of interpretation, a provisional framing to see how it looks” (p. 40). In

the end, this thesis, like all academic work, is a story, although I prefer to consider it a

counter-story or counternarrative to the dominant stories about the separateness of

humans and nature. As Buddhist scholar, David Loy (2010) comments, “when our

accounts of the world become different, the world becomes different” (p. 5). Thus, this

thesis is a counter-story to the dominant narratives of linear views of change. It is a

counter-story to the international political and economic system, which Diamond and

McDonald (1996) remind us, is “strikingly Eurocentric and overwhelmingly white and

male” (p. 147). Within this system, diplomacy and foreign policy tends to be “infused

with traditionally ‘masculine’ values and behaviors—rationality, logic, stoicism, power

orientation, crisis management, competition, aggressiveness, adversarial thinking—and

with ‘male’ language, replete, in some cases, with locker-room talk and sports analogies”

(p. 28). The meta-stories of rationalism and progress that undergird the international

system simplify reality, and create a myopic focus on reason and objectivity and

economic values. These stories are not awake to the wonder of the more-than-human

world. These stories are possibly amongst the reasons for much of the war and combat in

the twenty-first century (and before). These stories about rationality and progress are

themselves viewed as rational and progressive—any peoples or cultures who do not tell

these stories are viewed often as irrational and ‘backwards.’ Moreover, arms sales and

war tend to be ‘good for the economy,’ at least in the short term. In contrast, to engage

this thesis research often requires going against dominant practices and efforts, and

purposefully undermining these approaches.

Concluding Thoughts: Meanings for Praxis

334

This research also suggests taking the line of questioning in the environmental

security discourse, an approach heavily dependent on progress stories, beyond whether

degraded environments will lead to war: that is, as environments are degraded and

ecosystems destroyed, does this imperil future peace and recovery efforts and possibly

lead to further conflict? If “we are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is

not human” (Abram, 1996, p. 22), then what does this mean if we continue to overlook

and dismiss our interdependence with the more-than-human world?

A Final Thought: Stories of Caution, Stories of Hope

Historian Lynn White Jr. (1967) remarked, “What people do about their ecology

depends on what they think about themselves in relation to the things around them”

(p. 1205). This research and the narratives in this thesis are both stories of caution and

stories of hope. They offer cautionary tales about the ways that violence can lead to lost

humanity and a body in conflict with itself, to isolation and loneliness and withdrawal

from the world. But they also offer hope that one’s lost humanity can be recalled though

intimate contact with more-than-human nature, and the recognition that we, too, are

nature. In this, perhaps most importantly, this research offers hope for telling a new story

about ourselves and who we are in the world; for developing more embodied, creative,

and holistic approaches for praxis and for coming into our senses; for remembering who

we are and for creating the conditions for good contact and healthy, whole relationships

with the nature inside us as human begins, inside one another, and with the more-than-

human world. To return to Shepherd Bliss’s words, “there’s something about the healing

power of the regenerative earth, the grass, the leaves, the flowers, the bees, whatever

wanders in, the ants while they’re doing their work, the honey bees that don’t sting.”

335

References

Abram, David. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-

than-human world. New York: Vintage Books.

Abram, David. (2007). Earth in eclipse. In Suzanne L. Cataldi and William S. Hamrick

(Eds.), Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the landscapes

of thought (pp. 149-176). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Abram, David. (2010). Becoming animal: An earthly cosmology. New York: Pantheon

Books.

Ager, Alastair. (2002). Psychosocial needs in complex emergencies. The Lancet, 360,

s43-44.

Ahern, Jennifer, Galea, Sandra, Fernandez, William G., Koci, Bajram, Waldman, Ronald,

and Vlahov, David. (2004). Gender, social support, and posttraumatic stress in

postwar Kosovo. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 192(11), 762-70.

Alexander, Caroline. (2010).The shock of war: World War I troops were the first to be

diagnosed with shell shock, an injury – by any name – still wreaking havoc.

Smithsonian Magazine 41(5). Retrieved Sept. 13, 2011, from

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Shock-of-

War.html?c=y&story=fullstory

Alexievich, Svetlana. (2005). Voices from Chernobyl. (K. Gessen, Trans.). London:

Dalkey Archive Press.

Alfred, Taiaiake. (1999). Peace, power, righteousness: An indigenous manifesto. Don

Mills, Ont: Oxford University Press.

Alpert, Jon and Goosenberg Kent, Ellen (directors). (2010). Wartorn: 1861-2010

(documentary film). HBO Documentary Films in association with Attaboy Films.

Archi’s Acres. (n.d.). The Story of the Archipleys, the birth of Archi’s Acres, and the

veterans sustainable agriculture training. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from

http://archisacres.com/page/about

Arendt, Hannah. (1968). Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought.

New York: Penguin Books.

Ashoka. (2003). Ashoka Fellow: Paul Hogan (organization: Butterfly Peace Garden).

Retrieved July 21, 2011, from: http://www.ashoka.org/node/3573

References

336

Atleo, E. Richard (Umeek). (2004). Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth worldview. Vancouver,

BC: UBC Press.

Atleo, Marlene R. (2008). Watching to see until it becomes clear to you: Metaphorical

mapping – a method for emergence. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in

Education, 21(3), 221-233.

Bajaj, Monisha and Chiu, Belinda. (2009). Education for sustainable development as

peace education. Peace & Change, 34(4), 441-455.

Baldwin, Thomas (Ed.). (2004a). Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic writings (pp. 290-324).

New York: Routledge.

Baldwin, Thomas. (2004b). Introduction. In Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The world of

perception (pp. 1-28). (Oliver Davis, Trans.). London and New York: Routledge

Classics.

Ballantyne, Robert. (2011, June 14). Invisible war wounds: post-traumatic stress disorder.

CBC News. Retrieved Sept. 4, 2011, from

http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/blog/2011/06/invisible-war-wounds-post-traumatic-

stress-disorder-1.html

Barber, Katherine (Ed.). (2001). The Canadian Oxford dictionary. Don Mills, Ontario:

Oxford University Press.

Bar-On, D., Kutz, S., and Wegner, D. (2000). Bridging the gap: Storytelling as a way to

work through political and collective hostilities. Hamburg: Edition Körber-Stiftung.

Bastidas, Elena P. and Gonzales, Carlos A. (2008). Social cartography as a tool for

conflict analysis and resolution: The experience of the Afro-Colombian

communities of Robles. Peace and Conflict Studies, 15(2), 1-14.

Beatley, Timothy. (2000). Green urbanism: Learning from European cities. Washington,

DC: Island Press.

Beatley, Timothy. (2004). Native to nowhere: Sustaining home and community in a

global age. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Bell, Anne C. and Dyment, Janet E. (2006). Grounds for action: Promoting physical

activity through school ground greening in Canada. Retrieved Mar. 26, 2012, from

http://www.evergreen.ca/docs/res/Grounds-For-Action.pdf

Benedek, David M. (2011). Posttraumatic stress disorder from Vietnam to today: The

evolution of understanding during Eugene Brody’s tenure at the Journal of Nervous

and Mental Disease. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 199(8), 544-552.

Beresford-Kroeger, Diana. (2003). Arboretum America: A philosophy of the forest. Ann

Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.

Berger, Ronald J. and Quinney, Richard. (2005). The narrative turn in social inquiry. In

R.J. Berger and R. Quinney (Eds.), Storytelling sociology: Narrative as social

inquiry (pp. 1-11). Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Berger, Ronen (2010). Nature therapy: thoughts about the limitations of practice. Journal

of Humanistic Psychology, 50(1), 65-76.

Berlin Centre for Torture Victims (n.d.). Healing garden. Retrieved Sept. 2, 2011, from

http://www.bzfo.de/work/services/garden.html

Berto, Rita. (2005). Exposure to restorative environments helps restore attentional

capacity. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 25, 249-259.

Besthorn, Fred H., Wulff, Dan, and St. George, Sally. (2010). Eco-spiritual helping and

postmodern therapy: a deeper ecological framework. Ecopsychology, 2(1), 23-32.

References

337

Betancourt, Theresa Stichick, and Khan, Kashif Tanveer. (2008). The mental health of

children affected by armed conflict: Protective processes and pathways to

resilience. International Review of Psychiatry, 20(3), 317-328.

Bliss, Shepherd. (2006). Sound shy. In Maxine Hong Kingston (Ed.), Veterans of war,

veterans of peace (pp. 19-27). Kihei, Hawai‘i: Koa Books.

Bliss, Shepherd. (2008). Shepherd Bliss speaks at Farmer-Veteran benefit. Retrieved July

20, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7fjqw2T63E.

Bliss, Shepherd. (2009a). In praise of sweet darkness. In L. Buzzell and C. Chalquist

(eds), Ecotherapy: Healing with nature in mind (pp. 174-184). San Francisco:

Sierra Club Books.

Bliss, Shepherd. (2009b). Farms heal—agrotherapy. Retrieved July 20, 2011, from

http://www.countercurrents.org/bliss020209.htm.

Bliss, Shepherd. (2011). Learning from the community of the land. Retrieved July 20,

2011, from http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/shepherd-bliss/36852/learning-

from-the-community-of-the-land

Boulding, Elise. (1988). Building a global civic culture: Education for an interdependent

world. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Boulding, Elise. (2000). Cultures of peace: The hidden side of history. Syracuse, NY:

Syracuse University Press.

Bozzoli, Carlos and Brück, Tilman. (2009). Agriculture, poverty, and postwar

reconstruction: Micro-level evidence from Northern Mozambique. Journal of

Peace Research, 46, 377-397.

Bradshaw, Gay A., Capaldo, Theodora, Lindner, Lorin, and Grow, Gloria (2008).

Building an inner sanctuary: complex PTSD in chimpanzees. Journal of Trauma

and Dissociation, 9(1), 9-34.

Bradshaw, Gay A. (2009). Transformation through service: trans-species psychology and

its implications for ecotherapy. In L. Buzzell and C. Chalquist (Eds). Ecotherapy:

Healing with nature in mind (pp. 157-165). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Braverman, Mark. (1999). Preventing workplace violence: A guide for employers and

practitioners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Brigham, Steve. (2010). The American-Soviet walks: Large-scale citizen diplomacy at

Glasnost’s outset. Peace & Change, 35(4), 594-625.

Brown, J. W. (1999). Environmental issues and politics. In L. Kurtz and J. Turpin (Eds.),

Encyclopedia of violence, peace, and conflict (Vol. 1, pp. 703-713). San Diego:

Academic Press.

Brown, Patricia Leigh. (February 5, 2011). Helping soldiers trade their swords for plows.

New York Times. Retrieved July 20, 2011, from

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/us/06vets.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Burgess, Catherine. (1998). Saplings in the forest: A community development project

with young survivors of torture and trauma. Community Development Journal,

33(2), 145-149.

Burrell, C. Colston. (2000). Plants with power: The good scents and benefits of using

plants. Landscape Architecture, 90(1). 18-19.

Buzzell, Linda and Chalquist, Craig. (Eds). (2009). Ecotherapy: Healing with nature in

mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

References

338

Callenbach, Ernest. (1998). Ecology: A pocket guide. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Canadian Forces. (2011). Equality in the CF: Women. Retrieved Oct. 19, 2011, from

http://www.forces.ca/en/page/women-92#introduction-0

Cappiello, D. (2008). Efforts on global warming chilled by economic woes. Retrieved

Oct. 12, 2008, from

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MELTDOWN_GLOBAL_WARMING

Caputo, John D. (ed.). (1997). Deconstruction in a nutshell: A conversation with Jacques

Derrida. New York, NY: Fordham University Press.

Carlson, Eve Bernstein and Rosser-Hogan, Rhonda. (1991). Trauma experiences,

posttraumatic stress, dissociation, and depression in Cambodian refugees. American

Journal of Psychiatry, 148(11), 1548-1551.

Carman, Taylor, and Hansen, Mark B. (Eds.). (2005). The Cambridge companion to

Merleau-Ponty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Carman, Taylor. (2008). Merleau-Ponty. New York: Routledge.

Carson, Rachel. (2002). Silent spring (Fortieth anniversary ed.). New York: First Mariner

Books.

Carter, Neal, and Byrne, Sean. (2000). The dynamics of social cubism: A view from

Northern Ireland and Québec. In S. Byrne and C.L. Irvin (eds.), Reconcilable

differences: Turning points in ethnopolitical conflict (pp. 41-62). West Hartford,

CT: Kumarian Press, Inc.

Casey, Edward S. (2006). Phenomenon and place: Toward a renewed ethic of the

environment. Spring Journal 76, 175-200.

Cataldi, Susan L., and Hamrick, William S. (2007). Merleau-Ponty and environmental

philosophy: Dwelling on the landscapes of thought. Albany: State University of

New York Press.

CBC News. (2011, Mar. 31). Domestic violence up in Canadian military families: Rates

spike after Afghanistan missions. CBC News Online. Retrieved Sept. 4, 2011, from

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/03/30/canadian-forces-

military-domestic-violence-post-traumatic-stress-disorder.html

CBC News (2011, Oct. 4). Fire chiefs, union, seek federal PTSD help. CBC News Online.

Retrieved Oct. 4, 2011, from

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2011/10/04/calgary-fire-stress-

disorder.html

CBC Radio. (2011, Nov. 11). UBC’s veterans transition program helping veterans with

trauma. Retrieved Nov. 16, 2011, from

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2011/11/11/ubcs-veterans-transition-

program-helping-veterans-with-trauma/

Chaitin, Julia, Obeidi, Fida, Adwan, Sami, and Bar-On, Dan. (2002). Environmental

work and peace work: The Palestinian–Israeli case. Peace and Conflict Studies,

9(2), 64-94.

Chaitin, Julia. (2003). Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME). Retrieved

Feb. 5, 2012, from

http://beyondintractability.colorado.edu/audio/julia_chaitin/?nid=2418

Chambers, Cynthia (2008). Where are we? Finding common ground in a curriculum of

place. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 6(2), 113-128.

References

339

Chase, R., Doney, A., Sivayogan, S., Ariyaratne, V., Satkunanayagam, P., and

Swaminathan, A. (1999). Mental health initiatives as peace initiatives in Sri Lankan

schoolchildren affected by armed conflict. Medicine, Conflict and Survival 15, 379-

390.

Chase, Rob. (2000). Healing and reconciliation for war-affected children and

communities: Learning from the butterfly garden of Sri Lanka’s eastern province.

Paper presented at International Conference on War Affected Children (Winnipeg,

Canada, Sept. 2000). Retrieved June 20, 2008, from:

http://action.web.ca/home/sap/attach/Butterfly%20Garden%20Robert%20Chase.rtf

Cheldelin, S., Druckman, D., and Fast, L. (2000). Conflict: From analysis to intervention.

New York: Continuum.

Clandinin, D. Jean and Rosiek, Jerry. (2007). Mapping a landscape of narrative inquiry:

Borderland spaces and tensions. In Clandinin, D.J. (Ed.) Handbook of narrative

inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 35-75). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Cohen, Cynthia. (1994). Removing the dust from our hearts: A search for reconciliation

in the narratives of Palestinian and Jewish women. NWSA Journal, 6(2), 197-233.

Cohen, Cynthia. (2003). Engaging with the arts to promote coexistence. In A. Chayes and

M. Minow (Eds.), Imagine coexistence: Restoring humanity after violent ethnic

conflict (pp. 267-293). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Cohen, Cynthia. (n.d.) Creative approaches to reconciliation. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2012,

from: http://www.brandeis.edu/ethics/pdfs/publications/Creative_Approaches.pdf

Cole, David N. and Hall, Troy E. (2010). Experiencing the restorative components of

wilderness environments: does congestion interfere and does length of exposure

matter? Environment and Behavior, 42(6), 806-823.

Cole, Peter. (2006). Coyote and Raven go canoeing: Coming home to the village.

Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Coleman, Penny. (2006). Flashback: Posttraumatic stress disorder, suicide, and the

lessons of war. Boston: Beacon Press.

Connelly, F. Michael and Clandinin, D. Jean. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative

inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2-14.

Connelly, F. Michael, and Clandinin, D. Jean. (1991). Narrative inquiry: Storied

experience. In Edmund C. Short, (Ed.) Forms of curriculum inquiry (pp. 121-153).

Albany: State University of New York Press.

Corbin, Jane. (1994). The Norway channel: The secret talks that led to the Middle East

Peace Accord. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.

Coward, Harold. (2000). Self as individual and collective: Ethical implications. In H.

Coward and D.C. Maguire (Eds.), Visions of a new earth: Religious perspectives on

population, consumption, and ecology (pp. 43-64). Albany, New York: State

University of New York Press.

Crawford, Eric F, Drescher, Kent D, and Rosen, Craig S. (2009). Predicting mortality in

veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder thirty years after Vietnam. The Journal

of Nervous and Mental Disease, 197(4), 260-5.

Creswell, John W. (2012). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating

quantitative and qualitative research (4th edition). Boston, MA: Pearson

Education, Inc.

References

340

Crocker, C. A., Hampson, F. O., and Aall, P. R. (2001). Turbulent peace: The challenges

of managing international conflict. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of

Peace Press.

Crocker, C. A., Hampson, F. O., and Aall, P. R. (2007). Leashing the dogs of war:

Conflict management in a divided world. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute

of Peace Press.

Cronon, William. (1995). The trouble with wilderness; or, getting back to the wrong

nature. In William Cronon, ed., Uncommon ground: Rethinking the human place in

nature (pp. 69-90). New York: W.W.Norton & Co. Retrieved Oct. 28, 2011, from

http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Cronon_Trouble_with_Wilderness_1995.pdf

Dallaire, Roméo. (2003). Shake hands with the devil. Toronto: Random House Canada.

Dallaire, Roméo. (2007). Foreword. In Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren, (Eds.), Outside

the wire: The war in Afghanistan in the words of its participants (pp. ix-xii).

Toronto: Random House Canada.

Damasio, Antonio R. (2005). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain.

New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Dao, James. (2011, Dec. 1). After duty, dogs suffer like soldiers. New York Times.

Retrieved Dec. 9, 2011, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/more-

military-dogs-show-signs-of-combat-stress.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

Davis-Berman, Jennifer and Berman, Dene S. (1989). The wilderness therapy program:

An empirical study of its effects with adolescents in an outpatient setting. Journal

of Contemporary Psychotherapy 19(4), 271-281.

de Jong, Joop T. V. M., Komproe, Ivan H., Van Ommeren, Mark. (2003). Common

mental disorders in postconflict settings. The Lancet, 361, 2128-2130.

de Vries, S., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P. P., and Spreeuwenberg, P. (2003). Natural

environments−healthy environments? An exploratory analysis of the relationship

between greenspace and health. Environment and Planning A, 35, 1717-1731.

Denzin, Norman K. (2009). Qualitative inquiry under fire: Toward a new paradigm

dialogue. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press Inc.

Derluyn, Ilse, Broekaert, Eric, Schuyten, Gilberte, and De Temmerman, Els (2004). Post-

traumatic stress in former Ugandan child soldiers. The Lancet 363, 861-863.

Deutsch, Morton, and Coleman, Peter T. (2000). The handbook of conflict resolution:

Theory and practice (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Di Iacovo, Francesco, and O’Connor, Deirdre (Eds). (2009). Supporting policies for

social farming in Europe: Progressing multifunctionality in responsive rural areas.

Press Service srl, Sesto Fiorentino (FI). Retrieved Aug. 16, 2011, from

http://sofar.unipi.it/index_file/arsia_So.Far-EU_def.pdf

Diamond, Louise, and McDonald, John W. (1996). Multi-track diplomacy: A systems

approach to peace (3rd ed.). West Hartford: Kumarian Press.

Dukes, E. Franklin. (2004). What we know about environmental conflict resolution: An

analysis based on research. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 22, 191-220.

Duran, Eduardo and Duran, Bonnie. (1995). Native American postcolonial psychology.

Albany: State University of New York Press.

References

341

Dussel, Enrique. (1999). Beyond Eurocentrism : The world-system and the limits of

modernity. In F. Jameson and M. Miyoshi (Eds.), The cultures of globalization (pp.

3-31). Durham: Duke University Press.

Dyment, Janet E. (2005). Gaining ground: The power and potential of school ground

greening in the Toronto District School Board. Retrieved March 26, 2012, from:

http://www.evergreen.ca/docs/res/Gaining-Ground.pdf

Eastman, Timothy E. (2008). Our cosmos, from substance to process. World Futures,

64(2), 84-93.

Eikenæs, I., Gude, T., and Hoffart, A. (2006). Integrated wilderness therapy for avoidant

personality disorder. Nord Journal of Psychiatry, 60(4), 275-281.

Elings, Marjolein and Hassink, Jan. (2008). Green care farms, a safe community between

illness or addiction and the wider society. Therapeutic Communities, 29(3), 310-

322.

English, Allan D. (2000). Leadership and operational stress in the Canadian forces.

Canadian Military Journal, 1(3), 33-38.

Enloe, Cynthia H. (2004). The curious feminist: Searching for women in a new age of

empire. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Escobar, Arturo. (1998). Whose knowledge, whose nature? Biodiversity, conservation,

and the political ecology of social movements. Journal of Political Ecology, 5, 53-

81.

Etherington, Kim (Ed.). (2003). Trauma, the body and transformation: A narrative

inquiry. Philadelphia, PA, USA: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Evernden, Neil. (1992). The social creation of nature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press.

Evernden, Neil. (2002). Neil Evernden (interview). In D. Jensen (Ed.), Listening to the

land: conversations about nature, culture, and eros (pp. 112-123). White River

Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company.

Ewen, Alexander (Ed.). (1994). Voice of indigenous peoples: Native people address the

United Nations. Sante Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers.

Eytan, Ariel, Gex-Fabry, Marianne, Toscani, Letizia, Deroo, Lisa, Loutan, Louis, and

Bovier, Patrick A. (2004). Determinants of Postconflict Symptoms in Albanian

Kosovars. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 192(10), 664-671.

Faber Taylor, A. and Kuo, F.E. (2006). Is contact with nature important for healthy child

development? State of the evidence. In C. Spencer and M. Blades, (Eds.), Children

and their environments (pp. 124-140). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press.

Farmer Veteran Coalition. (2010, April 23). Veterans Farm gets new land, issues press

release. Retrieved July 22, 2011, from http://www.farmvetco.org/2010/04/veterans-

farm-gets-new-land-issues-press-release/

Farmer Veteran Coalition. (n.d.). FVC project outline. Retrieved July 20, 2011, from

http://www.farmvetco.org/who-we-are/about/

Fischer, Douglas. (2012, Jan. 3). Climate coverage down again in 2011. The Daily

Climate. Retrieved Jan. 21, 2012, from http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-

newsroom/2012/01/climate-coverage-2011

Fisher, Andy. (2002). Radical ecopsychology: Psychology in the service of life. Albany,

NY: State University of New York Press.

References

342

Fisher, Andy. (2006). To praise again: Phenomenology and the project of ecopsychology.

Spring Journal, 75, 153-174.

Fisher, Andy. (2009). Ecopsychology as radical praxis. In L. Buzzell and C. Chalquist

(Eds). Ecotherapy: Healing with nature in mind (pp. 60-68). San Francisco: Sierra

Club Books.

Fisher, Roger, Ury, William L., and Patton, Bruce. (1991). Getting to yes: Negotiating

agreement without giving in (2nd ed.). New York: Penguin Books.

Flavelle, Ryan. (2011). The patrol: Seven days in the life of a Canadian soldier in

Afghanistan. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers.

Frank, Arthur W. (2001). Can we research suffering? Qualitative Health Research, 11(3),

353-362.

Frankl, Viktor E. (1959/2006). Man’s search for meaning (with a new foreword by

Harold S. Kushner). Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.

Freeze, Colin. (2011, Aug. 18). Hike in stress-disorder claims by Mounties raises

questions for policy makers. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved Sept. 20, 2011, from

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/hike-in-stress-disorder-claims-by-

mounties-raises-questions-for-policy-makers/article2123341/

Fromm, Erich. (1964). The heart of man: Its genius for good and evil. New York: Harper

& Row.

Galtung, Johan. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research

3, 167-191.

Gardner, Howard. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New

York: Basic Books.

Gleditsch, Nils Petter. (2007). Environmental change, security, and conflict. In C. A.

Crocker, F. Osler Hampson and P. Aall (Eds.), Leashing the dogs of war: Conflict

management in a divided world (pp. 177-195). Washington: United States Institute

of Peace Press.

Glendinning, Chellis. (1995). Technology, trauma, and the wild. In T. Roszak, M. E.

Gomes and A. D. Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the

mind (pp. 41-54). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Globe and Mail (2011, May 30). One-quarter of Canadian soldiers return from

Afghanistan with mental-health problems. Globe and Mail. Retrieved June 15,

2011, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/one-quarter-of-

canadian-soldiers-return-from-afghanistan-with-mental-health-

problems/article2040698/

Goldstein, Joshua S. (2001). War and gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goleman, Daniel. (2010). Ecological intelligence: The hidden impacts of what we buy.

New York, NY: Broadway books.

Goffman, Erving. (1962). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and

other inmates. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company.

Grabowski, J. (2004). The Holocaust in Northern Mazovia (Poland) in the light of the

archive of the Ciechanów Gestapo. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Winter, 460-

476.

Grahn, P., and Stigsdotter, U. A. (2003). Landscape planning and stress. Urban Forestry

& Urban Greening, 2(1), 1-18.

References

343

Greenway, Robert. (2005). The wilderness effect and ecopsychology. In T. Roszak, M.

Gomes, and A . Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the

mind (pp. 122-135). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Greenway, Robert. (2009). The wilderness experience as therapy: We’ve been here

before. In L. Buzzell and C. Chalquist (Eds). Ecotherapy: Healing with nature in

mind (pp. 132-139). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Gross, Rita. (2000). Towards a Buddhist environmental ethic. In H. Coward and D.C.

Maguire (Eds.), Visions of a new earth: Religious perspectives on population,

consumption, and ecology (pp. 147-160). Albany, New York: State University of

New York Press.

Hadot, Pierre. (1995). Philosophy as a way of life: spiritual exercises from Socrates to

Foucault. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Hadot, Pierre. (2006). The veil of Isis: An essay on the history of the idea of nature.

Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. (2005). Being peace. (Introduction by Jack Kornfield). Berkeley, CA:

Parallax Press.

Hamrick, William S. and Van der Veken, Jan. (2011). Nature and logos: A Whiteheadian

key to Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental thought. Albany, NY: State University of New

York Press.

Han, Ke-Tsung. (2009). Influence of limitedly visible leafy indoor plants on the

psychology, behavior, and health of students at a junior high school in Taiwan.

Environment and Behavior, 41(5), 658-692.

Harris, Art. (1980, Feb. 24). Team combs city streets to salvage ‘Nam veterans. The

Washington Post, p. A1 (3 pages).

Hartig, Terry. (2003). Guest editors’ introduction: Restorative environments. Journal of

Environmental Psychology, 23, 103-107.

Hartig, T., Evans, G. W., Jamner, L. D., Davis, D. S., and Gärling, T. (2003). Tracking

restoration in natural and urban field settings. Journal of Environmental

Psychology, 23(2), 109-123.

Hartig, Terry, and Staats, Henk. (2006).The need for psychological restoration as a

determinant of environmental preferences. Journal of Environmental Psychology,

26, 215-226.

Hartig, Terry, Catalano, Ralph, and Ong, Michael. (2007). Cold summer weather,

constrained restoration, and the use of antidepressants in Sweden. Journal of

Environmental Psychology, 27, 107-116.

Hauss, Charles. (2001). International conflict resolution: International relations for the

21st century. London: Continuum.

Heifetz, Julie. (1989). Too young to remember. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Heifetz, Julie. (2003). Why write a patient’s life as a short story? Lilith, Winter, 12-13.

Heifetz, Julie. (2008). That’s what it means to be a nurse. Accessed online Sept. 1, 2011,

from http://www.nursingchannel.ca/programs/to_be_a_nurse/index.html

Henderson, James (Sákéj) Youngblood. (2000). Ayukpachi: Empowering Aboriginal

thought. In M. Battiste (ed.), Reclaiming indigenous voice and vision (pp. 248-278).

Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Hendin, Herbert and Pollinger Haas, Ann. (1984, Nov 11). Vietnam veterans’ trauma.

New York Times 1984. p. 234

References

344

Herman, Judith L. (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence - from

domestic abuse to political terror. New York: Basic Books.

Herodotus (440 BCE). History, Book 6, Sections 109-117 (trans. George Rawlinson).

Electronic version from the Internet Classics Archive. Retrieved Sept. 14, 2011,

from http://products.ilrn-

support.com/wawc1c01c/content/wciv1/readings/herodotus_bk6.html.

Hewson, M. (2001). Horticultural therapy and post traumatic stress recovery. Journal of

Therapeutic Horticulture, XII, 44-47.

Hickey, Brendan. (2008). Lothlorien Community: A holistic approach to recovery from

mental health problems. Therapeutic Communities, 29(3), 261-272.

Higuchi, Toshihiro. (2008). An environmental origin of antinuclear activism in Japan,

1954–1963: The government, the grassroots movement, and the politics of risk

Peace & Change, 33(3), 333-367

Hillman, James. (1995). A psyche the size of the earth: A psychological foreword. In T.

Roszak, M . Gomes, and A . Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth,

healing the mind (pp. xvii–xxiii ). San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Hillman, James. (2004). A terrible love of war. New York: The Penguin Press.

Hillman, James. (2006). City and soul. Putnam, Connecticut: Spring Publications, Inc.

Hine, Rachel, Peacock, Jo, and Pretty, Jules. (2008). Care farming in the UK: Contexts,

benefits and links with therapeutic communities. International Journal of

Therapeutic Communities, 29(3), 245-260.

Hoffman, Elizabeth. (2008). Reconciliation in Sierra Leone: Local processes yield global

lessons. The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, 32(2), 129-141.

Hogan, Linda. (2002). Linda Hogan (interview). In D. Jensen (Ed.), Listening to the land:

conversations about nature, culture, and eros (pp. 122-130). White River Junction,

VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company.

Homer-Dixon, Thomas F. (1999). Environment, scarcity, and violence. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Honwana, Alcinda (1998). Sealing the past, facing the future: trauma healing in rural

Mozambique. Accord 3, 75-81.

Hrynkow, Christopher, Byrne, Sean, and Hendzel, Matthew. (2010). Ecotheology and

inculturation: Implications for theory and practice in Peace and Conflict Studies

Peace & Change, 35(2), 295-327.

Irigaray, Luce. (1999). Between East and West: From singularity to community. (Stephen

Pluháček, trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.

Jackson, Judy (director and producer). (2011). War in the mind [Film]. TVO. Judy Films

BC Inc. Retrieved Nov. 12, 2011, from http://docstudio.tvo.org/story/war-mind

Jameson, Jessica Katz, Bodtker, Andrea M., Porch, Dennis M. and Jordan, William J.

(2009). Exploring the role of emotion in conflict transformation. Conflict

Resolution Quarterly, 27(2), 167-192.

Jeong, Ho-Won. (2000). Peace and conflict studies: An introduction. Burlington:

Ashgate.

Jerusalem Stories Project (n.d.). Jerusalem Stories: Building peace through sharing

stories. Retrieved March 11, 2009, from http://jerusalemstories.org/

References

345

Johnston, Basil. (1999). How do we learn language? What do we learn? In L.J. Murray

and K. Rice (Eds.) Talking on the page: Editing Aboriginal oral texts (pp. 43-51).

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Jung, Carl Gustav. (1964). Man and his symbols. New York: Dell Publishing.

Jung, Hans (Captain). (2007). Can the Canadian Forces reflect Canadian society?

Canadian Military Journal, 8(3), 27-36.

Kaplan, Rachel. (2001). The nature of the view from home: Psychological benefits.

Environment and Behavior, 33(4), 507-542.

Kaplan, Stephen. (1995). The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative

framework. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15(3), 169-182.

Kearney, Richard. (1997). The crisis of narrative in contemporary culture.

Metaphilosophy, 28(3), 183-195.

Kearney, Richard. (2011). Narrating pain: Hermeneutics of healing. Canadian

Hermeneutic Institute, University of Calgary, June 1-3, 2011.

Keller, Catherine. (1990). ‘To illuminate your trace’: Self in late modern feminist

theology. Listening, Fall, 211-224.

Keller, Catherine. (1996). Apocalypse now and then: A feminist guide to the end of the

world. Boston: Beacon Press.

Keller, Catherine. (2002). Catherine Keller (interview). In D. Jensen (Ed.), Listening to

the land: Conversations about nature, culture, and eros (pp. 273-281). Albany:

State University of New York Press.

King, Thomas. (2003). The truth about stories: A native narrative. Toronto: House of

Anansi Press Inc.

Kirkman, Robert. (2007). A little knowledge of dangerous things: Human vulnerability in

a changing climate. In S. L. Cataldi and W. S. Hamrick (Eds.), Merleau-Ponty and

environmental philosophy: Dwelling on the landscapes of thought (pp. 19-36).

Albany: State University of New York Press.

Klare, Michael T. (2001). The new geography of conflict. Foreign Affairs, 80(3), 49-61.

Kool, Richard and Eaton, Heather. (2009). Worldviews, religion, and leverage points for

environmental educators. Presentation May 12, 2009, at Earth, Our Common Home

5th World Environmental Education Congress, Montreal, Quebec.

Kronsell, Annika. (2005). Gendered practices in institutions of hegemonic masculinity:

Reflections from feminist standpoint theory. International Feminist Journal of

Politics, 7(2), 280-98.

Kuo, Frances E. and Sullivan, William C. (2001). Aggression and violence in the inner

city: Effects of environment via mental fatigue. Environment and Behavior, 33,

543-571.

Kuwert, Philipp, Klauer, Thomas, Eichhorn, Svenja, Grundke, Elena, Dudeck, Manuela,

Schomerus, Georg, and Freyberger, Harald J. (2010). Trauma and current

posttraumatic stress symptoms in elderly German women who experienced wartime

rapes in 1945. Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease, 198(6), 450-451.

LaDuke, Winona. (1999a). All our relations: Native struggles for land and life.

Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

LaDuke, Winona. (1999b). From resistance to regeneration. In Carolyn Merchant (ed.),

Ecology: Key concepts in critical theory (pp. 266-271), Amherst, New York:

Humanity Books.

References

346

Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind

and its challenge to Western thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. (2000). The language war. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Lambert, Kelly. (2008). Lifting depression: A neuroscientist’s hands-on approach to

activating your brain’s healing power. New York: Basic Books.

Lamprecht, Friedhelm and Sack, Martin. (2002). Posttraumatic stress disorder revisited.

Psychosometric Medicine, 64(2), 222-237.

Landis, Bernard. (1975). Fromm’s theory of biophilia-necrophilia. Contemporary

Psychoanalysis, 11(4), 418-434.

LaRocque, Emma. (1990). Preface, or, Here are our voices – who will hear? In J.

Perreault and S. Vance (eds.), Writing the circle: Native women of Western Canada

(pp. xv-xxx). Edmonton, AB: NeWest Publishers Limited.

Lawson, Mary. (2003). Crow lake. Toronto: Vintage Canada.

Le Guin, Ursula. (1994). Coming back from the silence. In White, Jonathan (ed.). Talking

on the water: Conversations about nature and creativity (pp. 99-120). San

Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Lederach, John Paul. (2005). The moral imagination: The art and soul of peacebuilding.

New York: Oxford University Press.

Lederach, John Paul, and Lederach, Angela Jill. (2010). When blood and bones cry out:

Journeys through the soundscape of healing and trauma. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Leiserowitz, Anthony, Maibach, Edward, Roser-Renouf, Connie, and Smith, Nicholas.

(2011). Climate change in the American Mind: Americans’ global warming beliefs

and attitudes in May 2011. Yale University and George Mason University. New

Haven, CT: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Retrieved Jan. 21,

2012, from http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/ClimateBeliefsMay2011.pdf

Leiss, William. (1972). The domination of nature. New York: George Braziller, Inc.

Lertzman, David A. (2002). Rediscovering rites of passage: education, transformation,

and the transition to sustainability. Conservation Ecology, 5(2). Retrieved March

30, 2012, from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol5/iss2/art30

Lewis, Charles A. (1996). Green nature/human nature: The meaning of plants in our

lives. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Little Bear, Leroy. (2000). Jagged worldviews colliding. In M. Battiste (ed.), Reclaiming

indigenous voice and vision (pp. 77-85). Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.

Liu, Mingwang, Kim, Eunhee, and Mattson, Richard. (2003). Physiological and

emotional influences of cut flower arrangements and lavender fragrance on

university students. Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture, 14, 18-27.

Louv, Richard. (2008). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit

disorder (updated and expanded). Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel

Hill.

Loy, David R. (2000). The religion of the market. In H. Coward and D.C. Maguire (Eds.),

Visions of a new earth: Religious perspectives on population, consumption, and

ecology (pp. 15-28). Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.

Loy, David R. (2010). The world is made of stories. Boston: Wisdom Publications.

References

347

Maas, J., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P. P., de Vries, S., and Spreeuwenberg, P. (2006).

Green space, urbanity, and health: how strong is the relation? Journal of

Epidemiology and Community Health, 60(7), 587-592.

Maathai, Wangari. (2003). The green belt movement: Sharing the approach and the

experience (Rev. ed.). New York: Lantern Books.

MacInnes-Rae, Rick. (2011, Oct. 26). A Brigadier-General’s dispatch (a conversation

with Brigadier-General Richard Giguere). Dispatches [radio program]. Retrieved

Oct. 28, 2011, from http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/episode/2011/10/26/october-27-

31-from-kabul---freetown-sierra-leone---zimbabwe---chiquitania-bolivia/

Madison, G.B. (1999). Merleau-Ponty. In R. Audi (Ed.), Cambridge dictionary of

philosophy (second edition) (pp. 558-560), Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

Mansfield, Sue. (1982). The gestalts of war: An inquiry into its origins and meanings as a

social institution. New York: The Dial Press.

Marshall, Grant N., Schell, Terry L., Elliott, Marc N., Berthold, S. Megan, and Chun,

Chi-Ah. (2005). Mental health of Cambodian refugees 2 decades after resettlement

in the United States. Journal of the American Medical Association 294, 571-9.

Mason, Jennifer. (2002). Qualitative researching (2nd ed.). London ; Thousand Oaks,

Calif.: Sage Publications.

Matthews, Eric. (2006). Merleau-Ponty: A guide for the perplexed. London; New York:

Continuum Books.

McCarthy, Colman. (1977, June 28). Veterans of a lost war. The Washington Post,

p. A19.

McNally, R. J. (2003). Progress and controversy in the study of posttraumatic stress

disorder. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 229-252.

McNeill, J. R. (2000). Something new under the sun: An environmental history of the

twentieth-century world (1st ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1968). The visible and the invisible (Compiled by Claude

Lefort; Alphonso Lingis, trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1970). Themes from the lectures of the Collège de France,

1952-1960 (John O’Neill, trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2002). Phenomenology of perception. (Colin Smith, trans.).

London and New York: Routledge Classics.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2003). Nature: Course notes from the Collège de France.

(Compiled and with notes by Dominique Séglard; Robert Vallier, trans.). Evanston,

Illinois: Northwestern University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2004). Eye and mind (Carleton Dallery, trans.). In Thomas

Baldwin (Ed.), Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic writings (pp. 290-324). New York:

Routledge.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (2004). The world of perception. (Oliver Davis, trans.). London

and New York: Routledge Classics.

Messer Diehl, Elizabeth R. (2009). Gardens that heal. In L. Buzzell and C. Chalquist

(Eds). Ecotherapy: Healing with nature in mind (pp. 166-173). San Francisco:

Sierra Club Books.

References

348

Messerschmidt, James W. (2006). Review symposium: the forgotten victims of World

War II: masculinities and rape in Berlin, 1945. Violence Against Women, 12(7),

706-12.

Mind (2007a). Ecotherapy: The green agenda for mental health (executive summary).

Retrieved Feb. 5, 2012, from

http://www.mind.org.uk/assets/0000/2139/ecotherapy_executivesummary.pdf

Mind (2007b). Ecotherapy: The green agenda for mental health. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2012,

from http://www.mind.org.uk/assets/0000/2139/ecotherapy_executivesummary.pdf

Mitchell, R., and Popham, F. (2007). Greenspace, urbanity and health: relationships in

England. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 61(8), 681-683.

Mollica, R. F., Lopes Cardozo, B., Osofsky, H. J., Raphael, B., Ager, A., and Salama, P.

(2004). Mental health in complex emergencies. The Lancet, 364, 2058-67.

Mollica, Richard F, Caridad Kathleen R, and Massagli Michael P. (2007). Longitudinal

study of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and changes in traumatic

memories over time in Bosnian Refugees. The Journal of Nervous and Mental

Disease, 195(7), 527-579.

Mooney, P. and Nicell, P.L. (1992). The importance of exterior environment for

Alzheimer’s residents: Effective care and risk management. Health Care

Management Forum, 5(2), 23-29.

Moore, E. O. (1981). A prison environment’s effect on health care service demands.

Journal of Environmental Systems, 11, 17-34.

Neilsen, Lorri. (1998). Knowing her place: Research literacies and feminist occasions.

San Francisco: Caddo Gap Press.

Nordheimer, Jon. (1972, August 21). Postwar shock besets ex-G.I.’s: Postwar shock is

found to beset veterans returning from the war in Vietnam. New York Times. Aug

21, 1972. p. 1 (2 pages).

Norton, Christine Lynn. (2009). Ecopsychology and social work: Creating an

interdisciplinary framework for redefining person-in-environment. Ecopsychology,

1(3), 138-145.

Noyes, Dorothy. (2008). Humble theory. Journal of Folklore Research, 45(1), 37-43.

O’Brien, L. (2006). “Strengthening heart and mind”: Using woodlands to improve mental

and physical well-being. Unasylva, 57(224), 56-61.

O’Neill, John. (1970). Translator’s preface. In Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Themes from the

Lectures of the Collège de France, 1952-1960 (John O’Neill, trans.) (pp. xi-xvii).

Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

OED (Online Etymology Dictionary). (2001). Available from: http://etymonline.com.

Okri, Ben. (1997). A way of being free. London: Phoenix House.

Oliver, Mary. (1986). Dream work. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press.

Osborne, Stephen. (2005). A peace refuge struggles to survive the tsunami: The Butterfly

Garden, home to child victims of Sri Lanka’s civil war, reaches out to Canadian

friends. The Tyee. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from:

http://thetyee.ca/Life/2005/01/07/APeaceRefugeStrugglestoSurvive

Ottosson, J., and Grahn, P. (2008). The role of natural settings in crisis rehabilitation :

How does the level of crisis influence the response to experiences of nature with

regard to measures of rehabilitation? Landscape Research, 33(1), 51-70.

References

349

Ozer, E. J., and Weiss, D. S. (2004). Who develops posttraumatic stress disorder?

Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(4), 169-172.

Pakenham, Thomas. (1991). The scramble for Africa. London: Abacus History.

Panter-Brick, Catherine, Eggerman, Mark, Gonzalez, Viani, and Safdar, Sarah. (2009).

Violence, suffering, and mental health in Afghanistan: a school-based survey. The

Lancet, 374, 807-816.

Papadopoulos, Maria. (2008, Aug. 31). Healing greens: Local vets find solace in

horticultural therapy. The Enterprise of Brockton, Massachusetts .Retrieved Jan. 3,

2012, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jk0U-_Gpko&NR=1

Paris, Max. (2012, Jan. 11). Attack on ‘radicals’ sign of tougher federal strategy:

Government expected to get more aggressive in defending major economic

projects. CBC News Online. Retrieved Jan. 12, 2012, from

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/01/11/pol-gateway-pipeline-

strategy.html

Parmeley, Michael. (2006). Meditation on being a baby killer. In Maxine Hong Kingston

(ed), Veterans of war, veterans of peace (pp. 413-414). Kihei, Hawaii: Koa Books.

Peluso, Nancy Lee and Watts, Michael. (2001). Violent environments. In Nancy Lee

Peluso and Michael Watts (eds.), Violent environments (pp. 3-38). Ithaca, New

York: Cornell University Press.

Perreaux, Les. (2011, July 15). The Canadian war vet is no longer an old guy. Globe and

Mail. Retrieved July 18, 2011, from

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-canadian-war-vet-is-no-longer-

an-old-guy/article2099390/singlepage/#articlecontent

Pert, Candace. (1997). Molecules of emotion: The science behind mind-body medicine.

New York, NY: Scribner.

Peterson, Anna L. (2001). Being human: Ethics, environment, and our place in the world.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Pinnegar, Stefinee and Daynes, J. Gary. (2007). Locating narrative inquiry historically:

Thematics in the turn to narrative. In Clandinin, D. J. (Ed.) Handbook of narrative

inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 1-34). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Plato. (2002). Phaedrus (trans. Robin Waterfield). Cambridge, GBR: Oxford University

Press.

Polkinghorn, Brian D. (2000). The social origins of environmental resource conflict:

Exposing the roots of tangible disputes. In S. Byrne and C. L. Irvin (Eds.),

Reconcilable differences: Turning points in ethnopolitical conflict (pp. 79-95).

West Hartford: Kumarian Press, Inc.

Poole, Robert M. (2010).The Pathway Home makes inroads in treating PTSD: An

innovative California facility offers hope to combatants with post-traumatic stress

disorder and brain injuries. Smithsonian Magazine, 41(5). Retrieved Sept. 13, 2011,

from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Learning-How-to-Treat-

PTSD.html

Pretty, Jules. (2004). How nature contributes to mental and physical health. Spirituality

and Health International, 5(2), 68-78.

Pretty, Jules, Peacock, Jo, and Hine, Rachel. (2006). Green exercise: the benefits of

activities in green places. Biologist, 53(3), 143-148.

References

350

Pretty, Jules, Peacock, Jo, Hine, Rachel, Sellens, M., South, N., and Griffin, M. (2007).

Green Exercise in the UK Countryside: Effects on Health and Psychological Well-

Being, and Implications for Policy and Planning. Journal of Environmental

Planning and Management, 50(2), 211-231.

Prince, Martin, Patel, Vikram, Saxena, Shekhar, Maj, Mario, Maselko, Joanna, Phillips,

Michael R., and Rahman, Atif. (2007). No health without mental health. The

Lancet, 370, 859-77.

Readings, Bill. (1996). The university in ruins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press.

Reardon, Betty. (1992). Towards a paradigm of peace. In J.J. Fahey and R. Armstrong

(eds.), A peace reader: Essential writings on war, justice, non-violence and world

order (pp. 391-403). Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Rees, William E. and Westra, Laura. (2003). When consumption does violence: Can

there be sustainability and environmental justice in a resource-limited world? In J.

Agyeman, R.D. Bullard, and B. Evans (eds.), Just sustainabilities: Development in

an unequal world (pp. 99-124). Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Rees, William E. (2006). Globalization, trade and migration: Undermining sustainability.

Ecological Economics, 59, 220-225.

Relf, Paula Diane. (2006). Agriculture and health care: The care of plants and animals for

therapy and rehabilitation in the United States. In Jan Hassink and Majken van Dijk

(Eds). Farming for health: green-care farming across Europe and the United States

of America (pp. 309-343). Dordrecht: Springer.

Reuveny, Rafael, Mihalache-O'Keef, Andreea S., and Li, Quan. (2010). The effect of

warfare on the environment. Journal of Peace Research, 47(6), 749-761.

Richards, Tadzio. (2010). Landmine in a rucksack: Homecoming soldiers aren’t

necessarily home free. Alberta Views (June), 38-43.

Richardson, J. Don, Elhai, Jon D., and Sarreen, Jitender. (2011). Predictors of treatment

response in Canadian combat and peacekeeping veterans with military-related

posttraumatic stress disorder. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 199(9),

639-645.

Richardson, Laurel. (1997). Fields of play (Constructing an academic life). New

Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Rilke, Rainer Maria (2005). Rilke’s book of hours: Love poems to God (A. Burrows and

J. Macy, Trans.). New York: Riverhead Books.

Ritchie, D.A. (2003). Doing oral history: A practical guide. (Second edition). New York:

Oxford University Press.

Roach, Catherine M. (2003). Mother/Nature: Popular culture and environmental ethics.

Indiana University Press: Bloomington & Indianapolis.

Roberts, Adam. (2010). Lives and statistics: Are 90% of war victims civilians? Survival,

52(3), 115-136.

Robertson, Gavin and De Kiewit, Stephen. (1998). Wilderness therapy with militarised

youths in traumatised communities. Community Development Journal, 33(2), 139-

144.

Robinson, Larry (2009). Psychotherapy as if the world mattered. In L. Buzzell and C.

Chalquist (Eds). Ecotherapy: Healing with nature in mind (pp. 24-29). San

Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

References

351

Rodiek, Susan. (2002). Influence of an outdoor garden on mood and stress in older

persons. Journal of Therapeutic Horticulture, 13, 13-21.

Rosen, J., Fields, R.B., Hand, A.M., Falsettie, G., and Van Kammen, D.P. (1989).

Concurrent posttraumatic stress disorder in psychogeriatric patients. Journal of

Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, 2(2), 65-69.

Rosen, Jules, Reynolds III, Charles F., Yeager, Amy L, Houck, Patricia R., and Hurwitz,

Linda F. (1991). Sleep disturbances in survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. American

Journal of Psychiatry, 148(1), 62-66.

Ross, Richard J., Ball, William A., Sullivan, Kenneth A., and Caroff, Stanley N. (1989).

Sleep disturbance as the hallmark of posttraumatic stress disorder. American

Journal of Psychiatry, 146, 697-701.

Roszak, Theodore. (1995). Where psyche meets Gaia. In T. Roszak, M . Gomes, and A .

Kanner (Eds.), Ecopsychology: Restoring the earth, healing the mind (pp. 1-17).

San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Roszak, Theodore. (1996). The nature of sanity. Psychology Today, 29(1), 22-24.

Roszak, Theodore. (2001). The voice of the earth: an exploration of ecopsychology (2nd

Edition ed.). Grand Rapids: Phanes Press Inc.

Rubin, H. J., and Rubin, I. (2005). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data (2nd

ed.). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Russell, Keith C. (2006). Brat camp, boot camp, or ........? Exploring wilderness therapy

program theory. Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 6(1), 51-67.

Russell, Keith C., and Farnum, Jen. (2007). A concurrent model of the wilderness therapy

process. Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 4(1), 39-55.

Ryan, Richard M., Weinstein, Netta, Bernstein, Jessey, Brown, Kirk Warren, Mistretta,

Louis, and Gagné, Marylène. (2009).Vitalizing effects of being outdoors and in

nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2009.10.009

Sagy, Shifra. (2000). Myself in society and society in myself. In D. Bar-On (ed.),

Bridging the gap: Storytelling as a way to work through political and collective

hostilities (pp. 101-111). (F. Moldenhauer, Trans.). Hamburg: Edition Körber-

Stiftung.

Sandole, Dennis J.D. (2003). Typology. In S. Cheldelin, D. Druckman, and L. Fast (eds.),

Conflict: From analysis to intervention (pp. 39-54). New York, NY: Continuum.

Santa-Barbara, Joanna. (2004). Medicine and peace: The butterfly peace garden.

Croatian Medical Journal, 45(2), 232-233.

Satel, Sally. (2011). PTSD’s diagnostic trap. Policy Review, 165, 41-53.

Schaafsma, David, and Vinz, Ruth. (2011). On narrative inquiry: Approaches to

language and literacy research (an NCRLL volume). New York: Teachers College

Press.

Schama, Simon. (1995). Landscape and memory (1st ed.). New York: Vintage Books.

Schirch, Lisa. (2001). Ritual reconciliation: Transforming identity/reframing conflict. In

M. Abu-Nimer (ed.), Reconciliation, justice, and coexistence: Theory and practice

(pp. 145-161). Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.

Schirch, Lisa. (2005). Ritual and symbol in peacebuilding. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian

Press, Inc.

References

352

Schumacher, E.F. (1973/1998). Small is beautiful: Economics as if people mattered. (25

years later ... with commentaries). Point Roberts, Washington: Hartley & Marks

Publishers Inc.

Searles, Harold F. (1960). The nonhuman environment: in normal development and in

schizophrenia. New York: International Universities Press, Inc.

Searles, Harold F. (1972). Unconscious processes in relation to the environmental crisis.

Psychoanalytic Review, 59, 361-374.

Seidel, Jackie. (2006). Some thoughts on teaching as contemplative practice. Teachers

College Record, 108(9), 1901-1914.

Sempik, Joe. (2008). Green care: A natural resource for therapeutic communities?

Therapeutic Communities, 29(3), 221-227.

Senehi, Jessica. (2000). Constructive storytelling in intercommunal conflicts: Building

community, building peace. In S. Byrne and C. L. Irvin (Eds.), Reconcilable

differences: Turning points in ethnopolitical conflict (pp. 96-114). West Hartford:

Kumarian Press, Inc.

Senehi, Jessica. (2002). Constructive storytelling: A peace process. Peace and Conflict

Studies, 9(2), 41-63.

Seymour, Barbara (producer) (2009). Vets’ Garden, Westwood. Retrieved Jan. 3, 2012,

from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eir1hzvAX-0&feature=related

Shanahan, L., McAllister, L., and Curtain, M. (2009). Wilderness adventure therapy and

cognitive rehabilitation: Joining forces for youth with TBI. Brain Injury, 23(13-14),

1054-1064.

Shank, Michael and Schirch, Lisa. (2008). Strategic arts-based peacebuilding. Peace and

Change, 33(2), 217-242.

Shay, Jonathan. (1991). Learning about combat stress from Homer's Iliad. Journal of

Traumatic Stress, 4(4), 561-579.

Sheridan, Joe. (2001). Mythic ecology. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education,

6(Spring), 197-208.

Shigemura, Jun and Nomura, Soichiro. (2002). Mental health issues of peacekeeping

workers. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 56(5), 483-491.

Shooting Star CSA. (n.d.). Shooting Star CSA. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from

http://www.shootingstarcsa.com/

Singer, M. (2007). Transforming the trauma of war in combat veterans. In M. Bussey and

J. B. Wise (Eds.), Trauma transformed: An empowerment response (pp. 259-278).

New York: Columbia University Press.

Smith, Daniel B. (2010, January 27). Is there an ecological unconscious? The Times

Magazine (New York Times). Retrieved July 29, 2011, from

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31ecopsych-t.html?pagewanted=all

Smith, David G. (1999). Pedagon: Interdisciplinary essays in the human sciences,

pedagogy and culture. New York: Peter Lang.

Smith, David G. (2006). Trying to teach in a season of great untruth: Globalization,

empire and the crises of pedagogy. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Smith, Dorothy. E. (1999). Writing the social: Critique, theory, and investigations.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Smith, Euclid O. (2002). When culture and biology collide: Why we are stressed,

depressed and self-obsessed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

References

353

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous

peoples. London: Zed Books.

Snyder, Gary. (1992). No nature: New and selected poems. New York, NY: Pantheon

Books.

Söderback, Ingrid, Söderström, Marianne, and Schälander, Elisabeth (2004).

Horticultural therapy: the ‘healing garden’ and gardening in rehabilitation measures

at Danderyd Hospital Rehabilitation Clinic, Sweden. Pediatric Rehabilitation, 7(4),

245-260.

Soper, Kate. (1995). Feminism and ecology: Realism and rhetoric in the discourses of

nature. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 20(3), 311-331.

Soper, Kate. (2000). The idea of nature. In L. Coupe (ed)., The green studies reader:

From romanticism to ecocriticism (pp. 123-126). London and New York:

Routledge.

Souza, Wanderson F, Figueira, Ivan, Mendlowicz, Mauro V, Volchan, Eliane, Portella,

Carla Marques, Mendonça-de-Souza, Ana Carolina, Ferraz, Coutinho, Evandro

Silva Freire. (2011). Posttraumatic stress disorder in peacekeepers: a meta-analysis.

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 199(5), 309-12.

Sparks, Allister. (1995). Tomorrow is another country: The inside story of South Africa's

negotiated revolution. Sandton: Struik Book Distributors.

Spiral Garden & Cosmic Bird Feeder (2005). Annual Report 2004. Toronto: Bloorview

MacMillan Children’s Centre and Spiral Garden. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from:

http://www.bloorview.ca/programsandservices/communityprograms/

centreforthearts/spiralgarden.php

Squire, Corinne. (2008). Experience-centred and culturally oriented approaches to

narrative. In Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, and Maria Tamboukou (Eds.), Doing

narrative research (pp. 41-63). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Steel, Zachary, Silove, Derrick, Phan, Tuong, and Bauman, Adrian. (2002). Long-term

effect of psychological trauma on the mental health of Vietnamese refugees

resettled in Australia: A population-based study. The Lancet, 360, 1056-62.

Stein, Dan J., Seedat, Soraya, Iversen, Amy, and Wessely, Simon. (2007). Post-traumatic

stress disorder: Medicine and politics. The Lancet, 369, 139-44.

Sternberg, Esther M. (2000). The balance within: The science connecting health and

emotions. New York: W.H. Freeman.

Sternberg, Esther M. (2009). Healing spaces: The science of place and well-being.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Stidder, Gary and Haasner, Adrian. (2007). Developing outdoor and adventurous

activities for co-existence and reconciliation in Israel: An Anglo-German approach.

Journal of Adventure Education & Outdoor Learning, 7(2), 131-140.

Storring, Russell D. (2007). A family reflection of Afghanistan. In Kevin Patterson and

Jane Warren, (Eds.), Outside the wire: The war in Afghanistan in the words of its

participants (pp.11-23). Toronto: Random House Canada.

Strunk, William. (1918). The elements of style. Ithaca, New York: Privately Printed.

Sugiyama, T., Leslie, E., Giles-Corti, B., and Owen, N. (2008). Associations of

neighbourhood greenness with physical and mental health: do walking, social

coherence and local social interaction explain the relationships? Journal of

Epidemiology and Community Health, 62(5), e9. doi:10.1136/jech.2007.064287.

References

354

Sutker, Patricia B., Winstead, Daniel K., Galina, Z. Harry, and Allain, Albert N. (1991).

Cognitive deficits and psychopathology among former prisoners of war and combat

veterans of the Korean conflict. American Journal of Psychiatry, 148(1), 67-72.

Swatuk, Larry A. (2006). Environmental security. In M. M. Betsill, K. Hochstetler and D.

Stevis (Eds.), Palgrave advances in international environmental politics (pp. 203-

236). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Taber, Nancy. (2005). Learning how to be a woman in the Canadian Forces/unlearning it

through feminism: An autoethnography of my learning journey. Studies in

Continuing Education, 27(3), 289-301.

Taber, Nancy. (2009). The profession of arms: Ideological codes and dominant narratives

of gender in the Canadian military. Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal, 34(1), 27-

36.

Taber, Nancy. (2010). Institutional ethnography, autoethnography, and narrative: An

argument for incorporating multiple methodologies. Qualitative Research, 10(1), 5-

25.

Taber, Nancy. (2011a). Ruling relations, warring, and mothering: Writing the social from

the everyday life of a military mother. Saarbrucken, Germany: Lambert Academic

Publishing.

Taber, Nancy. (2011b). “You better not get pregnant while you’re here”: Tensions

between masculinities and femininities in military communities of practice.

International Journal of Lifelong Education, 30(3), 331-348.

Tanielian, Terri and Jaycox, Lisa H. (Eds.) (2008). Invisible wounds of war:

Psychological and cognitive injuries, their consequences, and services to assist

recovery. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Taylor, Andrea Faber, Kuo, Frances E., and Sullivan, William C. (2001). Coping with

ADD: The surprising connection to green play settings. Environment and Behavior,

33(1), 54-77.

The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. (2003). Occupational

Stress Injuries: The Need for Understanding. Ottawa. Retrieved Nov. 2, 2011, from

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/372/vete/rep/rep14jun03-e.pdf.

Tick, Edward. (2005). War and the soul: Healing our nation’s veterans from post-

traumatic stress disorder. Wheaton, Il: Quest Books.

Tir, Jaroslav and Ackerman, John T. (2009). Politics of formalized river cooperation.

Journal of Peace Research, 46(5), 623-640

Turner, Dale. (2006). This is not a peace pipe: Towards a critical indigenous philosophy.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Ulrich, Roger S. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery.

Science, 224(4647), 420-421.

Ulrich, R. S., Simons, R. F., Losito, B. D., Fiorito, E., Miles, M. A. and Zelson, M.

(1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal

of Environmental Psychology, 11, 231-248.

University of Nebraska. (n.d.). Combat boots to cowboy boots. Retrieved July 21, 2011,

from http://liferaydemo.unl.edu/web/ncta/combatcowboyboots

van den Berg, A. E., Hartig, T., and Staats, H. (2007). Preference for nature in urbanized

societies: stress, restoration, and the pursuit of sustainability. Journal of Social

Issues, 63(1), 79-96.

References

355

van Manen, Max. (1997). Researching lived experience: human science from an action

sensitive pedagogy (2nd ed.). London, ON: The Althouse Press.

Vallier, Robert. (2003). Translator’s introduction. In M. Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course

notes from the Collège de France. (Compiled and with notes by Dominique

Séglard). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.

Vanier, Jean. (1998). Becoming human. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Limited.

Veterans Affairs Canada. (2011). Support for Operational Stress Injury (OSI). Retrieved

Dec. 9, 2011, from http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/services/benefits/osi

Veterans Farm. (August 1, 2010). WVFV Veterans Farm. Retrieved July 22, 2010, from

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rr1WpOVMIc

Veterans Farm. (n.d.). Veterans Farm. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from

http://veteransfarm.com

Volkan, Vamik. (1997). Bloodlines: From ethnic pride to ethnic terrorism. Boulder

Colorado: Westview Press.

VSAT (n.d.). VSAT: Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training. Retrieved July 21, 2011,

from http://www.archisacres.com/Archis_Acres/VSAT.html.

VVAA (2000). Massive suicide rate for Vietnam veterans’ children (Media Release - 7

August 2000). Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia. Retrieved Sept. 13,

2011, from http://www.vvaa.org.au/media12.htm.

Walker, A. J., Onus, M., Doyle, M., Clare, J., and McCarthy, K. (2005). Cognitive

rehabilitation after severe traumatic brain injury: A pilot programme of goal

planning and outdoor adventure course participation. Brain Injury, 19(14), 1237-

1241.

Wallach, J., and Wallach, M. (2000). The enemy has a face: the Seeds of Peace

experience. Washington: United States Institute of Peace Press.

War Child Canada. (2007). Sri Lanka tsunami relief. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from:

http://www.warchild.org/projects/WC_Canada/Sri_Lanka/sri_lanka.html

Wash, Sarah. (2006). The healing power of flowers: Torture victims turn to gardens for

hope. Utne Magazine (March/April). Retrieved Sept. 2, 2011, from

http://www.utne.com/2006-03-01/TheHealingPowerofFlowers.aspx

Weiss, D. S., Marmar, C. R., Schlenger, W. E., Fairbank, J. A., Jordan, B. K., Hough, R.

L., et al. (1992). The prevalence of lifetime and partial post-traumatic stress

disorder in Vietnam theater veterans. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 5(3), 365-376.

West, Rinda. (2007). Out of the shadow: Ecopsychology, story, and encounters with the

land. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Westlund, Stephanie. (2010). Incorporating ‘the earth and skies, the winds and rocks’:

nature as an active participant in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Global

Change, Peace & Security, 22(3), 297-313.

White Jr., Lynn. (1967). The historical roots of our ecologic crisis. Science, 155(3767),

1203-1207.

Wilshire, Bruce W. (1990). The moral collapse of the university: professionalism, purity,

and alienation. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Wilson, Edward O. (1984). Biophilia: The human bond with other species. Cambridge,

MA and London, England: Harvard University Press.

References

356

Wilson, Edward O. (1993). Biophilia and the conservation ethic. In Stephen R. Kellert

and Edward O. Wilson (Eds.), The biophilia hypothesis (pp. 31-41), Washington,

DC: Island Press.

Wright, Ronald. (2004). A short history of progress. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.

Yad Vashem (2001). Life of Jewish Partisans and Jewish family camps in the forest, from

a diary by a Jewish Partisan, 1942-1943. Retrieved Mar. 11, 2009, from

http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202001.pdf

York, Geoffrey. (2011, Sept. 14). Mentally ill are stigmatized, misunderstood and

shackled in Somalia . The Globe and Mail. Retrieved Sept. 16, 2011, from

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/famine/mentally-ill-

are-stigmatized-misunderstood-and-shackled-in-somalia/article2166688/

Zencey, Eric. (1996). The rootless professors. In W. Vitek and W. Jackson (Eds.), Rooted

in the land: essays on community and place (pp. 15-19). New Haven: Yale

University Press.

Žižek, Slovoj. (2008). Violence: Six sideways reflections. New York: Picador.

357

Appendix A – Ethics Approval Certificate

359

Appendix B – Sample Consent Form

Ph.D. Program in

Peace and Conflict Studies

360

Arthur V. Mauro Centre

for Peace and Justice

at St. Paul’s College

252-70 Dysart Road

Winnipeg, Manitoba

Canada R3T 2N2

Telephone: (204) 474-6054

Fax: (204) 474-8828

Informed Consent Form

Research Project Title: Placing stories of recovery

Researcher: Stephanie Westlund, PhD Candidate

Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manitoba

Sponsor:

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

(Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral)

This consent form, a copy of which will be left with you for your records and reference, is only

part of the process for informed consent. It should give you the basic idea of what the research

is about and what your participation will involve. If you would like more detail about

something mentioned here, or information not included here, you should feel free to ask. Please

take the time to read this carefully and to understand any accompanying information.

What does this research involve?

You are about to participate in an interview to discuss your interactions with the environment during

recovery from conflict. You will be asked to share the story of your experience with recovery

settings. You have been selected for an interview because your personal experience within these

settings is valuable, and documenting your experience may provide important insights for future

research and practice related to peacebuilding and reconciliation.

This interview will last approximately 60-90 minutes. If at the end of this time period our

conversation does not seem finished and you agree there should be another interview, we will

arrange to meet again at a time that is convenient for you. In the event that I have any minor follow-

up questions for you, I will arrange a time to reach you by telephone.

Your participation in this interview is voluntary. You do not have to answer any questions you do not

want to answer. If you wish, the interview can be terminated at any point and I will erase the

recording of our conversation and destroy any notes I have taken. In addition, you have the right to

withdraw from this research at any time without penalty. Should you choose to withdraw entirely

from this research, any data collected from you will be destroyed.

The expected outcomes of this research will include a final report and a PhD dissertation. I will also

use the research in future writing and subsequent publications.

361

What type of personal information will be collected?

This research will protect your privacy and anonymity as much as possible, depending on the

preferences you select below. If you choose, your name and the names of any people or organizations

you mention will be replaced by pseudonyms in the transcript and in any writing I do that uses

information from your interview. I will seek to exclude information that might allow readers to

identify you. No information that discloses your identity will be released or published without your

specific consent. Despite all these precautions, however, complete anonymity cannot be guaranteed.

There is a slight possibility that readers of this research who know you or are familiar with your story

may be able to identify a quote that came from you. If there is anything on which you do not wish to

be quoted, please let me know and I will respect your wishes.

What happens to the information?

If you grant permission below, the interview will be recorded with a digital audio recorder and

transcribed, and quotations from the recording may be used in my writing. Only I, and possibly my

supervisor, will listen to the recording of your interview. If you wish, I will provide you with a

transcript of this interview for your review and approval. After the interview, I will immediately

upload the recording to my password-protected laptop and erase it from the digital recorder. My

laptop will be locked up to prevent theft. I will also take notes during our interview.

All of the information that you provide, including the notes I take during the interview(s), will be

kept strictly confidential and will be stored in a locked cabinet, for the duration of this project (5

years). Only I will have access to this material. (If my supervisor requests it, she will also have

access to this information.) After this period, all audio recordings, notes, and drafts will be destroyed.

Are there risks or benefits involved in participating in this research?

There are no known harms or risks associated with your participation in this research. You will not

be compensated for your participation.

Questions/Concerns

If you have any questions about the research, please contact Stephanie Westlund

(stephanie_westlund@umanitoba.ca) or Dr. Jessica Senehi (jessica_senehi@umanitoba.ca).

This research has been approved by the Joint-Faculty Research Ethics Board at the University

of Manitoba. If you have any concerns or complaints about this project you may contact any of

the above-named persons or the Human Ethics Secretariat at 474-7122, or e-mail

margaret_bowman@umanitoba.ca. A copy of this consent form has been given to you to keep

for your records and reference.

Your signature on this form indicates that you have understood to your satisfaction the

information regarding participation in the research project and agree to participate as a

subject. In no way does this waive your legal rights nor release the researchers, sponsors, or

involved institutions from their legal and professional responsibilities. You are free to

withdraw from the study at any time, and/or refrain from answering any questions you prefer

to omit, without prejudice or consequence. Your continued participation should be as informed

as your initial consent, so you should feel free to ask for clarification or new information

throughout your participation.

362

Signatures (written consent)

There are several options for you to consider as part of your consent to participating in this research.

You can choose all, some or none of them. Please mark the corresponding box to grant your

permission to:

I grant permission to be audio recorded: Yes:  No: 

I would prefer that you use my real name: Yes:  No: 

I would prefer that you refer to me by a pseudonym: Yes:  No: 

The pseudonym I choose for myself is: ________________________________________________

______________________________________

Participant’s Signature

______________________________________

Participant’s Printed Name

______________________________________

Researcher’s Signature

_________________________________

Date

_________________________________

Date



Contact Information for Transcripts, Project Summaries, and Dissertation

I would like to review and correct or approve a transcript from this interview: Yes:  No: 

I would like to receive a summary report of the findings of this study: Yes:  No: 

I would like to receive a copy of the resulting PhD dissertation: Yes:  No: 

Please provide your contact information so that I may send you copies of the transcript, a summary

report, and/or the PhD dissertation as you have selected above:

e-mail: ______________________________________________________________

phone: ______________________________________________________________

street address: _______________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________