Writing another editorial, being with nature
These shells come from Amager beach here in Copenhagen. I walked there from where I live. The walk is around 10 km one way. To get back, I take a metro and a train. These days, due to pregnancy, it takes me a bit longer to walk to the beach, but I'm still determined to walk as much as I can. For me, walking is a meditative, self-transcending activity, and I feel that it relieves some pains that come with journeying through the second trimester. I hope that my yet unborn baby can hear the sounds of the waves too.
In the past few days, I've been working on another editorial for the journal Environmental Values. I serve as an associate editor there. As an autoethnographer (someone who studies e.g. culture, everyday life, practices, lifestyles and so on through their own, personal experiences), in my editorials, I try to weave together my reading of the articles in the forthcoming issue with my personal experiences of being in the world.
All the articles discuss human-nature relationships, though in different ways. They cover topics such as wilderness, wildness, rewilding, conservation, intrinsic value of biodiversity, naturalness. Working on this editorial coincided with me co-writing a (autoethnographic) piece on human-nature relationships in the city.
There is not much nature here in Copenhagen. Existing nature is very much transformed by humans or used for our pleasure and entertainment (think polished gardens and parks, flower beds, encaged roses growing by the entrances to old buildings, trimmed trees). Even Amager beach is artificial.
Humans, including myself, rarely have opportunities to spend prolonged quality time with nature. I wish there was a universal basic income and unconditional paid leave for everyone, so that persons could go somewhere at least for a while, away from cities, to develop meaningful, deep relationships with, and knowledge of, nature. Otherwise, concepts such as wilderness and biodiversity become too abstract.
And yet, even here, in Copenhagen, I try to find places where I can be with trees, birds, with myself, perhaps a cup of tea, and my notebook in a way that feels nurturing. These places are usually Søndermarken, Vestre Kirkegård, Solbjerg Parkkirkegård, and Frederiksberg Have.