Lichenologist Laura Boggess and I have been exploring new ways of introducing people to the world of lichens – ways that weave together both the scientific and the poetic: lichen taxonomy and social change, lichen ecology and being human in these times. We’ve taught two classes so far, this past spring at Rare Bird Farm in Hot Springs, NC and this past summer at Firefly Gathering’s annual gathering at Wild Human Preserve, Green Mountain, NC. What did we find? That people are craving a deeper connection with the living world around us – that indeed names are a way of honoring plants and lichens, and that names are only one of many paths for connecting with the beings around us.
The first step in naturalist or scientific style of connection usually starts with names. We do it socially too. But is it the *only* first step?
Tapping into our social instincts might provide more insight on how to relate with lichens, plants and other being sin the more-than-human world. If you’re alone at a coffee-shop, don’t you sometimes watch someone for a bit before you ask them their name? And if you’re introduced to someone, don’t you take often it a step further when you see them again, especially if you like them? Or do you just dismiss them — oh, that’s just Ru, never stopping to have a conversation – or worse, fingering Ru’s blue hat every time you pass them by (that’d be kinda odd social behavior, akin to how older white women will often fondle the hair of a black woman without consent). But if our cultural norms for interacting with plants and lichens are dismissive or exploitative, then how do we better engage with plants, lichens and the rest of the more than human world?
One of my primary influences for a different form of engagement is the Dark Mountain Project, a UK based collective of artists, poets, writers, and activists, who are looking at this time of ecological and social collapse with eyes wide open, while also fostering connection with and listening to the biosphere, the stones and deep time. Twice a year, DM publishes a book that compile the art and writing that comes from these interactions, often around themes like the struggle for land rights, or the notion of “endings” (political, social, cultural) – and they also host gatherings and online classes.
In courses that I took with Dark Mountain’s Charlotte Du Cann and Mark Watson throughout 2020-2023, participating in their plant practice solidified a hypothesis that had been growing within me since my pre-lichenologist days: that our imaginations are not just “ours” but are akin to our other senses. This seems a bit illogical at first, but I ask you: is what we see with our eyes “our” visions? Is what we see with our ears “our” sounds
Our modern culture says that our ears, nose, eyes, and tongue are sensing what is outside of ourselves – implying that our senses are entirely objective. In contrast, our modern culture says that our imaginations and dreams are only symptoms of what is happening to us internally, and are entirely subjective. But what if the lines between imagination and perception are not so distinct? Buddhists have long attested that what we see with our eyes is shaped not only by the light reflecting off of objects, but also tuned and tweaked by our thoughts and experiences (see the Heart Sutra). So lets take that logic a bit farther: if our imagination (this unseen inner screen that we often have only partial control over) has sensory qualities that are like eyes, ears, nose or touch, could it be sensing something outside of ourselves that is not discernible with our other senses?
This idea of the imagination as a sensory organ can become transcendental very quickly, but Dark Mountain’s practices are rooted in embodied experience and the context of living in a time of social and ecological collapse. For Dark Mountain, the creative practice is not some dilettante “lets paint a still life of pansies” but rather a direct path to being present during this time of the Great Unravelling, as Joanna Macy calls it, or “to stay with the trouble”, as Donna Harraway says. For when we listen into deep time – into mythic time – with both our bodies and imaginations, we might just find the strand of red yarn that will lead us back out of the labyrinth. As Dark Mountain’s Charlotte Du Cann once said to me, “finding your way back out of the labyrinth is just as important as facing the Minotaur at the center.”
It’s not just creatives who are leaning into another way of connecting with the more than human world. In the naturalist training program at the Tremont Institute of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, aspiring naturalist guides are taught to avoid naming plants for their participants, and instead to ask the participants what they notice about a particular plant or animal, and deepen the inquiry. Otherwise, Tremont instructors explain, the class is all about the naturalist who knows-so-much, as opposed to the participant learning to perceive a plant in their own unique ways. Perception can create connection when it is approached with curiosity.
Can both taxonomy and poetry be woven together? The lichen symbiosis– a symbiosis of a mycobiont (fungus) and photobiont (algae or cyanobacteria) – suggests that two diametrically opposed beings can indeed be woven together to create something that is far more than the sum of their parts. Fungi breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, while algae do the reverse. Taxonomy sees differences within similarities while poetry shifts the frame of reference so that differences pulse within a greater whole. The parallel is not too much of a leap, but does taxonomy and poetics have an analogous form akin to a lichen? In other cultures, the answer is probably yes. In our modern western culture, this framework seems to be in a development phase motivated by a deep yearning within the general and scientific population: a need for deeper connection; a quest to learn how to live in these times without succumbing to the cultural entropy that is fragmenting each of us psychologically – just as it its industrial counterpart is fragmenting forests, meadows, tundra.
So that’s part of what Laura and I have been exploring in our lichen workshops: a social practice of weaving together lichen taxonomy and ecology with lichen poetics that are rooted in learning from the more-than-human world.
If you’re interested in joining in on one of our classes, next spring we’ll be teaching a class about lichens and the Great Turning (see Joanna Macy) at Rare Bird Farm, in Hot Springs NC. And we’ll be teaching again at Firefly Gathering’s annual gathering in July 2025. If you’d like to get updates about our classes, jot your name in the form below and we’ll send you class info and registration links when those become available.
