A unit of Lasting Forests
Sustained forests; sustained profits
evolving since March 30, 1999
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Gamma Theory
Modern Wild Faunal Resource Management
Applied Epistemology: On Knowing and Place
A squirrel does not jump when a leaf falls beside it. It knows its terrain and actors. It dodges hawks, it ignores leaves. Short-lived insects know their places, but that can be called a genetic base. A wilderness traveler sleeps soundly; the tenderfoot awakes at any hoot, every scurry in the leaves, every fire brand collapse, every rock roll in the stream. From biology we gain an alternative concept of how animals know anything, and that is "imprinting." The duckling knows its parent. A duckling brought from an egg incubator imprints on a child or adult and behaves toward it as it might to its parent. There is evidence that birds and insects also "imprint" on spaces and structure. They return to the same nesting area; they build the same nests; they use the same nest-size holes. Wood ducks, raised in boxes return from migration to nest in boxes. Progeny of wasps having built paper nest on wires on the ground return to the same wires. Migratory fish imprint on the chemical characteristics of their original streams. Perhaps place is an element of cover. People grow up in grasslands; they "love the plains" and express discomfort at living among mountains. Mountain people tolerate, but express ad nauseam, coastal living, but long to return. They know their place; they feel uncomfortable out of it. Not proven; I suspect a type of low-level, residual, humanoid imprinting.
I visited northeastern China in 1989 and knew the place. I felt at home in the forest, though everything else was different. The species were different than those I knew, but the families and genera of plants were similar. The farms were the same. I could relate easily; I was familiar with the total, the "surround", a spatial gestalt. I knew the place. I knew what to expect. I did not feel at risk. I suspected that I could never feel comfortable in Senegal. Everything seemed different. I could not predict what was behind each tree, beneath the river surface, or what had caused the disturbance on the ground surface.
A student of mine took me to the Rann of Kutch in northwestern India, a vast frightful coastal salt desert. He was at home there. He loved the place; he knew it well. Place may be a way to know.
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Last revision January 17, 2000.