Why?

For me, the claim that our modern, industrial, technological society is somehow better than the previous life-ways of 300, 700, 2000 or 30,000 years ago is spurious at best. After living 150-200 years under this new system I think we have had ample evidence to see that it’s results do not match up to the sales pitch. Instead of creating a better life for all, the technological society has wrought terror on the populations of all the Earth’s beings, collapsed whole living systems, impoverished millions of human beings as well as our natural history and brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Worst is the inability of people to see the collapse unfold and their outright refusal to acknowledge their part in what is taking place.

It’s this simple: it will take a large-scale societal shift in how we interact with non-human life to preserve biodiversity, clean air, clean water, health and adequate food supplies, and, by extension, ourselves. It will also take a massive shift in how we treat each other as human beings.

Laws won’t cut it. Technological advances won’t cut it. International capitalism won’t cut it. Get over the illusion. People must learn to value something beyond themselves – and I’m not talking about that new TV or the new car.

But why Finland? Generally, Finns present themselves to the world as a culture intimately connected to nature and the rhythms of the natural world. It seems to me that most, believe this to the core. It helps Finns define who they are in the world. Yet, there is a difference between how people see themselves and how the abstract idea of SELF manifests itself on the ground. Finland suffers from many of the same environmental problems as the rest of the planet: biodiversity is collapsing, lakes and rivers are polluted and polls indicate that Finns prefer to spend more of their free time watching television than being out in nature.

Cultural values differ across the spectrum and as Finland has become increasingly connected to the global economic and social upheavals of the past 20 years, new values, ways of living and economic pressures are changing the manner in which Finns approach the natural world and integrate it into their lives. It is impossible to escape the growing tension between differing values, desires and needs. Culture is an ever-changing process, not a static thing. Ways of life change, and the Finnish relation to nature is constantly entering a new phase.

How do Finns relate to the natural world? What are the differences in that relationship throughout the society? How is this relationship changing? I will walk approximately 2,000 kilometers across Finland with a hope to begin to understand the link between people, culture and nature.

By walking the land and talking directly to Finnish people I hope to explore cultural relationships to the land and the environment and to see the process of cultural change in modern Finland. I want to find a way to break through the abstractions and ideologies surrounding environmental values and controversies. It will be a way for the Finnish people to tell their own environmental story. Along the route I will talk with private landowners, forest workers, conservationists, scientists and others.

I want to know how a society that claims to be “in touch” with nature, actually is in being in touch with nature.

***

I was considering a series of maps when the postman pushed the new National Geographic through my mail slot.

Mexico was on my right, South America was tacked to the wall, Europe and Africa were taped together on the floor to my left. Indonesia, Australia, Canada, Mongolia, Bolivia, Russia and the US lay folded, in a stack, on my desk.

The day was suffocating hot. Fire fighting planes swooped low over Albuquerque in an endless drone as they headed north to save Santa Fe from its worst nightmare. I was stripped to my underwear, drinking iced-tea and fighting with my Master’s thesis. But I couldn’t focus, I was already considering something else: How do individuals and communities relate to the environment?

I wanted to find a new paradigm for North American environmental protection. Laws, lawsuits and protests are only useful to a point. Setting aside National Parks and creating Wilderness is a fabulous idea (and a good start), but in our world of cars and off-road vehicles and greedy oil-baron Presidents, Wilderness cannot survive without human beings.

There must be a profound cultural change in the way we deal with our land and the non-human life dependent on it if we are to truly ensure the long-term protection of North American Wilderness and wildlife. The only way to truly protect Wilderness for generations to come is to remove the dichotomy separation man and nature; to include human beings in nature. We can’t do this without a “land ethic” as Leopold described it. I’m talking about a “rewilding” of humanity.

But how do we do this?

My thesis was meant to be technical in nature. The goal was to help a small, northern New Mexico community develop a way to monitor the health of the local forests during a forest restoration project. The monitoring method had to be both scientifically rigorous and yet accessible to people with no scientific training. It was a failure – not because it was a bad idea, but because I went about it in the wrong way.

Along the way I accidentally collected page after page of notes from casual discussions I had had with local people about their connection to the forest, land and wildlife that surrounded their community. Most of the sentiments varied between “I don’t know” and “I don’t care”. This from a community whose leaders proclaimed it to be “intimately connected to the land”. It was no fault of the community leaders, they were doing noble work, but I couldn’t help but wonder if they were out of touch with their community.

I thought then that I would like to collect stories about what people thought of themselves. Of themselves and their environment. Of themselves in their environment. I believe that the meaning of a country can be established by uncovering the stories written across its landscape. Stories are the paradigms of humanity.

E.O. Wilson said that “the stories we tell ourselves and others are our survival manuals”. Stories are a way of processing information. They are not truth but rather our way of dealing with what we see and perceive to be real. Narrative is a way to make sense of the world.

But where would I go? My ultimate concern was with North America, but in America I was too close to the issue. Too passionate. Too involved. There was no chance I could even pretend to be an objective observer in the US. Anyway, I wanted something different. Something outside the scope of American thought. I couldn’t decide and I was pacing in frustration.

Then I picked up the National Geographic. Dr. Michael Fay was walking across Africa on a “megatransect”, collecting massive amounts of scientific information on the Central African rainforest. His purpose: to construct a portrait of the great forests in an effort to conserve them. I decided then and there that wherever I went I would go by walking. I would do my own transect, but this one cultural. Enough thought, I went to cool down with a beer. A few days later, I fell in love.

She was the roommate of a friend of mine in Albuquerque. She was an artist. A costume designer. She danced flamenco, drank whiskey and liked to climb mountains. In Moab she had lost three teeth in a biking accident and carried her own bike ten miles to the nearest ranger station. She was perfect. And she was Finnish.

“There’s Wilderness in Finland.” She knew what was important to me.

I would never have come to Finland if I hadn’t met Nina.