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00:00:30.000Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. This week, we are rebroadcasting our
00:00:36.380interview with Carrie Knudsen, originally aired in April of 2019. While we draw upon
00:00:42.920Carrie's extensive knowledge of lichen, we also dream into navigating beyond the chaos
00:00:47.960of today. We hope you enjoy this special Encore episode.
00:00:51.600anything citizen scientists or can do to help help professional scientists or to like me to
00:01:03.560develop a career of your own is tremendously valuable at this time because the the environment
00:01:10.400is changing way faster than we imagined and may even be changing faster than currently projected
00:01:16.300today we are speaking with carrie newtson carrie is a mycological taxonomist and lichenologist at
00:01:26.300the university of life sciences in prague carrie founded a lichen herbarium at the university of
00:01:32.260california at riverside and has published 215 papers and articles on lichens he is a specialist
00:01:39.480in the lichen biodiversity of Southern California and in the order of acrosporals, which occur
00:01:53.620around the world. With his wife, Jana Korzerkova, who is also a lichenologist, they have begun a
00:02:00.360four-year project working on lichen biodiversity in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico.
00:02:05.420well carrie thank you so much for joining us on the show like i was mentioning earlier i'm
00:02:11.940absolutely mesmerized by lichens as i'm sure you are and it's really wonderful to be able to share
00:02:18.020this time with you and focusing on these incredible creatures so carrie you're credited
00:02:22.440with discovering over 60 species of lichen previously unknown to the scientific field
00:02:28.680Yet your fascination and dedication to Lycan is, as you describe, unorthodox.
00:02:34.960While it's a simple question, I would love to begin with you sharing your personal story.
00:02:40.320How and when did you become so enamored with Lycans and their complexity?
00:02:44.700Well, I wanted to study botany, and I was forced into retirement by a disability.
00:02:51.860and so I prepared to go to go back to college to study botany and the rehabilitation people said I
00:03:01.020was too old to invest in a college career for me so I was really depressed so so one day at my desk
00:03:12.500in where I had my microscope and stuff I told my daughters I said whatever's behind the house
00:03:17.340lichens or mosses that's what I'm going to study and luckily that day I found three lichens
00:03:23.540and I knew there weren't many people working on biodiversity in that field and no one in
00:03:31.200Southern California working on it so I began studying it and from the very beginning I aimed
00:03:38.520to be a professional scientist so I became after about two years of study I joined the Sonoran
00:03:46.880flora project, describing acrosperols for Arizona and Southern California. And at the same time,
00:03:56.020I started a herbarium at UCR, specializing it just in Southern California's lichen flora.
00:04:04.200And Southern California is really diverse because it has deserts, mountains,
00:04:07.980and even eight, it has a large coastal area and eight islands. So for the last 18 years,
00:04:16.340I studied this whole area, built up a herbarium just on Southern California and wrote mostly
00:04:23.540about Southern California lichens. Thank you for sharing that. And your story is an inspiring
00:04:30.300reminder of the importance and tremendous impact that citizen science or perhaps intimate immersion
00:04:37.460what the earth has, especially during this time. So I'd just love if you could share more on the
00:04:42.660beginnings of this process. And does citizen science take on new meanings in this age of loss?
00:04:49.220Well, yeah. One thing that's, especially here in America, you can see under Trump,
00:04:53.500there's an attack on scientific funding. Also, in terms of museums, herbariums,
00:05:00.480there's a low amount of investment going on in all of North America in these institutions,
00:05:06.380in most universities. So right now, if a person can do professional work or help people doing
00:05:14.820professional work, it's invaluable. Because at this time, taxonomy and biodiversity,
00:05:23.180despite all the talk about them, is really being ignored. See, right now, we came out of a molecular
00:05:31.440biological revolution in science. This is really important, and it'll be changed the whole 21st
00:05:39.680century, how we look at this. But in this earlier phase, it was de-emphasized field work and
00:05:45.980understanding species in order to master the molecular biology. Now, that's being balanced
00:05:53.220in the field now, but still there's a lagging in taking care of the biodiversity of the earth
00:06:00.620here, especially in North America. See, for instance, people studying biodiversity go down
00:06:05.520to the tropics, of course, because the Amazon, for instance, is being deforested at a tremendous
00:06:10.720rate. But at the same time, here in places like California, with climate change going on,
00:06:17.000you have constant droughts all through the Southwest, California included, and having
00:06:22.680these tremendous fires. For something slow growing like lichens or even rare plants,
00:06:29.460These fires come through and wipe out a whole habitat.
00:06:33.000As you know, some of these fires are as big as New Jersey that have happened in California.
00:06:39.240So anything citizen scientists can do to help professional scientists or to, like me, to develop a career of your own is tremendously valuable at this time.
00:06:53.020because the environment is changing way faster than we imagined
00:06:57.280and may even be changing faster than is currently projected.
00:07:02.400I deeply agree with everything you said from the importance of people becoming involved
00:07:08.520and knowing that they're really needed.
00:07:11.380People are really needed in supporting data collections
00:07:15.560because although I do have some issues around data collections,
00:07:20.420But this type of biodiversity collections, I think, is so meaningful and important right now.
00:07:26.840Because like you said, we're losing things quicker than we can even understand or project.
00:07:35.520A good example is right now we're working on a paper describing six new species for Southern California.
00:07:44.220And luckily, these are in the desert where they have a longer chance of lasting.
00:07:48.560But some of the stuff we recently described, we have only two or three locations of in areas like in conifer forest where fires are happening at a really rapid rate.
00:08:01.440I'd imagine many of us, even those who see a great deal of beauty in lichen, may not know much about their ancient presence.
00:08:12.300And I've read that some samples of lichen from the Arctic are over 8,000 years old.
00:08:18.560and that lichens as an organism have been around for perhaps 400 million years.
00:08:25.580So I'd really love if you could share some of the common traits of lichen,
00:08:29.440like their extraordinary long lifespans or their slow and steady growth.
00:08:34.300Yeah, most lichens grow really slow, like maybe a micron a year or so.
00:08:39.700There's exceptions in tropic areas and in some, like in the Arctic,
00:08:45.800Some things like cladonias grow really fast.
00:08:49.580But overall, if you see, for instance, in the Mojave Desert here,
00:08:54.160you can see a lichen the size of a 50-cent piece or a silver dollar,
00:09:03.600The reason they grow so slow is they have an alga or cyanobacteria in it as a symbiont.
00:09:09.580And most of the time, they only are photosynthesizing or actually alive and working, only like early in the morning, during rainstorms, high humidity, and then the rest of the time, they're dormant.
00:09:25.260So if there's a secret to long life in lichens, it would be that we spend most of our time asleep.
00:09:31.300hmm on looking for lichens you've said quote when i'm looking for lichens my mind is clear
00:09:38.120and i'm completely visual there is an art to looking for lichens a non-rational appreciation
00:09:44.280of reality end quote i was hoping you could expand upon this and then perhaps share with us
00:09:50.980your appreciation of lichens from a contemplative or aesthetic perspective as
00:09:56.500dreamlike objects of wonder rather than items of scientific categorization?
00:10:02.000Yeah, for sure. Because science is basically a rational process. I mean, I'm looking at
00:10:09.480diversity. I'm analyzing it. I spend most of my time in a lab looking at a microscope,
00:10:15.580doing measurements, studying literature, writing. All that is a real rational activity.
00:10:21.460And you can get sucked up into that. Also, the collecting. I can agree with you that there's a lot of miscollecting being done. And that's another part of it. It becomes like an avarice, rational activity of collecting things.
00:10:38.320Now, two things I really think we have in nature is both first thing, the contemplative part.
00:10:44.880I'm an atheist, of course, but in nature, even when I'm doing scientific work, I try and stop several times during the day.
00:10:54.720And maybe every time I look at something and I just stop and and have my mind completely silent and just feel complete unity with with reality.
00:11:09.140And that's a feeling that you can get in nature in small areas or in big, large areas like a redwood forest.
00:11:17.180It's in you, and it's feeling that unity with the reality and with life that we're part of a giant process of life that goes back billions of years.
00:11:28.940That part, I think, is every scientist should be practicing that, and all of us can appreciate that in nature.
00:11:40.940That means your mind's clear and you really observe.
00:11:44.740so you enjoy like the colors for me the lichens are beautifully colored most of them but you
00:11:50.820enjoy the colors the shapes you enjoy the beauty of the relationships of things and that's basically
00:11:57.760very visual and but also includes your hearing hearing sounds and that part's aesthetic but
00:12:04.360that's a different wavelength in your brain and uh the second part what i was first talking about
00:12:10.920uh the contemplative part that takes a little relaxing and for some people that they have to
00:12:16.820get beyond just thinking or just being active hiking and as a sport and you just have to relax
00:12:25.120and really let yourself go thank you so much for sharing that i i felt you in it and i feel really
00:12:33.260similarly myself when i'm in the forest and i'm building relationships with the plant life and
00:12:40.360the mycological life the lichen life and i agree lichens are just incredibly beautiful and
00:12:47.040mesmerizing and and i the colors are incredible the shapes and the way they grow onto one another
00:12:53.460like i'm thinking of this one lichen that i don't know the name of but it it kind of is like the
00:12:58.440seafoam green and then at the end there's these little dark orange red balls at the end of uh-huh
00:13:04.360and they're just you know you look and they feel like there's worlds within worlds in lichens
00:13:09.860So I really feel you. Now I want to go back to, you know, you had mentioned fires and lichens, as you also mentioned, take an incredibly long period of time to grow. Further testament to this would be that it takes over 50 years for lichens to recover after being exposed to fire.
00:13:28.500And in California, especially Southern California, we have seen an increase in fires, and we probably will continue to.
00:13:36.220So I'm curious as to what the lichen population is going to look like in California should these fires continue to grow, or even how the lichen population has changed in the last couple of years.
00:13:51.560One thing is, well, we'll take Cajon Pass, which you leave Southern California's coastal area between the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains and go out to Mojave.
00:14:09.260It had good chaparral, good soil conditions, good rocks, a lot of rocks, and it would have been a good lichen area.
00:14:17.240There's even some historical records from 100 years ago from this area.
00:14:21.560After the 1990 fires, when I was doing a survey of the San Bernardino Mountains, I could not
00:14:28.380find any lichens through this whole area, okay, and that's after 20 years, so, and that's
00:14:36.700a little bit drier habitat, so we're getting these lichen deserts, okay, where the fire
00:14:44.480has burnt through, and because of fragmentation of the environment with housing, urban development,
00:14:50.900freeways and other things, there's not easy for the lichens to re-colonize an area.
00:15:00.780So you have either these lichen deserts or if the conditions are right and at least some lichens get
00:15:06.260back established, there's lower diversity. So because a good lichen habitat, say like on the
00:15:14.040Channel Islands, where there's hardly been any fires off the coast of California, these habitats
00:15:20.740even though they've been destroyed by grazing somewhat, some of the vegetation and things.
00:15:26.740This is a continuous habitat since before the Pleistocene.
00:15:32.280So you have like literally three, four hundred species all within a 20 square mile area.
00:15:39.480So we don't know how much diversity has already been lost in Southern California from fires.
00:15:45.180But I would say that there's one thing, another factor besides this not being able to recolonize well is during the Pleistocene, a place like Southern California or parts of the desert, even New Mexico, were a different habitat.
00:16:04.680They usually had summer and winter rains and they were much more moister than they are now.
00:16:10.880a good example in Southern California is fir trees grew down to 1,500 feet. They're now up
00:16:16.680around 5,000 feet. And so you had a lot of things that had moved from the glacier south during the
00:16:25.220Pleistocene. And then as the climate change into the Mediterranean period, and we grew like, for
00:16:32.680instance, Southern California and in Southern California, there's no summer rains. So as that
00:16:39.020climate developed, most of the species that had moved from the north in this direction
00:16:45.460began to disappear. In fact, many of the species that we know were even collected at the beginning
00:16:53.240of the 20th century are now 500 miles north of here. So those things have been disappearing for
00:17:01.060sure. In the Santa Monica Mountains, for instance, along the coast, okay, there was a collector of
00:17:07.260lichens there from 1890 to 1918. From 1890 to 1918, when he collected, it was the beginning
00:17:16.980of a period when the rainfall along the coast began to decrease. And there's been a general
00:17:24.280decrease since the turn of the 20th century in the amount of rain in Southern California.
00:17:30.180When this man died in 1918, he'd been collecting in the Santa Monica Mountains
00:17:34.540for over 20 years. And his records are at Harvard. Now, I went through all his records
00:17:41.580and at least 70 lichen species that he collected, I could not find.
00:17:49.080And in the Santa Monica Mountains, for instance, this area is chaparral, oak trees, and chaparral
00:17:56.740can get really thick. If it stays moist year round, it won't catch fire so bad. I mean,
00:18:03.660if it stays moist and there's constant rainfall and stuff, you don't have a drying out of the
00:18:09.220brush and stuff. But what happened is starting in the 1920s began large scale fires. And so we can
00:18:19.000pretty well, except for some things like building highways along the coast, almost all of those 70
00:18:25.420species disappeared probably within about 20 years. That's unbelievable to just learn how
00:18:33.140fragile these species are. Oh, yeah, because they can't reproduce fast enough.
00:18:40.120Well, additionally, as someone who is now studying lichen outside of Southern California,
00:18:45.540I was hoping you could speak to how lichen populations and diversity will change as a
00:18:51.680result of climate change, residential and commercial development, and pollution,
00:18:56.940especially pollution, which as I understand it, is one of the most serious threats to the health
00:19:01.920of lichen. We already know that lichens aren't able to grow in cities or around industrial sites.
00:19:07.820So with the increased and widespread air pollution that is transpiring globally,
00:19:12.160it's apparent that lichens face more than just one threat. So to what extent are lichens facing
00:19:18.900endangerment? Is your immense cataloging and recording of lichens propelled by the understanding
00:19:24.440that the landscape is rapidly transforming? Well, one thing with the air pollution thing,
00:19:30.280say, just from nitrates, even if the lichens are able to absorb the nitrates and not be affected,
00:19:36.140it changes, for instance, on ones on bark, it changes the pH of the bark and causes a decrease
00:19:42.500in habitat. It causes an acidification of the bark. And so that's the main problem with air
00:19:50.020pollution. It was much worse when we were in sulfur dioxide and having acid rains.
00:19:54.860So some stuff is coming back, but it's being limited by this nitrates, which are selecting towards certain species that are more common.
00:20:05.740The other thing with even in the Pacific Northwest and stuff, this constant droughts is the main problem, though, because it's still a fire hazard.
00:20:17.020That's probably the biggest danger I see going on even in the next hundred years.
00:20:21.540but uh yeah air pollution is a problem but yeah that's that's a that's a problem here in southern
00:20:29.600california too but in our in my own observations in in for instance southern california and this
00:20:37.220is an area with heavy nitrate pollution we still have overall if you just go even a little bit into
00:20:43.540the mountains or out into the desert we still have high diversity so there so that's not that's not
00:20:50.420as serious as this fire thing even in the desert for instance in joshua tree uh there's grass
00:20:56.920different kinds of bromas came in are invasive grasses that are in the in the desert so what
00:21:03.260used to be a fire that would start and just burn for some brush and be uneven now like has all this
00:21:10.400fuel from the built-up brome and just burns for through and burns down the joshua trees one of
00:21:17.240the biggest Joshua tree areas was completely burnt with some of the biggest trees that are
00:21:22.180in Joshua tree. And, and it's all from this buildup of grasses. See, that's another thing
00:21:28.300that's a problem with, with all these, with lichens is, is it's these invasive species that
00:21:34.620come in and, and add to the fuel load in areas too, besides the fire. Wow. That's fascinating.
00:21:41.820Yeah, lichens are going to have a tough time anyway in the next 300 years as we go through this extinction event we're living through.
00:21:50.940Yeah, it's fascinating and really depressing to hear what happened in Joshua Tree and these invasive grasses that are giving more fuel and helping the fires burn longer and more potently.
00:22:04.200So it's hard to hear, but it's important to hear.
00:22:07.200And I do want to just mention around air pollution.
00:22:09.980I remember when I was learning about usnea and I had heard, you know, if you're seeing usnea, then that's a good sign that air pollution is not overtaking the area per se.
00:22:22.800But then I also thought about, I had read that usnea was also uptaking cesium-137 from the Fukushima fallout.
00:22:31.320And so I was kind of trying to balance the understanding that these lichens can survive when there isn't so much air pollution, yet they are uptaking pollution from the air.
00:22:44.920And I know usnea for a lot of people is used for herbal medicine.
00:22:49.220And so to think about what are the lichens uptaking and then how is that going into our body if we are using it as medicine.
00:22:55.840But then, of course, the flip side of that is if it's in the medicine, it's in everything.
00:23:02.180So, you know, of course, we should be careful about what we take into our body and where it's coming from.
00:23:07.240But we there's nowhere to run from this global, you know.
00:23:13.280There's one thing that's a little bit different with lichens is they have a, in order to grow an algae or cyanobacteria within it, the fungus develops a thallus that contains the alga or photobion from which it derives its nutrition.
00:23:31.280Okay, this thallus, whether it's like stringy with usnea or looks like a leaf or like crustose lichens looks like a bunch of bumps, this thallus has a lot of space in it.
00:23:46.820And the lichens are able to like make cysts out of stuff.
00:23:51.720They're able to have these chemicals come in and they just isolate them within themselves.
00:23:57.400so lichens so we were doing a in a lichen air pollution study that that my wife was just
00:24:04.180working on in the arctic in uh norway up in the very top of norway they decided that lichens it
00:24:11.940was better to study the top layer of a moss that grows year by year than to study lichens for for
00:24:19.200trying to do to calibrate the air pollution over a period of time the reason is the out the lichen
00:24:26.420keeps storing the pollutants within it and it has the space to do that and isolate it without being
00:24:33.360poisoned so so lichens probably if you're in an area where you're concerned about air pollution
00:24:40.320or uh or radiation or whatever lichens are more likely to have concentrated this stuff than say
00:24:46.880a plant that grows in one year or moss so yeah i i'd be uh i'd i'd watch where i collect my uh
00:26:43.880I assume many of us would overlook lichen or maybe even dismiss it as inconsequential being.
00:26:51.540And I know culturally we fail to recognize the inherent value of really any organism, human beings included.
00:26:57.780So I'd really like to transition to a conversation on what you noted as a utilitarian versus capitalist view in the field of lichenology and beyond.
00:27:09.460And especially it seems that now more than ever, if we don't change our value system, we stand to lose so much.
00:27:18.080And I think about how the fate of lichens in the anthropocene is akin to that of insects, wherein so little is known about either that it's not even feasible to even understand what the repercussions are should they disappear.
00:27:33.780So how do you, or how do these value systems influence the way in which we understand lichen?
00:27:40.220Well, I'll give you a good example of this attitude.
00:27:44.440I was giving a walk on one of the Channel Islands.
00:32:19.480This whole idea of just concentrating on rare species is BS, because as important as it
00:32:27.940is to, for instance, save the red wolves down in the red states or make sure that redwoods
00:32:35.620continue being repopulating. And all these things are really valuable. A real wild place
00:32:42.880is a gigantic relationship of many things that are common. Okay, many of the species are common.
00:32:50.620it's the whole environment that these rare species the rare species also exist in
00:32:56.980but by concentrating just on the rare species it tends to take away from the habitat
00:33:02.940and appreciating the wholeness of nature and habitats and a lot of that lichen habitats that
00:33:11.080are burning in for instance southern california nobody would consider particularly valuable they
00:33:16.620They have maybe three or four main chaparral plants, or they have oak trees that are everywhere, coastal live oaks.
00:33:25.760They have their granite areas, you know, and there's nothing there that's usually rare in the plants.
00:33:33.280Well, Southern California does have quite a few rare plants, but a lot of these areas are not that particularly rich in rare plants.
00:33:41.180yet when they go and this is happening all over the world when these common areas go
00:33:47.400you're losing a tremendous part of nature it's just like when i was saying about these lichen
00:33:52.760deserts i mean you go there and uh it's yeah the plants are there that came back after the fire
00:34:01.240the the habitats there the rocks and and the beautiful landscape the thing is is one part's
00:34:07.860gone. And with that one part gone, it's just like when you're in a forest that's been some of these
00:34:15.520artificial forests where they've been cut down and regrown or areas where you walk in and you hear
00:34:21.500no sound hardly. Yeah, I think a great thing about this program you got going with your group is that
00:34:28.600it concentrates on the wholeness of nature. Politically, these endangered species things
00:34:35.820are under constant attack. So, I mean, they're not really that effective overall anymore. They
00:34:43.000have a built-in economic factor that can be taken to court, and that still hasn't been worked out.
00:34:49.640So, without some kind of political change, even this concentrating on rare species is taking us
00:34:54.860away from concentrating on the protection of all of nature.
00:34:58.820so uh i the uh the thing i was talking about three to four hundred years is is i i believe
00:35:06.760that within three or four hundred years we'll reach the worst part of this uh the melting if
00:35:13.160if everything's gonna if we're gonna go through a melting of the the polar ice cap and a raising
00:35:18.980of the ocean levels up to 90 feet this should happen in i would imagine four or five hundred
00:35:25.460years. And when we reach that point when it's over and we've gone through all the first part
00:35:32.300of everybody trying to migrate and all the wars that are going to come out of that, I think at
00:35:37.280that point we'll reach a point where we'll be looking towards the future if it's not completely
00:35:42.560out of control. But we'll be seeing the nature, a large amount of the species that exist now be gone.
00:35:50.000And so I just use that as a general figure.
00:35:52.640Well, now that we're into the conversation of extinction and capitalism and how we're here and what we have to do to, or what I hope that we do in order to protect as much as we can, it would appear to be such a delicate balance between challenging the institutional and structural powers that uphold the system we're in,
00:36:19.580while also working on an individual or conscious level, it would appear that there is a mass
00:36:25.720paralyzation by a state of unconsciousness. And I often think about how wounded we are as a society.
00:36:33.580And in a sense, it matters less what our governing bodies look like. For example,
00:36:39.600what does it mean to reject hierarchy and self-govern if ourselves remain untended?
00:36:46.520So I'm curious if you have any thoughts on direct action in changing society, or perhaps
00:36:51.560what do you think reality and fantasy is if the facade of our democratic government truly
00:36:59.460Well, firstly, I don't think we're that democratic here in the United States.
00:37:04.200But anyway, say, for instance, if it's possible for an end to capitalism, okay, I think we're
00:37:11.560entering the best possible period for this to happen.
00:37:14.480first thing we have we're facing a crisis that most people do not realize it now within the
00:37:21.860next hundred years everybody will realize we're facing this we're facing this in the same way
00:37:27.760we'd be facing an alien evasion we're all in it and then at that point it's the first time in
00:37:36.380history that we've we all face a common enemy and so i think that's one thing that'll be
00:37:43.820historically different than even the period we're living in now. The second thing is the failure
00:37:50.720of our current capitalist economy and the individual nation-state organization we have
00:37:58.520of the world will have proven itself to most people that it's been a complete failure.
00:38:05.320third with the destruction of habitat the vast migrations the the social chaos that'll come out
00:38:15.500of this large areas that problems with food all of these problems will create pressures to push
00:38:23.180people towards action so real change anytime in history has to come from real factors more than
00:38:32.400one individual choice and I think so I think I'm I'm really positive that if ever there is a chance
00:38:39.480to for a major change it'll come out of these terrible events because for once we have a reason
00:38:48.280to be united as a people around the earth I think you have to also keep in mind this okay if you
00:38:55.620were living in Rome in the year 60, you wouldn't be able to imagine that there'd be anything beyond
00:39:06.660the Roman Empire. You might say, I don't really like these people fighting each other in the
00:39:13.820Colosseum and killing each other, but well, anyway, it's happening here. You'd be complaining
00:39:19.520about yeah only rich people run this this society i'm in i run a bar down here it's uh i have to pay0.92
00:39:26.840the the roman soldiers a bribe to in order to operate here you would like you wouldn't be able
00:39:33.320to imagine or living in in in europe in the middle ages that things would ever be different0.88
00:39:40.320and so we have to always keep that in mind that well we we should never be depressed completely
00:39:47.400by the period we live in. Massive changes could happen within the next 100 or 200 years,
00:39:54.200and there's no way we can imagine them or see how they're connected with our lives now.
00:40:00.560I can see, like, just say with this millennial thing that's going on about socialism,
00:40:06.100you know, at least it's understanding that government has to do more. It's not just a
00:40:10.480free market society. Okay, this is just, that's millions of people are coming to this conclusion.
00:40:16.740This is the way change happens. So there's a dynamic between your individual life. You should not feel like alienated because you can't, quote, do anything. For instance, I work on these lichens all the time, okay? I write papers about them. I do inventories so people know what's in a particular area.
00:40:40.500I describe new species, many of which may not even be here in a hundred years.
00:40:46.620Okay. That's all I have time to do. I've had in the rest of my life, I've had time to raise a
00:40:52.920family with where I had to do a lot of work for, and, and I don't feel depressed by what's happening.
00:41:00.040And that's all you can do. For instance, you're doing this show. You guys have a good foundation.
00:41:08.640And that may not seem like enough, but it's all of what we can do as an individual is limited.
00:41:16.820We shouldn't feel like despair because we can't do more.
00:41:22.380I think we need to just keep moving in the direction we're all moving.
00:41:28.420And there's big cultural changes going on.
00:41:31.060And we just go with these cultural changes and believe that just like the butterfly that beats its wings and causes a rainstorm around the other side of the world, you know, we have to embrace the chaos of our lives.
00:41:47.840I'm very hopeful for the future myself.
00:41:50.700But unfortunately, I think this with we're going to be entering into a new earth.
00:41:56.000So things are going to really change a lot.
00:43:31.060a lot of what you said picked me up a little bit from my my drooping shoulder feeling it's easy to
00:43:41.320get depressed yeah yeah yeah um so thank you for saying all that and and in terms of things that
00:43:50.100make me feel better and and kind of pull me out of that dark hole that i know i can get into and
00:43:57.600i'm sure many of the listeners can get into when we're learning about all the destruction is you
00:44:03.900know for me it's the forest or even or the desert or any of these incredible landscapes but thinking
00:44:10.260for me of the forest when i look at lichen and moss and spend time in the deep forest
00:44:16.460there's times that i'm reminded of fairy tales and of the magical stories that relate to the
00:44:23.060world of hidden forest and beyond. And in my mind, it's no accident that the forest is so often
00:44:29.300a canvas for magic. So, you know, I'd love to ask a question that I hope isn't too far-fetched.
00:44:37.740I'm thinking back to our notions of value systems, but this time in the context of magic.
00:44:43.800More specifically, do you think the loss of or degeneration of magic in dominant culture coincides with the destruction of life itself?
00:44:56.760And would you say that simultaneously, as you learn about lichen, have you found magic of sorts that's accessed through deep attunement to and with the natural world?
00:45:08.680Well, I think that the essence of magic is imagination.
00:45:12.780In a modern world that we live in through our cultural changes, magic now is the ability to imagine the impossible.
00:45:24.040So just like we're talking about a world beyond capitalism, that's magic to imagine something beyond what we're living in now.
00:45:32.860And the places like the forest, studying lichens, what's really in that quietness that you get out of that, the deep experience, that gives you a space for the magic of imagination.
00:45:51.220And we have to imagine a world better than the one we live in now in order for it to come into being.
00:45:58.100and in nature is that space is that silence where the imagination can grow you turn off your cell
00:46:08.880phone you turn off your computer you don't watch any television you go out there where it's nice
00:46:15.360and silent and you get in touch with yourself and you get in touch with your dreams and I think
00:46:20.940that's the magic that's in nature. I agree with you that imagination is magic and creativity.
00:46:30.480And I always think to myself, usually I am connected to a magic through the forest. And
00:46:37.720over this winter, things were really, really busy. And I felt at times that I was kind of drowning in
00:46:44.280the day-to-day bureaucracy of life and i remember thinking to myself i'm like well gosh ayana magic
00:46:52.420isn't going to come in creativity isn't going to come in if there's no place for it you know magic
00:46:58.640is magical magic is a star of the show and they need they need a place at the table they need to
00:47:03.680be served and they need to have offerings to them and and so it really was clear to me and i've and
00:47:09.160I know I felt this before that we have to turn off the TV, turn off the phone. We have to turn
00:47:14.280off these mechanisms that distract us in order to allow magic, creativity, imagination to show us
00:47:23.800anything, to offer us anything. And if we're not offering that space and that respect and that
00:47:29.260gratitude to magic and so on, we're not going to be able to tap into the immensity of what it is.
00:47:37.780And I can say for me, you know, when I get lost in the despair, when I can tap into the magic of the land and within myself, things begin to open and possibilities begin to open.
00:47:51.540And I wanted to go back a bit because as we're talking about possibilities and imagination and this so on and so forth, it makes me think again about citizen science.
00:48:01.700And for all those who are listening to this interview and they're wanting to step into the magical realm of lichens or really, you know, any kind of science around, citizen science around the land, what are some tips or tools or advice that you would give those folks who really want to commit and really want to dedicate themselves to the service of these creatures?
00:48:29.540Well, at least here in the Pacific Northwest and in California, you could, first thing, there's books.