Healing Grounds: Moving Through Loss

These planned efforts—of marking loss through shared experiences in and through landscape—manifest several years of research and teaching as a graduate student and exploring the phenomenon of “ecological grief”, ́ or what philosopher Glenn Albrecht calls “solastalgia, ́ which is “…the pain or distress caused by the loss of, or inability to derive, solace connected to the negatively perceived state of one’s home environment. ́ (2007) Many in the UW community have experienced directly or indirectly ecological grief as a result of COVID-19 and compounded by present and past losses. Understanding this phenomenon and the role it plays in social and environmental resilience is important. In addition to participating in the “Raising Resilience ́ research project funded by Resilience and Compassion Seed Grant and led by Department of Landscape Architecture faculty Julie Johnson and Brooke Sullivan 2020-2021, I have also explored issues of mindfulness, compassion, healing in my graduate studies and teaching including courses focusing on: collective rituals and public space in the Anthropocene; ecological grief and social justice in urban parks and streets; and film and affective landscapes. I employ the term “ecological grief ́ to more broadly include issues of historic and systemic environmental injustice—and the concomitant ways in which the built environment has been deployed to harm BIPOC and other communities, human and nonhuman, made vulnerable by structural racism and colonial exploitation. The existential anxieties and material realities of the Anthropocene—flooding, drought, fires, political upheaval and displacement, disease—continue to be experienced unevenly. While financial reparations and political reconciliations are critical in redressing the grievances of vulnerable communities, affording public spaces and shared rituals in which to recognize loss are critical in supporting robust communities. As stewards and shapers of the built environment, landscape architects advocate for sustainable design practices to protect and enhance ecological resources, functions, and health. At the same time, the discipline is equally vested in championing equitable access and social justice through place making and placekeeping. Designers preserve and reveal cultural histories and collective narratives located within and shaped through landscape and its inhabitation through the creation of spaces that support ephemeral rituals and longer-term networks. Such efforts contribute to what sociologist Eric Klinenberg (2018) calls “social infrastructures, ́ or public spaces that afford vital community connections and build social capital and particularly critical during periods of crisis. Yet social connection has been severely delimited by both epidemiological threats and civic discord despite or because of our highly interconnected digital lives. While the expression of grief has been spatially circumscribed, sites like cemeteries and other “melancholy landscapes ́ (Bowring 2017) represent critical geographies of reflection and survival. The restrictions of COVID-19 have left few opportunities to publicly, performatively, and perhaps more materially acknowledge and express our grief. Historically, we have marked loss in the landscape through community gatherings and physical monuments: the planting of 58 London plane trees on campus along University of Washington’s Memorial Way in aftermath of World War I; and the Trees for Life Day tree planting and pilgrimage in the “cancer forest” ́ of the Netherlands. Movement through landscape afford critical opportunities to reveal, manifest and bear witness to personal grief and communal grievances.