To step into my office you would have to step outdoors. My office building is nature and is located in a highly developed urbanized ecosystem. It is where I do most of my writing. Writing is a process of making observations about my immediate environment that encloses my body, stimulates my senses and quickens my mind. To write about a space requires me to become apart of earth’s living dimensions both in space and time, consequently my office is always changing and I must adapt my writing process to Earth’s changing parameters.
As a Gaia ecologist I must acknowledge that my physical presence effects the natural parameters of my surroundings much like a pebble causing ripples of waves through the surface of water. I also exist within an infrared dimension of light emitting heat waves flowing through the air that can be detected by animals and plants. Additionally, my presence is a conscious stream of my mental being intertwined within emitted light waves sensed by organisms disturbing their mental state for sense of safety. Before, I begin to write I incorporate time to become apart of the flora and fauna to give them time to sense my presence and during this period there is very little movement on my part. Perhaps sitting on a bench with notepad and pencil in hand taking notes regarding air temperature, humidity, wind direction/speed, or the types of clouds in the sky is how I begin my writing day as a Gaia ecologist.
An academic ecologist whose scientific training requires emotionless objectivity as a means to validating scientific data, is conditioned to interpret the environment only as formulated numbers displayed upon a spreadsheet. The peer review process of an academic ecologist detaches the human experience from doing science so that the individual exists outside of Earth’s nature. A Gaia ecologist begins the scientific process by acknowledging their feelings as a valid observation brought into existence by their presence in nature. The validity of the scientific numbers measuring Earth’s parameters cannot be compromised by writing how these parameters effect the Gaia observer’s feelings. The reason for being within that dimension of space and time is as vital for understanding how the Gaia ecologist interprets their observations as is the abstraction for scientific inquiry for the peer review process. This is a type of scientific understanding transcends those rigid, cold scientific formulations imposed upon nature’s wonders by an academic ecologist, because a Gaia ecologists’ questions of how nature works is not to be limited by how analogue observations fit into an abstract formulation procedure. A Gaia ecologist doesn’t seek peer review to validate their collection of observations, they only strive to observe as humanly as possible the essence of Earth’s being using not only scientific measurements but more importantly writing about the quality of their emotive state as an interpretation of being within that environmental dimension. A Gaia ecologist writes to record the human experience of feeling Earth’s breath as if it is the only observation of a planet breathing in this universe.
Oscar Mace 