Jason T Fisher
  • Home
  • About Me
  • ACME LAB
  • Research
  • Publications
  • Scientific Advisory
  • Philosophy
  • Contact
ACME LAB:
Applied
Conservation
Macro
Ecology

PHILOSOPHY

Because supposedly, I'm a Doctor of it.

Wildlife Research in a Tom Thomson painting

11/17/2017

2 Comments

 
I have always loved the northern boreal forest.

As a child, I saw my first Tom Thomson painting at the National Gallery in Ottawa: Pine Island, Georgian Bay. I was held enthralled by the colours of the bark, the shapes of the twisted and stunted branches, the ethereal hues of the sky. I stood for what seemed like hours, imagining myself immersed in that impossible tangle of pure wildness - if not hours, it was certainly long enough that I irritated my parents markedly.


Picture
When a young man, I took my first steps into that wild vastness to research red squirrels. I lost myself in those landscapes of drunken tilted black spruce, jack pines twisting aimlessly into grey heavens, and undulating bogs with fascinating carnivorous plants and bottoms so deep they threatened to swallow me whole. Some of my best hours were lived seated in the reindeer lichen with my back against the trunk of a white spruce tree, watching those animals eat, and nest, and play, and fight, and live. I became part of that landscape, a part of something ancient, and untameable, and Real.
Picture

I recently returned to that beloved landscape. Our team launched a new research project: Wildlife CAMERA. We are deploying large remote-camera arrays across the Alberta boreal forest and Rocky Mountains to understand the effects of landscape and climate change. Camera trapping has revolutionized wildlife research. We can gain insights into animal behaviour, abundance, and interactions in ways never before possible. Deploying cameras into some of the most remote landscapes south of the Arctic isn't easy - but it is fun. The helicopter is a wild ride, of which I shall never tire. But once the helicopter lifts away, I am left in that perfectly still, perfectly random crash of bogs and spruces and limitless cold skies. And I become that young boy again, standing in the undefinable wildness of a Tom Thomson painting.
2 Comments

The Ocean

9/29/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
There are few moments in life that balance abject fear and unbridled exhilaration. For me, those rare moments have always lived on the ocean, with the towering sky above and the fathomless depths below. The beach is a place to marvel at the ocean, to flirt with its wonders. I see its beauty anew through my little ones' wide eyes. e.e. cummings captured this beauty in a poem:

​maggie and milly and molly and may 
went down to the beach(to play one day)

​and maggie discovered a shell that sang 
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing 
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone 
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) 
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    noun: one who writes.

    Archives

    November 2017
    September 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About Me
  • ACME LAB
  • Research
  • Publications
  • Scientific Advisory
  • Philosophy
  • Contact