MLA I

Vernal Pull: Sensing Animal Culture in a Freshwater Forest

Advised by Emily Wettstein

This thesis proposes a series of clearings for interacting with the animal inhabitants of a coastal forest on Cape Ann, Massachusetts. The artful clearing of trees, soil, and stone stimulates change in the postglacial terrain as a method for calling attention to animal encounters. The script for cultivating these circular spaces suggests multiple futures that draw the mythical and ecological into conversation. By recalling the history of an early 20th-century naturalist who studied animal life in this forest, the project revives a practice for gardeners, naturalists, poets, and mystics—the nature fakers—who argue that close observation and imagination are essential to the opening of human-animal dualities.