The first (half) day of the ASLE conference in Victoria, BC:

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Today I had the morning off to figure out this internet connection stuff, as well as to check in at registration and set up the Terrain.org table in the exhibit hall. This afternoon I participated in the Ecomedia pre-conference session, for which I prepared (but we did not at all discuss, nor even mention, much to my chagrin, my “Virtual Sense of Place” hypertext essay).

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After the three-hour session I had the (easy) opportunity to photograph the sprawling herds / flocks / pods / kettles of rabbits here on campus (see below), which is when I ran into my friend and Terrain.org editorial board member Lauret Savoy, who no doubt thinks I’m crazy. Crazy like a rabbit, I say!

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The ISLE Reception, sponsored by Oxford University Press which now publishes ASLE’s fine journal Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, gave me the opportunity to mingle with conference participants, including a couple Terrain.org contributors and Susan Cohen, who organized the Wildbranch Essays panel for which she, Eve Quesnel, and I read tomorrow (10:30 a.m., Session B14, Clearihue C115).

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I finished the evening by walking down Sinclair Road to Cadboro Gyro Park (a couple photos below), which has a beach loaded with driftwood off a small inlet adjacent to the Strait of Georgia. The walk back up the long, steep hill was definitely good exercise.

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The problem, folks, is that I need caffeine, but I don’t drink coffee. Sure, I’ll drink tea — had some this morning and again at a stop at Starbuck’s on the way back from the park this evening — but there’s something about a cold Coke Zero that gets me going. Sad thing is, all the soda up here seems to come only in plastic bottles. So I’ve added another to my collection. Perhaps I’ll line them up outside before I leave and photograph them with the rabbits?

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A toss-up between the park, with the glowing boats on the water, and tracking down the feral European rabbits. Not sure what it is with me and these critters, but I find them fascinating. Learn more here, and here, too. Those are the official UVic sites. Now check out this article about the bunnies moving off-campus and the dreaded Rodentator. Or you could just kill and cook them, a certain kind of sustainability, I suppose. Guess that means that rabbits aren’t entitled to graduate and move off-campus like the rest of us…?

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I see now this section could get me in trouble, so I may change it to something a bit more politically correct. Suggestions?

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While I enjoyed reading the papers of the Ecomedia pre-conference seminar, and there was interesting discussion, I admit it wasn’t relevant to my needs as an editor, publisher, writer, or environmentalist on more than a peripheral level. That’s primarily because of the nature of the discussion, which focused not on technology or even content, as I hoped, but on research and teaching methodologies for ecocriticism and ecomedia. That’s fine: of the dozen or so of us in the session, only two people (me one of them) isn’t a full-time professor. I had this concern — about being a right fit for the session — before I put together the hypertext essay.

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One notable exception that warranted much discussion and interest is Claudia Hemphill Pine’s research on ecological thinking in the transformative culture of fandom. Apparently, online communities of fans — think of the Harry Potter fandom — tend to rally around social causes, with the notable exception of environmental issues. Claudia explores why, and why not.

I had a localish Canadian ale at the ISLE Reception, but I didn’t get the name, gosh darnit. Not bad, but not as tasty as Canoe’s Beaver Brown.

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My take away today is: I’m rolling my sleeves up for the full conference kickoff and sessions tomorrow. I’ll be dancing back and forth between the Terrain.org table and sessions, including my reading in the morning. There are fifteen concurrent sessions in each time slot, and while there are 670 registered participants, I wonder just how many audience members each panel can expect. I’ll let you know tomorrow evening!

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Terrain.org editor Simmons Buntin blogs the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment biennial conference:

Leaving Seattle aboard the Victoria Clipper hydrofoil ferry.

Technically, the ASLE conference hasn’t yet started, so this first post includes my trip from Tucson, Arizona, up to Victoria, British Columbia.

Summary

I’m spending eight full days traveling to and from Victoria for the ASLE conference, which affords a bit of time on either side of the conference to explore. Today (Monday), I had enough time in Seattle to check out the Olympic Sculpture Park before settling into the three-hour ferry ride up to Victoria.

Once I arrived in Victoria, my priorities were to check my bag and stroll around the Inner Harbour area until finding a brewpub; in this case Canoe Marina, Brewpub, and Restaurant (more on that below). In my travels I’ve found that the best food tends to align itself with the best, locally-brewed beer, and I’m all about local foods (even if I did have lunch at Subway in Seattle, on the fly).

The evening ended with a taxi ride to the University of Victoria, where the conference is being held, and a solid two hours of grappling with the sporadic wireless internet connection in the dorm room in which I’m staying. Just this morning (Tuesday) I figured out the ethernet connection, so problem finally solved!

Environmental Note

The concierge at the Inner Harbour hotel where I checked my bag noted how, from what he’d heard, America isn’t as environmentally progressive as Canada. And when it comes to Arizona, anyway, he’s spot on. Victoria’s full of hybrids — passenger cars, taxis, and buses — and recycling centers can be found, seemingly, on every other corner.

Yet when I went to breakfast at the campus cafeteria, this morning, the only juice I could buy was in a plastic bottle; ditto for water. So I sit here with three plastic bottles already gathered from my trip: two waters and one soda.

The solution? I visited the Student Union pharmacy where steel water bottles happen to be on sale, and picked one up. That should hold me well through this and many other trips. (I didn’t bring one up because our plastic BPA-free bottles at home are beginning to leak; this is my first stainless steel variety).

Best Event/Activity

While strolling around the Port of Seattle and the Olympic Sculpture Park was good fun, the highlight has definitely been wandering Victoria’s Inner Harbour. What a gorgeous city! I may not get to further explore the downtown area until Friday and Saturday (Friday promises a sea kayaking trip, Saturday a long hike through a nearby rainforest), but I can’t wait to get back to such urban vibrancy.

Worst Event/Activity

Canoe forgot to bring me my halibut fish and chips (I waited an hour), but they comped the meal, so I can’t complain too much about that. Plus the beer was outstanding (see below). Nope, I’ll go with being checked into the wrong room here at UVic and then being asked — after unpacking everything — to move next door. Which I did, without complaint, even though there are no hangers in this closet, much to my chagrin. And then of course the whole internet connection battle.

Beer Note

This section may change, depending on what tasty local beverage I can find, but for today I give a hearty endorsement to Canoe’s Beaver Brown Ale: delicious! The Red Canoe Ale was good, too, and that’s saying something for me since I’m not much of a Pilsner fan generally.

Take Away

Now that I’m settled in, I look forward to the conference beginning (for me, with an Ecomedia pre-conference seminar) this afternoon. It will be interesting to see how the exhibit area looks — Terrain.org has a table, but will I be too tempted by the many enticing concurrent sessions to stick around?!

Photos

Some photos from Monday. I’ll post some photos each day if possible, and then a large gallery at the end of the trip.

Victoria’s iconic Empress Hotel on the Inner Harbour.

Just as American cities often have painted sculptures placed around the city (in Denver, it was horses), Victoria has both eagle and whale sculptures.

An eagle sculpture along the Inner Harbour walkway, with the provincial capitol in the background.

British Columbia capitol.