Our Latest Publications:

Academic article published in Leisure Studies, July 2023 https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2023.2230527 

Abstract: This research explores how belonging and communion emerge from the human body engaging directly with more-than-human (MtH) during nature-based recreation. It asks: how are nature-based recreators experiencing relationships with more-than-human via their movement and sensing in US Forest Service trails? This research presents the conceptual tool haptic rapport to better explore and represent the intimate, sensory-based, meaningful, and embodied relationships that come about through haptic contact occurring specifically between human and MtH natures. This data serves to contradict structurally presumed separations between humans and MtHs; between recreational mobilities and belonging; and between cutaneous touch and internalization of that touch experience. This research highlights USFS land spaces as essential sites for nature-based recreation, belonging and sensing place, mobility, and the human-MtH relationships they make possible. Haptic rapport can be applied in all contexts and fields to better understand the intimacies and meaning-making associated with MtH-human engagements.

Keywords: haptic, sensing place, nature-based recreation, more-than-human, US public lands, belonging, movement

Read full article here:

 https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/XRUUSM7YRED7MXP9HQ2E/full?target=10.1080/02614367.2023.2230527 

Academic article published in Journal of Political Ecology October, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.4773 

Abstract: On US public lands, large-scale structural capitalocentric valuations are at odds with the embodied non-monetary valuations expressed by nature-based recreators. Valuing USFS lands through a capitalocentric[A1] lens does not account for the more-than-capitalist (MtC) valuations occurring within these sites and has facilitated large scale sale and reduction of these lands for commercial and extractive purposes. Capitalocentric valuations often fail to express the local, embodied, and intimate[A2] valuations of nature in these spaces.  These[A3]  lands are covered by the US public lands multiple-use mandate which defines recreational access as equal to that of natural resource extraction. However, in practice, recreational and non-extractive (ie. non-monetary) access is not represented within its own valuation terms nor is its true value reported and recognized as equally valuable to the corporate and national capitalocentric monetary valuations. These recreational, non-monetary, and local valuations of US public lands are un-accounted for and under/un represented in large-scale structural valuations of US Public lands. This paper argues that nature-based trail recreators value US public lands via non-monetary visceral value- valuation strategies that are rooted in intimate and embodied interactions with nature- directly challenging the strictly monetary value given to these lands by structural national and corporate entities.[A4]  This paper develops the concept, visceral value, to represent MtC valuations occurring via embodied experiences of nature-based recreators within USFS trails. Rescaling the assessment of value from structural capitalocentric valuations to the site of the individual recreator body directly confronts capitalocentric urges to universalize all used/usable/potential resources into monetary/extractive/production/labor use-values. [A5] 

Read full article here: https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/4773/

Book Coming soon! 

Jacket Blurb:

When was the last time the tender souls of your feet kissed the natural earth? The last time you wriggled your toes joyfully into fine grains of beach sand? The last time you took those bare feet for a jaunt to really feel the undulations and textures of our earth? 

We find ourselves in a time where we, within industrialized capitalist cultures, are yearning for connection, connection to ourselves, connection to our fellow humans, and connection with the earth herself.  But we find ourselves mediated from these necessities by industrialized technologies, consumption, and capitalist cultural norms. 

We call it the Anthropocene, named for the drastic impact humans have had on the planet. Why would we degrade and destroy those very ecological resources that we need to survive? We are homo sapiens, the “wise” species, aren’t we? What causes us to make these destructive decisions that feel dire for our survival? We do this because of learned cultural norms of industrialized capitalism that keep us in states of scarcity mentality, addiction, and sympathetic fight or flight so that we may be productive capitalist citizens.

This book highlights the exponential difference between nature’s production time and capacity and industrialized capitalism’s extraction and consumption rate.  It identifies culture as the central causal factor for our ecological and social issues, and it proposes culture as solution to these same ecological and social issues. 

Here we identify industrialized capitalist culture as sets of learned practices- not innate behaviors or beliefs, so that we may choose to un-learn these practices, to slow down, to return to nature’s time. It guides us back to rediscovering our right to lives of wonder, connection to nature, and community!

And don't forget our recent public media publications:

2024 The Pendulum Politics of Public Land Multi-Use Trails, Trail Builder Magazine, Fall 2(2)

2024 Trail Communion, Trail Builder Magazine, Summer 2(1)

2024 Well-Adjusted Companions: Benefits of chiropractic care, Prescott Dog Magazine, https://prescottdog.com/?p=5006

2024 “High” Desert Dog-Days of Summer: Keeping our four-leggers free from THC toxicity, Prescott-Sedona Dog Magazine, https://prescottdog.com/?p=4940, July

2024 Betty and Mickey Take to the High Seas: Paddleboarding with our pups! Prescott-Sedona Dog Magazine, April, https://prescottdog.com/?page_id=2207

2024 Paws for the Planet: Reducing our pet’s carbon pawprint, Prescott-Sedona Dog Magazine, February, https://flagstaffsedonadog.com/?p=3996

2024 Give Peace a Chance: Grounded pack leadership, Prescott-Sedona Dog Magazine,January, https://prescottdog.com/?p=4609

2023 Wag More, Bark Less: the miracles and wonders of dog-human communication, Prescott-Sedona Dog Magazine, November, https://prescottdog.com/?p=4499

2023 Happy Tails, Happy Trails: Ribbons of Single-Track and Tall Green Grasses, Prescott-Sedona Dog Magazine, September, https://prescottdog.com/?p=4435

2023 Happy Tails, Happy Trails: Burgers and Worms, Prescott-Sedona Dog Magazine, June, https://prescottdog.com/?p=4326

2023 Happy Tails, Happy Trails: A Doggie Sidecar Motorcycle Adventure, Prescott-Sedona Dog Magazine, April, https://prescottdog.com/?p=4222