Earthrise | Robert Dash – photographer, educator, environmentalist

||| EARTHRISE BY JAY KIMBALL |||

Looking at Robert Dash’s photographs, we can see… each image is a poem. An awe-inspiring visual invitation to slow down and deepen our connection with nature.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” ~ William Blake

Reading Dash’s book, On an Acre Shy of Eternity, you see that that shy acre, home to Dash and his wife, artist Ranna McNeil, is their muse – a quiet mossy hillside, overlooking the beautiful Salish Sea, that calls to them each and every day.

Since publishing his book in 2017, Dash’s photographic work has attracted a global audience thanks to numerous awards, exhibitions, residencies, articles, and, most recently, the National Geographic Storytellers Summit, a four-day gathering of National Geographic photographers, editors, writers, and staff.

A Conversation Overlooking the Salish Sea

Before leaving for that summit, Dash met with me for a wide-ranging conversation, catalyzed by my asking him to pick one of his photographs that embody key climate actions that can help the planet.

We met on a day that had started northwest winter gloomy but suddenly turned luminous and springlike in the afternoon. Sitting in folding camp chairs, surrounded by windswept Douglas fir trees clinging tenaciously to the steeply sloping cliff, we took in the expansive view of Spring Passage to the southwest. Sunlight reflecting off the pristine waters dazzled. Numerous waterfowl bobbed on the gentle tidal flow. A single sea lion occasionally surfaced, spy-hopping for a brief look at us as it took a puff or two of air.

Dash’s chosen photograph, pictured below, is a photo montage of images, at various magnifications, from the hazelnut tree – Corylus avellana. The elements include:

• brown hazelnuts;
• the yellow catkin anther, filled with hundreds of tiny flowers, which typically open in January;
• and the dominant image – scanning electron micrographs (in gray) of catkin flowers (about the width of a pinhead, 200x magnification) and their pollen (540x magnification).

Beyond the “crazy fascinating design,” Dash said, “hazelnut trees have a remarkable set of benefits,” that are good for the planet. “Hazelnut trees provide edible food, produce oil almost of the quality of olive oil, and offer massive benefits for soil health and for capturing carbon. They are carbon capture factories.”

And because it is a perennial, they do this naturally, year after year. “So much of our agriculture is annual. Farmers need to start over every year. All of the energy, fertilizers, sowing of seed, is tremendously fossil fuel dependent.”

Dash points out that hazelnut trees are essential to agroforestry and silvopasture – the mutually beneficial integration of trees, forage, and grazing domesticated animals. He says, “these are important ways to add more resilience, diversity, and sustainability to producing food.” Forward-thinking fruit and nut farmers “are shifting from mono-cropping perennials to intermixing rows of trees with pollinator crops.”

Connecting the dots between farming and care for the planet, Dash observes, “If you are interested in nature conservation, you have to be interested in agriculture and how it’s done, and how it could be done better.”

Small is Beautiful

In our often mind-numbing nanosecond culture, Dash’s images ground us in a more contemplative world where small is beautiful. Small is immense, miraculous, and reassuring in its power to move us.

Beyond talk of hazelnut trees, the conversation followed an interdepending golden thread, through a diverse set of topics, including perennial trees with edible nutritional leaves, perennial wheat, prairie strips, soil carbon cowboys, San Juan Islands Agricultural Summit, and Paul Hawken’s regeneration project. For more on all that, please take a look at the extensive notes below.

“Over all these years, nature has been my profound solace, inspiration, and teacher.” ~ Robert Dash

Earthrise: A Climate Action Journal

This climate action journal offers information and actions we can take together, locally and globally, as we care for this precious Earth.

“The best way to heal a living system, is to connect it with more parts of itself.” ~ Margaret Wheatley

If you like what you read here, pass it forward to a few friends and ask them to do the same. Like a pebble tossed in a pond, the rings emanate outward, reflecting and growing exponentially. “Going exponential” is what it will take to reverse the climate extremes that are accelerating around us.

Thank you…

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Notes

Robert Dash’s website

Ranna McNeil’s Website

The hidden beauty of the plants that feed the world

How to protect our food from a crazy climate? Consider the hazelnut.

How are hazelnut and soybean different?

What are the most eco-friendly nuts?

The giving tree: Agroforests can heal food systems and fight climate change

Hazelnuts in Agroforestry

Soil Carbon Cowboys

Perennial trees with nutritious edible leaves

Perennial Wheat

Prairie Strips

San Juan Islands Agricultural summit will feature workshops about agroforestry

Climate-Smart Agriculture

Converting a Pasture to a Silvopasture in the Pacific Northwest

Food systems account for more than one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions

Paul Hawken’s regeneration project. This is an amazing interactive website.