Move into the new season with intention, as you meet and get to know a tree neighbor with the aid of human friends!
Winter Buddies: Building a More-than-Human Community for Spring is the fourth iteration of a series of protocols developed for the Multispecies Care Survey — a public engagement and data gathering initiative meant to provoke and articulate forms of environmental agency that de-center human supremacy and facilitate the co-generation of embodied, localized plant-human care practices.
Following a series of protocols developed throughout the pandemic for spring, summer, and fall 2020, this protocol invites you to immerse yourself in winter by building a community of relations and exchanges with a tree and an extended support network of friends – together exploring care practices to sloooowly emerge into spring while shaping a future of more-than-human communities. The multi-step protocol encourages a series of exchanges and multiple visits with one tree. Offering this example by EPA agent andrea haenggi and majestic oak for reference, the protocol will invite you to document your exchanges and share a report by the end of March. Visit the Multispecies Care Survey website to get started.
Winter Buddies: Building a More-than-Human Community for Spring was created in collaboration with EPA guest agent Georgia Silvera Seamans. Some of the concepts animating the process of building the protocol are explored in her article “The Risks and Rewards of Being Black in Nature.”