Damaged Relationships
Formation in Place, Part 4: A series on the spiritual work of connecting with our landscapes and ancestral roots. Read the other post in this series:
Read the other posts in this series:
Part 1: Meaning in the Mud
Part 2: The Story Before the Story
Part 3: Societal Disconnect
Damaged Relationships
An ecosystem precisely models an interconnectedness of land and bodies. In the Yellow Sea region, which hooks around from the Getbol area north and then west into China, the tidal flats protect inhabitants from sea level rise and storms. Unfortunately, viewing land as a natural resource apart from culture led to economic growth which encroached on the Getbol. Rapid urbanization since the Korean War included development projects reclaiming land from the sea to convert for other uses, leading to a loss of approximately 65 percent of the tidal wetlands in the region in the last 50 years.
And so, the creatures that depended on this environment have also dwindled in population. The critically endangered spoon-billed sandpipers—of which there are only about 490 birds in the world—find refuge in the Getbol flats on their way from mating grounds along the Bering Sea enroute to Southeast Asia.
The Getbol area is a stopover buffet along the world’s most vulnerable global migratory bird route. All over one island, the camera filming the show Korea No. 1 captures a flurry of white wings, flying from tree to tree: white herons. There are so many birds, they look like Christmas tree ornaments attached to the foliage. Yet, “when Getbol disappears, the birds disappear. When the birds disappear, we disappear, too,” Ko Gyeong-Nam tells on the contestants.
Historically, the fisherman in the Sinan tidal flat were a testament to the balance of human activity within the bountiful ecosystem. “The tidal flats made the relationship between humans and the sea possible,” Joon Kim, a senior researcher at the Jeonnam Research Institute told National Geographic.
South Korea’s coastal communities interact with their environment through practicing folk cultures rich with stories, music, food, festivals, customs, and cultural places. The economic activities of fishing and harvesting marine life is inseparable from folk culture—they are interdependent, explained researchers at Chonbuk National University in Korea, thus sustainability of the tidal flats is supported when cultural heritage is preserved.
UNESCO defines the notion of preserving culture heritage sites, like the Getbol, as the “combined works of nature and man.” Preserving these places is only necessary, however, because our relationship with land is damaged.
As disoriented as I may feel, Korea No. 1 contestants also lack the knowledge of this specific land and practice, making me feel less alone. Trying to find octopuses buried in the mud as part of this episode’s challenge, the contestants humorously struggle to walk through the deep sludge, which sucks and slurps at their body weight with each step. An octopus hunt is completely foreign to them. I imagine the physical difficulty of the trudge, watching shaky thighs barely keeping them standing by the time they’ve completed their hunt, water lapping in quickly as the tide rises.
Throughout the episode, now and then one articulates what nugget of understanding they may have of the Getbol area—the views they may have seen, if less full, the species they know, the food they have eaten. Their ties are not as obscured as mine. But they’ve too lost some aspects of their ties to land. This problem is far bigger than the disconnection an adoptee feels.
Up next: Part 5: Slippery Spirituality
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