Movement, Mind, Ecology. Climate Run Project, Pavel Cenkl

The Climate Run project was born and my first

project was to run across Iceland.

Over three days from the south coast to the north coast, and, literally being

in places where the melting of glaciers has caused the Earth's crust to rise.

your positive, positive, positive imprint, imprint, imprint,

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What's your pi?

My guest today, Pavel Cenkl, is an adventurous nature enthusiast with

a background in English literature, particularly Native American works.

His doctoral dissertation centered on the transformation of New England's mountains

during the 19th century, shifting from a sparsely populated landscape to one

heavily utilized for tourism and industry.

Well, these significant changes serve as his core focus in his debut

book, This Vast Book of Nature.

Great title.

Pavel also began the Climate Run Project, which combines endurance sports with

climate change awareness, and he jogged across Iceland and other Arctic regions,

witnessing climate change firsthand.

Now, Dean of Academic Affairs at Prescott College in the United States,

he promotes regenerative relationships within communities and ecosystems.

Pavel advocates for a collaborative model, emphasizing the importance

of cultivating relationships for sustainable collective lifestyle changes.

And he is here to explain what this all means.

Hello, Pavel.

Welcome to the show

Great, Catherine.

Thank you so much.

It's a real pleasure to be here.

Yeah, it's always an interesting question of where you start answering that.

I could start in childhood with, all the trips that my parents took me on to

go hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and, we spent months camping

at a time and, really engaging with the natural world, the more than human world.

Probably swimming when I was a little too young to be swimming in really

cold water and those sorts of things.

And I'm sure that all those experiences had their imprint.

We're the culmination of all of our life ex- life's experiences, aren't we?

Beginning in that way and how we built on that in terms of what I

chose to study at university and then, which was actually English literature,

but it ended up really looking at issues of the environment issues of

how land is described in literature.

My undergraduate thesis was on Native American literature, where

I spent a lot of time, reading contemporary Native American fiction

and historical Native American fiction and looking at the nonfiction

from the Southwest specifically.

And that actually introduced me to a whole genre of a whole field of study, a

whole genre of literature I hadn't known much about, and then decided to pursue

my master's degree in the same area.

And actually wrote a master's thesis on contemporary Native American novels.

And then I transitioned in my doctoral program to looking at probably, stemming

from some of those early experiences, how I, as a, as somebody who really

enjoyed being in the outdoors, could leverage my sort of privilege of being

in a PhD program and my expertise in being able to read landscapes

and read descriptions of landscape.

And I ended up writing the dissertation, which became my first book titled "This

Vast Book of Nature," which looked at the 19th century transformation of

mountains in New England from really a more sparsely inhabited mixed landscape

to one that was largely exploited by first the forest industry and then the

tourist economy from the South and, from the urban centers in New England and

New York and how that helped to shape that landscape in a very particular

way that still resonates today.

When people pick up a book and they learn about a culture

or a land form- … it excites them, and that spreads the word.

That spreads positivity.

It gets people engaged.

Pavel, very interesting.

And so New Hampshire, being there in the New England area and being

in the mountains gave you the experience and the know of what it

was like before the transformation, whether, you see it as maybe too much

tourism, and perhaps that is true.

And hopefully with that tourism came education for people.

Oh.

And that's what I always hope, is that when they visit a place, that they

learn something to take back with them.

Yeah.

No, I think that's absolutely right, Catherine.

And, it might be that shift because, those experiences are foundational.

When I took on the role of dean at Sterling College in Vermont

I ended up teaching some courses in northern circumpolar studies looking at

commonalities and intersections among the indigenous communities in the north,

as well as the landscapes of the Arctic which then had you, you mentioned my

Climate Run project a little bit earlier, and, that's what helped to get me into, I

wanna go back to those places or I wanna go experience those places firsthand.

Again it's really all building up this foundation of, I've had

these experiences in the mountains.

I've, published this book.

What can I actually do that might be helpful and generative?

And, using that foundation to help ideally, make some substantive change,

whether it's, with students at the university level or with society at large.

Oh, awesome.

Circumpolar?

Most of that has actually been in Arctic Scandinavia and,

north in Svalbard, where I spent a little bit of time as well, right?

these opportunities I had as an an endurance athlete at the time, so running

over long distances really slowly, mind you, but running over long distances

very slowly in places where, you see evidence of the impact of climate change.

And thus the Climate Run project was born and my first project

there

was to run across Iceland.

I did that

over three days from the south coast to the north coast, and, literally being

in places where the melting of glaciers has caused the Earth's crust to rise.

you know, isostatic or post-glacial rebound to anthropogenic climate

change, specifically in Iceland.

If you're patient enough, you could sit there and watch the Earth's crust rise.

It was, up to about 40 milli- millimeters per year at the time.

So I felt like I wanted to be in a place where the impact that I was having on the

world and that, many folks are having, had a very explicit and measurable impact.

And, I played with this idea of rebounding as, as a runner

rebounds across the landscape.

So then, are you meeting the landscape in dialogue through your embodied practice?

And so that led to other runs across Arctic Sweden and Norway

trips up to Svalbard and the Faroe Islands and elsewhere.

I'm really drawn to those types of northern landscapes.

And, actually ended up teaching some classes field courses both in Iceland

and in in Arctic Norway working a bit with the Sami in Norway and Sweden

when we were there with students, and really seeing the impact not just on

the, glacial and periglacial landscapes, but on the flora, the fauna, and on the

the Sami cultural practices as well.

So it all started to weave together and at that same time, in academic

leadership, I was trying to think, "How can I leverage these experiences?"

which led me to teaching a lot more courses in applications of environmental

philosophy and how we might actually, apply what it is that we're doing in an

experiential and practice-led framework.

To think about how Prescott College, where I'm the dean of academic affairs.

How can we integrate ecology, community, and practice-led experience

into a coherent educational model.

I'm really concerned and interested and engaged in environmental issues

and recognizing that climate change a significant issue, when I started

it's only been, greatly exacerbated as we've moved forward, right?

I th-- and going into Iceland, the first run that I did, it's this is gonna

be about, let's try to change the way that athletes engage with their sports

and maybe we can minimize the carbon footprint of manufacturing of footwear

or dir- or different types of things.

And it very quickly came to me that's not really what it was about for me.

That it really was about, and this is through the personal embodied

experience, that how can we change our relationship with place?

And by doing that can we actually help shift our relationship with the data?

Going back and saying, "Look, the impact that we're having here in Ohio

or in England or wherever it might be is having this impact on glaciers

melting in the Arctic." how are we complicit in, in that process?

What changes can we make?

What relational changes can we make between ourselves and the more-than-human

world that then might shift our our buying habits or might shift our, how we how

we vote, how we talk to our neighbors, how we, make substantive change, right?

When I was working in England at Schumacher College, developed a

master's program about exactly this.

So just having come off of some of those Arctic experiences and, COVID

down and work remotely, which was ironic having moved just to England

to work there than working remotely.

But during that period, I thought how can we still do the same thing?"

For a while when I was living there, we had one hour that we were allowed to

go outside for exercise during the day when everybody was sequestered, right?

And I thought, "All right. You can't get very far in an hour. So what relationship

can you build with the natural world, like in the field behind your house or

the hedgerow behind-- next to the lane or the tree that's in your backyard?"

And so I developed a master's program called Movement, Mind, and Ecology which

became quite popular over the next few years, which w- really leveraged how can

we bring together ecological thinking, systems thinking environmental philosophy.

So what have people written about these places?

And then movement practice, embodied practice in place.

And a - a pretty big component of that master's was to get the students to

develop and deliver community-based practice in their home communities and

say, "Oh, we're gonna have people do yoga in, in this field," or, "We're

gonna have people go on a hike.

We're gonna have people do this thing." a- again, in an effort to multiply

the impact that we could then, try to have sort of fundamental change about

people's relationship to the environment.

I'd like to see more people write about their experiences,

because then we know what was it that was their connection?

Was it the sky?

The ground?

The sounds?

No structures around or the rain?

-- Or the animals.

In understanding what people, what kind of connection they have and what they

want to bring back to educate others.

, so you talk about resilience.

So resilience is many things, right?

That's what you say.

It's often described as a way to adapt a changing environment-

… Pavel Cenkl: Yeah, I think resilience is a key component.

I describe it as regenerative learning which is another sort of site and

organization that, that I work on.

What makes learning and the learning cycle and engagement

with with different disciplines or cross-disciplines regenerative.

And, right on the whiteboard in my office here I've got an adaptive cycle diagram.

Your listeners might be familiar with it.

It looks a little bit like an infinity circle or an infinity loop.

And it's been used to describe, how ecosystems change over time and to

recognize that it's not always growth and demise but it is always a cycle of, coming

to a moment of flourishing and then, collapsing in a way or re-grounding and

giving it an opportunity to rebuild and re-envision and then grow together, right?

So it's always this sort of cons-constant adaptive cycle.

And there's a visual concept for panarchy where you actually nest a lot

of these adaptive cycles together, so you describe how complex an ecosystem is

that's always undergoing these sort of perpetual changes of sort of growth and

collapse and rebirth and growth and so on.

And so I use that to actually model how we develop curriculum and how we

think as an institution as well, right?

Because right now we're-- education is under, under threat.

It's a really challenging time.

Even before the current administration of the US came into power there was an

epidemic of small progressive college and university closures, both in the

US, the UK, and elsewhere because it's a fairly inhospitable environment for a

small private progressive institution just because of en- economies of scale costs

and accessibility assorted with associated with higher education and so on.

And so one of the reasons that I came to Prescott, is that I felt, that it's

really at the intersection of ecology, community, and action we can insert

ourselves into this leverage point in the system and say, "All right, through

practice-led learning, through firsthand experience with place in relation

with sort of ecological systems," so understanding how we as humans work within

the more-than-human world to make…

Not just minimize our impact, not just make things sustainable

for the future, but to actively regenerate our relationship

with the more-than-human world.

agroecology and agriculture where they were talking about rebuilding soil.

And if you don't have soil health, you don't have anything, right?

So if we're constantly thinking about, even in education, our programming,

how do you rebuild the students' relationship with the place or with

the more-than-human world or with the communities that they're engaging with in

an active way to make that relationship more robust, more resilient, and better

then we're starting to get somewhere.

It's about rebuilding that relationship.

The reason that I do the work that I do is I think it's through that

embodied active practice of learning that you can do that the best.

And you can actually bridge some really interesting divides through

that physical activity, whether it's planting trees whether it's, growing

food and give some of that surplus food to students for free to use in their

kitchens or, engaging in different types of practices in the community, that

it's through that firsthand practice and experience, which is I think a

lot of higher education has shifted away from that and isolated itself.

And I think what we're trying to do is to rebuild those community connections.

And that experience will enhance your learning.

Both here and when I was at Schumacher College in England,

it was very much practice-led.

The first thing that they did was go out and observe birds and bird behavior

in their environment and, think about it, look at it, enact it in some ways.

Like, how can you be in that landscape with the birds in that environment?

And then take what they saw and what they experienced and

bring it back to the classrooms.

Like, all right, now we're gonna talk about economics.

And how does what you saw in relationship with the birds and the trees and the

wind and the rain, how can we apply that to this sort of systems thinking?

Which is what it is, right?

It's a, embodied practice as a way to open the door to systems thinking.

What have you seen as the end result?

And I think the end results are as varied as a- as the

interests of the students come in with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I put together a list of about 30 or 35 local businesses that are

run by Prescott alumni or have been founded by Prescott alumni.

, on that list are a number of experientially based schools that

are here in, in the city of Prescott.

So I think we have a lot of educators that come out of here.

We have a lot of people who are interested in one, how to engage the

community, how to make the community more vibrant and better, whether

that's through theater or music or any number of different industries.

We have folks who are engaged in embodied practice.

We have yoga practitioners.

We have people that run guide services.

We really run the full spectrum and I think it's because of that sort

of engagement that sense of sort of relationality and wanting to

engage and wanting to think about how they work within an ecosystem,

how they work with communities.

We've had two global field campuses at Prescott, one in Kino Bay in Mexico

and one in Kenya in Maasai land, so just north of the Maasai Mara in Kenya.

And I've, I've been to both of these over the last year.

And, those two, I actually went to a PhD student retreat, so we have PhD

program in sustainability education and we brought a number of those

students down to the Kino Bay Center.

Thought about and recognized how that center works with the local

community, with the indigenous community- … With arts, with

research, with science, with marine ecosystems, all in this amazing place.

How can you try to replicate that idea of experience at the intersection

of these different things, of cultures, of ecologies, of practice

and go and apply that to whatever you happen to be doing, right?

We've recently become members of the Planetary Health Alliance, for instance.

And that's a great umbrella organization that actually stitches together

public health and ecological health and how the two are inextricably and

holistically related to one another.

It's all interconnected in such a way you can't just think about, "Oh, I'm gonna

study counseling over here," but not think about the environment or vice versa.

And that, by the way, I didn't give the website for that.

That's regenlearning.org, and that's R-E-G-E-N-L-E-A-R-N-I-N-G.org.

When we look at the future of higher education, as I mentioned, it's

in crisis and it's in peril both because, of what's going on in the government

today as well as I think just broadly, higher education needs to find its way.

And I think there's, opportunity for a pretty seismic shift in what

universities and colleges are able to do with and for in collaboration

with communities and with the ecosystems that they're part of, right?

And part of that is recognizing we, as I do here, we can't do everything.

We can't be, a university for everybody for all disciplines, right?

So I think there's a lot to be said about collaboration, about networking about

what I describe as a distributed model of learning where, you're able to provide

a strength in one area, but you partner with others who are able to provide

strengths in others, and suddenly you have a really strong network of institutions

that serve, I think a much stronger and I think, I would say better purpose than a

single monolithic institution ever could

those are words of wisdom.

They truly are.

And I hope, and you said a seismic change- Yeah … and I think that it does leave

us open to move in a way that we never have before, so I look forward to that.

And I hope everything works out.

Yeah.

So Pavel, your last inspiring words.

Hmm.

I think, a lot of it is summing up what we've discussed here,

Catherine, and that's it-- when you boil it down to it, it's really about

building relationships and cultivating those relationships, and whether that's

with the, the communities the neighbors right next door community businesses

and also the ecosystems around you.

Often thinking about how do I cultivate that relationship in a

way that will be regenerative will help make the environment better

for the next generation, will help build community relationships

that are resilient and that last.

And in fact, it needs to be regenerative for yourself as well.

So I think building those strong relationships can actually be

regenerating for the individual.

And so I try to do that, try to cultivate that, and try to integrate

that into the curriculum here.

Excellent.

Pavel Cenkl,

I love ecology, community, action.

Thank you, Catherine.

Great.

Oh, you're welcome.

Thank you for being here on "Your Positive Imprint." Oh, it's been my pleasure.

Go to climaterun.org or regenlearning.org.

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of this podcast, here's how.

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Thank you so much for your support and for listening to your positive imprint.

And until next time, your positive imprint.

What's your P.I.?