Outdoor Patio, Northern Fish, Tacoma, WA
Restaurants both give us access to water views and distance us from the water. Water is an important aspect of the Ruston Way waterfront (Tacoma, WA); it is a preferred landscape feature that influences how we perceive, experience, and interact with nearby nature (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1998).
In a conversation two weeks ago, while eating in a waterfront restaurant and discussing the mixed-use development along Ruston Way, my lunch partner said, “I probably would not have planned for the restaurants here on the waterfront, but I’m glad they are here. They provide another way to experience the waterfront and to see views of the water. I enjoy eating here.” Her comment reminded me that early in my explorations for this project, while I was having lunch at Duke’s Chowder House in January, a woman at the next table said, “You sit here by the water and you feel like you are on a ship almost.” In contrast, in response to my ongoing survey, one community member emphasized that piers, not restaurants, are the best place to view and experience Commencement Bay.
“I like being able to walk out onto the piers, and really feel like I am out on the water. These are more reflective areas, away from the parking lots and “big box” restaurants that detract from the beautiful, natural setting.”
Food Chains
These reflections about restaurants name water as an important landscape feature, and connect water views to the restaurants along Ruston Way. Thinking about restaurants in relation to water helps me critically consider how we describe and visualize food chains and how we depict the relationships amongst plants, animals, human agriculture and acquaculture. I’ve been reconsidering terms like “farm,” “eat,” “harvest,” and “kill” and thinking about how the language we use can both connect us to, and distance us from, plants and animals and the food we choose to eat.
In The Omnivores Dilemma, Michael Pollan traces the food chains of different kinds of meals. For example, he demonstrates connections between a meal at McDonald’s to corn and traces produce and chicken from large-scale organic farming to the petroleum used to transport organic food. He invites us to consider the sources of our food and the impacts of our eating choices. Rather than prescribe one kind of meal or diet as better than another, he emphasizes that all meals involve the dilemma of deciding what to eat or not eat.
Fish taco and French fries, Katie Downs Tavern & Eatery, Tacoma, WA
Looking Critically at Language
Deciding what to eat is related to how our language connects us to, and distances us from, plants and animals.
Harriet Ritvo writes about eating as being culturally enacted in her book, The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination. She highlights the cultural and classification processes that shape what animals we eat, hunt, and keep as pets. Whether the language used to describe animals is vermin, game, or pets reflects different individual and cultural assumptions about human/animal relationships. These different assumptions and relationships are also visible in why people choose to use natural areas, or nearby nature—some are interested in predation (e.g., fishing), some domestication (e.g., walking dogs), and others observation (e.g., bird watching) (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1998).
Human’s massive consumption of animals and plants is noted in Matthew Hall’s Plants as Persons; humans eat over thirty billion animals each year and a third of the grain grown globally is used to feed livestock. His intentional use of the language “plants as persons” makes visible that eating plants involves ethical choices that impact the life of another living organism. This language frames the dilemma as the tension between not eating and taking the life of another living being—plant or animal—to support our own lives.
Eating is a major activity on the Ruston waterfront. Visitors note that “dining,” “picnicking,” “eating,” and “fishing”—all acts of predation—are activities that regularly occur on Ruston Way.
Fishing is most often associated with the Les Davis Pier, and many visitors name this pier “the fishing dock.” Below are the reflections of two community members.
“I like the dock by the little snack bar, where they fish at night. I have a fond memory of going there with my dad in the evening and seeing all of the people set up with their fishing poles and their lights.”
“But my favorite spot is the fishing dock past Katie Downs. I think it has the best view of Rainier on a clear day and I have also done some stargazing on that dock. The waterfront is one of the first places I bring visitors and we usually spend an hour or so sitting on a dock and walking around.”
Interestingly, both community members mention the pier, the activity of fishing, and waterfront eateries as well—the little snack bar and Katie Down’s restaurant.
Hall’s focus on “plants as persons” helps me see connections between human eating and the legacy of lumber mills on Ruston Way, Tacoma, WA. Terms like “sacred,” “ancestors,” “old growth forest,” “trees,” “timber,” “wood,” “lumber,” “shingle,” “cut,” “harvest,” “felled,” and “kill” potentially suggest different relationships between humans and trees/plants. Each term reveals assumptions about whether we view trees as resources for our use (e.g., timber, shingle, harvest) or as living organisms that deserve our respect (e.g., sacred, old growth forest, trees, kill). A vast amount of timber has been cut in the Pacific Northwest (and beyond). “On a global scale, over the last 300 years, twelve million km² of forests and woodlands have been felled” (Hall, 2011, p. 164).
Delivery Truck, Northern Fish, Tacoma, WA
Realizations
Every meal involves the act of predation, whether we name it that or not. Thinking critically about the language I, and others, use to describe plants, animals, water, soil, and sunlight helps me reconsider the relationships amongst plants, animals, and human agriculture. Water is essential to life and water provides habitat, transportation, and views. I’m reflecting on the pros and cons of categorizing water as non-living. My reading and walking this week have supported me to think about how spoken and visual language (e.g., signs and images on restaurants, visual depictions of food chains and food webs) influence how we see a place and the living organisms that reside within it.
Clam chowder, prawns and avocado salad, and mussels, Duke’s Chowder House, Tacoma, WA
For more information about this research project read the Project Overview.
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Resources
Hall, M. (2011). Plants as persons. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Kaplan, R., Kaplan, S., & Ryan, R. L. (1998). With people in mind: Design and management of everyday nature. Washington, D. C.: Island Press.
Pollan, M. (2006). The ominvore’s dilemma: A natural history of four meals. New York: The Penguin Press.
Ritvo, H. (1997). The platypus and the mermaid and other figments of the classifying imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
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- Navigating Nature, Culture and Education in Contemporary Botanic Gardens - June 9, 2018
- Vashon Island Perspective - March 18, 2018
- Teaching and Learning in Nearby Nature - March 12, 2017
