Last year, a lot of my friends thought about doing a senior thesis project. I contemplated doing one myself, thinking about ways that I could combine themes from my majors in Anthropology and Environmental Studies at  Wellesley College. 

 

I remembered discussing the work of Anthropologist Heather Paxson in one of my anthropology classes. Her book The Life of Cheese focused on Paxson’s visits to specialty cheese makers and the way they used different bacteria cultures to make their cheeses. 

 

Paxson’s book is an example of multispecies ethnography. That is to say, a work that discusses culture with respect to more than human influences. In the case of Paxson’s book, the focus was on the relationships between the cheesemakers and the bacteria used to make the cheese.

 

Multispecies ethnography opened my eyes to other types of ethnographies, narratives written about different cultures. To me, this was a way I could merge my fields of interest. Multispecies ethnography would allow me to focus on culture in a broader sense, a culture that involves more than the human as an actor.

 

There was one thing missing.

 

What other species would be in my multispecies ethnography? 

 

The question of my Professor echoing, what’s at stake? 

 

What would be the purpose of me doing this research?

 

And how might I pull off such a project in the midst of an ongoing pandemic?

 

All semester long I wracked my brain, trying to answer these questions. Eventually I decided to stop trying so hard all by myself, and look to others to see if I could find some answers. 

 

I ended up doing an interview with a graduating senior. We spent three hours walking around campus talking about their perceptions of the concept of nature, their relationship to food, and their relationship to places on campus.

 

Fast forward a few months later and I was a summer intern with the Paulson Ecology of Place Initiative at Wellesley College, an on-campus program that supports students in developing a sense of place and connection to nature. 

 

The first day of the internship, we started off by getting to know a tree in the Botanic Gardens. Blindfolded, another intern led me to hug a tree: I felt the texture of the bark, the directions of its branches, the shape of its leaves. I then used these sensory details to search out my tree, once I had returned to the starting point and my blindfold removed. After some debrief about our tree meetings, we went inside to discuss safety concerns for the summer.

 

The interns were tasked with researching things we should watch out for, like poison ivy which could be a potential danger to us when outside. When we started discussing how to identify ticks, one of the interns pointed to something moving on the table.

 

In the blink of a minute, our facilitator stuck the moving thing between some scotch tape, which  we passed around. It was a deer tick! It hitched a ride on one of the other interns during their tree meeting.

 

We continued discussing how to safely remove ticks. Each of the interns received a tick key that would help remove these little beings from our bodies. We talked about the importance of tick checks throughout the summer, and how if there was a tick on us for more than 24 hours, we could be at risk for Lyme Disease.

 

Lyme Disease has symptoms like headaches, fever, and skin rash. If left untreated, it can infect joints, the heart, and the nervous system. Pretty scary. 

 

I remember coming back to the tree I met later in the summer, laying a blanket on the grass to sit on, and then picking up the blanket to find over 10 ticks on the other side. My own fear of these insects definitely was instilled with knowledge of their impact, but I think all they would want from me would be to feed on my blood. 

 

These summer moments were when I realized how interspecies relationships could have such a significant impact on humans. There are such intense health impacts from crossing paths with these tiny bacteria-spreading bugs that we call ticks. 

 

Well, at least now I know what’s at stake.