Just coasting : the confluence of space, place and ecology

Human assaults on the environment are now the looming issues of the 21^st Century. The exponential forces of population and technology are the epicentres of unprecedented historical advents that are occurring in the swelter of simultaneity and the emergence of the Anthropocene. The deeper concerns of biological diversity and environmental integrity seem to languish in the aftermath of a brutal and malignant efficiency bent on exploitation and vested interests. The work of this thesis unfolds providing potent metaphors and cogent perspectives to think through life-affirming responses to ecological crisis. The chapters respond to the critical questions of existence as meditations on air, water, food, shelter, recreation, outdoor living and multi-species relationships. What are the crucial practices appropriate for place-making / place-writing at this time? Can these creative non-fictions support shifts in consciousness and better treatment of the environment? What role might the environmental humanities play in communities of environmental practice? The specific context of living on the coast, amid surfing culture, situates this thesis at the confluence of space, place and ecology, as a speculative work of multi-species ethnography and coastal philosophy. The urgency for human responsibility requires significant transformations that connect creative practices with the everyday to promote a plausible environmental culture of the future. The purpose of new ecologies of living are to utilise the care-of-the-self to realise a broader place-sensitive ecology-of-care. On the edge of these folds still shimmer possibilities rising on the horizon of an awakening.