ECOLOGICAL PILGRIMAGE
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Walking through unknown territory has been historically undertaken by pilgrims in search of moral or spiritual significance and transformation. Today, we are witnessing walking movements in the North like “climate pilgrimages” and “walks for the future” that offer an opportunity for embodied reflection on the ecological crisis and our role within it. Contemporary artistic and curatorial events have also taken place along trails, such as the performative pilgrimages initiated through the Future Farmers’ Flatbread Society project in Oslo, Norway (2012-) and the lecture and performance formats introduced along the UKK trail in Kainuu, Finland during the Mustarinda Community Convention. Drawing inspiration from these movements along with research on slow travel, degrowth, bushcraft, ancestral skills, and cultural rewilding, as well as place-based and wild pedagogies, our ‘Intra-living in the Anthropocene’ research group gathers around the idea of an “ecological pilgrimage” as a walking methodology, social innovation, and form of activism.
Driven by a curiosity of what an ecological pilgrimage could be and become, the members of our team embarked on a pilot walk along the 1000 km long ‘UKK trail” that runs along the Russian border from Koli in North Karelia to the northeast corner of Finnish Lapland/Sápmi. It is named after Finland’s former president Urho Kaleva Kekkonen (UKK), who hiked in this region in the Cold War era; that is when many decisions regarding Finland’s land-use policies were put in place, particularly concerning the building of hydropower dams and the draining of mires and wetlands for use in the forestry industry. Today, the almost forgotten UKK trail follows old trade routes and nature paths and is fragmented by clear-cuts.