Currents: the local landscape
Ph.D. thesis results shared with Coös interviewees
by Edith Tucker, Coos County Democrat, Jan. 14, 2009
GROVETON, N.H. — What is the role of the local landscape in the lives of North Country residents?
This is the question at the heart of the doctoral thesis that lifelong New Hampshire resident Laura Alexander asked as part of earning her Ph.D. in Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England in Keene last summer.
The energetic and down-to earth woman took the time to invite the 21 people that she had interviewed to hear the conclusions she was able to draw and to give them a chance to discuss her work. Happily, the majority of the interviewees were free to come to the Saturday afternoon, Jan. 3 session, held at Emerson's Outdoor Outfitters. Her dissertation title describes Ms. Alexander's research — “Meaning of Place: exploring long-term residents' attachment to the physical environment in northern New Hampshire.”
Ms. Alexander, an assistant professor of environmental studies at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, near her home base, also owns a newly built vacation house in Columbia. Earlier in this decade, this mother of two adult sons earned her Bachelor's degree, also at Anticoch, and then at her professors' urging stayed on to earn her doctorate over a nearly eight-year period. Outdoor columnist and sheep farmer John Harrigan of Colebrook was the first outdoorsman that Ms. Alexander interviewed, and he, in turn, suggested other potential interviewees, who all have spent at least half their lives in Coös. She was able to track down other locals on her own.
Her research roster includes a number of well-known local figures: sporting goods store owner Brian Emerson; forester Brad Wyman of Dummer; former U.S. Forest Service snow ranger Brad Ray, a Berlin native who now farms in Milan; retired Fish and Game conservation officer Rep. Eric Stohl and retired Colebrook Academy teacher Bill Schomburg, both of Columbia; horse logger Rick Alger of Milan; and logging contractor and land investor Alan Bouthillier, a Colebrook native who lives in Lancaster.
Although Ms. Alexander promised anonymity to those who volunteered, most did not care whether or not their participation became known. The then-doctoral candidate used photography as an interviewing tool. After discussing her project on the telephone, she gave all interviewees an inexpensive disposable camera and asked them to photograph places to which they were attached and explain how these places had shaped their identity. “These photos served as a way to enter quickly and deeply into a conversation about place meaning,” she points out in her thesis' opening paragraph. After Ms. Alexander transcribed, sorted, coded and analyzed the detailed answers to her open-ended questions, she discerned five themes of the meaning of “place:” the physical setting is stable; it is restorative; it is where spirituality is experienced; it provides material sustenance, such as food and fuel; and it fosters the development and expression of ecological identity.
“These themes were revealed as instrumental to maintaining residents' well-being through attending to the needs of the self,” she concluded. “Conceiving of the physical setting in this way expands our understanding of the relationship between people and place.” Ms. Alexander has high hopes that her research will prove useful by helping Coös residents to understand — and be able to talk about — “place” as an important element that ensures their well-being and could be used to guide land management policies, particularly in communities where traditional ways of interacting with the land are undergoing change in both land use and economic base.
The thought-provoking 156-page work, plus references and appendices, is not light reading. It includes numerous references to scholarly literature, which Ms. Alexander searched to learn what earlier researchers had theorized or concluded.
“I am going to try to identify a funding source to have a shorter, pithy version of this work printed, including some photos and quotations, that could be disseminated widely in the region,” Ms. Alexander explained in an e-mail exchange.
