Academic literature on the topic 'Sapce weather'

The scientific community of building physics has known for decades that weathering has a significant effect on the condition of buildings. Weathering agents such as water, carbon dioxide and oxygen, potentially accelerate the natural deterioration of buildings, leading to undesirable results, especially in cases involving buildings of special cultural importance. Climate change and its effect on weather conditions may potentially accelerate the weathering of buildings.The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of climate change on weathering of building materials of heritage buildings under subtropical climatic conditions. As a case study, non-destructive measurements of 10 traditional buildings in Strovolos, an urban centre in Cyprus, were employed. To study the deterioration of buildings, non-destructive methods were utilized, namely infrared (IR) thermography. The deterioration was studied for different materials, different orientations, as well as for materials of different ages. Through qualitative and quantitative thermographs, the results demonstrate the significant effect of climate change on the deterioration of building materials.

This paper focuses on cross-laminated timber (CLT) and how it is affected by the dynamic properties of moisture during installation in the cold climate of Estonia. The moisture safety principles are designed using a case study of comparable activities with 4D principles and on-site water content monitoring. On-site water content monitoring was done on the CLT elements that were installed and a parallel polygon specimen. Polygon testing was arranged with reduced size CLT elements subject to different conditions, with some exposed to the climate, some protected from precipitation, and some covered with film. The moisture content (MC) of the uncovered horizontal CLT element that was exposed to the climate reached over 25% after higher precipitation and the MC after prolonged direct exposure can reach up to 40% in a week, giving a clear signal of high risk areas for moisture safety. Installing a partly weather protected CLT element without a preliminary roof is a high-risk arrangement, but is essentially possible in a cold climate. Moisture safety pre-planning and a lean strategy must be applied with timber construction.

Kalanganyar Village is a village in Sidoarjo Regency, Sedati District, which covers an area of 2/3 consisting of a pond, which borders the villages of Buncitan, Sawohan, Cemandi, and Tambakcemandi. Kalanganyar Village is one of the areas with socio-economic conditions that need to be improved. The source of the livelihood of the local community is very dependent on the results of fishing which is very influenced by the weather. When fishermen cannot go to sea due to extreme weather, local people do not have alternative sources of income. The problems with partners and the potential to support the Sedati sub-district as a Minapolitan area are (1) limited livelihoods of the community as fishermen, (2) The skills of the Fish Cultivation Group (Pokdakan) are still weak regarding the diversification of products made from fish as raw material, (3) There is still a lack of knowledge and practice regarding fish processing which has economic value. (4) Limited knowledge about the packaging of fish-based products (5) Lack of knowledge about marketing fish products. The method used is counseling and training, among others, the socialization of the importance of diversification of processed products made from fish, training on diversification of fish product processing technology, training on packaging of processed fish products, training on online and offline marketing management. The results achieved in implementing program activities (a). The community understands the importance of product diversification from fish so that fish has a high economic value, (b) Training on product diversification from fish is successful in making soy sauce from fish and shredded fish from milkfish, (c) Success in making soy sauce product packaging from fish and labeling jerky from milkfish , (d). Online marketing through social media and websites is still in the design process.

During the last decade, building in wood has increased, mainly due to environmental awareness andtargets to decrease the carbon footprint originated from the production of building materials. Newtechnologies such as CLT (cross laminated timber) have accelerated the construction of multi-storywooden buildings. The CLT structure has been used both for housing and offices. Due to the extensivesize of the buildings and relatively fast assembly of the buildings, weather protection has not alwaysbeen used. It is commonly known that building materials sensitive to moisture need to be protectedagainst high moisture conditions and water during construction. If this is not done, there is an increasedrisk of microbial growth which can result in health problems for future users of the building, extensivecosts for the remediation and exchange of materials, but also lack of trust in the construction industry.There are disagreements between the building industry and researchers how sensitive wooden buildingsare to exposure to high moisture levels and water during storage at sites and construction. Based onresults from several research projects studying moisture conditions both in the laboratory and in thefield, recommendations for procurement, storage and handling of wood during construction to assuremoisture safety are suggested in this paper.

Nowadays, ultra-advanced facades have made great strides, and parametric simulation software has made a significant contribution to this advancement. Voronoi shells, based on their irregular nature, are one of the most advanced facades that are being used in modern building facades. In this paper, the main focus is on the behavior of these facades against incident light from the sun. The method presented in this research is based on Ladybug Tool’s plug-in capabilities. Using the analysis of weather information and the desired geometry, direct rays as a vector in each time step is prepared, and the amount of direct sunbeam hours by considering the contexts (Facade) calculated. To estimate the comprehensive method, the same workflow evaluated winter (P2) and summer (P1) solstice as a cross-sectional study (Max & Min solar altitude). The results indicate that the type of geometry Voronoi and the thickness of the facade frame have a great effect on the direction of the rays inwards and also the type of geometry should be controlled at latitudes appropriate to the solar altitude; because of the geometric intricacies of the Voronoi facade have a great deal to do with the solar altitude.

Abstract The precision of instruments used in 3 collaborative studies conducted within the Food and Drug Administration over a 4-year period (1981, 1982, 1984) for water activity (a„) determinations according to the official AOAC method is evaluated. Calibration responses of the instruments were tested for linearity over the a„ range from 0.75 to 0.97. Average absolute percent difference between predicted and assigned a, values for the linear model ranged from 0.3 to 0.7% for a fiber-dimensional hygrometer (Abbeon) and 3 electrical hygrometers (Beckman, Rotronics, and Weather Measure). The calibration responses for another electrical hygrometer (Hygrodynamics) were nonlinear. The fiber-dimensional hygrometer yielded mean a„ values and precision estimates that did not differ significantly from those obtained with the electrical hygrometers for (NH4)2S04 slush, KN03 slush, sweetened condensed milk, pancake syrup, and cheese spread. However, the mean a„ value for a soy sauce was 0.838 for the electrical hygrometers compared with 0.911 for the fiber-dimensional hygrometer. The fiber-dimensional hygrometer was affected by a volatile components) in the soy sauce that caused an erroneously high a„ value. Pooled estimates of reproducibility (5X) in the 3 studies were 0.008 for the fiber-dimensional hygrometer and 0.010 for the electrical hygrometers; these values were not significantly different from those reported in the study that verified the current official AOAC method.

This work proposes a numerical procedure to simulate and optimize the thermal response of a multilayered wallboard system for building envelopes, where each layer can be possibly made of Phase Change Materials (PCM)-based composites to take advantage of their Thermal-Energy Storage (TES) capacity. The simulation step consists in solving the transient heat conduction equation across the whole wallboard using the enthalpy-based finite element method. The weather is described in detail by the Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) of the building location. Taking the TMY as well as the wall azimuth as inputs, EnergyPlusTM is used to define the convective boundary conditions at the external surface of the wall. For each layer, the material is chosen from a predefined vade mecum, including several PCM-based composites developed at the Institut für Werkstoffe im Bauwesen of TU Darmstadt together with standard insulating materials (i.e., EPS or Rockwool). Finally, the optimization step consists in using genetic algorithms to determine the stacking sequence of materials across the wallboard to minimize the undesired heat loads. The current simulation-based optimization procedure is applied to the design of envelopes for minimal undesired heat losses and gains in two locations with considerably different weather conditions, viz. Sauce Viejo in Argentina and Frankfurt in Germany. In general, for each location and all the considered orientations (north, east, south and west), optimal results consist of EPS walls containing a thin layer made of the PCM-based composite with highest TES capacity, placed near the middle of the wall and closer to the internal surface.

TotalEnergies Drills Dry Hole Offshore Suriname TotalEnergies has plugged and abandoned its Keskesi South-1 on Block 58 offshore Suriname after encountering noncommercial quantities of hydrocarbons. Keskesi South-1 was drilled about 6.2 km from the discovery well Keskesi East-1. “The first appraisal well at Keskesi was a substantial stepout designed to assess the southern extent of the feature,” said Tracey K. Henderson, senior vice president, exploration at APA, a partner in the block. “This location had the potential to confirm a very large resource in place if connected to the reservoir sands in the discovery well. However, suitable reservoir-quality sands were not developed in the Campanian target at the Keskesi South-1 location. Data gathered from the well will be used to calibrate our geologic model and inform the next steps for Keskesi appraisal.” Semisubmersible Maersk Developer has moved to the Sapakara South-1 well, where it will conduct a flow test of the previously announced appraisal success. Following the completion of the Sapakara South-1 flow test, the exploration program will continue with the spud of the Krabdagoe prospect just to the east of Keskesi. Drillship Maersk Valiant is currently drilling Bonboni, the first exploration prospect in the northern portion of Block 58. Both rigs are operated by TotalEnergies. APA Suriname holds a 50% working interest in the block, with TotalEnergies, the operator, holding the remaining 50% stake. Harbour Abandons Falklands Plan, Will Exit Basins in Brazil, Mexico Harbour Energy (formed with the merger of Premier and Chrysaor) announced it will not proceed with the Sea Lion development in the Falkland Islands. The producer will instead focus on the successful integration of Premier Oil’s assets. Sea Lion, discovered in 2010 by Rockhopper, is estimated to hold more than 500 million bbl, but development startup has been stuck in neutral. Rockhopper intends to pursue the project and will talk with other operators about participating in the wake of Harbour’s exit. Harbour also revealed plans to exit exploration license interests in the Ceará basin in Brazil and the Burgos basin in Mexico. The operator said it wants to reinvest in lower-risk opportunities in regions where the company already has a presence. Harbour is the largest UK-listed independent oil and gas producer with most of its assets located in Southeast Asia and the North Sea. BP Starts Production at Thunder Horse Expansion BP confirmed it started oil and gas production at its Thunder Horse South Phase 2 offshore expansion project in the US Gulf of Mexico. The project comprises two subsea drill centers in 6,350 ft of water. They are connected to BP’s Thunder Horse production and drilling platform by 10-in. dual flowlines and are expected to add up to 25,000 B/D of production. The scope of the expansion will see a total of eight wells brought online, adding as much as 50,000 B/D of production. “This is another significant milestone for BP, completing the delivery of our planned major projects for 2021,” said Ewan Drummond, BP senior vice president, projects, production, and operations. “This project is a great example of the type of fast-payback, high-return tieback opportunities we continue to deliver as we focus and high-grade our portfolio.” BP operates Thunder Horse with a 75% stake; ExxonMobil holds 25%. The Phase 2 expansion project is part of BP’s plans to grow its Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production to around 400,000 B/D by the middle of the decade. ReconAfrica Granted Extension in Namibia Reconnaissance Energy Africa (ReconAfrica) and its joint venture partner NAMCOR (the state oil company of Namibia) said the Ministry of Mines and Energy has granted a 1-year extension of the first renewal period to 29 January 2023, relating to the approximate 6.3-million-acre (PEL) 73 exploration license, due to the impacts of the pandemic. ReconAfrica holds a 90% interest in PEL 73 covering portions of northeast Namibia. The exploration license covers the entire Kavango sedimentary basin. Eni Achieves First Oil at Cabaça North off Angola Eni has started production from the Cabaça North development project in Block 15/06 of the Angolan deep offshore, via the Armada Olombendo FPSO vessel. The development, with an expected peak production rate in the range of 15,000 B/D, will increase and sustain the plateau of the FPSO with an overall capacity of 100,000 B/D. This is the second startup achieved by Eni Angola in 2021, after the Cuica early production achieved in July. A third startup is expected within the next few months, with the Ndungu early production in the western area of Block 15/06. Block 15/06 is operated by Eni Angola with a 36.84% share. Sonangol Pesquisa e Produção (36.84%) and SSI Fifteen Limited (26.32%) are joint venture partners. Further to Block 15/06, Eni is the operator of exploration blocks Cabinda North, Cabinda Centro, 1/14, and 28, as well as of the New Gas Consortium (NGC). In addition, Eni has stakes in the nonoperated blocks 0 (Cabinda), 3/05, 3/05A, 14, 14 K/A-IMI, and 15, and in the Angola LNG project. Gas Production at Groningen To Cease Next Year The Netherlands plans to end gas production at the large Groningen field next year, the Dutch government recently confirmed. Output at Groningen will be cut by more than 50% to 3.9 Bcm in the year through October 2022, which will be the last year of regular production. The recent runup in natural gas prices has not impacted the state’s plans. The Dutch government originally announced Groningen would shutter by mid-2022 to limit seismic risks in the region but left the possibility of emergency production in the event of extreme weather conditions from select sites. To keep these sites operational, around 1.5 Bcm of gas will be produced on a yearly basis, until a main gas storage site can be switched to the use of imported low-calorific gas instead of the high-calorific gas Groningen delivers. The government wants the conversion to happen quickly, but originally thought it would not happen until between 2025 and 2028. Discovered in 1959, the Groningen field is run by Shell and ExxonMobil joint venture NAM. BP Turns on the Taps at Matapal BP Trinidad and Tobago achieved first gas at its Matapal subsea development offshore Trinidad. The project comprises three wells which tie back into the existing Juniper platform. Matapal is located about 80 km off the southeast coast of Trinidad and approximately 8 km east of Juniper, in a water depth of 163 m. Equinor Spuds Egyptian Vulture Well off Norway Equinor has started drilling operations on the Egyptian Vulture exploration well located offshore Norway. According to well partner Longboat Energy, the drilling of the Egyptian Vulture prospect is being undertaken by Seadrill semisubmersible West Hercules. The well is expected to take up to 7 weeks to drill. The exploration probe is targeting gross mean prospective resources of 103 million BOE with further potential upside to bring the total to 208 million BOE on a gross basis. The chance of success associated with this prospect is 25% with the key risk related to reservoir quality and thickness. Longboat has gained access to a drilling program of seven exploration wells in Norway through agreements with three separate companies. Earlier, Vår Energi started drilling the Rødhette exploration well off Norway, the first in a series of seven wells where Longboat will participate as a nonoperator. SBM Secures Large FPSO Financing SBM Offshore has completed the project financing of FPSO Sepetiba for a total of $1.6 billion—the largest project financing in the company’s history. The financing was secured by a consortium of 13 international banks with insurance from Nippon Export, Investment Insurance (NEXI), and SACE SpA. China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure) intends to join this transaction by the end of the year and will replace a portion of the commercial banks’ commitments. Sepetiba is owned and operated by a special-purpose company owned by affiliated companies of SBM Offshore (64.5%) and its partners (35.5%). The vessel has a processing capacity of up to 180,000 B/D of oil, a water-injection capacity of 250,000 B/D, associated gas treatment capacity of 12 MMcf/D and a minimum storage capacity of 1.4 million bbl of crude oil. Sepetiba will be deployed at the Mero field in the Santos Basin offshore Brazil, 180 km offshore Rio de Janeiro. The vessel will be spread-moored in approximately 2000 m water depth. The Libra Block, where the Mero field is located, is under a production-sharing contract to a consortium (PSC) comprising operator Petrobras (40%), Shell Brasil (20%), TotalEnergies (20%), CNODC (10%), and CNOOC Limited (10%). The consortium also has the participation of state-owned Pré-Sal Petróleo SA (PPSA) as manager of the PSC.

The spatial accessibility serves as a lifeline that sustains the existence and survival of small island communities with limited resources. Yet, there is a lack of studies that focus on transport availability and characteristics as measures of small island spatial accessibility. A Small Island Spatial Accessibility Index (SISAI) was created to determine the spatial accessibility of San Vicente, Northern Samar, an archipelagic municipality consisting of seven small islands. The indicators used include distance (km), number of public vehicles available, one-day return trip (presence/absence), number of vehicles that travel per week, number of trips per week, total vehicle passenger capacity per week, and transport connectivity. The distance and transport characteristics are essential in measuring the small island's spatial accessibility. Environmental factors, e.g., extreme weather events, also affect the accessibility of small islands. Additionally, to understand further the accessibility situation in the island group, the accessibility problems of the islanders were determined using focus groups and surveys. A Spatial Accessibility Problem Confrontation Index (SAPCI) was developed, which showed that disruption of the spatial accessibility of the islands due to big waves, bad weather, unsafe conditions of the vehicles, and unfollowed schedules were the four main problems that concern households. Thus, the stacking of goods, the government's provision of a storage facility, and support of the business sector are critical in sustaining the needs of island communities, especially during calamities. Moreover, the study recommends the conduct of a transportation feasibility study to improve the spatial accessibility of the area.

This essay combines life writing with meditations on the significance of walking as integral to the ritual practice of pilgrimage, where the individual improves her soul or health through the act of walking to a shrine containing healing relics of a saint. Braiding together insights from medieval literature, contemporary ecocriticism, and memory studies, I reflect on my own pilgrimage practice as it impacts the land itself. Canterbury, England serves as the central shrine for four pilgrimages over decades: 1966, 1994, 1997, and 2003.The act of memory was not invented in the Anthropocene. Rather, the nonhuman world has taught humans how to remember. From ice-core samples retaining the history of Europe’s weather to rocks embedded with fossilized extinct species, nonhuman actors literally petrifying or freezing the past—from geologic sites to frozen water—become exposed through the process of anthropocentric discovery and human interference. The very act of human uncovery and analysis threatens to eliminate the nonhuman actor which has hospitably shared its own experience. How can humans script nonhuman memory?As for the history of memory studies itself, a new phase is arguably beginning, shifting from “the transnational, transcultural, or global to the planetary; from recorded to deep history; from the human to the nonhuman” (Craps et al. 3). Memory studies for the Anthropocene can “focus on the terrestrialized significance of (the historicized) forms of remembrance but also on the positioning of who is remembering and, ultimately, which ‘Anthropocene’ is remembered” (Craps et al. 5). In this era of the “self-conscious Anthropocene” (Craps et al. 6), narrative itself can focus on “the place of nonhuman beings in human stories of origins, identity, and futures point to a possible opening for the methods of memory studies” (Craps et al. 8). The nonhuman on the paths of this essay range from the dirt on the path to the rock used to build the sacred shrine, the ultimate goal. How they intersect with human actors reveals how the “human subject is no longer the one forming the world, but does indeed constitute itself through its relation to and dependence on the object world” (Marcussen 14, qtd. in Rodriguez 378). Incorporating “nonhuman species as objects, if not subjects, of memory [...] memory critics could begin by extending their objects to include the memory of nonhuman species,” linking both humans and nonhumans in “an expanded multispecies frame of remembrance” (Craps et al. 9). My narrative—from diaries recording sacred journey to a novel structured by pilgrimage—propels motion, but also secures in memory events from the past, including memories of those nonhuman beings I interact with.Childhood PilgrimageThe little girl with brown curls sat crying softly, whimpering, by the side of the road in lush grass. The mother with her soft brown bangs and an underflip to her hair told the story of a little girl, sitting by the side of the road in lush grass.The story book girl had forgotten her Black Watch plaid raincoat at the picnic spot where she had lunched with her parents and two older brothers. Ponchos spread out, the family had eaten their fresh yeasty rolls, hard cheese, apples, and macaroons. The tin clink of the canteen hit their teeth as they gulped metallic water, still icy cold from the taps of the ancient inn that morning. The father cut slices of Edam with his Swiss army knife, parsing them out to each child to make his or her own little sandwich. The father then lay back for his daily nap, while the boys played chess. The portable wooden chess set had inlaid squares, each piece no taller than a fingernail paring. The girl read a Junior Puffin book, while the mother silently perused Agatha Christie. The boy who lost at chess had to play his younger sister, a fitting punishment for the less able player. She cheerfully played with either brother. Once the father awakened, they packed up their gear into their rucksacks, and continued the pilgrimage to Canterbury.Only the little Black Watch plaid raincoat was left behind.The real mother told the real girl that the story book family continued to walk, forgetting the raincoat until it began to rain. The men pulled on their ponchos and the mother her raincoat, when the little girl discovered her raincoat missing. The story book men walked two miles back while the story book mother and girl sat under the dripping canopy of leaves provided by a welcoming tree.And there, the real mother continued, the storybook girl cried and whimpered, until a magic taxi cab in which the father and boys sat suddenly appeared out of the mist to drive the little girl and her mother to their hotel.The real girl’s eyes shone. “Did that actually happen?” she asked, perking up in expectation.“Oh, yes,” said the real mother, kissing her on the brow. The girl’s tears dried. Only the plops of rain made her face moist. The little girl, now filled with hope, cuddled with her mother as they huddled together.Without warning, out of the mist, drove up a real magic taxi cab in which the real men sat. For magic taxi cabs really exist, even in the tangible world—especially in England. At the very least, in the England of little Susie’s imagination.Narrative and PilgrimageMy mother’s tale suggests how this story echoes in yet another pilgrimage story, maintaining a long tradition of pilgrimage stories embedded within frame tales as far back as the Middle Ages.The Christian pilgrim’s walk parallels Christ’s own pilgrimage to Emmaus. The blisters we suffer echo faintly the lash Christ endured. The social relations of the pilgrim are “diachronic” (Alworth 98), linking figures (Christ) from the past to the now (us, or, during the Middle Ages, William Langland’s Piers Plowman or Chaucer’s band who set out from Southwark). We embody the frame of the vera icon, the true image, thus “conjur[ing] a site of simultaneity or a plane of immanence where the actors of the past [...] meet those of the future” (Alworth 99). Our quotidian walk frames the true essence or meaning of our ambulatory travail.In 1966, my parents took my two older brothers and me on the Pilgrims’ Way—not the route from London to Canterbury that Chaucer’s pilgrims would have taken starting south of London in Southwark, rather the ancient trek from Winchester to Canterbury, famously chronicled in The Old Road by Hilaire Belloc. The route follows along the south side of the Downs, where the muddy path was dried by what sun there was. My parents first undertook the walk in the early 1950s. Slides from that pilgrimage depict my mother, voluptuous in her cashmere twinset and tweed skirt, as my father crosses a stile. My parents, inspired by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, decided to walk along the traditional Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury. Story intersects with material traversal over earth on dirt-laden paths.By the time we children came along, the memories of that earlier pilgrimage resonated with my parents, inspiring them to take us on the same journey. We all carried our own rucksacks and walked five or six miles a day. Concerning our pilgrimage when I was seven, my mother wrote in her diary:As good pilgrims should, we’ve been telling tales along the way. Yesterday Jimmy told the whole (detailed) story of That Darn Cat, a Disney movie. Today I told about Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey, which first inspired me to think of walking trips and everyone noted the resemblance between Stevenson’s lovable, but balky, donkey and our sweet Sue. (We hadn’t planned to tell tales, but they just happened along the way.)I don’t know how sweet I was; perhaps I was “balky” because the road was so hard. Landscape certainly shaped my experience.As I wrote about the pilgrimage in my diary then, “We went to another Hotel and walked. We went and had lunch at the Boggly [booglie] place. We went to a nother hotel called The Swan with fether Quits [quilts]. We went to the Queens head. We went to the Gest house. We went to aother Hotle called Srping wells and my tooth came out. We saw some taekeys [turkeys].” The repetition suggests how pilgrimage combines various aspects of life, from the emotional to the physical, the quotidian (walking and especially resting—in hotels with quilts) with the extraordinary (newly sprung tooth or the appearance of turkeys). “[W]ayfaring abilities depend on an emotional connection to the environment” (Easterlin 261), whether that environment is modified by humans or even manmade, inhabited by human or nonhuman actors. How can one model an “ecological relationship between humans and nonhumans” in narrative (Rodriguez 368)? Rodriguez proposes a “model of reading as encounter [...] encountering fictional story worlds as potential models” (Rodriguez 368), just as my mother did with the Magic Taxi Cab story.Taxis proliferate in my childhood pilgrimage. My mother writes in 1966 in her diary of journeying along the Pilgrims’ Way to St. Martha’s on the Hill. “Susie was moaning and groaning under her pack and at one desperate uphill moment gasped out, ‘Let’s take a taxi!’ – our highborn lady as we call her. But we finally made it.” “Martha’s”, as I later learned, is a corruption of “Martyrs”, a natural linguistic decay that developed over the medieval period. Just as the vernacular textures pilgrimage poems in the fourteeth century, the common tongue in all its glorious variety seeps into even the quotidian modern pilgrim’s journey.Part of the delight of pilgrimage lies in the characters one meets and the languages they speak. In 1994, the only time my husband and I cheated on a strictly ambulatory sacred journey occurred when we opted to ride a bus for ten miles where walking would have been dangerous. When I ask the bus driver if a stop were ours, he replied, “I'll give you a shout, love.” As though in a P. G. Wodehouse novel, when our stop finally came, he cried out, “Cheerio, love” to me and “Cheerio, mate” to Jim.Language changes. Which is a good thing. If it didn’t, it would be dead, like those martyrs of old. Like Latin itself. Disentangling pilgrimage from language proves impossible. The healthy ecopoetics of languages meshes with the sustainable vibrancy of the land we traverse.“Nettles of remorse…”: Derek Walcott, The Bounty Once my father had to carry me past a particularly tough patch of nettles. As my mother tells it, we “went through orchards and along narrow woodland path with face-high nettles. Susie put a scarf over her face and I wore a poncho though it was sunny and we survived almost unscathed.” Certain moments get preserved by the camera. At age seven in a field outside of Wye, I am captured in my father’s slides surrounded by grain. At age thirty-five, I am captured in film by my husband in the same spot, in the identical pose, though now quite a bit taller than the grain. Three years later, as a mother, I in turn snap him with a backpack containing baby Sarah, grumpily gazing off over the fields.When I was seven, we took off from Detling. My mother writes, “set off along old Pilgrims’ Way. Road is paved now, but much the same as fifteen years ago. Saw sheep, lambs, and enjoyed lovely scenery. Sudden shower sent us all to a lunch spot under trees near Thurnham Court, where we huddled under ponchos and ate happily, watching the weather move across the valley. When the sun came to us, we continued on our way which was lovely, past sheep, etc., but all on hard paved road, alas. Susie was a good little walker, but moaned from time to time.”I seem to whimper and groan a lot on pilgrimage. One thing is clear: the physical aspects of walking for days affected my phenomenological response to our pilgrimage which we’d undertaken both as historical ritual, touristic nature hike, and what Wendell Berry calls a “secular pilgrimage” (402), where the walker seeks “the world of the Creation” (403) in a “return to the wilderness in order to be restored” (416). The materiality of my experience was key to how I perceived this journey as a spiritual, somatic, and emotional event. The link between pilgrimage and memory, between pilgrimage poetics and memorial methods, occupies my thoughts on pilgrimage. As Nancy Easterlin’s work on “cognitive ecocriticism” (“Cognitive” 257) contends, environmental knowledge is intimately tied in with memory (“Cognitive” 260). She writes: “The advantage of extensive environmental knowledge most surely precipitates the evolution of memory, necessary to sustain vast knowledge” (“Cognitive” 260). Even today I can recall snatches of moments from that trip when I was a child, including the telling of tales.Landscape not only changes the writer, but writing transforms the landscape and our interaction with it. As Valerie Allen suggests, “If the subject acts upon the environment, so does the environment upon the subject” (“When Things Break” 82). Indeed, we can understand the “road as a strategic point of interaction between human and environment” (Allen and Evans 26; see also Oram)—even, or especially, when that interaction causes pain and inflames blisters. My relationship with moleskin on my blasted and blistered toes made me intimately conscious of my body with every step taken on the pilgrimage route.As an adult, my boots on the way from Winchester to Canterbury pinched and squeezed, packed dirt acting upon them and, in turn, my feet. After taking the train home and upon arrival in London, we walked through Bloomsbury to our flat on Russell Square, passing by what I saw as a new, less religious, but no less beckoning shrine: The London Foot Hospital at Fitzroy Square.Now, sadly, it is closed. Where do pilgrims go for sole—and soul—care?Slow Walking as WayfindingAll pilgrimages come to an end, just as, in 1966, my mother writes of our our arrival at last in Canterbury:On into Canterbury past nice grassy cricket field, where we sat and ate chocolate bars while we watched white-flannelled cricketers at play. Past town gates to our Queen’s Head Inn, where we have the smallest, slantingest room in the world. Everything is askew and we’re planning to use our extra pillows to brace our feet so we won’t slide out of bed. Children have nice big room with 3 beds and are busy playing store with pounds and shillings [that’s very hard mathematics!]. After dinner, walked over to cathedral, where evensong was just ending. Walked back to hotel and into bed where we are now.Up to early breakfast, dashed to cathedral and looked up, up, up. After our sins were forgiven, we picked up our rucksacks and headed into London by train.This experience in 1966 varies slightly from the one in 1994. Jim and I walk through a long walkway of tall, slim trees arching over us, a green, lush and silent cloister, finally gaining our first view of Canterbury with me in a similar photo to one taken almost thirty years before. We make our way into the city through the West Gate, first passing by St. Dunstan’s Church where Henry II had put on penitential garb and later Sir Thomas More’s head was buried. Canterbury is like Coney Island in the Middle Ages and still is: men with dreadlocks and slinky didjeridoos, fire tossers, mobs of people, tourists. We go to Mercery Lane as all good pilgrims should and under the gate festooned with the green statue of Christ, arriving just in time for evensong.Imagining a medieval woman arriving here and listening to the service, I pray to God my gratefulness for us having arrived safely. I can understand the fifteenth-century pilgrim, Margery Kempe, screaming emotionally—maybe her feet hurt like mine. I’m on the verge of tears during the ceremony: so glad to be here safe, finally got here, my favorite service, my beloved husband. After the service, we pass on through the Quire to the spot where St. Thomas’s relic sanctuary was. People stare at a lit candle commemorating it. Tears well up in my eyes.I suppose some things have changed since the Middle Ages. One Friday in Canterbury with my children in 2003 has some parallels with earlier iterations. Seven-year-old Sarah and I go to evensong at the Cathedral. I tell her she has to be absolutely quiet or the Archbishop will chop off her head.She still has her head.Though the road has been paved, the view has remained virtually unaltered. Some aspects seem eternal—sheep, lambs, and stiles dotting the landscape. The grinding down of the pilgrimage path, reflecting the “slowness of flat ontology” (Yates 207), occurs over vast expanses of time. Similarly, Easterlin reflects on human and more than human vitalism: “Although an understanding of humans as wayfinders suggests a complex and dynamic interest on the part of humans in the environment, the surround itself is complex and dynamic and is frequently in a state of change as the individual or group moves through it” (Easterlin “Cognitive” 261). An image of my mother in the 1970s by a shady tree along the Pilgrims’ Way in England shows that the path is lower by 6 inches than the neighboring verge (Bright 4). We don’t see dirt evolving, because its changes occur so slowly. Only big time allows us to see transformative change.Memorial PilgrimageOddly, the erasure of self through duplication with a precursor occurred for me while reading W.G. Sebald’s pilgrimage novel, The Rings of Saturn. I had experienced my own pilgrimage to many of these same locations he immortalizes. I, too, had gone to Somerleyton Hall with my elderly mother, husband, and two children. My memories, sacred shrines pooling in familial history, are infused with synchronic reflection, medieval to contemporary—my parents’ periodic sojourns in Suffolk for years, leading me to love the very landscape Sebald treks across; sadness at my parents’ decline; hope in my children’s coming to add on to their memory palimpsest a layer devoted to this land, to this history, to this family.Then, the oddest coincidence from my reading pilgrimage. After visiting Dunwich Heath, Sebald comes to his friend, Michael, whose wife Anne relays a story about a local man hired as a pallbearer by the local undertaker in Westleton. This man, whose memory was famously bad, nevertheless reveled in the few lines allotted him in an outdoor performance of King Lear. After her relating this story, Sebald asks for a taxi (Sebald 188-9).This might all seem unremarkable to the average reader. Yet, “human wayfinders are richly aware of and responsive to environment, meaning both physical places and living beings, often at a level below consciousness” (Easterlin “Cognitive” 265). For me, with a connection to this area, I startled with recollection emerging from my subconscience. The pallbearer’s name in Sebald’s story was Mr Squirrel, the very same name of the taxi driver my parents—and we—had driven with many times. The same Mr Squirrel? How many Mr Squirrels can there be in this small part of Suffolk? Surely it must be the same family, related in a genetic encoding of memory. I run to my archives. And there, in my mother’s address book—itself a palimpsest of time with names and addressed scored through; pasted-in cards, names, and numbers; and looseleaf memoranda—there, on the first page under “S”, “Mr. Squirrel” in my mother’s unmistakable scribble. She also had inscribed his phone number and the village Saxmundum, seven miles from Westleton. His name had been crossed out. Had he died? Retired? I don’t know. Yet quick look online tells me Squirrell’s Taxis still exists, as it does in my memory.Making KinAfter accompanying a class on a bucolic section of England’s Pilgrims’ Way, seven miles from Wye to Charing, we ended up at a pub drinking a pint, with which all good pilgrimages should conclude. There, students asked me why I became a medievalist who studies pilgrimage. Only after the publication of my first book on women pilgrims did I realize that the origin of my scholarly, long fascination with pilgrimage, blossoming into my professional career, began when I was seven years old along the way to Canterbury. The seeds of that pilgrimage when I was so young bore fruit and flowers decades later.One story illustrates Michel Serres’s point that we should not aim to appropriate the world, but merely act as temporary tenants (Serres 72-3). On pilgrimage in 1966 as a child, I had a penchant for ant spiders. That was not the only insect who took my heart. My mother shares how “Susie found a beetle up on the hill today and put him in the cheese box. Jimmy put holes in the top for him. She named him Alexander Beetle and really became very fond of him. After supper, we set him free in the garden here, with appropriate ceremony and a few over-dramatic tears of farewell.” He clearly made a great impression on me. I yearn for him today, that beetle in the cheese box. Though I tried to smuggle nature as contraband, I ultimately had to set him free.Passing through cities, landscape, forests, over seas and on roads, wandering by fields and vegetable patches, under a sky lit both by sun and moon, the pilgrim—even when in a group of fellow pilgrims—in her lonesome exercise endeavors to realize Serres’ ideal of the tenant inhabitant of earth. Nevertheless, we, as physical pilgrims, inevitably leave our traces through photos immortalizing the journey, trash left by the wayside, even excretions discretely deposited behind a convenient bush. Or a beetle who can tell the story of his adventure—or terror—at being ensconced for a time in a cheese box.On one notorious day of painful feet, my husband and I arrived in Otford, only to find the pub was still closed. Finally, it became time for dinner. We sat outside, me with feet ensconced in shoes blessedly inert and unmoving, as the server brought out our salads. The salad cream, white and viscous, was presented in an elegantly curved silver dish. Then Jim began to pick at the salad cream with his fork. Patiently, tenderly, he endeavored to assist a little bug who had gotten trapped in the gooey sauce. Every attempt seemed doomed to failure. The tiny creature kept falling back into the gloppy substance. Undaunted, Jim compassionately ministered to our companion. Finally, the little insect flew off, free to continue its own pilgrimage, which had intersected with ours in a tiny moment of affinity. Such moments of “making kin” work, according to Donna Haraway, as “life-saving strateg[ies] for the Anthropocene” (Oppermann 3, qtd. in Haraway 160).How can narrative avoid the anthropocentric centre of writing, which is inevitable given the human generator of such a piece? While words are a human invention, nonhuman entities vitally enact memory. The very Downs we walked along were created in the Cretaceous period at least seventy million years ago. The petrol propelling the magic taxi cab was distilled from organic bodies dating back millions of years. Jurassic limestone from the Bathonian Age almost two hundred million years ago constitutes the Caen stone quarried for building Canterbury Cathedral, while its Purbeck marble from Dorset dates from the Cretaceous period. Walking on pilgrimage propels me through a past millions—billions—of eons into the past, dwarfing my speck of existence. Yet, “if we wish to cross the darkness which separates us from [the past] we must lay down a little plank of words and step delicately over it” (Barfield 23). Elias Amidon asks us to consider how “the ground we dig into and walk upon is sacred. It is sacred because it makes us neighbors to each other, whether we like it or not. Tell this story” (Amidon 42). And, so, I have.We are winding down. Time has passed since that first pilgrimage of mine at seven years old. Yet now, here, I still put on my red plaid wollen jumper and jacket, crisp white button-up shirt, grey knee socks, and stout red walking shoes. Slinging on my rucksack, I take my mother’s hand.I’m ready to take my first step.We continue our pilgrimage, together.ReferencesAllen, Valerie. “When Things Break: Mending Rroads, Being Social.” Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads. Eds. Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016.———, and Ruth Evans. Introduction. Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads. Eds. Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016.Alworth, David J. Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2016.Amidon, Elias. “Digging In.” Dirt: A Love Story. Ed. Barbara Richardson. Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, 2015.Barfield, Owen. History in English Words. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1967.Berry, Wendell. “A Secular Pilgrimage.” The Hudson Review 23.3 (1970): 401-424.Bright, Derek. “The Pilgrims’ Way Revisited: The Use of the North Downs Main Trackway and the Medway Crossings by Medieval Travelers.” Kent Archaeological Society eArticle (2010): 4-32.Craps, Stef, Rick Crownshaw, Jennifer Wenzel, Rosanne Kennedy, Claire Colebrook, and Vin Nardizzi. “Memory Studies and the Anthropocene: A Roundtable.” Memory Studies 11.4 (2017) 1-18.Easterlin, Nancy. A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2012.———. “Cognitive Ecocriticism: Human Wayfinding, Sociality, and Literary Interpretation.” Introduction to Cognitive Studies. Ed. Lisa Zunshine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010. 257-274.Haraway, Donna. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities 6 (2015): 159-65.James, Erin, and Eric Morel. “Ecocriticism and Narrative Theory: An Introduction.” English Studies 99.4 (2018): 355-365.Marcussen, Marlene. Reading for Space: An Encounter between Narratology and New Materialism in the Works of Virgina Woolf and Georges Perec. PhD diss. University of Southern Denmark, 2016.Oppermann, Serpil. “Introducing Migrant Ecologies in an (Un)Bordered World.” ISLE 24.2 (2017): 243–256.Oram, Richard. “Trackless, Impenetrable, and Underdeveloped? Roads, Colonization and Environmental Transformation in the Anglo-Scottish Border Zone, c. 1100 to c. 1300.” Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads. Eds. Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2016.Rodriquez, David. “Narratorhood in the Anthropocene: Strange Stranger as Narrator-Figure in The Road and Here.” English Studies 99.4 (2018): 366-382.Savory, Elaine. “Toward a Caribbean Ecopoetics: Derek Walcott’s Language of Plants.” Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment. Eds. Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B. Handley. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. 80-96.Sebald, W.G. The Rings of Saturn. Trans. Michael Hulse. New York: New Directions, 1998.Serres, Michel. Malfeasance: Appropriating through Pollution? Trans. Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2011.Walcott, Derek. Selected Poems. Ed. Edward Baugh. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. 3-16.Yates, Julian. “Sheep Tracks—A Multi-Species Impression.” Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Washington, D.C.: Oliphaunt Books, 2012.

The rise of Pisa and Genoa is almost as mysterious as that of Amalfi, and the mystery is compounded by the startling success of these cities in clearing the western Mediterranean of pirates and in creating trade routes, sustained by colonies of merchants and settlers, as far east as the Holy Land, Egypt and Byzantium. Pisa and Genoa had strikingly different profiles. Genoa had been the seat of a Byzantine governor in the seventh century, but after that two or three hundred years of quiet descended, savagely interrupted by the sack of the city by Saracen raiders from North Africa in 934–5. It has no obvious resources; it perches by the side of the Ligurian Alps and is cut off from grain-producing plains. The favoured products of its coastline are wine, chestnuts, herbs and olive oil, and it was out of its herbs and oil that Genoa perfected the basil sauce known as pesto, a product that speaks for poverty rather than wealth. Its harbour became adequate by the end of the Middle Ages, after many centuries of improvements, but its ships were best protected from the weather by being beached along the sandy shores to east and west of Genoa itself, and it was there that most of them were put together. Genoa was not a centre of industry, with the exception of shipbuilding. The Genoese had to struggle to survive, and came to see their trading voyages as the key to the city’s survival. As their city grew, so did their dependence on outside supplies of wheat, salted meats and cheese. From these modest beginnings emerged one of the most ambitious trading networks in the pre-industrial world. Pisa looked quite different. The city stands astride the river Arno, several miles from the sea; the final muddy, marshy exit of the river into the sea deprived Pisa of a good port. Its obvious assets lay in the flat fields stretching down to the coast, sown with grain and, closer to the shoreline, inhabited by the sheep that supplied Pisa with wool, leather, meat and dairy products.