Participant auto-ethnographic trail journals : representing more-than-humans through embodied experiences of nature-based recreators

Within industrialized capitalist cultures, more-than-human (MtH) biological environments are considered commodities that lack sentience and agency. This leaves MtH’s underrepresented as active agents in human-MtH engagements, without rights and without voice. Scholars have been reluctant to engage in MtH research due to perceived “messiness” or ethical complications of speaking to and for those who do not communicate with human language. Methodological innovation capable of highlighting MtH agency in diverse research contexts is integral to shifting cultural norms within Westernized and industrialized capitalist cultures that treat nature as a resource instead of life. This paper details novel MtH methods developed and practised with human nature-based recreators and their MtH counterparts in the Humboldt–Toiyabe National Forest. Rooted in auto-ethnography and journaling, participant auto-ethnographic trail journals rely on human recreators as experiential and communicative relays of MtH participation. The researcher's absence makes space for uninterrupted and synchronous human-MtH engagement. Trail journals are prime examples of how expert positionality can and should be afforded to human and MtH participants, and how researchers need to be brave and embodied in inquiry.