Creative and contemplative autoethnography, slow transit, and more-than-human governance in the High Tatras sub-mountain region

<ns5:p>Standard academic field methodologies often approach landscape observation through directive agendas, rapid transit, and extractive data collection. This essay reflects on a 10-day Culture Moves Europe artistic residency in Eastern Slovakia hosted by Machaon International, proposing a contemplative, non-directive autoethnographic methodology positioned at the intersection of biology and design. By embracing slow, multi-modal transit (a 16-hour journey from Sintra to Gánovce) and a practice of “self-extinguishment”—emptying ego-driven expectations to achieve environmental receptivity—the researcher documents how mountain topographies condition local human culture and ecological rhythms. The essay critiques the hyper-convenience of contemporary mass tourism, arguing instead that transit friction fosters deep ecological care and wandering. Furthermore, it examines local conservation efforts in the High Tatras sub-mountain area, advocating for a change from extractive eco-tourism toward regenerative models rooted in multispecies coexistence and more-than-human governance. Finally, a four-stage visual workflow (immersion, mental processing, memory-based drawing, and direct photographic rendering) is contextualised as a rigorous tool for autoethnographic visual research.</ns5:p>