The Narratives We Tell
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“The Narratives We Tell” is part of an ongoing body of work entitled:
Remnants of Sumas Mountain
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This essay was written on the unceded ancestral territories of the Semá:th First Nation.
Where science, nature, and humanity are concerned, each disciplined area has its own narrative surrounding the state of the planet and the human action involved in healing or destroying the natural world. These narratives, from whichever direction they come, are reinforced by long-entrenched, publicly accepted, understandings and beliefs about the way the work works. Those same narratives are supported and encouraged by government policy and dialogue, media, social movements, education, and even the way a community is designed. Sumas Mountain, east of the Greater Vancouver area and south of the Fraser River, reaching into the sky and looking over the heart of the Fraser Valley, is one such example where narratives tell of growth and progress as necessary and unavoidable to accommodate the increasing population gravitating toward this place, too often at the expense of natural spheres, animal habitats, plant species, and delicate biodiversity unique to the area. While technically following guidelines and protocols, rather than considering how landscape, forests, migration patterns, waterways, non-human interdependent communities of beings, and plants and animals that have called this place home for centuries, all work together, builders, city planners, and policymakers still have a habit of clearcutting, diverting, and making creatures homeless, ending entire ecological ways of being, in order to develop gluttonous structures that aim to satisfy a growth of wealth and abundance deemed as deserving by the incoming population. The trouble lies, not in the development itself but in the way it is developed. How one perceives the value of an area, what narratives go along with those perceptions, and how a space is consequently developed must be called into question as we move forward in expanding our heavy human footprint. Rather than attempting to work with nature, or let some areas alone and develop others that have already been touched by man’s tainted hand, there is a story cultivated around a person’s sense of deserving permeating the minds of consumers. This ancient narrative, dating beyond the Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s, continues to take hold with today’s policymakers, developers, and short-sighted companies, where a reinforced culture of accumulation, expansion, want versus need, and toxic growth is perpetuated by public blindness to the damage these narratives incur. Negative growth is encouraged at every turn, in an eagerness to win a high price, at the expense of the natural environment’s right to exist.
Born on Sumas Mountain in Abbotsford B.C, a location that is expected to absorb seventy percent of a growing Fraser Valley population over the next 25 years, I have been privy to increased development of the area over many years. At first, it crept slowly up from the valley, over several decades. Then, with extraordinary rapidity, an explosion of growth began to unravel; a never-ending ribbon of development. This haven, which was once quiet and so far out of the way that as a child parents of friends would refuse to drive out here on account of the remoteness, has turned into a busy and highly desirable destination. Neighborhoods and subdivisions, with gates and without, pop up at various points along and off of Sumas Mountain Road. The growth seems insatiable as with every turn a corner of the forest has been pushed over and torn out, replaced by large modern homes with fresh farmed grass rolled out onto the small front lawn of the city-sized lot set against a backdrop of mountainous beauty. Mine is a complex relationship with Sumas Mountain. I try to protect the space I knew as a child, paired with the story of how we came to be here, how our family home was a dream come true; a paradise in the trees. Even my presence, though, and that of my family and others of my time and going back a century before me, are intruders on this land. We are part of an entirely different narrative that tells of commandeering space, privatizing and altering it to suit our own stories. I suppose all relationships are complicated when the narratives that help to create them are examined closely; when pasts are acknowledged for their darkness and faults, and when the stories we grow comfortable with proving to be broken with missing pieces. Perhaps narratives are created or bought into, to help manage what we don’t understand, or what feels uncomfortable. Perhaps they ease a sense of guilt; of intuitive knowing that some would like to put away. We develop culturally sustained and socially enforced stories that allow for the process of what has been, to get us here to this point, and to continue on. Land doesn’t belong to anyone – not really – we belong to it. We are renting this land and this earth, as Rosi Braidotti, the contemporary continental philosopher and feminist theorist, professor at Utrecht University, would say. Land goes back beyond all humans. The thing about a place is that time is always changing it, and the narratives shift ever so slightly. With each new generation, the way a place is known and remembered alters and we continue to start from an already shifted understanding of where we are and what this space is and should be. I wonder if Sumas Mountain remembers what it used to look like – used to be like. I wonder if it carries the hurts of outside forces and hopes for abundance in itself for the future. I wonder if the narratives will ever shift in favor of the natural state of Sumas Mountain over the expansive footprint of humanity.
If Sumas could speak, what would it say? Perhaps it would talk of its past, of the glory of who it has been, who it has housed, who it has destroyed, and how it has changed. It may likely reveal natural disasters, heat waves, plagues, catastrophic lightning bolts that ignited fires aimed at raging across forests from one side of the mountain to the other, or great floods that separated communities of indigenous peoples. Perhaps though, it would also speak of regeneration, of connection, of networks of trees with highly intelligent root systems; of animals, water sources, and all living things that work together to develop the biodynamic place we call Sumas Mountain today. Would the mountain though, wonder why nobody listens when it speaks out in protest against large swaths of logging, mining that digs deeper and deeper into its core, the erection of more and larger tanks to house oil, the business of old roads, and construction of new roads, subdivisions, and large gates designed to keep the wild out of the carefully cultivated homes of the rich? Maybe the mountain has been beaten down so long that it can only whisper; a small voice set against the backdrop of so much noise and distraction brought by humanity everywhere it goes. How then, can a person learn to listen to the mountain, to see it in all its glory, to respect it for precisely what it is, and not what it could be used for? How can a narrative change if there is no access point to recognize even the possibility that there is another way of being? Perhaps the way we see gets in the way.
The next chance you get to walk in a forest, to smell the trees, and feel the air shift as you wander about, take a moment and close your eyes. Block out the visual to illuminate other ways of being. Isolate yourself from the distraction that sight so often brings us. Distance yourself from expectation and what you believe you are supposed to be experiencing; what you’ve been conditioned to experience, see, and feel. Breathe deeply and exhale the reinforced conceptualization of the space you are in. In the forest, you might feel fear, aloneness, distress, or lack of comfort in your feet, skin, mind, and identity. The opposite might be conjured for you, where the woods is a fairyland of beauty and magic; a romantic space where no wrong can exist and only the purity of the natural world surrounds you. With so many visually stimulating elements in our everyday lives, valid and valuable in their own ways, we are often deaf to other senses, other ways of being in the world, and other narratives that exist for spaces we are undeniably connected to. We often miss what we should be both in awe and in fear of in these wild places. With your eyes closed in your natural space, enveloped by stillness, what do you feel? Are these your own experiences or are they narratives cultivated by socially and culturally reinforced ideologies and perspectives?
If this mountain spoke, or tapped you on the shoulder, nudged you, led you by the hand, or tried to express an alternative narrative of existence than what you have known, would you notice? Would the narratives of want versus need, or necessity of growth and progress, or the required sacrifice of natural spaces in order to support the expanding population, all agreed upon because it is just the way it is, perpetuate a complacency in you to see a road put through a national park or level a section of trees because it is more profitable than to build around them or elsewhere altogether? Would the distraction of your life keep hidden from you alternative narratives surrounding ways of being and ways of doing? There is always another way, another narrative, another perspective. If one is willing to learn to see beyond seeing, to listen, sense and feel, more than what they think they know, expectations can transcend and narratives of what a place is, could be, and should be, can shift to support a more full connection that mutually benefits the earth and the humans and creatures engaging with it, right down to ancient moss species, bugs and spores, and the water trickling here and there searching for the mother source to return to.
Thought and thoughtlessness equally lead to action in some form or another. Though, the kind of action spurred by a collective thoughtlessness over how humanity interacts with a natural environment, how we are consuming, how we are living, what we respect and honor by default rather than by deep thought, is changing our planet, perhaps unalterably. The narrative of a natural place is only as good as how it is told. One day perhaps we will tell stories of how our world became empty, leaving gaps and spaces where there is so much that is simply gone, missing, eradicated completely, and forgotten. This void will exist in the phantom owl hoots and quiet streams that no longer greet us. It will exist in the hot suffocating heat domes and uncontrollable wildfires. The co-existence of the planet, of this place, of Sumas Mountain, will no longer exist collectively. The animals and birds and bugs will suffer then cease their calls and life cycles. The plants will wither and die. We will wonder where the beauty of this place went, and the narratives we will tell ourselves will unlikely do justice to what was here, what was done, and what could have been, had we altered the story a little earlier, to change the outcome in the end. Yet, there is hope still. In learning to see, not just to look but fully and completely see nature and how it connects and transforms, we may learn to go beyond what we know, changing the narrative altogether.
There is arguably no more agile acrobat of the sky than the multiple varieties of barn swallow who migrate back to Sumas Mountain every spring. Arriving each year the species called Hirundinidae, a neotropical migrant that makes its way up through Washington State via the Pacific Flyway, pods appear in small groups, singles, or pairs at first, then in larger groups until the nests in our barn rafters, left behind by their ancestors year after year, are revitalized with fresh horsehair and moss lining, completely occupied. Each nest houses a pair of swallows excited to create their own family. Once arrived, the birds’ chatter begins in the nests early each morning. Sleeping above them in a renovated loft, I hear them Twitter and chirp, warble and gossip, from early on as the sky begins to lighten, until the sun peeks through the trees. As they wait for the day to begin they tell each other stories of what happened in the night, who ended up in whose nest, what dreams they had, what strange noises were heard, and what they plan to do that day. They will quiet down momentarily until a single bird chirps up with a new story to elaborate on. Soon everyone has an opinion and the floorboards ignite with dynamic swallow chatter marking the beginning of the mating season. I love watching them, seeing them, listening to them, and learning from their interactions with each other and with the space they occupy.
Early spring is the most exciting time for swallows and other species of birds who have returned from wintering elsewhere. Are they sharing stories of their winter holidays? Did an aunt or an uncle do something deplorable at a holiday party warranting a tall tale for those who missed the excitement? Perhaps the stories are about the long journey back to Sumas Mountain, where birds braved forest fires and drought, where humanity over the winter had flattened a typical generational rest area and replaced trees and wildness with homes, or highways, or warehouses, or farms, leaving the birds to build new nests there or brave exhaustion and find solace elsewhere. How many of them never made it past their halfway point? How many of them ate bugs that had been poisoned so farmers didn’t have to be bothered with managing the natural occurrence of insects? Maybe some who made it here told stories of getting lost on their way to Sumas; sound pollution might have thrown some young birds off the trail, who had never actually made the flight and were only running on ancient instinct to lead them. Was the chattering about harrowing travels and adventures that didn’t necessarily end in a warm nest to rest in upon arrival in our barn?
Most likely the abundant noise is simply a mating ritual. Not long after the flurry of arrival and several days of chatter, three to eight small white eggs with reddish-brown spots and flecks rest in most nests, waiting for their chance to hatch and join the party. At this point, the early morning gab sessions grow quieter and less frequent. The days grow longer and the swallows spend their time tumbling through the skies snatching up stray flying mosquitoes, flies, and other winged creatures. They dance triumphantly at dusk swooping and diving, nearly colliding with one another as they come close, yet knowing precisely where their wingspan can take them, devouring any fluttering bug they can find. After a long winter and an even longer journey, arriving back on Sumas Mountain truly is the golden pot at the end of their rainbow.
When the nestlings hatch, if their parents have lived to keep them warm at night or the nests weren’t raided by other critters looking for an easy meal, the chattering starts up loud and clear again. Only this time, the tone is slightly different; at once desperate on the part of the nestlings for food and consoling on the part of the parent bringing meals back to the nest, all day, every day to feed the insatiable baby appetites. Sometimes, the parents don’t return. Sometimes they return but not often enough. Sometimes there aren’t enough bugs to feed mom, dad, brother, and sister. Sometimes, the chicks don’t make it through the spring, on account of heat, dehydration, or emaciation, and are found dead and alone in their nests or fallen to the barn stall floor below.
Local swallow experts don’t always know for certain what causes a bird’s death. A myriad of reasons could be the answer, and a combination is likely.. Some claim heavy pesticide use wafting up the mountain from farms below in Sumas Prairie, which wipes out the insect population on one hand and poisons the birds who manage to find pesticide infected bugs, effectively killing them or impacting successful reproduction and healthy nestlings. Others suggest the demolition of barns and other man-made structures where birds have come used to returning year after year for decades, leaving them homeless when they return after wintering in South America or Mexico. The birds that survive need to set up shop elsewhere, often building subpar nests on the quick, in dangerous areas, with abundant predators. Draining and filling of local wetlands to build homes, roads, farms, and other structures limits the breeding ground for insects necessary to keep these birds alive once they make it to their historic nesting grounds. It appears though, that fewer and fewer birds are returning from winter holidays each year.
I wonder, as I sit and watch the ancestors of birds I knew as a child, tumble and swoop, dive and pivot, soaring along and through invisible air streams, where did Barn Swallows live before there were barns in this area? Where will they live if someday, we are gone, the mountain returns to nature and the barns break down and cease to exist? That question may not be required really, as the more populated this area becomes, the more houses are built, larger forested areas and older buildings are demolished, more nests get knocked down, and the more confused swallows become when they return one winter to find their home has disappeared. It's likely that someday, the Barn swallows will stop coming back here, for lack of food, water, home, or for an abundance of pesticide use to keep the wild at bay. Will you notice when the swallows stop returning? Will you see? Will you feel the lack of their fullness soaring in the sky? Or have they already become part of a form of natural blindness, where they, like other plants and critters, blend into the greenery and wildlife that is the forest, the mountain, and the natural world. Have you stopped seeing them already?
Among other flying critters, Mosquitos make up the diets of birds and bats who call Sumas Mountain their home – those annoying little pests who seem to find your ear on purpose, and whose females discretely land on your bare skin only to alert you when they’ve pricked the surface and are feasting on your blood. This is their only meal for perhaps several days. They hang on with all their mosquito might take that long drink necessary to sustain them for the remainder of their life until they expire of old age, become some critter’s meal, are swatted at and slapped by a human, drown in a raindrop, or find themselves caught on the windshield of some motorized vehicle. There are countless ways a mosquito can meet its end. But must they always be the nuisance they’re commonly seen to be?
On a spring night one June, sitting in the grass among friends and family on Sumas Mountain, one among us remarked at how few bugs were flitting about. We discussed the lack of dragonflies that had once been a staple in the skies as the air turned warmer each year; their rainbow-colored wings and mermaid painted bodies mystified those who watched them dance about, then rest on a blade of grass before taking off once again, soaring and diving, as the last rays of sun retreated from the day. I remembered moths the size of small Maple leaves coming out after dusk. When the back porch light went on, they’d collect there, glued to the glow of the glass, sharing the space with other moths of all sizes, shapes, and colors. I remember watching them flutter and rest, flutter and rest, in one moment completely manic and in the next part of a well-painted tapestry. There were also ladybugs whose ability to populate our south-facing kitchen window became an elaborate game between me and them, where at six or seven years old I tried to figure out where they were going with such dedicated purpose, as they sauntered here and there along with the glass and up the window crevices. In the grass too, those red and black ladies seemed to be everywhere. I’d let them crawl on my hands and arms and along with the toes of my feet. I’d lay so still so as not to disturb their busy trails. I assumed they had somewhere or nowhere to go for they just wandered here and there, endlessly.
On that June evening as we discussed our bug stories, wondering where they had all gone and lamenting at the lack of food there must be for the barn swallows and bats whose livelihoods depend on a healthy insect population, a mosquito graced our presence. Male or female we did not know, but it buzzed among us from one to the next, hovering before each face as we looked at it but did not move. Nobody raised a hand to swat it away. Nobody brought two palms together to squish it. We just watched this little mosquito float about our evening grassy meeting. Did she know we were concerned about her kind? Did she know we wondered where her brothers and sisters had gone? Was she trying to tell us the answer as she floated hither and thither? It would have been easy to knock at this creature’s irritating winged frame, aiming for the kill, and yes mosquitoes can carry diseases that decimate populations, but sometimes – sometimes– there are circumstances where we can let the mosquito go along its merry way and simply see it as it goes. And so we did. After greeting each of us there on the grass, the mosquito floated up to where swallows were ending their daily flight, handing off the reins to a collection of bats. Maybe this mosquito became one of their meals. Either way, this time around with fewer bugs than anyone could remember in the area, we let this mosquito go. He was free from our quick hands and irritated and disgruntled attitudes. Perhaps his life was put to better use than what would have befallen him had we reached for the kill. At that moment, we saw the mosquito in a different way, and we learned to go beyond the reaction cultivated in us by the narratives surrounding the humble mosquito.
Of course, later that month, mosquitos would return with a vengeance. It proved to be a good year for bugs after all, only with a slow start, who were able to feed the birds and the bats and the butterflies and dragonflies and spiders and all other manners of critters whose young depend on a healthy population of flying insects. Some years are not so fortunate and populations of bugs dwindle to the point where entire families dependent on them see young birds pushed out of their nests instead, giving others a chance to live on the scarce feedings available. What’s the cause for such a dramatic change in bug population each year? I’m sure natural and human elements are both to blame; the closer you look the more you notice how the dichotomy of us versus them, one or the other, and so on, ceases to be reality. Regardless of the collection of causes, humanity has a choice in the practices used to get along in the world. We can choose how we decide to see our impact. What will the world have come to when mosquitoes are on the extinction list? Will we even notice our hand in it? Will we celebrate never being irritated while trying to enjoy an outdoor gathering? What other ecosystems will quake in the mosquito’s wake? Will anyone mourne the last mosquito? Unless a connection is made between narrative and truly seeing, it's possible perhaps that mosquitos and other necessary bite-sized creatures, among other flora and fauna big and small, will become an element of the past. Perhaps the narrative itself, and even learning to see the world around us affected by our human impact, is only as good as the connections humans work to create with the natural world.
In early February 2021, a proud parade of painted rocks adorned with assorted plants, vegetables, and fruits, one day began to appear among the nooks and crannies of the trail tracing around our still relatively winterized neighborhood. Nobody I spoke to seemed to know where they came from or who painted them. Not the family up the street where Charlie Spruce meets Dawson Road whose multigenerational living arrangement sees grandparents, parents, and kids making Sumas Mountain their home. Not the other multigenerational family who lives down the road, up the hill, and at the bend leading to where the cul de sac begins. Not even the little girl at the bottom of the cul de sac who rides her purple bike and plays in the creek behind her house. Everyone on our street has access to these trails; many have built their own narrow access points from their backyards to join onto the growing web of networks leading from one end of the long road to the other, looping around behind the acreage of each resident. Yet nobody I speak to knows who has painted the rocks. Is it a mother’s creative endeavor in taking over the schooling of her child while Covid-19 blazed through our community in 2020? Or a child taking on a creative project for themselves? Is it an art student practicing the steady hand of a brush on a small smooth surface? Or is it some bored neighbor playing a trick on the rest of us to glean a bit of entertainment in their day? Is it perhaps just a way to connect to the environment, to show respect, in a soft and unassuming way?
Each day it seemed, for weeks, a new stone would pop up. An orange carrot in the crevice of cedar on Monday, and a brown spotted mushroom nestled at the base of a decaying stump by the following Friday. Soon, an eggplant, a tomato, an apple, a sweet onion, a few more carrots, and an edible flower, became part of the landscape. Then, further along, closing in on March and April and May, a second or third or fourth rendition of each vegetable appeared on different sized and shaped rocks, no bigger than the center divot in the palm of a large hand. It came to the point where each walk taken through the forest, following the same narrow trail, crossing the creek, abhorring the jutted carving of motorbikes widening other parts of the path, had me anticipating a new image on a new rock. The frequency of them slowed over time, but by summer’s end in 2021, a few corn cobs half sheathed with their kernels showing, peppered the landscape as well as several more renditions of the carrot and the mushroom and the eggplant, and one lonely strawberry, graced the secret corners of the forest. When no more stones appeared, I wondered where broccoli was, or lettuce, or beet.
As Covid 19 came to a general balancing off and parts of the world opened back up, the rock paintings failed to grow in number and I still had not encountered the artist. There is an access point to our trail from a road past the turnoff to Charlie Spruce Place and down Dawson road. It is from here that motorbikes and other small motorized vehicles have typically come. What was once a narrow footpath exiting onto a road, connecting to another narrow footpath on the other side which continues the full circle behind my neighbors' acreage and back, is now wide enough for four-wheel drive. There are a few houses along this road, many of whom are new to the mountain and not yet acquainted with its long-standing residents. Maybe those homes occupy a child, or an artist in training, or a person who likes to paint vegetables. Whoever it is, and whatever the reason, I like the narrative that tells it is someone using this as their way to speak to and connect with the forest. In gently participating in the growth of the tree community, walking its paths, observing and meandering slowly enough to find just the right spot to place a rock painted carrot, they would see the forest changing and breathing and living day today. The gift of these noninvasive and complementary painted stones, almost indiscernible, hidden among the nooks and crannies of the woods and not obtusely placed along the path, helps me to believe they too might be starting to understand the magic of this place. They too may connect to it and learn to understand it. They too may be learning to see it in all of its fullness and individuality. They too may someday work to save it. For it is perhaps only through exposure to a place that allows one to become intimate with it, to the woods and winds and winding ways. Through exposure and time, one can learn perhaps to see, then to go beyond what one thinks they know of a place, then to connect with that place on a whole new level. This perhaps is the way to change a narrative.
It matters where we place our values. It matters what we are taught to protect, to love, to cherish, and to respect. It matters what we ignore and where we place our time, energy, and focus. Integrity for the way we see the world, the way we treat the earth, and the way we interact with all entities, matters. There are some who will say that the earth must come second because there is so much human suffering in our time. There are those who will argue that the earth and all of its natural elements exist for humanity to enjoy and to use to create a better world for the future. We have been using the earth for centuries – is our world better today? Look closely. We have been extrapolating resources, unchecked, and the result is rarely a better place to be. It may be improved for a limited few and might look beautiful for a short time, but in the end, someone and something suffers at the hand of this exploitation. When a resource is gone. It is gone. When the swallows can’t find their way home or when the sky is empty of food for bats and birds, their end has come. When the earth is damaged to the point of irreversible chaos, no single human or nonhuman life form wins. These are the value systems called into question when the narratives we know about a human’s connection and interaction with nature are examined.
During the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, an event postponed once and nearly canceled again in the wake and continued effects of the Covid 19 pandemic circling the globe, a Kenyan runner named Abel Mutai stopped running a few meters before the finish line. He thought he had finished the race until Ivan Fernandez from Spain began yelling at him from behind to keep running. When Mutai didn’t understand and didn’t move, Fernandez pushed him over the finish line. Fernandez told reporters that if he had gone around Mutai and won because the Kenyan runner misread the signs marking the end of the race, there would have been no merit in his victory. There would have been no honor in the win because the race already belonged to Mutai. This is the value of integrity. This is the value of community; of respect. Rather than taking advantage, Fernandez ensured that the person who should have won did. This kind of heroic act is celebrated as the right thing to do, where values are honorably placed, where help is given and supported. If humanity can do this for each other, in a time when differences are exploited and separating citizens across the globe, it is possible we can collectively learn to place respect and support for the natural environment too. The race cannot be won without the competitor with whom we are tied.
Value systems are created in part by what is passed down from our families and direct influences as children. They are cultivated, encouraged, or discouraged, depending on the set of values the family system one is raised in wishes to uphold. These values are strongly influenced by the stories and narratives gathered and told in the societies, cultures, and communities we live in as well. Neighborhoods, schools, places of worship, shopping centers, city planning, your friend’s living room, and especially media, social, entertainment, and otherwise, and consumer products. Many of the systems we grow up in are from a time gone by that no longer applies today, and yet because of the powerful influence some values have over our minds, our identities, our choices, and our wallets, they continue to play a massive role in the way we design and go about our lives and how we see what exists around us. In order to know how narratives are cultivated to teach us how to interact with and understand the natural world, we must first learn to see. See the birds and the mosquitos, observe the weather and notice how one directly affects the other. See how you directly affect your environment and how your environment impacts others. Once you learn to see, you will be able to connect. Spend time with the rhythm of the land, in the breath of the trees, then perhaps you can decide on a narrative that brings us together, rather than isolates. The question is whether we are brave enough to take the first step, whether we have the courage to notice before we can even begin to see.
Sources Consulted:
Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Polity Press, Cambridge. 2013.
Moore, Jason W. Anthropocene or Capitalocene? PM Press, Oakland. 2016.
Oliver, Mary. Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to be Human. Columbia University Press, New York. 2019.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions. 2013.
International Fair Play Committee - Honesty Of The Long-Distance Runner ". Fairplayinternational.Org, 2021, http://www.fairplayinternational.org/honesty-of-the-long-distance-runner. Accessed 7 Aug 2021.