Santa Maria Island, August 2, 2023 Autobiographic Description of the Fabulation Process.

Autobiographic notes leading to the Fabulation.

Inspiration (Figures 1, 2), choosing a point of view to notice, indexing (Figures 3, 4), fabulation (Figure 6), and turning the fabulation into affirmative and positive worlding (Figure 7).

To familiarize with the new landscapes, the natural and man-made structures and entanglements, one of the authors starts to sketch to capture structures, colours, and entanglements.

Figure 1: Santa Maria Island, south side of the Island Sketch 1

Sketching takes place across various areas of the island to help familiarize oneself with the landscape and its natural features. As the process unfolds, details emerge more clearly, and observations become more focused, with notes and annotations enhancing the sketches. The stone walls and sparse white buildings create a striking contrast against the green meadows..

**Figure 2:**Santa Maria Island, south side of the Island Island Sketch 2

The landscape of the south of the island is quite domesticated. Contrasting very much with the north (Baia de san Lourenço).

Figure 3: Sao lorenco Beach Noticing 1

The landscape of the north is lush. The hills are terraced- it is noticeable after a while. After capturing their details for the visual sketch, the hills reveal their human attempt to tame them, cultivate them, produce to sustain themselves and forage for their animals. The terraced land is now abandoned and leaves a ghostly impression of a land reclaimed by nature, but that once was the theatre of a very different dynamic between land, people, animals and the sea.

Figure 4: sao Lourenço Beach Noticing 2

One night, we are invited to a special event, in the north, in a small village of São Lourenço, overlooking the bay. The event takes place in an outdoor setting, with the traditional dish of Santa Maria, a sort of stew made with beef and local vegetables (which cannot be found in other parts of Portugal, or at least they do not taste the same). The dish goes back to the times when the island had triple the population of today- the whaling industry was keeping everybody busy. Whale hunting and its industry have been abandoned for a long time. Locals cherish their nature and often engage in offshore sightseeing of marine megafauna, which includes the whale shark and the manta ray.

A conversation with local inhabitants and returning migrants highlights the importance of natural heritage and marine megafauna to them. This makes the researcher revisit some of the sketches and focus on capturing the locals' impressions and on caring for their natural, rich biodiversity and more-than-human patrimony.