Saturday night I waited until the black flies went to bed in the grass, or whatever they do, and then slid out the front porch door with a bottle of wine and a mug. My new pink jasmine’s perfume wafted through the screen from the sun room, peepers sang purposefully from down at the lake like they’ve been doing since March, and the on-and-off rain and clouds floated away as the stars came out one by one. I called my mom, and we had a long talk about the old days, about my mamaw and papaw (her parents) from their eastern Kentucky holler. They’ve long passed away, but if I could spend one day with them, I would jump into it arms wide open. This feeling represents a sense of ongoing nostalgia, solastalgia, and, yet, appreciation.
Book of the Month and World Eco-fiction World Spotlight
In 2015 I had a great talk with M Jackson. We explored disappearing things. She was a National Geographic Student Expedition leader at that time, and her nonfiction book While Glaciers Slept had just come out. Seven years later, it’s my book of the month! We had a great talk about the book, about life, about things and people gone, like her parents who had died and glaciers that were disappearing. I felt like I’d met a good friend, even though we wouldn’t talk again until just recently. In our conversation back then, despite the unimaginable losses when experiencing death, we both understood that optimism in life is a necessary thing, a sweet thing, even. She said:
“One of my favorite things to do on a glacier is to park myself on a nice piece of ice and sit there in total silence for ten, fifteen minutes. I try to build this time in after a day of crunching around on crampons, climbing, walking, exploring, photographing—doing all those other things that require attention and care. Sitting down and listening draws attention not to the sounds I am making; but rather, the symphony happening around me on the ice that I can only hear if I quiet down. It is in these quiet moments that the glacier reveals herself in entirely novel and original ways. There is so much in life that can be missed if we don’t settle down for a bit. My life is full of distractions—deadlines, flights to catch, a smartphone that beeps away, life life life. Listening brings things to focus, and often times it is quite surprising what draws the attention of that quiet ear.”
Antarctica is losing ice mass (melting) at an average rate of about 150 billion tons per year, and Greenland is losing about 270 billion tons per year, adding to sea level rise. -NASACoincidentally, I heard the song “Calling All Angels” (the Jane Siberry and KD Lang version) while on a run this week, and I remembered that when Dad died, I made a memorial video for him, with photos from all the years he was alive and of people who came before and after him, and that was the one song I chose to add to the photo collage. My sister chose the second song. It’s so odd how songs like that come on during random playlists when I’m running. It feels like that’s Dad’s way of saying hello, if I’m just listening hard enough; even though I don’t believe that is really possible, I want to think it is true. He also liked to run; it’s something we had in common. There’s a line in the song that goes, “Oh, but if you could, do you think you would trade in all all the pain and suffering? Oh, but then you'd miss the beauty of the light upon this earth and the, and the sweetness of the leaving.” Dad suffered quite greatly for many years, especially the last few, with the extremely debilitating late-stage pain of Parkinson’s. But even in those last times I spent with him, he loved to be wheeled outside, and though he couldn’t keep a conversation for long, due to his memory failing, occasionally he would say something like, “The crimson and golden summer hues are why I so enjoy coming out here.” And as the sun and flower aromas blanketed us, he would breathe deeply and smile as he took in the flowers and Indiana green grass around the nursing home pink-brick patio. Those were moments of listening to the wind and the insects and just being with my dad. Quiet moments. Maybe similar to M’s soft glacier sounds. The sounds of life that soothe you, even though you know: this won’t last forever or even much longer.
He knew the beauty of the light upon this earth, and I know it too. To me it’s not a religious moment but a moment of seeing the sweetness of nature and recognizing the goodness of life in it. And that’s why I can’t spend too much time focusing on myself, because there is beauty to pay attention to around me and natural places to keep safe and people in pain who need more love. Just like Mary Oliver advised.
M and I talked again just recently for May’s World Eco-fiction spotlight. She just published a debut novel, The Ice Sings Back. Since we last talked, M became a mother, got married, earned a doctorate degree, published another book, became a National Geographic Explorer, starred in a Netflix series, traveled to Antarctica, and much more. She said of Ice:
“The heart of this story is a missing little girl who vanishes in the Three Sisters Wilderness of the Oregon Cascades. Her disappearance sets off a chain of events that impact each character [four women]. Each of these women and the decisions they make impact one another, even if they never realize it. That’s critical to this story. To me, stories are never in real life tied up neatly, and as human beings we never have full context on the events in our lives. As such, I built a story where the reader, by peeking into each of these women’s stories, can see the pieces, the context, across the whole tapestry of the novel.”
Other News
Well, it feels like most of this newsletter is written, so I won’t post too much else. You can, like always, view new books at Dragonfly.eco just by visiting its front page. One that I really want to read is a Nebula Award nominee for best novel in 2022: The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor. I love octopi, and this story has them. It’s “a near-future thriller, a meditation on the nature of consciousness, and an eco-logical call to arms, Ray Nayler’s dazzling literary debut The Mountain in the Sea is a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.” Eco-logical! I love that.
Another new project is Queer Ecology: Eight Works of of Flash Fiction on the Intersectionality of SOGIESC and Ecological Justice. I’ve read a few stories, and they’re pretty interesting. I’m not sure what the plan is with these stories or if they’ll just be online. It’s worth checking out.
Resources
In case you’ve missed these exciting resources at Dragonfly, which are constantly being updated, check ‘em out!
LinkTree: Find out more about me.
Rewilding Our Stories: A Discord community, now expanded into a website, where you can find resources, reading, and writing fun in fiction that relates strongly to nature and environment. There’s a new submissions call-out for place writing!
New subreddit: Ecofiction. A place to find almost daily news about novels, articles, news, and films in the field of rewilded and ecological fiction.
World’s biggest playlist? Our environmental/nature song-of-the-week playlist goes back to 2015.
Book recommendations: a growing list of recs.
Eco/climate genres: They’re all over the place, and here’s an expanding compendium.
Inspiring and informative author quotes from Dragonfly’s interviews.
List of ecologically focused games.
List of eco/climate films and documentaries.
Eco-fiction links and resources.
Book database: Database of nearly 1,000 book posts at Dragonfly.eco.
Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation: Fiction aimed toward children, teens, and young adults.
Indie Corner: The occasional highlight of authors who publish independently.
Backyard Wildlife: A hidden gem exploring how we are rewilding our own backyard and meadow. Also check out our new meadow cam!
Artists & Climate Change. This is an extraordinary resource delving into all kinds of the arts focused on climate change. For a while now they’ve been rerunning my world eco-fiction spotlights. I’m a core writer for their team, and I’m both honored and grateful. Look for my “Wild Authors” series there. Note that this site is indefinitely paused at the moment, but the owner let me know that the content isn’t going away.
I’ve been helping with the social media at Climate Fiction Writers League. Check them out!
Copyright 2024 Mary Woodbury