My heart is full right now. Maybe it’s just the simple things in life that make moments meaningful and bright: becoming immersed in the sunshine patterning through the John Boy Waltonesque lace curtains behind my writing desk, overcoming the fear of disposing of mice that we trap under our bathtub (not sure how they get in), enjoying the ambience and warmth from fire in the wood stove that we use to heat our house, wearing warm socks, being aware of the ever-present beauty and danger of the natural world—even in our meadow—and gazing upon the unimaginable and distant light from dead stars on cold, clear nights.
I’ve been watching the television series “Alone”, despite not liking most reality television. I’m not a fearful prepper or a survivalist. But I’ve always found the deepest connection with nature. “Alone” is different as far as reality tv goes. Ten contestants, who are experienced survivalists, trackers, hunters, anglers, foragers, herbalists, etc. carry provided cameras to document living completely alone in a selected area, miles apart from any other person on the show. They have strict rules and limitations of what they can take and what they can do. The episodes I’ve watched so far have taken place on northwestern Vancouver Island, Patagonia, and Mongolia. Having been to Vancouver Island and other remote places in British Columbia (though not as remote as where the show takes place), I find myself missing the tall cedars and hemlocks and magical mountains.
I like the show for its peoples’ resilience and insights. But what I like the most is how they overcome fear of big predators, how they adapt their knowledge of building shelters and finding food to actual survival, and how they enjoy the stunning beauty of nature around them. The show has made me rethink my own fears, like how, when I tried to learn to surf once, I never really got over my fear of the ocean or how I’m squeamish about dead mice, or live mice for that matter. When I used to trail-run in British Columbia, and after a few encounters with black bears (from a distance only) and one spooky feeling in a forest that had signs warning of a cougar in the area, I slowly became more afraid of running alone and haven’t gotten back into trail-running or even hiking without others. I’m looking into BOW Nova Scotia, though it seems to just have 1-2 retreats a year and the fall one in September was canceled due to Hurricane Lee. Other things: do more foraging. Our meadow alone is a rich place for berries, plants, and someday nuts from trees we planted. I’ve also done lots of archery in the past but am out of practice and want to get back into it.
My daughter and her partner have inspired me on what feels like my own burgeoning journey of learning how to overcome any fears of the wild. They live out West and welcomed a baby into the world in March this year. He was born two months early, and my daughter showed every bit of strength and resolution she has shown her entire life to be a great mama to him, in the NICU and of course since. Their weekends consist of camping, hiking, fishing, hunting, and bow-shooting (they compete in the Total Archery Challenge as well). While I am unsure of whether I can ever get past certain fears, like killing an animals for food and skinning, I am wondering about it now and have been for a while. My daughter had similar fears but went into the learning and has surpassed those fears. I already love archery, hiking, and camping. We grew up fishing.
There’s a point of all this that ties to ecofiction, and that is how many people learn and live traditional ways of living (especially Indigenous ways), who are reliant on nature but also depend on art express that connection. Two books I spotlight this month travel along a similar journey.
World spotlight series
This month I chatted with ’Cúagilákv (Jess H̓áust̓i), author of Crushed Wild Mint: Poems. They are a writer and grassroots activist of Heiltsuk (Indigenous) and mixed settler heritage. They are based in their unceded ancestral territory within Bella Bella, B.C. The book is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted to the poet’s motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist, and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Jess grapples with the natural and the supernatural, transformation, and the hard work of living that our bodies are doing—held by mountains, by oceans, by ancestors, and by the grief and love that come with communing.
Housty’s poems are textural—blossoms, feathers, stubborn blots of snow—and reading them is a sensory offering that invites the reader’s whole body to be transported in the experience. Their writing converses with mountains, animals and all our kin beyond the human realm as they sit beside their ancestors’ bones and move throughout the geography of their homeland. Housty’s exploration of history and futurity, ceremony and sexuality, grieving and thriving invites us to look both inward and outward to redefine our sense of community.
Book of the month
A big shout-out to Stelliform Press, which continually publishes unique, fascinating, and genre-bending Earth-focused novels and novellas. The latest is Tiffany Morris’s Green Fuse Burning, an eco-horror set in forests around my home— Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Tiffany is a Mi’kmaw/settler writer of speculative fiction and poetry. She has an MA in English with a focus on Indigenous Futurisms. You know me. I love the Weird. But this book has so much else to dig into: art, land, water, sky, and the necessity and beauty of decomposition, to name a few.
After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him—about his childhood, their family, and the Mi’kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita’s girlfriend Molly forges an artist’s residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up.
On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin’s history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest’s lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channelling that energy into art like she’s never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent and intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp’s decay, the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.
Other news
Although I haven’t been able to volunteer too much with the University of Minnesota’s Climate Literacy program, my article, Building a Database and Website for Eco-fiction Resources (download the PDF here) is in Vol. 1 No. 2 (2023) of Climate Literacy and Education.
This fall issue of Ecology Action Centre’s magazine (PDF) focuses on marginalized voices and climate change. As an editor for the magazine, I worked with Sian Borden on her article Decolonizing Climate Justice. This issue is one of my favorite from the centre so far. Raised in Montreal’s Black community spaces, Sian has been working in that grassroots non-profit sector for over four years as a way to pay it forward. Noticing a gap in care for environmental measures in her work environment, Sian looked towards her Barbadian and African Nova Scotian roots to see how these types of issues were mitigated in other locations. She is pursuing a Master of Resource and Environmental Management to strengthen her environmental skills with the goal of better serving communities in climate change adaptation.
Read more news at Dragonfly.eco!
Resources
In case you’ve missed these exciting resources at Dragonfly, which are constantly being updated, check ‘em out!
LinkTree: Find out more about my work.
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 writers’ experiences with climate disasters.
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 over 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.
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.
Copyright 2024 Mary Woodbury