Thank you for being here.

Homecoming is a place to step out of the center, to explore the edges, and to share our profound gratitude, awe, and wonder at being alive on this amazing planet.

Your presence makes me stronger, better able to face each day with a renewed sense of purpose and hope. Given all the bad news about the environment and climate melt-down, you may wonder if there’s any reason to be hopeful about the future. There is!

We come together from a desire to share our love for the world—including ourselves, however misguided and frustrating (and damaging) we can be. Our wonder is an outward expression of our love. It’s tender, laced with delight and with grief. Touched by loss and abundance.

We can align with the story that we—yes, even humans—belong here, we have a purpose, and we are loved. We are here to bear witness to the miracle of creation: to revel in joy, to sing, dance, paint, write, teach, tell stories. As Mary Oliver puts it:

Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Why subscribe?

As much as we long to live open-hearted, it can be too much sometimes. I know I can fall back to skimming the surface out of fear or weariness or sadness. Good thing we can always return to our belonging and renew our hope. With Homecoming, you’ll find writing on resilience (climate and otherwise), community, architecture, and the mysteries of our relationship with the natural world.

If you need a weekly dose of seeing the world through the eyes of wonder, awe, and appreciation, you’re in the right place.

Subscribers receive

• NatureStack, monthly journal of shared wonder gleaned from the best nature writing and art on Substack

• Reciprocity, interviews with Substack nature writers

• Building Hope, essays on architecture and culture in a time of climate collapse and environmental reconciliation

• Marcellus Stories, short fiction exploring how we, trapped and complicit in destructive systems we hate, might find a way forward. 

• Talking Back to Walden, monthly feature where we consider only the best passages of Thoreau’s 1854 classic, for what they might tell us about our present-day environmental woes and hopes. 

Paid subscribers receive

The satisfaction of supporting this project to give readers a sense of awe and appreciation of their surroundings. Plus my boundless gratitude and — if you’re into this sort of thing — a video of my singing dog, Brody, who is quite the diva.

From Summer Solstice until the Autumnal Equinox, 2024, I’ll donate 30% of paid subscriptions to Indigenous Environmental Network. Through a variety of alliances, they’ve been promoting environmental and economic justice issues for over twenty years. Withing five days of the Autumnal Equinox, 2024, I will make the donation and post a Note on Substack to disclose the amount and announce the next organization to benefit from your generosity.

Why I do this

“I tell you this / to break your heart, / by which I mean only / that it break open and never close again / to the rest of the world.”1

Besides being in awe of nature’s design brilliance, I’m endlessly inspired by the vision and persistence of creative people—writers, artists, my architecture students, foodies and others. Creative work helps me to hear the voices of ancestor guides and feel their love and compassion. Other days, the children of our children’s children whisper, Keep dreaming, don’t be afraid.

Thanks for reading this far. Now it’s time for a little rest. So says Brody.