🍃01-02 | NatureStack: shared wonder
June-July 2024: “Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight” edition
Celebrating midsummer
“I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.” (Fairy, Act 2 Scene 1)
When I was a kid, my class performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream in two consecutive years. The humor in it works perfectly for 11 and 12 year olds. I remember making a papier-maché donkey head mask for Bottom. The second year, I shared the Helena role with another girl.1 And the whole idea of a play within a play has intrigued me ever since. (This may explain why I adore Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.)
What do you know!? It’s midsummer! The perfect time to celebrate something new, fall in love, revel in mistaken identity, slip into absurdity, and overdo it with no regrets.
New season, new name
Building Hope is now Homecoming.
Nearly every day, I discover another fabulous nature-focused writer here, so I decided to refocus my newsletter. I will still publish essays on architecture and culture in a time of climate collapse and environmental reconciliation. And now this newsletter will also be a place for nature writers to recharge, share, and discover each other. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even find a better word for what we do, besides “nature writing.” After all, we’re dreamers, gardeners, farmers, rewilders, biologists, birders, trekkers, habitat restorers, designers, voyagers, artists, walkers, photographers, poets, ancestor-whisperers, guides, activists, ecologists, soil-makers, mythologists, storytellers, and so much more.
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.” (Oberon, Act 2 Scene 1)
Two new features in one: NatureStack
I curated today’s journal to bring you some of the best nature writing and artwork on Substack.2 Next week begins our second community feature, Reciprocity, an interview series with nature writers. Later in July, I will return with an essay about visiting the famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto’s masterpiece, Villa Mairea, which I’ve adored3 since my deep-dive analysis of it in grad school.
To read more from and about these talented folks, please consider becoming a free or upgrading to paid subscriber. From now until the Autumnal Equinox, I’ll be donating 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.
Special thanks to
for helping me to strategize this refocus and for weighing in on an absurd number of graphic design choices. Nobody says it like Tara:“The lines, proportions, PLANTS in the slime trail of life, and the angle of Madame Snail’s chin are as exquisite as snail-art gets. Despite her prim pride, I can see [her] getting on the dance floor for Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive.’ She’s got it all.”
I imagine Tara talks about wine with similar wit.
More thanks to
and for initial sparks and conversations. In further service to nature writers here, Rebecca curates this lovely directory of nature-focused writers:
Now, let’s go hang pearls in some cowslip ears!
🍃wonder
Sydney Mikalski, In Search of Light
Every Nature Moments post encourages me to pause, notice, and appreciate. In our Northern Hemisphere season of abundant light, this post enchanted me.
’s audio narration and her splendid photography add to the delight.“I wander out into golden hour light when my heart is uneasy, because seeing more deeply is an anchor in a world that can run a little stormy.”
David E. Perry, Birdsong and Prairie Smoke: abundant, wild and perennial.
’s photographs are immersive and sublime. They tell one story and the words another—both stories of deep love. There’s even an audio of birdsong. To read this is to travel with a devoted guide and be transported into kinship. “Our wonder, if we have any toward it, is our own dance with life. We must prepare our own hearts to be torn by their sadness, healed by their wonder. We must whisper our ‘yes’, then make our choice. It is we who set aside time. We who read. Who listen. Who gaze.
We who daydream.”
Bill Davison, Take Your Cues from the Muse
Who doesn’t love an audio narration by
’s wife, Mercy? The author Amy Tan is making the rounds with her amazing book of bird appreciation and impressive drawing skill. Richly illustrated with Tan’s bird sketches and quotes from another birding artist, Kyo Maclear, this post encouraged me to more deeply notice the amazing world around me.“The key is slowing down. The beauty was there all along, but we tend to move too fast to notice it.”
Chloe Hope, points in space and time
I love basking in
’s way of seeing the world. Where else would a squirrel become a sensei and a juvenile robin named Hood a surly teen?4 Or a bird carry the name Olivia (because “It suits her”)?“An unspoken wisdom abounds within the natural world and, deaf to a silence that might save us, it seems as though we are trying to compete with it, rather than attune to it. It is a strange pathology, the need to compete with the very thing from which we emerged.”5
Angie Kelly, Wild Devotional
This is from last winter, just the chill those of us immersed in a heat wave could use. I love how
meanders from appreciative observation into the deeper territory of awareness and questioning, and the surrender of wild entanglement. I gasped at the end.“A myriad of emotion rose in my chest, both peace and longing. Gratefulness and frustration. Nostalgia and hope. I have never felt I could find enough ways to say thank you. Never felt like any of my offerings of gratitude or experience with this land and sea was enough to convey what it truly is to me. Even what I write will fall short, because what are words to this truth? Only a reflective approximation. Only a feeble gesture toward the magic and mystery of the real thing.”
🍃 kinship
Troy Putney, Effortlessly
This poem stands on its own. I do want to say that I was delighted to discover
’s newsletter last year via his epic post, “Fallen Giants.” I knew I’d found a kindred spirit—and his About page clinched it:“I am a writer, photographer, and conservationist hoping to help others fall in love with this planet and join in the movement to create a more sustainable and just society.”
Link to poem (includes gorgeous photo).
Just as the mighty blue whale has no conception of its enormity as it crosses vast oceans, each of our souls, carried in these bodies, through times of joy and periods of great pain, swim effortlessly through eternity on love’s endless sea.
🍃 entanglement
Maybe you’ve heard that, in 2007, the Oxford Junior Dictionary removed a bunch of precious nature words from its dictionary for children and, worse, replaced them with crap like broadband, wireless, analogue and cut and paste.6 And that author Robert MacFarlane and artist Jackie Morris refused to let that stand and created a masterpiece book called The Lost Words Book of Spells, to conjure and celebrate our entanglement with the strangeness, magic, and beauty of the wild.
That picture book’s release caused a spontaneous gathering of musicians from around the world to create a recording of “Spell Songs,” including this marvelous song. Let it put you in the mood for your own outdoor immersion, inspired by Tania Tyler and Jane Pyke.
Tania Tyler, The Vermont Notebook - Part 1
A Sacred Plant Medicine workshop at Sage Mountain with herbalist and author Stephan Buhner opened
to a transformative encounter. I recognized her mind’s skepticism and frustration, cheered the revelatory rewards, and smiled at “I don’t think I did it right.” We all have access to this boundless wisdom and encouragement—if only we stop resisting and listen.“Words suddenly filled my head. I scribbled as fast as I could into my notebook, not thinking, just writing and staying with the flow…”
Jane Pike, of the time when animals were still people
The title of this pulled me in, and the subtitle spun me round: “of the time when the land named herself after the movement of the hawks.”
’s audio narration is the perfect accompaniment to a wild encounter.“The forest knows grief, she tells me, but here we call her something different.
In the forest, we refer to her as reverence.”
🍃 story
Elisabeth Ingram Wallace, Liquid History
My intention here is to share short fiction. I’m sure they’re here, but so far I haven’t found stories that decenter people and explore more-than-human POVs, as I’m going for in my own work.7 For today, here's a piece of flash fiction that blew me away when I read it five years ago and that haunts me still.
“Feels the tides turn under her, the ocean Septembering – remembering, how when she was young she had been empty and nothing made her full, no journey was the end. The oceans pool back into her cold empty spaces.”
Read it here, on SmokeLong Quarterly.
🍃 inspiration
I know Leah Rampy from the nature-and-soul retreats I help facilitate in West Virginia. Her book was recently published and already being acclaimed: the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Spirituality Category; and the 2024: National Indie Excellence Awards, winner in both the Nature Category and Spirituality Category.
Leah calls for us to renew our relationship with Earth amid uncertain times. Facing directly into the devastation of climate chaos and biodiversity loss, she leads her readers on a soul journey through grief and loss to also claim the beauty, joy and possibilities available when we reconnect with Earth. Through personal experiences and lyrical stories of whales, cedars, sparrows, and more, we see the necessity and urgency of learning from the wisdom of our kin in the natural world. Even now when the world as we once knew it is ending and a new story lies beyond what we can envision, we can lay stepping stones toward a diverse and vibrant world of oneness and mutual flourishing.8
🍃 hope
I love good news. I’m obsessed with the idea that there is exponentially more good news than bad, but we hear of such a tiny fraction of a fraction that it’s too easy to slide into despair. Whether that’s accurate or not, I appreciate Grist’s commitment to publishing good news. Like this recent article: “The Mille Lacs Band will see the return of 18 acres of state trust land.” The subhead reads: “Of several landback bills the Minnesota Legislature considered this year, the Mille Lacs measure was the only one to make it through.” Check it out and carry that good feeling into your day.
“We’re in a new era of restoring land back to Indigenous people, and people shouldn’t feel threatened by that,” Applegate said. “We’re the original caretakers of all of this land, and who better to manage it than the tribal nations?”
🍃 housekeeping
Talking Back to Walden is on hiatus until the August edition on heat. This T.O.C. has links to all previous editions.
Next Thursday,
’s interview kicks off the Reciprocity series. She’ll be followed by , then , and more to come!Special thanks to
for the sharing gorgeous heron drawing in the midst of her scramble preparing for her big show this fall.What did you enjoy most about this edition of NatureStack? Please consider becoming a free or upgrading to paid subscriber. From now until the Autumnal Equinox, I’ll be donating 30% of paid subscriptions to Indigenous Environmental Network, which I was happy to hear about from
. Through a variety of alliances, they’ve been promoting environmental and economic justice issues for over twenty years.If you enjoyed this post, a lovely ❤️ keeps me going. Another way to show love is to share this post with others by restacking it on Notes, via the Substack app. Thanks!
Having just read this quick summary of her character, I’m wondering if my life can be explained by that fateful casting: “Compared to the other lovers, Helena is extremely unsure of herself, worrying about her appearance and believing that Lysander is mocking her when he declares his love for her.”
Though this will be a monthly feature, this one’s a special double issue, so issue 03 will come out in August.
and been in awe of
Is it wrong of me to delight in hearing the f-bomb in Chloe’s soothing voice?
It was a tough call to choose this over this: “My mentor (Death) has made me acutely aware of how improbable and how fragile any and all of life’s unfoldings truly are.”
The outcry was swift and vocal, to little avail.
I’m all for self-promotion, but I resist linking to one of my own stories (for now?).
Available at Four Seasons Books, Shepherdstown, WV, and online via Bookshop, and other popular book sellers. Find Leah on FB or IG
Welcome to the world, NatureStack Journal and Madame Snail logo! This roundup looks fantastic. I read a few of these Stacks currently, and they’re top-notch. The others are new to me.
Your midsummer Titania and Oberon references anticipate my vacation re-post coming soon out of my archive. It’s one of my favorites, and quite a frolic by the time I get to Shakespeare’s fairies. 🧚🏼 Happy midsummer!
Beautifully done Julie! Thank you very much. Love the new logo too!