🍃 03 | NatureStack: shared wonder
August 2024: Catch a falling star edition
One August, our niece was visiting on her birthday. Over dinner, we got to talking about “her” meteor shower, the Perseid, which coincides with her birthday.1 We quick-hatched a plan to seek out a dark sky for the show. After running through limited options, we decided to take our boat out and anchor in our favorite swimming cove at the mouth of Middle River, where it meets the Chesapeake Bay.2
We packed up, drove to the boat, and motored out the river in the dark. Without studying the navigation chart or the tides, we anchored on the side of the cove opposite to our usual spot. Though my husband and I had little patience to count falling stars, our niece and son stayed up and saw a good show. But in the bright hot light of morning, something was off.
Turns out, our keel was now hard aground, pinning us to the spot, and the tide was still receding. Our niece’s flight would leave in a few hours, so we couldn’t wait for the moon’s magnetism to restore our buoyancy.3 Good thing we had tow insurance. That’s a whole story involving first a failed attempt by a passing good samaritan and then not one but two tow boats, but our niece made her flight and here we are, just as this year’s Perseid wraps up the show.
In further service to nature writers here,
curates this lovely directory of nature-focused writers. It’s organized by region and topic and, if you’re a nature writer yourself, easy to get listed.
Now let’s go catch some falling stars.
🍃 wonder
Hari Berrow, I have finally heard the language of nature (spoiler alert: it is legalese)
’s posts are smart and funny and relatable, and often include a sharp swerve. Her audio is delightful. Expect to be moved, learn something and laugh out loud more than once.“It is far more important, from what I can see, to create accommodation for the non-human world now. We take up enough space already. The benefits of local growing aside for a minute, if you’re that worried about having carrots for dinner, get to Tesco, you feral whelps.”
Bryan Pfeiffer, A Wild Swarm of Dragonflies
is not only a meticulous and accomplished nature writer, he’s the one who recommended Hari Berrow to me. Thanks! Here, he explores a swarm in Rhode Island so rare, even an 86-year-old dragonfly expert has never seen anything like it. Leave it to Bryan to amp up our wonder by putting this mysterious swarm in context with other recent events. Despite our fascination with Nature, we know so little, really, and yet . . .“Even insects that fly around, kill things, and have crazy sex can also bring us joy.”
Mary Beth Rew Hicks, Swallowtail Vigil
I’m lucky enough to know
irl.4 “Unapologetic in her anthropomorphism,” she joins a biologist’s talent for close observation with a writer’s artistic eye. The most difficult task I had here was choosing the quote.5“But the process the biologist watches, the aging of one individual butterfly over a lifespan of days, is normal for a butterfly. Demise is their whole trajectory. The morphology of butterfly memory is only and always collective. They are built of ephemera that would melt in heavy rain, would shred in strong wind, would shatter in a freeze. They were never meant to last. And yet, they do endure, across generations.”
FogChaser, Turnings
It’s a delight to immerse in
’s writing and images while listening to his mesmerizing compositions. We have a double treat this month—look for another audio clip further down.“Everything, it seems, is a turning. A turning toward, a turning from.”
🍃 kinship
Nan Seymour, Come, said the lake
You can read more about
in her Reciprocity interview. Throughout the 2022 and 2023 Utah State legislative sessions, Nan served as poet-in-residence on Antelope Island, leading day & night vigils on behalf of Great Salt Lake, an experience she says, “has given me an entry into growing my lake-facing empathy.” What better medium to share that kinship than through poetry?
🍃 entanglement
Another audio treat from
, this from his June excursion to Yosemite, “Light Through The Valley.” Enjoy.7🍃 story
Adam Nathan, Moby
This section features stories that decenter people and explore more-than-human POVs, as I’m going for in my own work.8 The blurb for
’s 7-part story is: a postmortem account of Silver Water, Inc.'s breakthrough communication with sperm whales and the tragic events that transpired off the coast of Baja California Sur in August 2022.For a story about communication brimming with sub-stories and footnotes and dialogue, Part 1 left me tantalizingly both over- and under-enlightened. Even after his crazy behind-the-scenes9, I’m still scratching my head over how he pulled this off. Adam’s response to my comment on Part 1 was:
“All I can say is: ‘wtf?’ is the right response right now.”
Stick with it. The payoff is unimaginable and so, so worth it.
🍃 inspiration
Nina Schuyler, In This Ravishing World
Relatable people’s fears, hopes, and struggles foreground a planet and society in crisis.
, of the Stunning Sentences Substack, weaves together stories of doubt, despair, and anger, tempered by fierce joy, resilience, and embodied delight. Nina has a gift for dramatizing the tension of opposites. In one story, two sisters argue over what to blame for the mess of everything—religion or capitalism. Each clings to her position, until they find a common scapegoat: that arrogant Descartes and his pronouncements of human supremacy, I mean, come on.10I could easily write a whole post about my love for this remarkable book, but will close with a hearty recommendation. Stay tuned for another treat coming at the end of the month when Nina answers the 6 questions of the Reciprocity interview.
🍃 play
Stacy Boone, Seven Ways, I Dare You
August is the steep downslope of summer for those of us on an academic schedule. But there’s still time to play! And lucky for us, nature guide
’s July post is full of creative games to try while we cling a bit longer to going barefoot and wearing the same t-shirt and shorts for days.“We wouldn’t need an adult’s guidance to ‘see’ the outdoor wonderment. In six hours, we took one lunch break, and ate our snacks on the go. We traveled one mile, made a nature cookie, danced to the choreographed Thriller of Michael Jackson, played cow patty baseball, constructed a chipmunk trap (no success), hung a bear bag, built a fort, wrote in our journals, compared various scats, and collected rock of no small sizes (LOTS of rocks).”
🍃 hope
Rob Lewis, Am I Witnessing a Public Re-enchantment With the Land?
How could I resist
’s hooky title? Re-enchantment is a critical piece of repairing our relationship with the living earth. Fortunately, Nature has endless ways to beguile us, including by modeling resilience with “legacy forests.”11“We see that just as the land contains a will and memory that presses through no matter what we do to it, there is within us an ancient longing for that magic that also persists.”
Beached: Deep-sea support, forever chemicals, and a river water oath
Beached presents deeply researched reporting by wildlife and marine conservation campaigner,
. The newsletter is a central source for conservationists, researchers, policy wonks and fishermen. I appreciate that Amie doesn’t sugarcoat the bad news but also includes stories of amazing beauty and resilience.“Welcome to the latest edition of the Big Blue Bulletin – a weekly roundup of marine conservation news and updates. Expect good news, bad news, and a cute creature in your inbox every Friday.”
🍃 housekeeping
What did you enjoy most about this edition of NatureStack? I love to hear from readers. If you have any suggestions or requests for next month, do let me know in the comments.
If you enjoyed this post, a lovely ❤️ keeps me going. Another way to help others find great nature writing on Substack is to share this post by restacking it on Notes, via the Substack app. Thanks!
Read about more marvelous nature writers in the Reciprocity interview series, which so far has featured
and . Coming next: .
In case you missed the June-July double issue of NatureStack, it’s here:
Did I mention there was wine with dinner?
High tide at that point was over six hours away.
We were in the same MFA program, having arrived via an Orion Magazine environmental writing workshop. Each Residency, the faculty member who’d recruited us from those workshops held an evening gathering of the “Orion Troubadours.”
Hooray for footnotes! Here’s another: “Backlit by the sun, her branching wing veins shine like molten gold threads still powering her across the blue pane of sky.” I meannnnn ~ come ON! 🥰
For the full experience, the post is here.
Shameless plug - I just published a new story called “Shapeshifting” featuring a heron, which you can read here (but read “Moby” first!).
Full of spoilers, so stay away until you’ve read the story, you’ve been warned!
Nina doesn’t write like this.
For those who love forests, check out the work of the Old Growth Forest Network, founded by my fellow Marylander, Joan Maloof.
Julie, you make my heart sing. Thank you for the inclusion and thank you for introducing me to more nature writers. People who give me hope with their shared words and perspective. This listing feels so very hopeful. Pictures painted by the writers that are green and beautiful with possibility.
Woah… Julie thank you so much for the shout out amidst so many amazing nature lovers… and for including an image from one of my favorite misty mornings ever!
My Sunday reading list is ready! 🙏🏽