🍃 08-09 | NatureStack: shared wonder
January - February 2025: "defiant, raging hope" edition
Imbolc’s invitation to connect
Since the first of the year, I’ve noticed that many of my favorite nature writers and artists have given special attention to connection, relation, and emotion. This may be my own lens shaped by a need for such nurturing, or it may be an immune-system response to the ongoing barrage of assaults on our humanity, our humility and sense of decency.
Writing and reading about encounters with the marvelous beings we live among is always grounding, good for the soul and for our mental and emotional well-being. The wonder of witness and personal connection with, say, jackdaws. Or the acrobatic drama, sounds and smells of fulmars sweeping and nesting on winter cliffs. Waterfowl carrying on in a storm. That curious blend of insouciance and hospitality.
The past two months have felt liminal, a threshold from fraught knowns into ominous unknowns. February 2, Imbolc, marked the threshold between the winter solstice and spring equinox. In this time of in-between, the wild world goes on, living and breathing and breeding and speaking, always. Speaking to each other and, when we are attentive, to us. When human events become overwhelming, these connections endure. We are invited to participate in whatever form we choose.
Each season, we donate 30% of paid subscriptions to a worthy environmental cause. This season, it’s the Center for Humans and Nature, where they explore what it means to be human in an interconnected world. Track past and current recipients here.
To support Substack’s nature writers and readers, Rebecca Wisent 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 indulge our curiosity and explore
🍃 Wonder
Sophie Strand, Find Your Biophonic Niche
opens with a lovely blessing for the new year, invoking rain, soil, snowdrops, trillium, seashells and more. She segues into an inventive consideration of soundscapes and acoustic niches, biophony, geophony, and anthrophony. Along the way is the gentle nudge to be quiet and listen more.“When you go outside at night and hear the heartbeat pulse of peeper song below the sonorous whooping of a barred owl, the streaking cackle of coyotes on the hunt somehow gliding in and out of the rush of the mountains stream, you are hearing the product of melodic, evolutionary cooperation.”
Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, The damage done by “invasives”—the word, not the plants
presents a thoughtful, well-researched dive into the word “invasive,” which may be a fancy term for the equally misguided “weed.” Years ago, I read an essay by Michael Pollan, “Weeds Are Us,” that completely flipped how I think about all plants, and our relationship with them. When we step out of the center and see the bigger picture, surprising insights emerge.“Our lack of conscious connection with plants and place and the planet is an ongoing crisis, one that empowers the degradation of the living world to grind on with awful intensity, whether far away or nearby. We need to heal this wound by re-embracing endearing relation with the ever changing intricacy of actual ecological interactions.”
Bill Davison, The Duck Spa: Finding Solace in a Fractured World
’s writing is riveting. Pretty sure I held my breath reading this. The effect of both words and photographs is calming and that is a gift.“I want the birds to come close, not just to photograph them, but because their presence offers something our screens and anxious headlines never can. The undaunted birds, so free, so near, carry no burden of tomorrow's fears. In their eyes, I see a reflection not of my worried self but of something older and wiser – a world where that sparkle in their eye is worth more than gold.”
David E. Perry, Stepping Deliberately Into The Storm
This is a gorgeous meditation on what really matters.
’s narration perfectly complements his sublime words and photographs, which somehow both calmed and energized me. Lessons on how to be in these chaotic times are all around us. David shows what wonders emerge from not resisting the storm. And in remembering that storms do pass.“No one I encountered within the storm was running from it.
Not a one.
Each just …was,
a part of something profoundly real,
unfolding in its fertile moment.”
🍃 Kinship
Rebecca Hooper, come to the cliffs
’s lyric incantation casts a spell. Immerse all your senses into the soundscape, the photos, and her poetic reading. “Come to the cliffs to fall in love, to remind yourself what love tastes like (seasalt, gushing air, feather).”
🍃 Entanglement
The Good Whale podcast
This story includes many perspectives and raises questions about our relationships with wild creatures, our devastation of their homes (in this case, the ocean), and our responsibility (if any) to them. It’s brilliantly hosted by journalist and novelist, Daniel Alarcón. (Thanks to
for this recommendation.)Episode 5 is a wild departure from the usual podcast format of interviews, host reflections, and soundscape. It’s a musical from the point of view of a whale, considering different possible outcomes of the story.
Gift link to the New York Times article.
🍃 Immersion
I listen to Cory Wong and Jon Batiste’s album, Meditation, while writing. It conjurs calm and focus and connects me to beautiful places. Here’s a selection:
🍃 Story
I’m delighted that my essay, “Song of the Chesapeake,” is included in the just-released anthology, Dark Matter: Women Witnessing: Dreams Before Extinction. This collection, selected from the first ten years of the online journal, contains essays, poems, and artwork by 67 women—all of it responding to the many forms of devastation we face in these times. My essay reflects on Water Walkers, usually indigenous women who pray over and for their home waters. As a movement, it has spread to other communities and waterways.
Read about the anthology and order a copy:
🍃 Hope
Chicago keeps its New Year’s resolution
All city buildings now use 100% clean power, from Grist, thanks to increased efficiency and the largest solar farm east of the Mississippi.
The Year in Cheer
144 ways the world got better in 2024, from reasons to be cheerful. From maker spaces to youth mentors, landfill diversion to free child care, to walking off loneliness and creative local food-growing solutions, to safe cycling classes for kids, beavers returning to London, restoring tidal wetlands, and much more!
Amanda Royal, Tigers doubling, mangroves multiplying, climate writers booming, Teslas tanking and more
I love
’s newsletter for her focus on good news in the environmental world (which is to say, the world). I was taken by what she said in earlier issue back in January:1"When I consume bad news, I raise a few mental shields. When I discover good news, I let all boundaries down. I let it sink in deep. I turn it into a meditation, where I envision the life that is healing from these monumental successes or tiny strokes of beauty. I feel it in my veins, enlivening and urging my hands and heart to take environmental action."
And her distillation of the newsletter’s purpose:
“Earth Hope, in a nutshell, shares reminders of how we make environmental progress. We don’t do this to provide a balm, but instead to inspire individuals to take action, to remind ourselves that the seed of success is often defiant, raging hope.”
Her latest post is full of links to stories about biodiversity, the flourishing of climate science writing, tree planting, protecting endangered species—in short, people caring and taking action to protect and restore.
🍃 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 had recently featured
, Jeanne Malmgren, , and. Most recently, spoke about her special blend of photography and words:
You must put so much of your precious time into sharing this Julie, I know from adding the odd few I do to the bottom of my own posts it takes time to add a thoughtful caption and time is never a commodity in bountiful supply is it! Huge thanks for everything, it is much appreciated!
Julie, thank you for this little nature stack. I have just returned from a week of walking through the mountains in Tasmania, and these essays are exactly the things that I want to read more of. We need more stories of connection and love, and also from those other non-human perspectives. Thank you :)