Coming home in 2024

Reader's favorites: contemplative essays, nature writing, and short stories

Watercolor by Julie Gabrielli

First, I’m so grateful to you all for subscribing, commenting, and sharing. A special welcome to new subscribers. 💚 Together, we bear witness to this world — not with despair, but with love, curiosity, and courage. Your trust encourages me to keep going and try new things.

My heartfelt thanks to all the new paid subscribers who joined this year. Your support sustains this space for the entire community, ensuring that reflections, stories, and shared wonder remain accessible to everyone. This season, we’re donating 30% of paid subscriptions to the Center for Humans and Nature, who explore what it means to be human in an interconnected world.¹

In Midsummer, the newly renamed and re-logo’d Homecoming became a place for nature writers to recharge, share, and discover each other. Still searching for 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.

Come mid-January, I’ll be serializing my novel, Flux, about an asthmatic climate scientist and closet inventor who approaches her life as puzzle to solve, a machine to repair. A rising academic star, she documents the harms caused by the fracking industry. She’s determined to expose the methane-leaking cracks in gas wells while hiding her own widening cracks—in her integrity, her relationships, her health, and her control over any of it.

Stay tuned for more on Dr. Grace Evans in the coming weeks. (Worked her ass off for that PhD, even lived in her car for a while, and doesn’t take well to being called “Ms.”)

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Most liked

After Homecoming’s rebirth, I was delighted that the first NatureStack journal was a hit. I also discovered that, following November’s disastrous election, readers have an appetite (dare I say a yearning?) for more contemplative content.

🍃01-02 | NatureStack: shared wonder

The Old Woman Weaves the World

Prayer is an expression of reciprocity

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Most commented

I started this Substack with the eventual plan to publish fiction.² I’ve found marvelous fiction here—from luminaries like

Eleanor Anstruther

,

Ben Wakeman

, and

Dr. Kathleen Waller

—with too many others on my to-read ASAP list. Indy lit is thriving on Substack! I’m heartened that Homecoming’s readers were enthusiastic about stories I published this year.

December’s St. Francis Prayer series was also a hit, prompting several suggestions to make it into a book, which is now in my personal Project 2025.³

📖 Drift and Settle

📖 Shapeshifting

Love is courage in action

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Most shared

We all have our reasons for sharing a piece of writing that’s just too good to keep to yourself. Maybe a post made you think or you learned something new. Or now you see the world differently. Or, in the case of the Old Woman, you’re devastated by bad news and need the comfort of a wider perspective.

I’ve included a bonus here, since the Old Woman already got a mention at the top. After rereading “When the Student . . . ,” I’ve decided it needs an update. Writing it changed me in ways I’m still processing, so that’ll be 2025’s first post.

The Old Woman Weaves the World

💡 There’s a tiny house for that

💡Every great building tells a story

🏛 When the student becomes the teacher

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How to find these stats

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You can discover all sorts of things under Stats. For instance, to see where your readers are in the world, click on “Subscriber Report.” Have fun with it!

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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.

What did you enjoy most about this essay? I’d love to hear from you. Or share it with others by restacking on Notes, via the Substack app. Thanks!

1. Their website is here. Track past and current recipients of Homecoming’s donations here.

2. I’m aware that fiction can be a tough sell, as most readers and writers come to Substack for non-fiction.

3. First up, a proposal to Chronicle Books. I think they’d be perfect. Putting this here so you’ll hold me to it.