🍃Reciprocity: the interview

6 questions for Sydney Michalski

Nature writer, n. A person who delights in paying attention, being astonished, and telling about it.¹

“[M]y favorite nature memories weave together from all the little moments when we’re just hanging out together as a family in the forest around our house, chatting about which birds are singing, and did you hear the Ruffed Grouse drumming, and someone’s going to go climb a tree and someone else is going to poke around in the stream.” ~ Sydney Michalski

My inbox is full of treasure in the form of lovingly observed writing about place, encounters both wild and gentle, imaginative kinship and renewed reciprocity. These thoughtful, talented writers kindled in me the desire to learn more about them.

Today’s guest, Sydney Michalski writes Nature Moments, a weekly publication where she shares nature photography + stories to inspire you to develop a consistent practice of connecting with nature, by becoming an ever-greater-noticer, and cultivating that feeling of amazement that will ingrain nature connection in your heart!

Sydney is a Nature-enthusiast, amazement-prone, sharing the wonders of connection with the natural world through her art and writing. She’s also a wife and mom-of-three, living a homestead life in Downeast Maine, in the forest, near the shore.

Nature Moments always lifts my spirits, no matter how the day is going otherwise. Sydney’s audio narration, writing laced with humor, and gorgeous photos work a mysterious magic.

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Why are you drawn to nature writing?

Because nature is amazing! Nature connection is good for everyone and can change the world :)

I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s just simply the truth. I first picked up a camera as way to capture things in nature that amazed me, so that I could look back at them and share them with others. The more amazed I became by nature, and shared my amazement with others, the more I realized how very good it was for me, and how much my nature-amazement spilled over to benefit other aspects of my daily life.

Nature is the most universally beneficial resource in our everyday lives. There’s always something for everyone. It’s often overlooked, of course, but every single person who experiences a moment of connection in nature will be moved and changed in ways that often surprise them. A person who becomes curious will be amazed. A person who is amazed becomes a person who cares. A person who cares, connects. A person who connects, cultivates. Imagine the ripple effects!

The natural world is really accessible to all of us. Most of what I share is right from my own backyard, and is less about finding some spectacular and rare location or subject, and more about noticing the absolute wonder of all these many lives unfolding underneath our noses every day. I just never get tired of it :)

How does writing about nature affect you, in your work or personal life?

At this point, writing about nature is just entirely ingrained in my being. I kind of can’t not do it, and it just fits in alongside anything else our family has going on at the time.

There was actually a period of time when I lost my sense of nature-amazement. Our family had to move to Texas for a year to care for my mom during end-stage dementia, which was hard for a number of reasons. When we finally returned home, I was so relieved at having such difficult experiences behind me, but still overwhelmed at the enormity of settling back in to a homestead so long abandoned, such a setback to all the work we had been doing there.

I would walk outside, among these familiar spaces that used to instantly fill me with delight, and I would feel nothing but wooden emptiness. I realized that I had become numb, and it was really striking, because I had been easily amazed by nature for so long! But I remembered what it felt like to be amazed, and I had to just start practicing, like physical therapy, noticing, and being curious, and being amazed all over again. Photographing, and writing, and sharing, to cultivate that daily amazement again. It really brought home what a deeply personal effect this very basic practice has had on my life, and what a hole it left when it was missing.

While outside, have you ever experienced feeling small, lost or in danger?

I’ve never really felt lost or in danger outside, though I am conscious of the wildness of nature. My nature encounters tend to be close to home or in natural spaces that are easily accessible to my whole family. I am cautious by personality, and we practice being aware and careful of our surroundings to avoid harming or being harmed. But I do feel small all the time! It’s actually become one of my favorite practices.

The first time I was really struck by my tiny-ness, our family lived in the Pacific Northwest and we were hiking in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. We climbed a trail to the top of what looked like a small hill, but on the other side of the ridge-line, the whole world dropped away in velvety, forested wrinkles to the horizon.

We sat on the slopes eating wild blueberries and just staring at this sky-high expanse, and I realized how very small my children were, how very small I was, tiny dots on the side of a mountain at the edge of the universe. It was enormously comforting, and now I like to take a moment in any wide open space to notice just how very small I am in the midst of it all.²

What’s a favorite memory of nature from your childhood?

I didn’t actually connect with nature until I was a young adult, and don’t have any specifically nature-related childhood memories. I do, though, have lots of wonderful memories of nature with my own children!

Some of my favorite memories with my kids involve going to the shore, which is about 20 minutes away. When we arrived in Maine, the kids were 5, 8, and 9. Now, they’re 12, 15, and 16. But a trip to the beach is still the same. We get there at low tide and walk out into the tide pools. The kids immediately start turning over rocks and looking under seaweed and calling out their finds. “Guys, come here, it’s an anemone!” “Hey, I found a hermit crab!” “Over here, come see!” I never get tired of watching them show each other something amazing, watching their three heads bend over some little wonder, watching them excitedly wave Mom and Dad over to hurryup-and-come-look.

But also, on a softer, more everyday level, my favorite nature memories weave together from all the little moments when we’re just hanging out together as a family in the forest around our house, chatting about which birds are singing, and did you hear the Ruffed Grouse drumming, and someone’s going to go climb a tree and someone else is going to poke around in the stream. I often feel like it is now impossible to separate our family’s life from the natural world around us, and that’s everything I could have hoped for when we moved out to the homestead. :)

What do you hope for, for your writing?

I hope to inspire people to notice the natural world around them in their everyday lives. That’s all. Because that’s all it takes!

If you will once begin to notice nature, you will become curious. And then you will be amazed. And then you’ll be drawn to do it again. Something so small, a moment’s interest in the bird or the flower or the squirrel, and it transforms your place in the world. You can’t believe it until you experience it. Once you experience it, you want to share it with everyone, and you realize that this is what it takes to change a world. :)

A writer or other creative artist who makes you hopeful for humanity and the earth.

Whenever I see a writer or creative artist who is seeking honest connections, with nature, with truth, with each other, it makes me hopeful for humanity and the earth. :) Social media is inundated with content that prioritizes other values (influence, appearances, metrics, virality) so I just don’t participate. But there are a number of connection-oriented writers here on Substack! A short list of publications I’ve discovered in my own brief time here includes:

Jason McBride’s Weirdo Poetry; Michela Griffith’s Flow; Pamela Leavey’s Words and Pictures; Don Boivin’s Shy Guy Meets the Buddha; Candace Rose Rardon’s Dandelion Seeds; Bill Davison’s Easy by Nature; Bryan Pfeiffer’s Chasing Nature; Neil Barker’s Meditations on Nature; Karen Davis’ Life in the Real World; Emily Charlotte Powell’s While I Was Drawing; Chloe Hope’s Death & Birds; and Mike Sowden’s Everything is Amazing.

Unfortunately, I know there are many, many more that I’m missing; fortunately, that’s a testament to just how many wonderful writers and creatives are right here in this community, sharing and cultivating and encouraging connections in ways that are enormously beneficial to us all!

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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!

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For more inspired nature writing and artwork from the best of Substack, check out the articles in NatureStack journal.

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In further service to Substack’s nature writers,

Rebecca Wisent

curates this lovely directory of nature-focused writers:

1. thanks, Mary Oliver

2. Sydney wrote about it in her essay, “The Importance of Being Tiny,” here.