Wildly Attentive/Attending to the Wild

Join me online December 16th + holiday book recommendations

🎙️ <tap, tap> Is this thing on?

Greetings Dear Reader,

I have had precious little time for writing and sharing here in recent months, but the happy news is that Northeast Wilderness Trust, where I am fortunate to work, continues to thrive. We just celebrated 100,000 forever-wild acres conserved since our founding, and the even better news is that we are just getting started.

I am writing today to share an invitation and a little reading update.

First, an invitation, and I apologize for the extremely late notice. Northeast Wilderness Trust hosts an online speaker series and tomorrow evening (US Eastern Time at 6 PM), I will be conversation with the author Cal Flynn about her book Islands of Abandonment, which readers of this newsletter may remember I loved and wrote about here. I’m so grateful to Cal for making time to talk about the questions and lessons of this brilliant book. You may sign up here, and if you are not able to join live, not to worry. If you sign up, you’ll receive a link in your email to watch the recording at your convenience. It will also be uploaded to NEWT’s YouTube channel. One last thing: Cal’s next book, The Savage Landscape, has just been announced and the subject is . . . wilderness! Look for it next spring in the UK and next summer in the US.

Second, I thought I would briefly share a few books that I have loved this year in case you are looking for your next read or a gift for someone in your life.

The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger. The core of this book is the story of the recent revolution in botany and new understandings of plant awareness, communication, and intelligence. It is, however, a great deal more than that. Schlanger’s complex narrative explores deeply how we think we know what we know, and the messy truth about what it takes to change our minds. It’s about the complex humanity of the scientific establishment, and it’s about how we might deal with climate grief. Plus, you get to meet so many cool plants along the way.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. For a first book, this is just a splendid achievement. Dalton is a foreign policy expert with decades of memos and talking points under her belt, and an identity rooted in city-dwelling and globe-spanning travel. She retreats to the English countryside to be near her family during the pandemic and emerges as one of our best living nature writers as she documents her extraordinary experience saving the life of a tiny baby hare. Dalton’s descriptive writing is astonishing and her commitment this fellow being’s independence and dignity is inspiring.

Finally, something from long ago and far away. The Hōjōki is a masterpiece of memoir and philosophy from a Japanese Buddhist monk Kamo no Chōmei. This is a voice from another era, a troubled time. The author was born to a privileged family and suffered some disappointments in his career. He was also witness to a period of rising violence, disaster, and social distress, and turned in response toward a very imperfect and incomplete (in a good way) life of isolation in the mountains. This is a precursor text to Walden that few in the English-speaking world have ever heard of that speaks honestly to the question of what we can and can’t give up as we make our way.

Cal Flynn’s book and all the books above are wildly attentive to the miracles of the living world that surrounds us. They are also attending to, that is to say caring tenderly about the wildness of that world as its essence.

Leave a comment if you have read any of these or if you have other book thoughts or wild thoughts to share.

Sending all best wishes for a peaceful and wild winter solstice,

Nicie