This Isn't It

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And just like that, I'm going back to Substack

YES, I am switching platforms AGAIN.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

What is love if it's not attentive?

There is no human who can know my land (or love it) better than me.

New Moon Reading Reports

Lessons in Living Alongside Monsters: Reading Soil by Camille T. Dungy

I am horrified by the circumstances that have forced Dungy to develop this skillset of thriving under and in spite of the crush and fear of our culture. But I am deeply grateful that she chose to share it with the world. This is the kind writing– the kind of leadership–that we desperately need.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Fear and Joy

I confess I harbored a perverse hope that I would hear that the trees are afraid. It’s a bit like doom-scrolling—sometimes it feels good to have our fear reflected in the world around us.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

What Does it Mean to Love the Land?

Each week, I provide a gentle turning practice to help us shift our perspective. You may find it helpful to have a journal at hand, but it’s not required. I hope these practices of body and heart bring you peace and connection in the middle of whatever storm is

Full Moon Essays

I Choose the Bear (But Not for the Reasons You Might Think)

I live in Alaska. I hike. The bear vs man debate–where women theorize whether they would rather meet a man or a bear while hiking alone–is not a theoretical question for me. I choose the bear, but not for the reasons you might think.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Love the Land You're With

We cannot afford to limit vacation-able places to a few shrinking oases of culture and natural beauty.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Road Noise Isn't Background Noise, Either

These days, learning to love the more-than-human world is more heartbreaking than romantic. But I find more joy in learning to love the birds and keeping company with them in their difficulty than I do in ignoring them. I hope you do, too.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

The True Extravagance of Wild

Many of us love “nature” and support “bird” habitat and “wildness” with little concept of the extravagant diversity of the more-than-human world.

New Moon Reading Reports

Flyways

If political borders cut apart our world, then the flyways of birds crossing them over and over, year after year, do the hard work of stitching us back together.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Birdsong Isn't Background Noise

Now, when I sit on my porch, I don’t just see a tree, I see a home for a Sandpiper family. It’s like the difference between hearing background music at the coffee shop and listening to your friend play guitar and sing while you sip. Its the difference between being alone and being connected.

Full Moon Essays

Free as a Bird

Even the little bit of knowledge I've gained about birds is reshaping how I see the world in profound ways.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

First Bird

I believe our deeper meaning and purpose is in that connection, not just between words, but between beings—human and nonhuman alike. When we pay attention to others, we learn about ourselves. We find our place in the larger life story unfolding on our planet since time began.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

A Pathway for Connection

Can you feel any of this in your belly or your bones as you remember? Is there a part of you that feels like it’s humming along to a tune from outside of you?

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Touch Grass

Being with trees and plants is being home.

New Moon Reading Reports

Finding the Mother Tree: A Reading Report for the New Moon 🌑

This book isn’t about the change we want, it’s about the change we need. Deep, soul-shifting change that can motivate a person to upend her life repeatedly over an entire career and still decide the sacrifice is worthwhile....

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

On Eating Intelligent Plants

The insight that plants are aware in ways that are new to our culture is disconcerting when it comes to food.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Reviving Lost Love Stories: Ancestral Plants Near & Far

Love for plants lives in my bones, in my DNA, but I feel the absence of family stories to go with it.

Full Moon Essays

Origins

Some family members gave us the tremendous gift of a family cruise to the Galápagos islands earlier this year. They had traveled there before, and they wanted the rest of the family to experience it, too.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Sharing Plant Stories

As part of your subscription to This Isn’t it, I’m bringing you a 5- minute gentle turning practice for your midweek. You get a prompt for a meditative activity for disentangling from the default American mindset and connecting more closely with yourself and your surroundings.

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Breathing with Plants

Breathing with Plants0:00/204.3123811× This week, I have a fact for you to contemplate: Plants breathe. They take in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, the inverse of our oxygen-in, CO2-out breathing. You might kind of know that already, from elementary school science, but I want to freshen

New Moon Reading Reports

New Moon Reading Report: The Dawn of Everything

This month’s read is The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow As I hope you’re seeing in this newsletter, I really love to pick at our cultural assumptions like they’re scabs and I’m 8 years old. Particularly the

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice: Speaking with Plants (part 2)

Happy Wednesday! As part of your Weaver subscription to This Isn’t it, I’m bringing you a 5- minute gentle turning practice for your midweek. You get a prompt for a meditative  activity for disengaging from the powerarchy and connecting more closely with yourself and your surroundings. You may

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice

Midweek Gentle Turning Practice: Speaking with Plants (part 1)

Happy Wednesday! As part of your Weaver subscription to This Isn’t it, I’m bringing you a 5- minute gentle turning practice for your midweek. You get a prompt for a meditative  activity for disengaging from the powerarchy and connecting more closely with yourself and your surroundings. You may

Full Moon Essays

Finding Our Footing in an Era of Uncertainty

Our reality is saturated and clouded over with the fog of Domination.  No, really. The current political environment is not just the product of the last few years, or even the last few decades. It is the offspring of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of years of shared history. The spirit