This essay was published in 2024, and is inspired by the nature writing of Barry Lopez, especially his book, Arctic Dreams, and an essay by Mary Rush from Emergence, an online magazine. It’s a rumination on the inner and outer landscapes we’re bound to, how language is tied to the land, and how patient attention leads us to experience an animate earth.

When I think about … how to recognize the animacy of the more-than-human world, the answer is simple enough: start close to home. Forget the quest towards the sublime mountaintop. Start with the earthworms in the backyard…. Pay attention to the place where our lives unfold. Where time, lots of it, is at least partially, a given. Here, right here, is where we begin to recognize the Earth as alive. ~Mary Rush, “Glacial Longings”

Every landscape is alive.

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