what is this?
when approaching the origins + encounters projects, i spent weeks trying to tease any one of my fractured ideas into something i could write 1000 words about. unsuccessful.
no matter how many times i outlined, my plans were non-sensical. spread between pages in my journal and voice notes in my phone, these little sparks of inspiration and knowledge never seemed to connect with one another in a way i could describe to someone else. i began to get frustrated and panicked.
until i remembered that my job is not always to draw conclusions. sometimes it is simply to be curious, to examine the space between old and new, concrete and abstract, and ask it questions.
i'm not sure how close to the instructions of this project i've gotten, but i've decided to plead forgiveness rather than ask permission. i didn't write an essay or a short story. i don't know what this is. i suppose this is what you might call "an exploration." which in my head feels like the academic way to say: this is me unraveling the knot in my stomach. here is the long rope, bent and frayed at the ends. watch me try to use it for something that doesn't hurt.
what does this have to do with ecology?
everything. everything! my encounters with the more than human, prompted by this coursework, have shown me that our Western way of separating storytelling, emotions, and beauty from academic study and scientific research are limiting how much we can learn from the earth and limiting our tools for healing. my relationship with depression, a deadly global pandemic, a social justice reckoning, a failing economic system, a generation of young people growing toward an uncertain future, a dying planet - these stories are all woven together and knotted up inside me. unraveling one unravels them all. hope for healing and building a better world starts in the body. it starts with that knot in our stomach and travels out to our actions in our community, nation, and world. nature knows this well: what is healthy at a very small scale is healthy at a large scale too.