Dear friends,
I am both a beneficiary and a victim of growing up in the mid-twentieth century. I don’t mean ‘victim’ in the sense of competing for who had a tougher life—that’s rarely a good path for a writer unless you are Barbara Kingsolver. But I grew up in a time when most male landholders believed the patriarchy’s version of Darwin’s theory of evolution: survival of the fittest. Some still believe that. There are even people who run for public office on the theory that men have dominion over the other 80 million species.
We now know differently. Scientists are translating the world of cooperation, mutualism, and collaboration found in nature. Women have walked into the science labs. They’ve undertaken field work. They have written literary memoirs about their work. They are credited for their observations, unlike Eunice Newton Foote who was overlooked for her discovery that carbon dioxide heats up faster and stays hot longer than ‘regular air’ as oxygen was referenced in 1856.
Collaboration instead of competition. We see a similar phenomena on Substack. The platform works because we all work together.
Last month, I was going through my email, deleting the Substacks knowing I would return to the app later that evening. I was just about to delete one from Substack writer Julie Gabrielli when I noticed it was actually a personal email. She planned to launch interviews with Substack nature writers. Would I be willing to participate, and if so, she included six interview questions. (My answers can be found in my previous cross-post from
, Julie’s Substack.)Julie Gabrielli lives a mindful life. She teaches architecture and writes stories and essays to cultivate hope in the face of climate crisis. She chooses to “align with the story that we belong here, we have a purpose, and we are loved. We are here to bear witness to the miracle of creation: to revel in joy, to sing, dance, paint, write, teach, tell stories.”
Here’s Julie on her connection to the natural world:
“A while back, my ancestors chose to deny their entanglement with the living world. Instead, they made an org chart with human beings at the top and the rest of nature below us. It’s a lonely legacy, this estrangement from brown bears and beetles, clouds, crabs, herons and honeybees, humpbacks, lemurs and larkspur, monarchs and maize, oaks and uncountable others. That story of separation and superiority still dominates while the Earth burns and civility unravels.
If only we could rediscover these relationships with non-humans, we might treasure them more and stop all this ecocide. We might begin to wonder how we could ever see a tree as mere timber, a river as a turbine driver, a mountain only as minerals. What if, instead, we meet them as sacred beings, as mysteries, lifeblood, kin?“
Julie’s work is powerful. She is a human guardian of nature. She collaborates the way nature does. By asking other Substack nature writers why they do what they do, she fosters relationships. I am grateful that she took the time to answer her own questions and sent along the egret photographed flying over the cove behind her home.
Why are you drawn to nature writing?
I write from a place of love, to express my love of the world, to share it with others. My wonder and awe—these are outward expressions of love. Tender, laced with joy and with grief. Loss and abundance. Delight and despair. None of this comes easily. Recently I was reminded that being awake hurts. There is no antidote for it. It’s the price of being human. More attention and more noticing are the only way through.
How does writing about nature affect you, in your work or personal life?
Writing puts me in a reverie. It’s a balm that soothes my innate anxiety and softens the rough edges of impotent rage about politics or the latest violation against a wild place. At its best, writing connects me with beings and messages that too often go unnoticed in my busy daily life of responsibilities, lists, and distractions. It’s a way to pay closer attention. Close attention is always rewarded. Quiet insights are possible, and even on rare occasions, revelation.
While outside, have you ever experienced feeling small, lost or in danger?
Oh, yes. My mother instilled in me her own fear of boats and, by extension, water. (Luckily, she also forced me to have swim lessons as a kid.) So whenever I get on a sailboat, I bring that anxiety with me, even after years of sailing and racing on boats big, small, and in-between. Always. Feeling small has its pluses, though. I love that feeling when sailing in perfect summer weather under the blue dome of sky, that I’m just a speck and that’s as it should be. I’ve been in enough sudden storms to know for a fact that my presence here is a gift and can be revoked at any moment. There’s nothing like the zing of lighting’s energy on the nape of your neck and the fresh smell of ozone when water is struck nearby, to drive that point home. And don’t get me started on the wind.
What’s a favorite memory of nature from your childhood?
This feels shameful to admit, but I was mostly an indoor cat as a kid. Sure, I went camping with the Girl Scouts once a year, but have no significant memories of it (other than one sleepless night freezing in a summer nightgown woefully inadequate to the weather). I remember spelunking with my eccentric nuclear-physicist uncle in Missouri and maybe a very boring fishing trip on a lake in Texas with my dad. My mother was terrified of boats, so that outing may be imagined. The one thing we did outdoors every year without fail was go to the beach for a week. Once I befriended my fear of the water, I enjoyed jumping waves and body surfing, and on land the endless hours to beachwalk, scope out boys and read junky novels. My love of the outdoors has grown in my adult life, so my sense of wonder is a way of reliving my childhood and making up for lost time.
What do you hope for, for your writing?
The visionary architect, R. Buckminster Fuller, said, “There are no passengers on spaceship earth, only crew.” I hope my writing draws people in to experience their own belonging, to know that they are welcome and needed. They are not bystanders. “Nature” and “the environment” are not places separate from us or inconveniences that we can overcome with technology. The very fact that we need words for them speaks to our self-exile.
A writer or other creative artist who makes you hopeful for humanity and the earth.
So many. I’d have to begin with Annie Dillard, whose book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek taught me at a pivotal moment in my career how to see what really matters, and that it’s fine to lose myself in the leaves on a tree. Wendell Berry’s essays always challenge me to think more expansively and to embrace nondual paradox. Thomas Berry, David Abram, Martin Shaw, Sharon Blackie, and Paul Kingsnorth expand my sense of reality, and emphasize storytelling’s critical role in the human experience.
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful presence and writing in Braiding Sweetgrass give me hope—an all-too-rare commodity these days. Rebecca Solnit, a brilliant, honest and clear writer, clarifies hope for me: what it is and isn’t, and how hope is both intentional practice and unpredictable outcome. Journalists Amy Westervelt and Emily Atkin are fierce truth-tellers about climate. As are Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson, whose anthology, All We Can Save, is full of positive action and activism. As I continue to write my way into more intimate reciprocity with my beyond human kin, I always return to the inventive fun of Brian Doyle’s stories, which I wrote about for “The Books That Made Us,” here.
🌱
You can find
with her stories, essays and interviews with nature writers at .🌱
Next up for
is a series of essays based on Birding to Change the World. Sound like an outlandish title? That’s what I thought until I realized that Trish O’Kane’s memoir is a step by step, story by story manual of how to organize for change, address city councils, educate to save green spaces, and find joy at the same time. I am eager to share with you!in kinship,
Katharine
PS: Pressing the ❤️ button helps this publication along. Your comments brings us together in community. And paid subscriptions support my research. Many thanks for being here, however you show up.🌱
Collaboration instead of competition. There is a mantra for every part of life.
Thanks for bringing us this interview! I enjoyed this and the one you participated in a few weeks ago.
Thanks for this challenge, Katharine. It was fun to tackle the questions myself.