By Way of Introduction
Why a newsletter?
Let me tell you how I am obsessed with the newsletter form. I wish all of you would send me newsletters about your lives. I love hearing about how people are getting through the tedium of the so-called apocalypse. I love seeing other people being messy and vulnerable and in process.
There are a few topics that I want to talk about specifically, things I hope you’ll find interesting and perhaps even useful: experiences and observations around a sense of being “placed” after moving around the country a lot and trying to put down some roots as they say, what I’m growing in the garden and on the windowsill, community projects that I think are wonderful, what I’m learning as I try to teach myself a little botany, a little systems theory. In my drafts so far I’ve written about my changing relationships to rewilding and foraging, nephelomancy (divination through the observation of cloud formations), things I learned and felt in my time working on an organic farm, prairies and their disappearance, the power of a lost notebook, and more.
Why ‘disturbed ground’?
Forest succession is the way, given the time and inclination, a site will grow through stages - beginning with hardy ground-breaking plants, transitioning into small trees and shrubs, and later big tall tree canopy and diverse understory - and ultimately become what we call a forest.
There are certain kinds of plants that thrive in places where most others can’t, the so-called “herbaceous weed community” of plants like bull thistle, goldenrod, wild garlic, false indigo and many others who crop up almost before the dust settles on a small successional “reset” (i.e., a disturbance). They accumulate nutrients in the soil that make the ground hospitable to other kinds of plants in the future. These events occur all the time - a huge tree falls in the forest and suddenly much more light can reach the ground and the existing patch of plant community has been destroyed, for example. It’s a chance for plants to grow that haven’t had the right conditions up until now. This is the nature that bursts on the scene to fill a vacuum, otherwise abhorred.
This feels like a resonant metaphor for me because I’ve been so completely creatively frozen for almost a decade. I’ve written a lot in that time but I’ve been devoured by the fear that people would read my writing and see me and hate what they saw. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy channeling that fear into bad-faith judgment and criticism of others. But, like everyone, the last few years put me through the ringer and I have come out on the other side wanting to be in the world in a different way. Shortly before the pandemic lockdown began I moved to a small city in the Midwest where I knew no one except my partner. Months of crushing depression, a major injury, and convalescence ensued. I felt like I had lost my direction in life, the meaning was sucked out of everything. Eventually I got help from a therapist and pulled apart all of the values I’d had and the assumptions I took for granted. I found so much solace at the local nature preserves, learning the names of the plants that grow there. I quit drinking myself towards oblivion and learned how to quilt. I wrote every day. I felt the life coming back to me but so far all of that has been happening underground, out of sight.
I’m hoping this newsletter will be a way to unpick my longstanding thrall with perfectionism by sharing my writing in public, to let the sunlight reach the forest floor and let something new grow. I hope it’s helpful and fun, I hope it’s a soft place to land even briefly. And I do plan for these to be brief - about a 6 minute read coming to your inbox through the tubes on Wednesdays.
I also have a few professional projects in the pipeline - a how-to guide for deepening your connection to the place you live, garden designs for growing food in containers, and other ways to work with me on your garden dreams of every size - and I’ll keep you posted about all that stuff too.
Thank you for being here! It means a lot. See ya next Wednesday.
-Mere