Greetings from Atlanta and Port Angeles and the airspace in between. I’m flying west at sunset, traveling back in time and chasing the fading light across the land. It’s a strange dance of eastern axial rotation meets western flight, a stretching of time like taffy.
I began writing this newsletter after an afternoon of kayaking down the Chattahoochee River, my favorite memory lane to visit when I return to my hometown. I used to always say that this river is the only thing that hasn’t changed in this sprawling suburban amoeba that seems to turn every last patch of forest into a shopping center or new subdivision.
Then the River reminded me that change is all it knows, and all it’s ever been. It’s never stopped running, meandering, birthing baby geese along its banks. We saw those fuzzy little goslings, along with a snake, a turtle, heron, ducks, dozens of songbirds, and a barred owl within a few short miles.
I could smell the clay in the air—it is a distinct smell unlike any other—and it transported me back to all of the times I’ve paddled down this river in my lifetime, dipping the blade as child and now a woman in her thirties. (Sometimes when I go home, I’m not sure which one I should be.) I have been a different person, each version just as true, paddling the same yellow kayak each time. Foolishly thinking the river had stayed the same.
In April, I wrote about Earth Day, mothers, and voice in The land of milk and honeysuckle. It touched on a brief history of Earth Day and the environmental movement, traveled through 400 million years of song on Earth, gave thanks to the Mother, and more.
The rest of this newsletter offers curated resources related to these themes and more. I hope these resources feel like a “yes” in your body. I hope they spark something new. I hope they are a reminder of the generosity of this world.
In that spirit—I’m taking down the paywall this month. Yew!
I hope you still consider becoming a paid subscriber to support and help expand this work. It is meaningful sustenance, your attention even more so. I’ll never stop being honored that you’re here.
For the mind
Read | Watch | Listen
Black Earth Wisdom by Leah Penniman is balm. She begins with a 35-page introduction honoring the Black ancestors and elders of modern environmentalism, then weaves dozens of present-day individual interviews into conversations as if speaking with a group. Both the methodology and the content are brilliant, soulful, needed nourishment.
Take it a step further with the Black Earth Wisdom Directory, a curated list of BIPOC-led environmental organizations, collectives, books, and media.
I mentioned listening to the courage of our youth and to those who have the most to lose. Our Children’s Trust is a nonprofit law firm supporting youth plaintiffs in 12 active climate lawsuits across four countries who are defending their constitutional rights for both present and future generations. Help save their landmark case of Juliana v. United States.
When the Earth Started to Sing by David Haskell takes listeners on a sonic journey from the first sounds of ice and rock on Earth all the way through modern day voice and technology. A true auditory treasure spanning hundreds of millions of years.
Magic and the Machine by David Abram reflects on our undying urge to recreate a primal experience of intimacy with the surrounding world in this powerful essay on technology and animism in an age of ecological wipeout. It’s really something.
Journaling Prompt / Community Conversation
Feel free to use this for independent reflection, or for community conversation in the comment section!
“The difficult magic of animistic perception, the utter weirdness and dark wonder that lives in any deeply place-based relation to the earth, is the felt sense of being in contact with wakeful forms of sentience that are richly different from one’s own—the experience of interaction with intelligences that are radically other from one’s own human style of intelligence. – David Abram, Magic and the Machine
I had the honor of taking part in Emergence Magazine’s recent Seeds of Radical Renewal course, where we had the chance to speak with David about his work. To borrow from our discussion:
In his essay, David goes on to suggest that animistic perception and participatory experience are utterly normal for the human organism, and cannot truly be lost. When was the last time you had the direct experience of encountering a “radical other” form of intelligence or sentience in the natural world? What did it evoke in you?
For the body
Somatic Practice and Nourishment
This issue, I’m combining both the somatic and wild food offering into one, with deep gratitude to the incredibly generous stinging nettle!
Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is one of the most well-known, prolific, and giving plants here in the cool and wet climate of western Washington. All parts of nettle—its leaves, stalk, roots, and seeds offer medicine, food, and fiber across different seasons of the year.
Springtime is all about the leaves. There are so many ways to work with nettle—as a loose leaf tea, a pesto, a wilted green, soups, juice, vinegars, and beyond. I love making a potent fertilizer tea for other plants too.
Medicinally, nettle leaves are cherished for their cooling and cleansing properties, and their rich vitamin, mineral, and nutrient content. Nettle works wonders as a diuretic, alterative, nutritive, tonic, astringent, rubefacient, anti-inflammatory, and anti-allergenic.
I am still building and deepening my relationship with this incredible being, and am exploring why I feel so strongly pulled toward its medicine:
“Nettle cools an overheated mind that wants to pull us in different directions…the evolutionary function of this plant is to provide the clear sight to guide purposeful action so that our energetic inclinations are channeled and working toward a bigger picture—not scattered, agitated and prone to ineffective tangents.” – Flora Farm, plant profile
Today, I decided to harvest and process a basket of nettle with bare hands. To do this, I had to move extra slowly and delicately, paying close attention to where I chose to touch this plant. In this act of care and curiosity, I received so many lessons on love. (Its leaves are heart-shaped after all.) Nettle reminds me that love can be astoundingly generous and still have sharp boundaries. That consent is everything—ask before you touch. That saying “no” and accepting “no” are fantastic ways to demonstrate love. That love likes to move in slow motion. That everything can soften. That you don’t have to be soft to be lovable. That what we absorb, we can offer back as medicine—love is circular.
For this month’s somatic practice, I (and really, nettle), invite you to process an ingredient as slowly as you possibly can. That could be filet-ing a fish with the utmost precision. Feeling the texture of bread flour between your fingertips. Maybe it’s simply peeling an orange. Whatever it is, invite your hands to listen.
For more information, Flora Farm, a local herbalist, grower, and medicine-maker here in Port Angeles, offers a beautiful plant profile on nettle medicine. Find nettle and so more in her seasonal CSA bundles, which she just launched this week! Shippable.
For the spirit
When I wrote “I follow the spiral inward and it always leads me to the Mother,” my mind immediately traveled to a temazcal ceremony, a ritual practiced by various Indigenous cultures of Mexico and parts of Central America. The word “temazcal” originates from the Náhuatl word Temāzcalli, which translates to “house of heat” (“Temaz” meaning steam, “calli'“ meaning house).
A temazcal is an earthen dome that’s used for purification ceremonies involving hot stones, herbal steam, and darkness. Its structure and the ceremony itself create the environment of a womb, representing a return into the belly of Mother Earth and the opportunity to emerge reborn. I had the privilege of being invited to participate in a temazcal ceremony last year near the town of San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico, and it remains one of the most beloved experiences of my life.
We entered the dome crawling on hands on knees. We sat on a floor of clay and pine straw, circled around a pit of scorching hot grandmother stones that had been cooking in a fire all morning. The temazcalero closed the door, enveloping us in complete darkness. He poured herbal-infused water on the stones; they glowed red and began to hiss, hot steam rising and penetrating every pore.
Drums pounded. Songs commenced. Prayers rose, a group of about 20 voices from across the world becoming one.
After several minutes, the door opened, welcoming light and air back in for a brief reprieve. The cycle repeated three more times, each round a specific devotion to an element of Mother Earth. With each round came more stones, more heat, more travel inward.
By the end, the heat had brought every one of us to the fetal position. To a place of reverence and surrender that we needed to go.
I offer my deepest gratitude to my friends in San Cristóbal who facilitated this ceremony with such love and integrity, and to all those keeping their ancestral practices alive. I offer my unyielding gratitude to the herbs, to the water, to the stones, to the fire, and to the Earth that held us close—and that has never let us go.
May the month of May bring welcomed heat and warm the parts of you that need it most.
May you always be held.
From my heart to yours,
Iz
• Email: izabellazucker@gmail.com
Missed the March musing? Take a wander below.
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