So well said, you never get used to the beauty, it strikes me all the time as well. What a wonderful thing to say, Nia! Just catching up on a lot of things, so wonderful to start with your splendid thoughts and writings.
Your original post of this essay is what first attracted me to your writing and to your way of thinking about the world. Reading it again felt like visiting an old friend. Thank you, Nia.
Because I am trapped in a particular way of being in the world, a way that sometimes feels as inescapable as the air I must breath, I am guilty of the possession trap. But I will say this: every claim to possession is a form of violence. The fox owns herself.
Love all this, Antonia! The reminder of how sensible Riane Eisler is. I've made myself both hopeful and bereft imagining a politics based on her "real wealth of nations." Your photos of sunset and moonrise are a gift. And the poem is simply wonderful!
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, our parliament has enacted laws that grant legal personhood to a river, and to a national park. This has come about due to a long standing (140 years in the case of the river!) legal discussion led by Māori, the indigenous peoples here. Māori world view holds that humans are just one element of the natural world; entities like rivers and mountains are considered tūpuna (ancestors).
Yes! I remember when this happened, so heartening. There have been some movements here in the U.S. to do the same, with unfortunately fierce legal pushback. (In one case, a group worked to get Lake Erie personhood rights, only for the governor of that state to make it illegal to legally represent a natural entity. Maddening.)
Māori people truly have led the way, haven't they? Thank you for sharing these insights.
Hey Antonia, I think there is a real balm to be found in the truth that everything of these times, of us, will be completely forgotten but that it still is incumbent on us to care for each other. It is a mitzvah.
Cool photos here.
And the fox is wonderful. I think foxes have a magic about them (and I’m not a schmaltzy man).
Thank you, Fox, and thank you Nia, for sharing her! Bill Kittredge once said to me, “Now all you have to do is show how Montana and Russia come together..” (I finally did, but not in time for anyone to live to see it.. still, it’s been a fine, long journey across several deserts, and on the way George Seilstadt even showed us where the piece of “North America”’s former continent shoved away to become what would eventually become eastern Siberia ( though there wasn’t anybody around, not even foxes, to see her leave). I’ve been reading a fabulous book; true stories, personally scouted out by Sophy Robert’s, a journalist who will surely be known for The Lost Pianos of Siberia. I think you would love it, containing as it does some more overlapping chunks of human history. Russian, of course, but not excluding Mongolia, Buryatia on the far side of Baikal, and a hint that she spent some time in Siberia hanging out with the tigers.. as they said, “Moscow doesn’t make the weather here.” Foxes, too.
Surely not?! Really? It is one of the most beautiful sights in the world, IMHO. I watch for it many winter evenings, right after the sun sets. It only lasts for moments, but those few moments are something else.
Peter Freuchen wrote a book called Arctic Adventures, about his time living with native Greenlanders. He recalled an early hunt, in which he was second or third in a group, all of whom had a claim to meat. When he realized that he would be in possession of several hundreds pounds of meat, he thanked the hunter who made the first mortal hit:
"Later on at camp [the hunter] told me not to thank anyone for meat:
'Up in our country we are human! And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. If I get something today, you may get it tomorrow. Some men never kill anything because they are seldom lucky or they may not be able to run or row as fast as others. Therefore they would feel unhappy to have to be thankful to their fellows all the time. And it would not be fun for the big hunter to feel that other men were constantly humbled by him. Then his pleasure would die. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.'"
Hunger being a need rather than a right, Freuchen’s first error was his misunderstanding about “possessing” the meat. No ownership, no conflict.
This is a wonderful quote, and serendipitous in ways I can't quite describe -- a local friend was working on some writing about the deeper meanings of reciprocity, and how to embody or live that spirit without it feeling transactional. I copied the quote you shared here and sent it to her.
I haven't read that book but sounds like it's one I would like, thank you! "By gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs" -- I'm going to be thinking about that for such a long time. It completely inverts not just an idea of possession and ownership, but of human relations with one another.
This connection reminds me of the book, Debt: The first 5,000 years. Many dives into reciprocity, gifting, owning and owing in just the first few hundred pages (I didn't finish the book.)
As Justice H.B. Livingston put it in his dissent, "[b]oth parties have regarded [the fox], as the law of nations does a pirate, 'hostem humani generis.'"
Apposite, as always. Yesterday I was reading The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (on your recommendation):
> We do not understand that what Kelenli has come to give us is a sense of *peoplehood*. We do not understand why we have been forbidden this self-concept before now… but we will.
> And then we will understand that *people* cannot be *possessions*. And because we are both and should not be, a new concept will take shape within us, though we have never heard the word for it because the conductors are forbidden to even mention it in our presence. *Revolution*.
Now I think I need to reread those! I don't remember that particular quote, but it's one of the things that I took away from that trilogy most -- who gets to be considered a "person." What an incredible writer she is.
Wonderful, Nia. Thank you. A geological perspective does much to soothe a troubled soul, especially in the wake of a rough election, or while watching the species with confused notions of ownership transform the planet into a discarded possession. May your days be filled with curious foxes...
Your recent piece on the manufacture of tires and the pollution they constantly leave behind was so important. I appreciated it. I recently gave public comment about a section of riverside walking/biking trail our town has been trying to get a permit to build for *over 40 years* (a disagreement with nearby property owners about the easement has been most of the holdup), and decided to focus on tire particle pollution. The permit has to be granted by state Fish, Wildlife & Parks, which is tasked with protecting navigable waterways. You'd think reducing car traffic would be at the center of that mission, wouldn't you? Maybe someday. Anyway, I quoted that study about coho salmon and it turned out our city engineer had been involved in the original studies on that years ago. Small world! Changes slowly!
"Small world! Changes slowly!" should be a mantra given to anxious schoolchildren everywhere... And the rest of us too. Thanks for that. And thanks for the note on the tires piece. I felt like it was important too, all the more so as I went deeper into the research. Good luck with your walking/biking trail. I'll check back in another 40 years...
The cabin in the woods where we're staying in New Zealand is less than an hour from Hobbiton, the site of the set of Lord of the Rings. This land lay undiscovered, untouched, and unowned by humankind until around 700 years ago. As I observed the non-native conifer plantations, clear cuts, and roadside Scotch broom, all reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest, on the way to Wai-O-Tapu thermal park, I couldn't help but feel that ownership has not been beneficial.
I have not been there but my sister and brother-in-law have! They spent a year in New Zealand before they were married, and in fact ended up working on the set of The Hobbit for the year (in craft services -- he's a chef and she's a server and event planner). It sounded amazing.
Ownership has created much, some claim, but what it's destroyed in the process is almost inconceivable. I think constantly about your work on PFAS and things you've talked about, like astroturf being used in a dam and causing pollution downstream ...
Thank you for doing the necessary work for a healthier, more vibrant world.
So well said, you never get used to the beauty, it strikes me all the time as well. What a wonderful thing to say, Nia! Just catching up on a lot of things, so wonderful to start with your splendid thoughts and writings.
So glad to hear that and to see you here, Paul! The light of this place, across the entire state in all its varying sky-ness, never fails to awe me. 💚
Your original post of this essay is what first attracted me to your writing and to your way of thinking about the world. Reading it again felt like visiting an old friend. Thank you, Nia.
Because I am trapped in a particular way of being in the world, a way that sometimes feels as inescapable as the air I must breath, I am guilty of the possession trap. But I will say this: every claim to possession is a form of violence. The fox owns herself.
"Every claim to possession is a form of violence." YES.
Your comments are always like hearing from an old friend, too. 🧡
Love all this, Antonia! The reminder of how sensible Riane Eisler is. I've made myself both hopeful and bereft imagining a politics based on her "real wealth of nations." Your photos of sunset and moonrise are a gift. And the poem is simply wonderful!
Riane Eisler is someone I keep going back to! "Nurturing Our Humanity" had such tremendous insights, too.
Thank you 🏔️🌒
Love the conjunction of "deep time" and personal agency here, and of course, Glacier Park:)
🏔️😍
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, our parliament has enacted laws that grant legal personhood to a river, and to a national park. This has come about due to a long standing (140 years in the case of the river!) legal discussion led by Māori, the indigenous peoples here. Māori world view holds that humans are just one element of the natural world; entities like rivers and mountains are considered tūpuna (ancestors).
https://www.parliament.nz/en/get-involved/features/innovative-bill-protects-whanganui-river-with-legal-personhood/
Yes! I remember when this happened, so heartening. There have been some movements here in the U.S. to do the same, with unfortunately fierce legal pushback. (In one case, a group worked to get Lake Erie personhood rights, only for the governor of that state to make it illegal to legally represent a natural entity. Maddening.)
Māori people truly have led the way, haven't they? Thank you for sharing these insights.
Hey Antonia, I think there is a real balm to be found in the truth that everything of these times, of us, will be completely forgotten but that it still is incumbent on us to care for each other. It is a mitzvah.
Cool photos here.
And the fox is wonderful. I think foxes have a magic about them (and I’m not a schmaltzy man).
Something about that tail, the way they move through the grass in an almost catlike way ...
Care for one another, no matter what the eons bring ...
Thank you, Fox, and thank you Nia, for sharing her! Bill Kittredge once said to me, “Now all you have to do is show how Montana and Russia come together..” (I finally did, but not in time for anyone to live to see it.. still, it’s been a fine, long journey across several deserts, and on the way George Seilstadt even showed us where the piece of “North America”’s former continent shoved away to become what would eventually become eastern Siberia ( though there wasn’t anybody around, not even foxes, to see her leave). I’ve been reading a fabulous book; true stories, personally scouted out by Sophy Robert’s, a journalist who will surely be known for The Lost Pianos of Siberia. I think you would love it, containing as it does some more overlapping chunks of human history. Russian, of course, but not excluding Mongolia, Buryatia on the far side of Baikal, and a hint that she spent some time in Siberia hanging out with the tigers.. as they said, “Moscow doesn’t make the weather here.” Foxes, too.
They do come together! In ways that are still waiting to be shown, including by you. Plenty of people still alive to see it!
I don't know Sophy Roberts. I'll try to find a copy.
". . . You are right to think that, alive, no one could own me.
That’s the only true part of your story.”
love this.
🦊
never heard the word 'alpenglow' before
Surely not?! Really? It is one of the most beautiful sights in the world, IMHO. I watch for it many winter evenings, right after the sun sets. It only lasts for moments, but those few moments are something else.
I used to have a "list of things to read and listen to" on this newsletter, and in the original post of this included this interesting discussion of the alpenglow phenomenon from a professional photographer: https://danbaileyphoto.com/blog/challenge-the-traditional-definition-of-alpenglow/
Oh, now that I've heard the phrase, I have seen it. I just didn't know what it was called.
Like the Green Flash that appears with ocean sunsets sometimes. I witnessed that once in San Diego and was like, "Perfect name for that!"
Also, the King of the Dwarves grows roses? That's a cool legend, very much against type for D&D and cookie-cutter fantasy.
I have heard of the green flash but never seen it, either. I would like to!
There's a 2-part series on the Alps on PBS Nature, prominently featuring the glow in multiple shots, though they never use the word.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/preview-alps-high-life/23570/
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/preview-alps-winters-fortress/23576/
Peter Freuchen wrote a book called Arctic Adventures, about his time living with native Greenlanders. He recalled an early hunt, in which he was second or third in a group, all of whom had a claim to meat. When he realized that he would be in possession of several hundreds pounds of meat, he thanked the hunter who made the first mortal hit:
"Later on at camp [the hunter] told me not to thank anyone for meat:
'Up in our country we are human! And since we are human we help each other. We don't like to hear anybody say thanks for that. If I get something today, you may get it tomorrow. Some men never kill anything because they are seldom lucky or they may not be able to run or row as fast as others. Therefore they would feel unhappy to have to be thankful to their fellows all the time. And it would not be fun for the big hunter to feel that other men were constantly humbled by him. Then his pleasure would die. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.'"
Hunger being a need rather than a right, Freuchen’s first error was his misunderstanding about “possessing” the meat. No ownership, no conflict.
This is a wonderful quote, and serendipitous in ways I can't quite describe -- a local friend was working on some writing about the deeper meanings of reciprocity, and how to embody or live that spirit without it feeling transactional. I copied the quote you shared here and sent it to her.
I haven't read that book but sounds like it's one I would like, thank you! "By gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs" -- I'm going to be thinking about that for such a long time. It completely inverts not just an idea of possession and ownership, but of human relations with one another.
This connection reminds me of the book, Debt: The first 5,000 years. Many dives into reciprocity, gifting, owning and owing in just the first few hundred pages (I didn't finish the book.)
As Justice H.B. Livingston put it in his dissent, "[b]oth parties have regarded [the fox], as the law of nations does a pirate, 'hostem humani generis.'"
You always send me down the most intriguing rabbit holes, Charley ... 🏴☠️
What it might mean if this were a larger social movement " ... this world we all share, these ecological and social and spiritual commons."
Step by step, maybe, we can continue to build it 🌔
Apposite, as always. Yesterday I was reading The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (on your recommendation):
> We do not understand that what Kelenli has come to give us is a sense of *peoplehood*. We do not understand why we have been forbidden this self-concept before now… but we will.
> And then we will understand that *people* cannot be *possessions*. And because we are both and should not be, a new concept will take shape within us, though we have never heard the word for it because the conductors are forbidden to even mention it in our presence. *Revolution*.
*pp50, The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin*
Now I think I need to reread those! I don't remember that particular quote, but it's one of the things that I took away from that trilogy most -- who gets to be considered a "person." What an incredible writer she is.
Such an incredibly beautiful story with nature as the subject, as it should be.
Thank you, Michelle! 🦊
Wonderful, Nia. Thank you. A geological perspective does much to soothe a troubled soul, especially in the wake of a rough election, or while watching the species with confused notions of ownership transform the planet into a discarded possession. May your days be filled with curious foxes...
I hope yours are, too!
Your recent piece on the manufacture of tires and the pollution they constantly leave behind was so important. I appreciated it. I recently gave public comment about a section of riverside walking/biking trail our town has been trying to get a permit to build for *over 40 years* (a disagreement with nearby property owners about the easement has been most of the holdup), and decided to focus on tire particle pollution. The permit has to be granted by state Fish, Wildlife & Parks, which is tasked with protecting navigable waterways. You'd think reducing car traffic would be at the center of that mission, wouldn't you? Maybe someday. Anyway, I quoted that study about coho salmon and it turned out our city engineer had been involved in the original studies on that years ago. Small world! Changes slowly!
"Small world! Changes slowly!" should be a mantra given to anxious schoolchildren everywhere... And the rest of us too. Thanks for that. And thanks for the note on the tires piece. I felt like it was important too, all the more so as I went deeper into the research. Good luck with your walking/biking trail. I'll check back in another 40 years...
The cabin in the woods where we're staying in New Zealand is less than an hour from Hobbiton, the site of the set of Lord of the Rings. This land lay undiscovered, untouched, and unowned by humankind until around 700 years ago. As I observed the non-native conifer plantations, clear cuts, and roadside Scotch broom, all reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest, on the way to Wai-O-Tapu thermal park, I couldn't help but feel that ownership has not been beneficial.
Thanks, Nia, for this beautiful piece.
I have not been there but my sister and brother-in-law have! They spent a year in New Zealand before they were married, and in fact ended up working on the set of The Hobbit for the year (in craft services -- he's a chef and she's a server and event planner). It sounded amazing.
Ownership has created much, some claim, but what it's destroyed in the process is almost inconceivable. I think constantly about your work on PFAS and things you've talked about, like astroturf being used in a dam and causing pollution downstream ...
Thank you for doing the necessary work for a healthier, more vibrant world.