"We All Need to be Tree Huggers Now" & other readings

Hugging an old growth tree in Oregon’s southern Cascades

Here’s this month’s post with extras for paid subscribers. I made these recordings for the audio version of my book, “From Outside,” which is available as an autographed paperback (only two copies left!), a digital download, or an audiobook.

“From Outside” is collection of forty two essays from 2016-2021 in which I explore a variety of topics including the environment, war, agriculture, settler colonialism, racism, patriarchy, media criticism, “green energy,” collapse and the nature of civilization itself. Stylistically, the selections vary from reporting to commentary to personal story telling.

The title, “From Outside,” has multiple meanings. First, topically: many of the essays relate to the environment—to the “outside” world. Second, spatially: since 2016, I have spent the majority of my time in rural areas, “outside” of cities and “outside” as in camping. My intended audience has often been urban people who live “inside,” since that lifestyle insulates one from so much of what’s going on in the world, like the systems of agriculture and resource extraction that make city life possible. Third, culturally: the perspectives I present are “outside” conventional social norms.

Paid subscribers have access to three more readings, below:

1. Climate Change: Why is it so often “sooner than predicted?”

2. Rare Wildflower Threatened by Lithium Mine

3. #WeedsArePeopleToo: Springtime Reflections on Farming and its Damages