Sabbatical Report: Taking the Non-traditional Path

Along US 50, the loneliest road, across Nevada

When I wrote about taking a sabbatical from forcing my writing to earn a living back in November, many of you left supportive comments on the blog or on social media, all of which I very much appreciated. Now that I’m two months in, I thought I’d let you know how it’s going.

Which is probably not the way you may have imagined. I’m not spending my days in leisurely reading and contemplation of the universe in its wondrous and chaotic ways. Nor am I writing up a storm.

What am I doing? A lot of planning for the April release of Bless the Birds, my upcoming memoir. I’ve been sending advance review copies to magazines and newspapers that have book review sections, which involves a lot of tedious looking up of addresses and editors’ names, and finding their requirements for review copies in these COVID times when many people are still working remotely.

The advance review copies of Bless the Birds

I’m also dreaming up virtual book events involving bookstores and libraries. The idea I am percolating is a series of internet-based conversations with fellow authors whose work intersects with mine, exchanges on topics that relate to our work.

One idea, for example, is a conversation with my over-the-ridge neighbor, Kati Standefer, whose absolutely stunning debut memoir, Lightning Flowers, tracks in gorgeous and raw prose the human and environmental cost of the defibrillator implanted in her chest that both saved and irretrievably altered her life. We could talk about living on the edge of death, a subject we both know more about than we’d like. My dream is to have that event sponsored by Collected Works, my favorite Santa Fe bookstore, as my book launch event.

I’d like to have a conversation with Ken Lamberton, author of Wilderness and Razor Wire, among other fine books, about stumbling into the understanding that the world outside our skin boundaries, the wild world nearby, can save us. I’d like to talk with Kathy Moore, author of Earth’s Wild Music, about what humans lose when we lose other species, when the tapestry of this living planet frays beyond what seems repairable.

Lichen, an entity made of two kinds of lives that are entirely different but manage to cooperate for their mutual benefit, a fungus and a photosynthesizing algae or bacteria.

I imagine these virtual events as a series of thoughtful interactions between people you’d like to listen to, conversations that explore ideas you’d like to know more about. Conversations that are inspiring and thought-provoking, and yes, might relate to our books, but are mostly offerings from us to you.

Because what I’ve realized during this sabbatical is that, while I do have a book to promote, what’s most important to both the writer me and the scientist me is that I have experiences and ideas that I want to share, and I know writers whose ideas and experiences I want to delve into. So if I can combine those things, book promotion will be something useful to all of us, instead of merely an exercise in selling something.

In dreaming up this series of conversations, I’m taking a non-traditional path, focusing more on what I have to share than on sales. Because that’s in alignment with why I wrote, which is to offer something I know to others in a way that I hope will be useful, inspiring, life-changing, or simply worth the read.

I owe this realization in part to work I did last year with Beata Lewis, goddess of transformational work (you could call her an executive coach, but that’s too limiting), and work I am doing now with human-centered marketer Dan Blank of We Grow Media. Both of them pushed me to look beyond the conventional view of what success in writing means, to integrate the left-brained scientist and the right-brained writer, and to listen to what my heart and spirit ask of me.

Which occurs to me is very much in the spirit of this sabbatical: reflecting on who I am and what I am doing with my life.

Hence this new mission statement:

I aim to restore our love and care for this numinous Earth, and help us be our best and kindest selves–wholly at home on a healthy planet.

Reflections on a lake in the Cascades above Bend, Oregon

Fieldwork: Weeding for Biodiversity

I ended last week's blog post with a draft of a mission statement for my work. I've been trying to explain to myself for years what unites the varied passions that propel me through life.

I'm a writer and plant ecologist, a person happiest outdoors, whether just in my yard or in wilder places. (Though my yard is pretty wild at times!) I'm rooted in the inland West where sagebrush perfumes the air after spring rains, sandhill cranes bugle as they migrate in to nest in summer, and winter days are edged with snow. 

I'm passionate about nature, both the study of earth's web of life and reconnecting humans to our place in the planet. Specifically, I'm drawn to plants, especially those native to this continent, for their ability to evoke place and also their myriad of relationships that weave that web of life.

I have spent decades restoring nature, often on my own and without pay, particularly nature in the places where we live, with a special interest in gritty industrial landscapes and urban creeks and rivers. 

I garden with an eye to growing habitat for pollinators and songbirds, as well as providing food, scents and colors, tranquility, and beauty for humans. 

I write as a way to understand and explore the meaning in life, both my own life, and the larger cycle of capital 'L' life, existence. To show us why we are here, and to reveal the wonder and incredible variety of the world we live in, including the myriad of other life forms with whom we share this planet. 


The thread is clear: I'm passionate about nurturing and celebrating life in all its glorious diversity, with a particular emphasis on plants and words.

Which is why I'm spending my annual  "vacation" in Yellowstone National Park, digging out invasive weeds to help restore these iconic landscapes to health. So that this island of wild biodiversity may continue to thrive and inspire us all. 

Houndstongue, AKA Cynoglossum officianale, a plant imported from Asia and one that truly does not play well on this continent.

Wait! You say. How does labeling plants as invasive weeds and then killing them square with nurturing biodiversity? 

Like everything else in life, it's complicated. The phrase "restore the integrity of nature" is key to what I'm doing in Yellowstone. Some species don't play well when they're transplanted to new places, where they lack the interrelationships with other species that give them a positive role in the community.  

They may "go rogue" and actually endanger the health of the whole community. Think salt cedar or tamarisk in the inland West, crowding out the diverse ribbons of species along the region's rivers and streams, and poisoning the soil as they shed their salty leaves. 

The plant I'm focusing on, houndstongue (Cynoglossum officianale), a native of Eurasia, protects itself from grazers by manufacturing compounds that act as liver disrupters in wild ungulates like deer, elk, and moose. If for instance, an elk calf munched enough of houndstongue's large, felty leaves (which are at their most attractive just as the baby elk are learning how to graze), it might well die of liver failure in a few weeks or months.  

Houndstongue may also do something more subtle and potentially more disruptive to Yellowstone's ecosystems: it may co-opt the attention of native bumblebees by growing tall stalks of flowers that bloom for a long time and are attractive to native bumblebees.

Bumblebees and other native bees are critical to the survival of Yellowstone's native wildflowers: they pollinate their flowers and ensure the next generation, seeds. If say, a plant from somewhere else takes over whole areas and keeps bees from pollinating the native flowers, they decrease and the invader increases, which fragments the integrity of the ecosystem and ends up reducing biodiversity. 

So here I am in Yellowstone, digging up trash bags full of one invasive, non-native species to nurture biodiversity in the larger native community. (I hiked five miles yesterday, and dug up about 50 pounds of houndstongue. Hard, rewarding work!)

I'm working for the health of the lupine (the native wildflower being pollinated by the bumblebee in the photo above), the sagebrush, the elk, and the whole interwoven community that forms these iconic landscapes.

And I'm having a wonderful time, camping in Red, and listening to elk and western tanagers, admiring wildflowers and hot springs, and taking in time in a place where I began this work of celebrating and nurturing biodiversity decades ago.  

Of course, I'm still playing with that mission statement. (Writing really is 95 percent revision!) Here's another version:

I nurture and celebrate biodiversity, plant by plant, word by word. I work to restore the integrity of nature and to honor all forms of life. Because diversity is key to health–of cultures, neighborhoods, and ecosystems. That our planet may thrive, and we along with it.

The Gardner River below Mammoth, roaring with spring snowmelt.