“Bear thunder down on my belly and watch me explode. Watch me become mad, mercurial, savage. Bear fire on her skin and watch the woman shriek and howl as she is burned alive. The myth of the devil possessing the maiden has become the myth of poetry possessing those who dare to dream differently. Much further and tangled we must go.”
Mythic invocation of autumn decay. Written in Northern Canada under a windswept sky.
My new opinion piece on the perils and nuances of market-based approaches to regenerating nature.
Deep winter elicited this poem from me.
Let’s remember what extinction is. What it feels like to those who are dying. Let’s bring it closer to home, envelop it in our arms, and promise, not on my watch. Let’s be the ones who take on the old shapes, the new shapes, pouring ourselves into the voids of extinction, the cognition of our fleshy bodies and synapses fusing again to make entirely new million-year dependencies.
Insomniac writings following the visit of clearcut forests, pulp mills and those ancients slated be killed.
Increasingly we must wrap our minds around the sheer complexity and beauty of biodiversity. Whether it’s for the development of nature-related financial disclosures, natural capital products, biodiversity bonds, or corporate risk assessments… Biodiversity is the ‘hot new thing’. But can the process of measurement actually bring us closer to the living world?
I think it can. But only if we apply several key concepts.
Our planet has a body just like our own. By swimming in the science of wildlife migration, ecological connectivity and the free flow of Earth systems, I unpack what happens when we strangle the passage of human and non-human life.
An opinion piece I wrote on three broad problems with how the term ‘nature’ is commonly used, and a few ideas on how we can refresh the ways that we talk about nature.
The second part of my Becoming Landscape series. Here I speak to the ways that desire paints itself across the land, through deer trails and shadows and treetops; the liminal, sometimes invisible paths that each creature takes to fulfill its desires and proclivities. Every empty space filled with relational potential, reaching, sensing, calling, across seasons and species, expressed as the poetics of space. And how to discover exciting and intriguing new possibilities of walking into nature and observing the world around you.
This is my story of becoming an apprentice to a living landscape. It’s a journey into an ecology of mind — a tale where the human psyche and imagination blossoms and branches through entanglements with a planetary intelligence. On how our synapses pattern through relation and reverence, and the remarkable necessity for human culture to co-evolve with an animate, beyond-human world.
This meditation is a form of prayer — it is a song for the element of water.
A while ago, I came across a legal concept called The Rights of Nature. Intuitive, holistic, and ridiculously appropriate for this current time of systemic re-imagining, it gripped my imagination. I pooled together my research as a ‘starter’ piece for anyone who is interested in learning more on the subject.
This project is the first in a series of experiments designed as invitations to appreciate more-than-human life and enter into deeper reciprocity with the ever-present gifts of nature. In the words of Andreas Weber: “Poetic creativity is the ability to know something through participation. We need to understand life as a deeply sense-creating phenomenon. Organisms live in existential, felt realities and perception always means to be touched on a bodily level.” Our hope is that this project encourages you to enter into deeper participation, curiosity, reverence and harmony with the countless gifts of Nature that are bestowed upon us every day.
Something I felt called to write amidst all the discussions on climate breakdown and biodiversity loss. Nature never has been and never will be ours to own and measure, and as long as we continue do so, it is us who will pay a steep price. I invite anyone moved in any way to share their thoughts and feedback.
Every once in a while, I dig up an old diary entry and feel compelled to share it. This is taken from the Fez Festival of Sacred Music last year, and I think it is a love song for the land of Morocco, and for all the lives we ache to live, and a homage to the entirety of this one.
Staring out at grids of cement, some thoughts on grief, mourning, hope and healing.
In a remote cabin in Vancouver Island, far far away, I sat by the shore. I listened. I re-read poetry. I swam with jellyfish. I ate bright salmon berries and raw samphire. I gazed around and listened to the songs of the land. This piece of writing is a result of my days there.
I titled this poem ‘The Woman of Many Names’ and I will let it sink in without much further explanation. I saw her in these forms, I felt her, and the words came. A call for the untamed, the wild, the chthonic.
“Nature conveys a profound message—that we are always in relationship. In the wild, one can go beyond the mind and truly embody teachings about
impermanence, regeneration, stillness and self discovery…” Atlas Unbound brings travelers together to discover Mexico’s extraordinary landscapes with a dedication to bring people back into the wild. Article and photos by yours truly, on our company and my passion project Atlas Unbound featured in Embraer Magazine
I receive many a request to send advice for people traveling to Mexico. What to see & do, go off the beaten track, special experiences and such. To make this easier, I have compiled some of my suggestions below. Bear in mind, I am a road trip kinda gal and love to explore hidden corners and find sublime gems that may not be on usual touristical routes, so map out beforehand.
Along with the FMCN (Mexican Fund for Conservation of Nature) I went to document and explore growth opportunities for a ranch in northern Mexico piloting regenerative agriculture models and holistic land management. By 2020 we will be launching our first regenerative learning journeys and experiential programmes on this epic land.
My footsteps crushed on the gravel as I wandered over to a damp bench and sighed in relief as I sat down. It had been loud inside. I looked up at lady moon, and embraced the stillness, the solitude, embraced all of our living and dying and everything in between. The following words then came to me as a flurry of exploding thoughts that I felt to be as true as anything I had ever known.
On being and becoming Earthlings, inner transformations and the web of life
On the immense beauty of delving into grief, sadness and surrender; on becoming more intimate with our inner selves, and honouring the seasons of our souls.
A call to questioning, world-building and the emergence of new life
My article in L’Officiel Switzerland on my travels across Morocco and into the Saharan desert. Excerpt: “It is here, in the desert’s primal solitude, under the bottomless infinity of night skies that religions are created, beside roaring fires with pounding drums and the chants of desert tribes. Something, anything, to make sense out of an expanse the mind struggles to conceive. The ancestral name of the Berbers, imazighen, translates into “free people”. In the lone desert sands, there is no authority. There is no control.”
Before every Atlas Unbound journey, we send our travelers these story booklets and other surprise gifts and talismans to immerse them in the universe they’re about to discover. Written text is mine and illustrations by the incredibly talented Mexican artist Mauricio Ramirez Castillo.
Excerpts from my travel diary across Morocco. I traced the path of ancient Saharan caravanserai trading routes, going from Marrakesh’s winding medina alleys into the soaring Atlas Mountains, descending through palm-lined oases and crumbling ochre kasbahs. Finally, the Sahara awaited, in her ethereal wonder. Timeless sunsets, footsteps traced in the sand and wiped away with a sigh, undulating rivulets of lost waters.
My updated guide to Mexico City’s newest haunts and cool spots. Come explore this wonderful city I call home.
Human beings have always found a sense of intoxication laced with danger. Mountaineers scale precipitous peaks to toy with death; deep sea divers strain their lungs to the limit just to be able to lose themselves in the emancipating silence of the abyss; storm chases race into the heart of tornadoes as they rip apart farmlands. And why? Because in that split second, in that moment where your soul brushes with death, it’s just you and the world. Everything else disappears. Life crystallises. It becomes infinitely sharper, visceral, blindingly clear. Above all, perhaps, we thirst for reminders that we live on Earth.
I travelled to Antarctica aboard an expedition led by the polar explorer Sir Robert Swan, whose aim is to raise awareness about climate change amongst a new generation of conservation leaders and help protect the last wildernesses we have left. Antarctica, with her monumental walls of ice and stone, rises out of the clouds like a forgotten mirage. Time and time again, I kept being struck by the primordiality of the land. This is a place that belongs not to humans but to creatures and mountains, to ice sheets and krill, to gale force winds and yawning crevasses which plunge deep into the earth. It has no place nor time for humans. It belongs more to our Earth than we ever will and yet belongs to another Earth entirely.
A small excerpt from my diary as we road tripped down the Baja Californian coastline over New Years. There were many special moments during that journey of lunar boulders and desert plains, but these two in particular will remain engraved in my memory forever.
This past December in Mexico City, I poured a little piece of my soul into the four walls of a photo gallery, called the show “Getting Lost”, lit some candles, put on some groovy tunes, and as the sun went down and people started coming in I watched with baited breath to see what would unfold. It was exhilarating; scary; magical; a lot of fun; and mostly, a confirmation from life that something was finally clicking into place. That night filled me with joy, purpose and overwhelming gratitude for the path I’ve been led to discover and all the incredible people and places I’ve had the fortune of meeting along the way. And the project is far from over – in fact, this was just the beginning.
Secret Mayan pyramids, howler monkeys and tropical thunderstorms, harvest full moons and deep journeys into the jungle and her sacred rivers – this is Dancin’ to the Jungle Hop.
South of Kyoto lies one of the world’s most ancient pilgrimage routes, the Kumano Kodo, a series of narrow trails that wind through the dense, mystical mountains of the Kii peninsula and is a fascinating fusion of Japanese Shintoism and Buddhist beliefs. These faiths beckoned to me – their concepts of the endless flow of life and death, of hidden energies, of connectivity between beings and worlds inside of ourselves we don’t even know exist.
My trek through the Barrancas del Cobre, Mexico’s desolate Copper Canyons. The guardians of these lands are the indigenous Tarahumara tribes who fled to the canyons escaping Spanish rule back in the 1500s. An official consensus lists them as being around 50,000 in number, but this is a tricky estimation – the Tarahumara lead nomadic lives, scattered amongst remote rickety wooden huts and isolated caves peppered throughout the mountainside.
My alarm was set. Five in the morning, right at the break of dawn. I was spending the night in a thatched roof farmhouse high above the Iya valley, a spectacular land of deep river gorges, dense pines, quaint villages and cherry blossom trees. I woke up quickly, eagerly anticipating a sunrise that would sweep across the rugged valley below me and slowly rise amongst the balmy mountaintops in the distance.
In the misty islands of Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, over the past 30 years an art mecca has slowly sunk into the hills and cascaded down into abandoned wooden fishing villages with ageing populations. As I roamed the islands’ art museums, I entered the trance of the art pilgrim. My mind quietened. There were dark shadows, mystical silhouettes illuminated by the openings carved in the building’s body. The museums pulled me into their spell, revealing themselves slowly, layer by layer, room by room.
In Kyoto this past April, I stayed in both a traditional Japanese ryokan and a dehumanising capsule hotel. Each to their own merits, they taught me a thing or two about hotels.
In April I travelled to Japan for three weeks and went from bustling Tokyo city life to contemporary art islands, valleys, mountain pilgrimages and monastery complexes. Here are some of my tips and suggestions!
In Chiapas, Mexico, an isolated church in the small village of San Juan Chamula is an eerie mix of Christian faith, animist beliefs, animal sacrifices, medicine men, and healing ceremonies of the indigenous Tzotzil Maya people.
Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca retains an astounding variety of indigenous cultures, with entire villages often dedicated to one particular craft. Traditional pottery making in this area is at risk of disappearing, all too easily replaced by mass plastic goods and quickly made substitutes. To survive, several groups of makers have decided to pool their skill sets and create a collective brand called Colectivo 1050, combining their forces in order to sustain the roots of a thousand year old tradition.
Fabrica Social is an organization which works to conserve Mexico’s various groups of textile artisans. To preserve a country’s indigenous craftsmanship is not just an aesthetic or romantic ideal. It’s about perpetuating the countless myths and stories that are sung into each thread; it’s about liberating them from cultural amnesia.
Nowhere in the world is quite like Mexico City. It’s a city palpable with energy, with ideas, an adventure and a nightmare, of stimulation and spontaneity. This is my guide for Suitcase Magazine on its different neighborhoods – where to eat, stay, watch, do, drink, and some tips and tricks on navigating the craziness.
Along with artist Bosco Sodi, Japanese architect Tadao Ando has designed a striking artists’ residency on Mexico’s Pacific coast where artists from around the world can pursue unique projects – and drink tequila.
A caterpillar rolled up in a sleeping bag. A bright spot in the sky that slowly drops and vanishes into thin air. Its not a star. Its desert magic.
My trip to Iceland in midsummer last year, 2898km in five days. I fell in love with this land of strange wistful devastation, of summer sunsets of pure magic with thick, heavy mists that coat the mountains with permanent cloud frosting.
A Dionysian world of the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal
The Mexican Day of the Dead is a tradition of nuance, a testimony to the occasional brilliant combination and transformation of two distinct cultures.