Ecologist with prodigious feelings makes cookies

Social media algorithms are echo chambers. I have painstakingly curated my echo chamber to enable my participation in online discourse. Once in a while, something new and truly beautiful floats by: "I know it can be lonely, but if this community has shown me anything it is that I am not alone. And neither are you. There are others carrying the same grief, the same hope, the same love for this planet. It's a lot to carry. But maybe that's what this work truly is - holding the immensity of it all, and still finding a way to care anyway. And in each other, we find strength when our own feels too small." @wildtesa/instagram 26 October 2025 Tesa Mendoza started an online community for conservationists that includes webinars and coaching. More than just a primatologist, I bet she has some words for your soul:  wildtesa.com . Whether or not you have found "your people" locally (yet), communities occupying virtual spaces can be a mighty boon. Cybercommunities are on...

We're more than brains in a jar? We need to stop pretending neutrality is a thing? Neat. " It's when science implies societal action that people begin to try to reject the science in order to avoid the need for action." It's called solution aversion  ( Buckiewicz, 2025 , January 17 ). One of the articles I read to wrap my noodle around this social aversion thing states " we should understand that certain problems have particular solutions that threaten some people and groups more than others" (). Basically, if something requires an action that threatens our core values we reject the scientific facts. In that example, whether or not an audience accepted climate science modeling depended on whether the proposed solution was in line with that audience's values. We are willing to take action when we believe in the actions. Green technology in the free market over carbon tax or other government interventions. For my beloved eggheads, the original  npj Cli...

Did you ever hear about Tsay Keh Dene's displacement? It's been about 60 years. There's a 75-minute documentary directed by Luke Gleeson that came out in 2022. You should watch it: https://gem.cbc.ca/dne-yiinjetl-the-scattering-of-man Not all isolated communities chose to be isolated. Colonial processes continue to shape our lands, neighbours, and relations. Tsay Keh Dene is in stage 4 of the modern treaty process with B.C.

 I just finished my first watch of The Eternal Song .  One of the Elders interviewed for this video, Pat McCabe (Diné) links European witch hunts to the worldwide system of othering through the colonial era. Recounting that the children were made to watch torture. Another Elder states that's when Europeans were drawn away from the forest, the Land, when Europeans lost their wise ones.  The colonial violence of severing relationship with place, the identity of being part of nature and one's environment... a form of cultural genocide... is, perhaps, not always as obvious as I think it is. I never thought about the ways we/they Europeans did it to our/them-selves. I witness the message, among many others, that interconnectedness is true and sacred. We humans are part of the rich tapestry of life; that great web unites us all.  So we are also holy and precious, each one of us, but especially when we come together in collaboration and celebration. cf. alterity "The people...

 I've been re-reading Grenz' Medicine Wheel for the Planet  over the summer and embracing her way of writing herself into her work, of connecting her head and her heart. This reflection is an inkshed about how I might connect my head and my heart. I've been told I show up with authenticity, I speak truth to power.  I don't know how to unmask in academia and applied biology. Will people still take me seriously if I acknowledge the bliss I feel lying in the moss or watching the wind flirt the aspen leaves for hours? Does ecology need to be objective? My science-based advice must be unfettered, unbiased, and 'objective'. But the rest of it? I'm no phenomenologist that can bracket out her biases. I wear them firmly on my sleeve and live them out loud. I sometimes attempt a feminist hermeneutic of transformation. Theory, applied. My plant neighbours are sentient. That caribou's life is worth as much as yours because you're part of the same ecosystem, the ...

 A new friend asked me if I've heard of the gates of grief. While I'm familiar with the general precepts of Keller's work , I hadn't stopped to consider how they apply to eco-grief. The third gate, Sorrows of the World, is intrinsically linked to my entanglement with the rest of the biosphere. Among other things, I take an earth systems science approach to my work with the biosphere and my work is deeply tied to my spirituality. I hold this gate of grief open to honour my connections to the rest of Gaea. I know Lovelock pivoted away from his Gaia hypothesis later in life, but it still resonates with me. We are the planet's sentience / self-awareness / surveillance system. Homeostasis is imperative and humans have minimized our homeostats. That's a conversation for another day. Grief shows us what matters, and this grief is my lifelong companion. Grief shared is medicine . So. Grief rituals can help us mark important events and processes, help drive meaning into...