Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home
essential readings & notes
Essential Reading
Baldwin, James. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son. Dial Press, 1961.
Bass, Ellen. “The Big Picture.” In The Human Line. Copper Canyon Press, 2007.
Berry, Wendell. The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. University Press of Kentucky, 1971.
Beyer, Tamiko. “Equinox.” In Last Days. Alice James Books, 2021.
brown, adrienne maree. Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation. AK Press, 2021.
Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1992.
Clifton, Lucille. “the mississippi river empties into the gulf.” In How to Carry Water: Selected Poems. BOA Editions, 1996.
Harjo, Joy, and Stephen Strom. Secrets from the Center of the World. University of Arizona Press, 1989.
Hirshfield, Jane. “Optimism.” In Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems. HarperCollins, 2001.
hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow, 2000.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.
Laméris, Danusha. “Nothing Wants to Suffer.” In Blade by Blade. Copper Canyon Press, 2024.
Limón, Ada. “Dead Stars.” In The Carrying. Milkweed Editions, 2018.
Lorde, Audre. “A Burst of Light: Living with Cancer.” In A Burst of Light and Other Essays. Firebrand Books, 1988.
Marvel, Kate. Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet. Ecco, 2025.
Maathai, Wangari. “Nobel Lecture.” Nobel Prize, December 10, 2004.
Meadows, Donella. “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System.” Sustainability Institute, 1999.
Milligan, Katherine, Juanita Zerda, and John Kania. “The Relational Work of Systems Change.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, January 18, 2022.
Mitchell, Sherri. Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change. North Atlantic Books, 2018.
Morales, Aurora Levins. “Summons.” In RIMONIM: Ritual Poetry of Jewish Liberation. Ayin Press, 2024.
O’Connor, M. R. Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World. St. Martin’s Press, 2019.
Palmer, Parker. Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. Jossey-Bass, 2000.
Renkl, Margaret. The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year. Spiegel & Grau, 2023.
Sawin, Elizabeth. Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World. Island Press, 2024.
Smith, Tracy K. “An Old Story.” In Such Color: New and Selected Poems. Graywolf Press, 2018.
Wray, Britt. Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis. Knopf Canada, 2022.
Wild Chorus by Abacus Corvus was a mystically wise and profoundly generous companion as I created Climate Wayfinding.
Notes
“And the world cannot be discovered”: Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge (University Press of Kentucky, 1971), 34.
Pre-Ambling
“Come closer. / Come into this”: Anis Mojgani, “Closer,” in Songs from Under the River (Write Bloody Publishing, 2013), 21.
Embarking
1
Qualla Boundary, the 56,600-acre territory: “About Us,” Visit Cherokee, NC, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
“morning pages,” one of Julia Cameron’s two essential practices: Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1992).
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do”: Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” in New and Selected Poems, Volume One (Beacon Press, 1992), 94.
warmest temperatures in at least one hundred thousand years: Darrell S. Kaufman and Nicholas P. McKay, “Technical Note: Past and Future Warming—Direct Comparison on Multi-Century Timescales,” Climate of the Past 18 (2022): 911–17.
Globally, 84 percent of young people: Caroline Hickman et al., “Climate Anxiety in Children and Young People and Their Beliefs About Government Responses to Climate Change: A Global Survey,” Lancet Planetary Health 5, no. 12 (December 2021): 863–73.
A majority of Americans are worried, too: Anthony Leiserowitz et al., “Climate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs & Attitudes, Spring 2025,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2025.
a quarter of the country expresses alarm: Anthony Leiserowitz et al., “Global Warming’s Six Americas, Fall 2024,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2025.
a much smaller group—just 8 percent of us: Matthew Goldberg et al., “Segmenting the Climate Change Alarmed: Active, Willing, and Inactive,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2021.
Around the world, 89 percent of people: Peter Andre et al., “Globally Representative Evidence on the Actual and Perceived Support for Climate Action,” Nature Climate Change 14 (2024): 253–59.
“We are living in high-stakes times”: Makani Themba, “Stepping Up, Stepping In: Facilitating for Freedom,” in Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, ed. adrienne maree brown (AK Press, 2021), 56.
In the 1800s, scientists like Eunice Newton Foote: “History of Climate Science Research,” UCAR Center for Science Education.
“Why are the keys to our future in the hands”: Andrea Gibson, “Homesick: a Plea for Our Planet,” in You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021).
“the climate crisis is a leadership crisis”: Suyin Haynes, “Meet 15 Women Leading the Fight Against Climate Change: Katharine Wilkinson: Education,” Time, September 12, 2019; Katharine Wilkinson, “Women, Girls, and Non-Binary Leaders Are Demonstrating the Kind of Leadership Our World So Badly Needs,” The Elders, December 6, 2019; Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, “Begin,” in All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (One World, 2020), xvii–xxiv.
Just 37 percent of American adults: Gregory A. Smith et al., “Religious Attendance and Congregational Involvement,” Pew Research Center, February 26, 2025.
the true complexity of that request: Katharine Wilkinson, “How Empowering Women and Girls Can Help Stop Global Warming,” TED Talk, Palm Springs, CA, November 2018.
a five-step approach to answering the question of What can I do?: Katharine Wilkinson, “The Climate Crisis Is a Call to Action. These 5 Steps Helped Me Figure Out How to Be of Use,” Time, July 19, 2021.
“the act of finding one’s way to a particular place”: Oxford English Dictionary, “wayfinding.”
In Indigenous wayfinding traditions . . . signs and signals guide navigation: M. R. O’Connor, Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World (St. Martin’s Press, 2019).
the term more-than-human world: David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (Pantheon Books, 1996).
metaphor of the air held between a drum’s round shell and taut skin: Sherri Mitchell, speech, Global Matriarchs’ Gathering, Wicuhkemtultine Kinship Community, Maine, September 24, 2022. (No recording available.)
Colette Pichon Battle’s story, adapted with permission from: Colette Pichon Battle, “On Knowing What We’re Called To,” interview by Krista Tippett, On Being with Krista Tippett, podcast, The On Being Project, March 3, 2022.
Getting Our Bearings
2
roughly 50 gigatons of greenhouse pollution: Alfredo Rivera, Shweta Movalia, and Emma Rutkowski, “Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: 1990–2022 and Preliminary 2023 Estimates,” Rhodium Group, November 26, 2024.
Judith Viorst’s classic tale: Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Atheneum, 1972).
burgeoning community of climate leaders within American evangelical Christianity: Katharine K. Wilkinson, Between God & Green: How Evangelicals Are Cultivating a Middle Ground on Climate Change (Oxford University Press, 2012).
The Systems Change Lab defines systems change: “What Is Systems Change?,” Systems Change Lab.
1.4 degrees Celsius: C3S Global Temperature Trend Monitor, Copernicus Climate Change Service, October 2025.
Kate Marvel’s story, adapted with her collaboration and permission from: Kate Marvel, written exchange with the author, July 28, 2025; Kate Marvel, Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet (Ecco, 2025); Kate Marvel, “What Have We Learned from a Summer of Climate Reckoning?,” interview by David Wallace-Wells, The Ezra Klein Show, New York Times, September 5, 2023; Kate Marvel, “The End of Normal: Understanding—and Correcting—Earth’s Troubling Climate Trajectory,” webinar, posted August 28, 2023, by Project Drawdown, YouTube.
“the rarest and purest form of generosity”: Simone Weil to Joë Bousquet, April 13, 1942, in Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (Pantheon Books, 1976), 462.
Following Our Emotions
3
Google searches for “climate anxiety” soared 565 percent: Kate Yoder, “It’s Not Just You: Everyone Is Googling ‘Climate Anxiety,’” Grist, October 28, 2021.
nearly half of young people surveyed: Caroline Hickman et al., “Climate Anxiety in Children and Young People and Their Beliefs About Government Responses to Climate Change: A Global Survey,” Lancet Planetary Health 5, no. 12 (December 2021): 863–73.
What Dr. Lise Van Susteren, a practicing psychiatrist, termed pre-traumatic stress: Lise Van Susteren, “Our Children Face ‘Pretraumatic Stress’ from Worries About Climate Change,” BMJ Opinion, November 19, 2020.
more than eight billion human beings: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results, DESA/POP/2024/TR/NO. 9 (2024).
over two million known species: O. Bánki et al., Catalogue of Life, Version 2025-10-10 XR, 2025.
climate anxiety . . . healthy response to an existential threat: Britt Wray, Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis (Knopf Canada, 2022).
“taxonomy of climate emotions”: Panu Pihkala, “Toward a Taxonomy of Climate Emotions,” Frontiers in Climate 3 (2022).
Climate Emotions Wheel: Panu Pihkala, Anya Kamenetz, and Sarah Newman, “Climate Emotions Wheel,” Climate Mental Health Network, 2024.
“The planet, like us, has lost much before”: Kate Marvel, Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet (Ecco, 2025), 120.
“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep”: Adrienne Rich, “Sources,” in Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems (W. W. Norton, 1986), 25.
“fucking face our grief” . . . “shallow actions”: Kritee Kranko, “How to Cope with All the Climate Feels,” interview by Katharine Wilkinson, A Matter of Degrees, podcast, season 3, episode 4, November 2, 2022.
“Our feelings are our most genuine paths”: Audre Lorde, interview by Claudia Tate, in Black Women Writers at Work, ed. Claudia Tate (Oldcastle Books, 1985), 106–7.
not a sign of something wrong with us: Sherri Mitchell, “How Pain Can Drive Climate Action,” posted November 27, 2020, by Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, YouTube.
Participating in collective action: Sarah E. O. Schwartz et al., “Climate Change Anxiety and Mental Health: Environmental Activism as Buffer,” Current Psychology 42 (2023): 16708–21.
She began to edit Thich Nhat Hanh’s books on Buddhism and ecology: Thich Nhat Hanh, Love Letter to the Earth (Parallax Press, 2012); Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet (HarperOne, 2022).
Sister True Dedication’s story, adapted with her collaboration and permission from: Sister True Dedication, in discussion with the author, July 2, 2025; Sister True Dedication, “3 Questions to Build Resilience—and Change the World,” TED Talk, Edinburgh, Scotland, October 2021; Sister True Dedication, guided meditation from “Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, Week 7: Action Dimension,” online course, Plum Village, 2023.
“sponge of gratitude”: Ross Gay, “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” in Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015), 93.
Surfacing Solutions
4
“I don’t believe any longer” . . . “we have to make it over”: James Baldwin, address at the Esquire symposium, San Francisco State College, October 22, 1960, Poetry Center Digital Archive, audio and transcript; James Baldwin, “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel,” in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (Dial Press, 1961), 126.
major fossil fuel companies . . . conditions of the last ten thousand years: Beth Gardiner, “How an Early Oil Industry Study Became Key in Climate Lawsuits,” Yale Environment 360, November 30, 2022; Oliver Milman, “‘Smoking Gun Proof’: Fossil Fuel Industry Knew of Climate Danger as Early as 1954, Documents Show,” The Guardian (US edition), January 30, 2024.
I spent most of 2016 at my desk, writing most of the book Drawdown: Paul Hawken, ed., Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (Penguin Books, 2017).
“One of the best and most challenging things”: Rebecca Solnit, “What Can I Do About the Climate Emergency?,” digital addendum to Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, eds. Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua (Haymarket Books, 2023).
the follow-up publication I led, The Drawdown Review: Katharine Wilkinson, ed., The Drawdown Review: Climate Solutions for a New Decade (Project Drawdown, 2020).
roughly the combined weight of all livestock (mostly cattle) and all human beings on Earth: Lior Greenspoon et al., “The Global Biomass of Wild Mammals,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 10 (2023): e2204892120.
“Leverage points are points of power”: Donella Meadows, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” Sustainability Institute, 1999.
I saw that in action . . . efforts to build a regenerative economy: Leah Stokes and Katharine Wilkinson, hosts, A Matter of Degrees, podcast, season 3, episode 10, “The Tongass: A Way Forward for the Forest,” March 2, 2023.
the Tongass is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world: “The Tongass National Forest: America’s Climate and Salmon Forest,” Sitka Conservation Society, October 5, 2022.
“We brought down apartheid”: “Our Two Priorities: The Climate Emergency and the Crisis in Democracy,” Doc Society.
a “wild rumpus,” reminiscent of Maurice Sendak’s fantastical scenes: Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (Harper & Row, 1963).
Or, for a more recent reference: Everything Everywhere All at Once, written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, A24, 2022.
Andrew Boyd proposes three questions for solution evaluation: Andrew Boyd, I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor (New Society Publishers, 2023), 231–32.
Dr. Elizabeth “Beth” Sawin calls this multisolving: Elizabeth Sawin, Multisolving: Creating Systems Change in a Fractured World (Island Press, 2024).
“The bottom line is this”: John Romano, “James Baldwin Writing and Talking,” New York Times, September 23, 1979.
“a more human dwelling place”: James Baldwin, “The Creative Process,” in Creative America, ed. Jerry Mason (Ridge Press, 1962), 17. (Find an excerpt here.)
“The majority of the world’s remaining biodiversity is on lands cared for and loved by Indigenous peoples”: Katie Reytar, Peter Veit, and Johanna von Braun, “Protecting Biodiversity Hinges on Securing Indigenous and Community Land Rights,” Insights, World Resources Institute, November 22, 2024; Latoya Abulu, Aimee Gabay, and Sonam Lama Hyolmo, “Do Indigenous Peoples Really Conserve 80% of the World’s Biodiversity?,” Mongabay, September 26, 2024.
boreal forest that covers more than half of Canada: The Canadian Encyclopedia, “Boreal Zone,” last updated May 25, 2018.
It is the largest intact forest ecosystem on Earth: Michelle Sims, Peter Potapov, and Elizabeth Goldman, “The World’s Last Intact Forests Are Becoming Increasingly Fragmented,” Insights, World Resources Institute, November 2, 2022.
Valérie Courtois’s story, adapted with her collaboration and permission from: Valérie Courtois, in discussion with the author, July 3, 2025; Valérie Courtois, “How Indigenous Guardians Protect the Planet and Humanity,” TED Talk, New York, NY, September 2022; Valérie Courtois, “Bright Award Event and Discussion Honoring 2023 Winner Valérie Courtois,” interview by Shawn Watts, October 2, 2023, posted October 5, 2023, by Stanford Law School, YouTube; David McGuffin, “Valérie Courtois on What She Hopes Will Come out of COP15: ‘To Save the World,’” Canadian Geographic, December 9, 2022.
Offering Our Superpowers
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As I wrote for CNN, being the “city in a forest”: Katharine K. Wilkinson, “Opinion: What Threatens My ‘City in the Forest,’” CNN, August 28, 2023.
“Every living thing”: Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year (Spiegel & Grau, 2023), 78–79.
“No matter how sick I feel”: Audre Lorde, “A Burst of Light: Living with Cancer,” in A Burst of Light and Other Essays (Firebrand Books, 1988), 76–77.
“Even a wounded world is feeding us”: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2013), 327.
“Perhaps this / is [life’s] way of fighting back”: Mary Oliver, “Don’t Hesitate,” in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin Press, 2017), 61.
“every job is a climate job”: Jamie Alexander, “No Matter Where We Work, Every Job Is a Climate Job Now,” TED Talk, TEDxClimateActionTech, December 2020.
American Climate Corps, a national service program maddeningly axed in early 2025: Kate Yoder, “The American Climate Corps Is Over. What Even Was It?,” Grist, January 15, 2025.
what Joanna Macy called the Great Turning: Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy (New World Library, 2012); Joanna Macy and Jessica Serrante, hosts, We Are the Great Turning, podcast, 2024, Sounds True.
Peabody pulled more than a billion gallons of pristine groundwater: Tim Grabiel, “Drawdown: An Update on Groundwater Mining on Black Mesa,” NRDC Issue Paper, Natural Resources Defense Council, March 2006.
Wahleah Johns and Billy Parish’s story, adapted with their collaboration and permission from: Wahleah Johns and Billy Parish, in discussion with the author, August 13, 2025; Billy Parish and Dev Aujla, Making Good: Finding Meaning, Money, and Community in a Changing World (Rodale Books, 2012), 12–16; Wahleah Johns, “Changing Woman: One Navajo’s Fight for a Just Energy Transition,” interview by Julian Brave NoiseCat, A Matter of Degrees, podcast, season 1, episode 7, December 8, 2020; Billy Parish, “742: Mosaic’s Journey to $15 Billion in Residential Solar Loans with Co-Founder & Executive Chair, Billy Parish,” interview by Nico Johnson, SunCast, episode 742, Spotify, September 19, 2024; Wahleah Johns, “Wahleah Johns and the Movement to Replace Extraction with Regeneration,” interview by May Boeve, How We Build This, podcast, episode 4, Spotify, July 15, 2025.
Connecting with Community
6
It forms more compounds than all the other elements: Britannica, “carbon.”
“I contain multitudes”: Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” in Leaves of Grass (David McKay, 1892), 78.
“Everything we know about systems tells us relationships are the core”: Katherine Milligan, Juanita Zerda, and John Kania, “The Relational Work of Systems Change,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, January 18, 2022.
One definition of life: David Haskell, “How Listening to Trees Can Help Reveal Nature’s Connections,” interview by Diane Toomey, Yale Environment 360, August 4, 2017; David Haskell, written exchange with the author, August 30, 2025.
“conscious emulation of nature’s genius”: Janine M. Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (HarperCollins, 1997), 2.
“Be locally attuned and responsive”: “DesignLens: Life’s Principles,” Biomimicry 3.8.
“The most important thing an individual can do”: Bill McKibben, “Give Up Your Climate Guilt,” interview by Leah Stokes, A Matter of Degrees, podcast, season 1, episode 1, October 14, 2020.
Dr. Parker Palmer’s small, wise book: Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Jossey-Bass, 2000).
“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation”: bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (William Morrow, 2018), 215.
Parker’s concept of a community of congruence: Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (Jossey-Bass, 1998), 173–84.
“get in good trouble, necessary trouble”: John Lewis, afterword to His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, by Jon Meacham (Random House, 2020), 248.
the All We Can Save anthology: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, eds., All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (One World, 2020).
“Go . . . where your heart can find a home”: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures (One World, 2024), 427.
This is the country that has produced the most climate pollution over time: Matthew W. Jones et al., “National Contributions to Climate Change Due to Historical Emissions of Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide Since 1850,” Scientific Data 10 (2023): 155.
Kimberlé W. Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989: Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139–67.
“values that reflect life”: Tara Houska, “Sacred Resistance,” in Johnson and Wilkinson, All We Can Save, 218.
fundamental causes of the sickness we are experiencing: Nadine Anne Hura, “Those Riding Shotgun,” PEN Transmissions, May 6, 2021.
“There is an art to flocking”: adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (AK Press, 2017), 13.
Up to about sixty thousand years, carbon can tell us: Steve Koppes and Louise Lerner, “Carbon-14 Dating, Explained,” UChicago News, February 2025.
That absence makes it possible to identify their gaseous remains: Heather Graven, Ralph F. Keeling, and Joeri Rogelj, “Changes to Carbon Isotopes in Atmospheric CO2 over the Industrial Era and into the Future,” Global Biogeochemical Cycles 34, no. 11 (2020).
“We are called to assist the Earth”: Wangari Maathai, “Nobel Lecture,” Nobel Prize, December 10, 2004, video and transcript.
Of the fifty most climate-vulnerable countries in the world: Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN) Country Index, 2025.
Wanjira Mathai’s story, adapted with her collaboration and permission from: Wanjira Mathai, written exchange with the author, August 1, 2025; Wanjira Mathai, “The Tree- Growing Movement Restoring Africa’s Vital Landscapes,” TED Talk, Vancouver, BC, April 2023; Wanjira Mathai, “How Gender Equality Can Save the Planet,” interview by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson, A Matter of Degrees, podcast, season 2, episode 10, September 29, 2021; Wanjira Mathai, “Wanjira Mathai—a New Story for Africa,” interview by Amy Davoren-Rose and Angus Hervey, Hope Is a Verb, podcast, Spotify, July 21, 2023; Wanjira Mathai, “The Green Belt with Wanjira Mathai,” interview by Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac, and Paul Dickinson, Outrage + Optimism, podcast, season 1, episode 33, December 5, 2019.
Orienting with Vision
7
“The task of stories is to teach us to see”: Margaret W. Pepperdene, “The Figure of the Journey,” lecture, September 1, 1999, Paideia School, author’s notes.
The hippocampus, so named for its seahorse shape: Shyamal C. Bir et al., “Julius Caesar Arantius (Giulio Cesare Aranzi, 1530–1589) and the Hippocampus of the Human Brain: History Behind the Discovery,” Journal of Neurosurgery 122, no. 4 (2015): 971–75.
It’s famously large for long-tenured London taxi drivers: Eleanor A. Maguire et al., “Navigation-Related Structural Change in the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97, no. 8 (2000): 4, 398–403.
“The human imagination is like a beacon”: M. R. O’Connor, Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World (St. Martin’s Press, 2019), 274.
Nikki Silvestri teaches that vision sources from our spirit or soul: Nikki Silvestri, lecture from “Joy + Impact Academy,” online course, Soil and Shadow, 2021, author’s notes.
The first compass was invented in ancient China, during the Han dynasty: Susan Silverman, “Compass, China, 220 BCE,” Museum of Ancient Inventions, Smith College Program in the History of the Sciences.
the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics celebrated it: “Incredible Highlights—Beijing 2008 Olympics, Opening Ceremony,” posted January 19, 2010, by Olympics, YouTube.
This earliest compass . . . a means of divination: Silverman, “Compass, China, 220 BCE.”
the compass was adapted for terrestrial and maritime navigation: “Technological Advances During the Song,” China in 1000 CE: The Most Advanced Society in the World, Asia for Educators, Columbia University.
the poles of our planet . . . sit some 7,900 miles apart: John W. Foster, “Earth’s Shape,” EBSCO Research Starters, 2025.
That magnetic field . . . shelters us from the bombardment of solar wind and storms: Alan Buis, “Earth’s Magnetosphere: Protecting Our Planet from Harmful Space Energy,” NASA, August 3, 2021.
“compass of the heart”: Tara Brach, “Compass of the Heart,” Tara Brach, podcast, Vimeo, June 29, 2011.
“In order to find our way”: Bayo Akomolafe, “Bayo Akomolafe: To Find Your Purpose, Become Lost,” posted March 23, 2023, by Purpose Guides Institute, YouTube.
“Sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be”: Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches over the World: A Native Memoir (W. W. Norton, 2001), 15.
navigation is primordial: O’Connor, Wayfinding, 274.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing: Melissa Denchak, “Fracking 101,” Natural Resources Defense Council, April 19, 2019.
“to bring the world’s biggest problem to the world’s highest court”: Julian Aguon, “The Fight for Climate Justice at the World Court,” Rolling Stone, June 27, 2025.
“Land is our mother”: Cynthia Houniuhi, “Cynthia’s Oral Statement to the International Court of Justice,” December 2, 2024, posted January 14, 2025, by Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, YouTube.
“The judges heard ninety-six government submissions”: Jennifer Bansard et al., “Summary of the International Court of Justice Hearings on States’ Obligations in Respect of Climate Change: 2–13 December 2024,” Earth Negotiations Bulletin, International Institute for Sustainable Development, December 16, 2024.
“In the Pacific, we have always looked to the stars”: Vishal Prasad, “Vishal’s Oral Statement to the International Court of Justice,” December 13, 2024, posted January 14, 2025, by Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, YouTube.
“has an important but ultimately limited role”: “Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change,” International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion (July 23, 2025), ¶ 456.
Jennifer Robinson’s story, adapted with her collaboration and permission from: Jennifer Robinson, in discussion with the author, July 30, 2025; Jennifer Robinson, “Living Greatly in the Law: Law and Progressive Social Change,” 2021 Hal Wootten Lecture, October 13, 2021, UNSW Sydney, audio and transcript; “CityTalks: The Climate and Nature Crisis—What Australia Does Matters!,” April 2, 2025, posted April 9, 2025, by City of Sydney, YouTube.
“Release perfection”: adrienne maree brown, Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation (AK Press, 2021), 129.
Journeying Onward
8
“During the time that I’m here”: Christiana Figueres, “Christiana Figueres: Ecological Hope, and Spiritual Evolution,” interview by Krista Tippett, On Being with Krista Tippett, podcast, The On Being Project, November 9, 2023.
Flamenco was born . . . persecuted by Spain’s Catholic elite: Donn E. Pohren, The Art of Flamenco (Bold Strummer, 2005); Giles Tremlett, Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past (Walker Books, 2008).
“Gutsy” and “earthy”: “Flamenco Dancer María Benítez,” ¡Colores!, season 19, episode 10, aired March 28, 2013, on New Mexico PBS.
Alaska issues its first-ever heat advisories: Lois Parshley, “Alaska Just Hit a Climate Milestone—Its First-Ever Heat Advisory,” Grist, June 16, 2025.
the Klamath River, undammed, runs free from Oregon to California: John Branch, “First Time in 100 Years: Young Kayakers on a Ride for the Ages,” New York Times, June 17, 2025.
Gas turbines powering the world’s largest supercomputer foul the air of southwest Memphis, Tennessee: “We Went to the Town Elon Musk Is Poisoning,” posted May 30, 2025, by More Perfect Union, YouTube.
a conservation group buys, and blocks, a mining site that threatened to imperil Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp: Kala Hunter, “Okefenokee Mining Site Purchased for $60M. Land Buyers Credit Public Advocacy,” Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, June 24, 2025.
In it, we explore the personal, professional, and political dimensions: Leah Stokes and Katharine Wilkinson, hosts, A Matter of Degrees, podcast, season 3, episodes 1–3, 2022.
They are nine critical processes . . . “safe operating space for humanity”: Johan Rockström et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461 (2009): 472–75.
seven of nine boundaries are outstripped: N. H. Kitzmann et al., eds., Planetary Health Check 2025: A Scientific Assessment of the State of the Planet (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 2025).
This particular rift has been opening: Alyssa L. Abbey and Nathan A. Niemi, “Perspectives on Continental Rifting Processes from Spatiotemporal Patterns of Faulting and Magmatism in the Rio Grande Rift, USA,” Tectonics 39, no. 1 (2019).
Equisetum . . . is the only surviving genus of a primordial lineage: “Field Horsetail,” CU Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado Boulder, August 12, 2020; Britannica, “horsetail.”
“On the last day of the world”: W. S. Merwin, “Place,” in The Rain in the Trees (Knopf, 1988), 64.
Sherri Mitchell’s story, adapted with her collaboration and permission from: Sherri Mitchell, in discussion with the author, June 25, 2025; Sherri Mitchell, Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change (North Atlantic Books, 2018), 3–5.
“I have lost my way many times”: Joy Harjo and Stephen Strom, Secrets from the Center of the World (University of Arizona Press, 1989), 52.
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