Writing Prompt #6
coming together on conserved land
I want to start with some good news. I won another book giveaway! You know, one of those social media things, tag a friend and like this post to enter. I am excited to read this book from Spiegel & Grau because it appears to be hopeful and I love and trust this press’ catalogue of books and authors. Cheaper, Faster, Better comes out May 28th, 2024 and the author, Tom Steyer, is a billionaire-businessman turned climate activist.
“I first became a ‘climate person’ on a 2006 trip to Alaska with my family,” Steyer said in a statement. “I wanted them to see how beautiful and powerful the untouched American landscape can be. Except there was one problem — Alaska was melting. The vast glacial expanse that I admired on my first visit there in 1981 had completely disappeared.
“From that point on, I’ve dedicated my time, resources and energy to helping America win the climate war.” (AP News)
I will let you know what I think when I finish it.
In the meantime, what are you feeling hopeful about right now?
Write for five minutes, no editing. Whatever comes to mind.
For this week’s writing prompt, I have been thinking a lot about conserved land or the “untouched American landscape” that Steyer refers to above. Does that even exist? What a gift it is that we have land trusts, wildlife refuges, and state and national parks in this country, but what management issues (of people and land) arise on conserved land and how much conserved land is enough? What would these ecosystems look like if we hadn’t protected these places?
The group Yellowstone to Yukon is doing some interesting work to create “conservation solutions at the scale that nature demands.” As an independent non-profit, they are working across five American states, two Canadian provinces, two Canadian territories, and at least 75 Indigenous territories, to tackle the loss of biodiversity and a changing climate and keep this land base in tact, “giving animals freedom to roam and protecting habitat for grizzly bears, caribou, wolves, and more.” They are also taking into account the need of people across this region.
This poem below, by Erika Meitner, came out this week and I enjoyed it on a lot of levels. You can read it below or follow the link to the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. On their website, they also have a link (that works on my computer, not my phone, fyi) to hear the author read the poem.
Just as the Darkness Got Very Dark / Another Data Point
People going through
hard times don’t listen
to songs about people
going through hard times,
says my son. Debt, addiction,
chronic bad luck, unemployment—
I’m with you, I say. The only
exception is heartbreak;
when you’re deep in it
you just want a late-night
DJ to spin your pain. The car
radio is playing Jason Isbell
through Wyoming, part of it
in Yellowstone National Park,
home to 500 of the world’s
900 geysers. Mesmerizing
eruptions! Geothermal wonders!
Hot holes and fumaroles!
Last week a Bison
gored a Phoenix woman,
but who knows how close
she got before it charged.
Bison run three times faster
than humans and injure
more people than any animal
in the park—even grizzlies.
In thermal areas the ground
is just a thin crust above
acidic pools, some resembling
milky marbles, others the insides
of celestine geodes reflecting
the sky. Boardwalk signs
all over Yellowstone shout
Dangerous Ground! Potentially
fatal! and despite that—
despite the print of a boy
off-balance, falling through
the surface into a boiling
hot spring, his mouth an O
of fear—despite the warnings
in writing that more than
a dozen people have been
scalded to death here and
hundreds badly burned
or scarred, there are still
the tourons taunting bears,
dipping their fingers
off the side of the Boardwalk
into a gurgling mudpot.
Got a loan out on the truck
but I’m runnin’ out of luck,
sings Isbell, and the parking lots
are packed with license plates
from every state—so many
borrowed RVs taking the curves
too hard, so much rented
bear spray dangling from
carabiners clipped to cargo
short waistbands, and ample
Christianity too: the Jesus
& Therapy t-shirt, the Enjoy
Jesus baseball hat, the all I need
today is a little bit of coffee
and a whole lot of Jesus tote,
Mennonite families with
women in bonnets
hauling toddlers. I want
to tell my son it’s not
shameful to need
something or someone
to help us out of the darkness
when it gets very dark.
Jeff Buckley. Joy Division.
Jesus. Dolly Parton. Even
Delilah and her long
distance dedications
cracking the silence of
every solo backroad
I’ve been driving since
before he was born.
He is sixteen. Does he know
the black hole of loving
and not being loved in return,
the night and its volume?
And the moon—nearly full,
rising over Old Faithful
which erupts on cue
to an appreciative crowd
every ninety-ish minutes.
And the moon, keeping me
insomniac with its light
shining like an interrogation
trick into this cabin
through the crack
between the window
and the blind.
Copyright © 2024 by Erika Meitner. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 27, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
Think about an experience or memory you have on protected land, like Yellowstone or a local park or preserve? Who were you with and how did you feel? What were the other people there doing? What were they wearing? How do these spaces allow or prevent access to nature?
Try to create a scene from memory. You may want to integrate some other, surprising elements like Meitner has done in her poem:
Song lyrics (like the Jason Isbell lyrics used here)
Celebrities (Delilah and Dolly Parton!)
An invented word like touron (tourist + moron)
Write for 15 minutes. I like the way she uses tercets, maybe try your own or write in prose if that feels more comfortable.
I am taking a little spring break next week, but I will see you in April for National Poetry Month, Earth Day, and the 2-year anniversary of Her Deepest Ecologies!
