If We Relearn to Love the Ground
Hybrid piece by Jane Burn
If We Relearn to Love the Ground
i
I was facilitating a workshop for a Climate Club at a local gallery recently. Our initial discussion led to some of the participants admitting to feeling utterly overwhelmed when it came to attempting to separate their thoughts on the planet, or address environmental concerns through creative writing. I replied that I understood this feeling well – to begin to consider an issue is to disappear down innumerable tangled paths, each more distressing than the last. Eco-anxiety is very real.
The American Psychology Association (APA) describes eco-anxiety as “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one's future and that of next generations”.1
Our planet has passed through many epochs. The Pleistocene2 ages of ice became the Holocene2 age with a more stable climate, in which humans flourished. Now, we must all find a way to exist as we face the consequences of the Anthropocene3 – the age of human detachment from the planet and from nature. An age of colonialism, industry, war, political incompetence and evil, myriad abuses and mind-boggling greed. No wonder we struggle to know how to negotiate and survive this precarious time.
Ten years ago, I found myself increasingly suffering from eco-anxiety. I never felt that I was doing enough to help the environment. All my adult life I have had the desire to find a different way to live. I have always had the strongest desire to ‘step off the world’ and lessen my reliance on the modern engine of capitalism and waste. Working in shops and supermarkets for a decade and witnessing the levels of waste and the in-built obsolescence of products had distressed me to a point from which I wondered if I would ever recover. Especially at times like Christmas, when I wanted to stand up and yell stop it! Please stop this! I felt weak and a failure because I did not. I closed my mouth and carried on, because of the wages I so desperately needed. Plastic, plastic, plastic. Endless streams of unnecessary packaging swept before my eyes. Crowds and crush. This was one of the reasons my mental health eroded until I had to leave, try to recover and find a way of life that lessened my stress and eco-guilt. Could I (I wondered) use the guilt I was feeling to do some good?
“Eco-guilt is guilt that arises when people think about times they have not met personal or societal standards for environmental behaviour. Highlighting instances when people fail to meet standards for environmental protection should create guilt which should then motivate eco-friendly behavior.”4
The answer that we found, as a family, was to turn our lives upside down. After a lot of internet searching, I found a property in which we could learn to live differently. I waited for my husband to come home from work and asked that he come to view something with me. After a few wrong turns, I found the place I was looking for – a dilapidated, half-rotten timber disaster with an overgrown, almost impassable garden, at the point of collapsing away from its chimney stack. I calmly informed him that this was to be our new home.
With a lot of hope, a will to learn and a great deal of risk, we began restoring a 1920s wooden cottage on a local site of historical interest. I chose this place because it was off-grid. We rebuilt using almost entirely reclaimed and recycled materials, even to the extent of reusing nails and screws we had pulled from pieces of wood. The blog which I kept at that busy, exciting, hopeful time can be found here: https://weboughtacottage.wordpress.com/28th-may-2016/
After fast-forwarding through nine years of injury, fatigue, scavenging and scrabbling, terrifying finances, much labour and more learning than we thought our minds were capable of, we have changed our lives beyond recognition. As I type this essay, my laptop is nourished with solar power. The sofa I am sitting on, along with every stick of furniture here, is a triumph of second, third, fourth, fifth-hand freecycling. I have encouraged a garden of diversity, and leave it, as much as possible, to its own devices. Bird and insect boxes are installed in many places.
Every day, I open the door and tell the animals, birds, trees, sky and landscape around me, we did this for you. It was all we could think of to do. And no, I do not live smugly guilt-free. I have not escaped from eco-anxiety. I do not live in blissful ignorance of the plight of the world. I did the best, at the time, that I believed I could do. I wanted to make a positive contribution to the environment, one that I believed I could personally manage. I do not expect everyone to live as we do, for so much of the year (we can only access the site for eight months of the year, unfortunately). Our journey is not over. I believe that there is always more the pair of us can do, no matter how small or large in scale it is. My husband and I have an aim to live every month of the year as off-grid as possible, and the place we live at during the winter (itself acquired as a desperate flooded-damaged wreck) is a reclaim/recycle/freecycle/solar ongoing development, which is far from complete. Our finances continue in white-knuckle uncertainty. We are getting older. Our energy for such undertakings dwindles.
My diagnosis of hEDS has had a profound impact on my working capability. But we press on, for to stop would mean giving up on what we have proved two people, with no specialist knowledge or training, can manage, for the sake of the Earth, to do. I can’t control what happens throughout the world – I have had to come to terms with that (thinking along these lines has led me to some very dark places), but I can control the damage I personally do. I can accept responsibility for my own carbon footprint, and do my best to address it. No, I cannot stop all the consequences of my own life upon the planet. But I can try and keep on trying. Living as we do is not an ultimate solution. It is not perfect. It has allowed us to rebuild moments of happiness, recapture positivity. It has offered us a way to progress through life with a degree of optimism. We live in a community of people who all want to live a greener, more eco-conscious life. Meeting these like-minds fuels hope. We share knowledge, materials, ideas and time. There is power in numbers, as they say.
(The pencil drawing Rewilded I and the painting Rewilded II might be considered thrutopian art. I had felt such sadness and despair as I watched the struggles of the fields around our cottage. For six years, crops were planted relentlessly, with no fallow time between. Those crops were patchy or failed. Two years ago, the fields were rewilded. The first of these years felt like a much-needed rest for the acres. There was some growth. The second of these years brought a joyous explosion of plant life, of flowers, colours and textures. Bees, butterflies and other insects thronged. Birds, mice, hares and many other creatures returned in great numbers. I created the two Rewilded artworks to not just represent the beauty of these fields, but to tell the story they held – a story of rest and rebirth, of the repair and repopulation of faded, overworked land.)
Each of us must make our own decisions about how we might help stall the Anthropocene. Acts such as household recycling, planting a tree, or cutting down on driving (if possible) are vital steps. Participating in education, supporting scientists working on alternative power, and asking that politicians open their minds to the truth, together with the million other changes that can be made around and in-between are a means to give ourselves and the planet hope.
I did my best to discuss this with the people who came to my aforementioned workshop. Instead of trying to take on the whole of the world’s environmental disasters, worries and issues at once (even though this is how we encounter them, through various media sources it seems – one distressing, devastating article after another), I advised them to absorb them in bitesizes which feel more manageable. To write their way into them, and out of, little by little. To share their thoughts and the pieces they write. To kindle discussion in the home, at work or with friends. To give each thought the time it needs and see where it leads them.
As a writer, the climate crisis is world after world of horror. The grief we feel can prove too large for our hearts if we attempt to express it all at once. We must write. We must take care of ourselves, if we are to keep using our poetic voices to articulate the Anthropocene. We must cling onto salvation among the apocalypse. I think sometimes, secretly to myself, of an age called the Hopeocene – an age to come, where there is still an opportunity for humans to restore some balance, kindness and respect for the biodiversity of the Earth. An age of truth and awareness, where greed and hatred sheath their blades. It is a dream – the seed of which I must nurture in order to pass my days in a semblance of peace.
When Ilse Pedler wrote to tell me about a project which several creatives were participating in concerning the environmental movement thrutopia, and to invite me to contribute, I was very happy to be asked. Rupert Read’s words intersect with my own. In them, I find space to breathe, permission to exist between dystopia and utopia, between devastation and redemption.
“What I am saying is that, despite the extreme challenges we face, in fact to put it more precisely, because of the extreme challenges we face, we could be on the cusp of a flourishing future if we imagine something other than dystopias and utopias.”5
I realised my blog, upon our off-grid cottage’s progress, is a sort of thrutopia – one ordinary person’s guide to what might be possible. Something positive I can leave behind me when I am gone.
ii
I have always struggled with definitions. As I progressed as a writer, I worked hard to understand the differences between nature poetry and eco-poetry. Nature poetry is explained by Edward Hirsch as:
“the urge to describe the natural world — its various landscapes, its changing seasons, its surrounding phenomena — has been an inescapable part of the history of poetry. Wendell Berry provides a simple useful definition of nature poetry as poetry that “considers nature as subject matter and inspiration.””6
Ecopoetry is described by John Shoptaw thusly:
“…an ecopoem needs to be environmental and it needs to be environmentalist.
By environmental, I mean first that an ecopoem needs to be about the nonhuman natural world — wholly or partly, in some way or other, but really and not just figuratively. In other words, an ecopoem is a kind of nature poem. But an ecopoem needs more than the vocabulary of nature.”7
As I view poetry through the lens of someone existing in the Anthropocene, I believe we need those poems which celebrate nature – that take joy in its wonders, that lyrically describe its fascinations, its locations, its moments, its inhabitants. We also need ecopoems which document human effects upon the environment. We need both. As readers, we need to be reminded of the beauty of nature as an antidote to words which bring us worry, sadness and fear. We need more. Often, after reading a poem or piece of literature, we are left wondering, where do we go from here?
I wonder if the lines between these definitions are crumbling, morphing, realigning as we struggle to separate nature from climate crisis. Ilse wrote to me about ‘thrutopoems’, and the definitions shift for me again.
“With thrutopian poems we’re feeling our way past the obvious obstacles of doom
and into the possible. If I had to pin down what we’ve concluded so far for the poetry side of thrutopia, I’d say that thrutopoems imagine a realistic, liveable and thriving future on Earth.”
I believe such new dialogues are a necessity. We need to believe that we can still change things for the better, that there is a point to trying – that there is a point to coming together as communities, to writing poetry. That our writing can express not just problems, but solutions.
“In a world where climate denial is no longer credible, despair must not be the natural response. Although it is too late to keep global overheating and biodiversity loss within safe limits, the extent of the damage still depends largely on our actions. People are demonstrating their ability to handle the truth when they have others to face it with.”8
It is vital we find ways to express our grief. Grief is not denial. We grieve for someone or something because we love or feel a strong connection to that someone or something. Our creative writing is a powerful tool which could bring us together in collective mourning, which could then manifest into action.
“This is not a time for denying our emotions or embracing fantasies of powerlessness. Instead, we need to feel our emotions, share them, recognise the power that courses through them and through our veins, and through our deeper-than-deep connections with each other —and change the world. For good.”9
In the following poems, I consider questions and possible answers. In Bright and Bitter Fruit, I express my thoughts upon the way I have lived, and what I have mistakenly placed too much importance upon. I contemplate my passing, our passing, and the reclamation of the Earth by nature. In The Howgill Fells, I celebrate the returning of wild Fell ponies (now a rare breed) to their original environment. In Fake Metal Birds Flocking, I express my fears about the damage of air travel, together with the hope that humans might learn to reduce their need for non-essential flight.
Bright and Bitter Fruit
I do not know if my home would survive an apocalypse, or if anything
I’ve done will make me worth remembering, in the end. Perhaps
it’s for the best that everything around me will eventually crumble down.
Loneliness will not stain the soil—nor will sadness, rage, embarrassment,
admiration, or joy. Stratigraphy isn’t captivated by smiles. Laughter is bodiless.
Envy as insubstantial as air. The ground beneath my feet will not be nourished
by tears—heartbreak, pride and fear are of no consequence to the earth.
My throat is dust. When the cataclysm comes, the broken bathroom mirror
will no longer host the progress of my years. Its relics will cut whoever
gathers them up, edged as they are with knives. I have cried
over the porcelain I carefully polished and kept—every chip has been
felt like a flitch in my own flesh. Every crack mapped a new way to hate.
Soon, it will all be nothing more than cold glazed wheels, hollow shapes,
flowers painted false and scratched with use—none of it had the power
to love me back. The cabinets will pitch and spill their stacks of tableware out—
atoms will scatter like delph leaves, like bright and brittle fruit. I should have
smashed the whole lot long ago, should have got the heck out, headed for distant hills.
I should have learned to save myself. I should have given up. I should have run.
Here will be a place where grief is kept. Bindweed will knot my stories beneath—
weeds will seed another future upon this wreck. I wrote a prayer upon the scaffold
of this house, right before we skinned its frame with ply, with paper and paint,
wires and shelves, the sounds and scents of life. We built you in hope. Keep us safe.
As it burns or blasts, rots or slumps as time’s vengeance needs—as the layers
of existence are stripped, my ghost will roam the ruin and mutter to the moon.
Words will mean nothing in this unpeopled place. I cannot know, in this new age
if birds will sing, for I shan’t be there to hear them if they do. I cannot tell you
what will happen to those miles of sky, or if they will ever be blue again.
My bones will let my body go. I will waste the liquor of my blood,
my heart, my breath, my brain.
The Howgill Fells We live in happy tangles, manes let loose— I am wild. We are wild. Rewilded. There is a gangle-new foal by my side, slicked in summer fur. We are spun with light! We choose to live through winter’s rough, then bloom, sun-feral with grass-fed glut, wear our solstice-smooth. I whisper in my baby’s linty ears— you and I will only be ruled by the sky. How lucky we are in our valleys! Each fell a season’s changeling— roan with first frost, green as a yearling, then palomino autumn, milky-white with snow. We have grazed our way to Hare Shaw, paused by the low rubble cairn. We have wandered Tebay Gill, found moments of shelter beneath scant trees. Little foal, live simple, keep subtle, stay unpeopled. I learned this heft and pass my knowing on— hope my newborn will trust this spread of ground. Trust the rain, the cloud, the blue. Trust the stars—the brilliance of their map, the ways we have written so surely with our feet. Our hooves skim the land — no stopping till we have run enough for fun, or fled our fear, nostrils wide with air so fresh it tastes of ice, tastes the way that Ulgill Beck does, answering the drought in our throats. We are keen as Cautley Spout, veining foam and loud. There is no tame. We are not tame, so lay no hand upon us. We have wick within— the kind you only get from living this kind of life. Sometimes we will be cold, hungrier than we have ever been. Sometimes it seems the winter-barren ground must bend us to its will. Sometimes the wind will hollow out our bones— but we stand, tails tucked and rumps turned, waiting for hard times to pass. We have a lifetime to be here, to listen to a Peregrine scream in flight and joy, to mouth the honey gorse — to recognise space as our friend. To live as free things, leave only our bones to the land.
Notes
Wild Fell ponies have been reintroduced to the Howgill Fells area, Cumbria, for conservation purposes. Fell ponies are listed as an endangered breed by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.
Fake Metal Birds Flocking Everyone wants to ride the clouds we tilted our gaze upwards and said Oh! the sky was a volume we filled with restlessness we have conjured dragons upon it filled the blue with gods and angels the moon was a pale temptation we thrilled to the romance of stars scriptured a heaven above we grew in science and explained away the miracles answered lightness with machines made a darkness of war filled a bomber’s breast with cruel atomic eggs we crammed our heads to the small square windows to see diminished mountains folded into snow fingernails of field negligible trees a river’s small flax some people fall (on purpose) from the sky they have fooled themselves into thinking they are birds and great wings of silk bloom from their backs we learned to chase the wonders of the world packed a case of necessary things peered from cannisters pocked with glass cawed with fear at juddering metal wings we marked our passing with long white trails chewed a rubbish of long-haul grub pecked at lap-table nuts queued like pigeons at a cree’s vent if we relearn to love the ground reduce our need for sun-seeking flight if we forgo a holiday here or there then we might leave our children a share of breath unbreak what is left of the air
Sources
1. (Iberdrola https://www.iberdrola.com/social-commitment/what-is-ecoanxiety#:~:text=The%20American%20Psychology%20Association%20(APA,and%20that%20of%20next%20generations%E2%80%9D.)
2. “The last 2.6 Ma of Earth’s history is known as the Quaternary Period. This period allows us to learn about the origins of modern environments and reconstruct their transformations. The Quaternary is characterized by a series of over 50 glacial-interglacial climate cycles and is divided into two epochs, the Pleistocene and the Holocene. The Pleistocene epoch (2.6 Ma to 11.7 Ka) is climatically characterized by long glacial cycles or ice ages, and milder interludes or interglacial periods between them. On the other hand, the Holocene is the current interglacial period that began 11.7 ka ago. The rapid climate changes produced during the Quaternary are associated with large-scale redistributions of biodiversity and extinctions. Intensive levels of extinctions occurred at the start of the Late Pleistocene (ca. 132 ka) and during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene, where a rapid and global-scale species disappearance without functional replacement occurred. These phenomena can be explained by two main agents: the climatic changes, and the beginning of the expansion of modern humans (Homo sapiens).”
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity/special_issues/climate_pleistocene_holocene#:~:text=The%20Pleistocene%20epoch%20(2.6%20Ma,that%20began%2011.7%20ka%20ago.
3. “In the years since the term Anthropocene was coined by Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000, it has increasingly defined our times as an age of human-caused planetary transformation, from climate change to biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, megafires and much more.
Crutzen originally proposed that the Anthropocene began in the latter part of the 18th century, as a product of the Industrial age. He also noted that setting a more precise start date would be “arbitrary.”
According to geologists, we humans have been living in the Holocene Epoch for about 11,700 years, since the end of the last ice age.
Human societies began influencing Earth’s biodiversity and climate through agriculture thousands of years ago. These changes began to accelerate about five centuries ago with the colonial collision of the old and new worlds. And, as Crutzen noted, Earth’s climate really began to change with the increasing use of fossil fuels in the Industrial Revolution that began in the late 1700s.”
The Anthropocene is not an epoch − but the age of humans is most definitely underway. 7th UMBC, March, 2024. https://umbc.edu/stories/anthropocene-not-an-epoch/
4. Mallett, R. K. (2012). Eco-guilt motivates eco-friendly behavior. Ecopsychology, 4(3), 223–231. https://doi.org/10.1089/eco.2012.0031
5. https://rupertread.net/writings/thrutopia/
6. Hirsch, Edward. A Poet’s Glossary. Harper Collins, 2014.
7. Shoptaw, John. Why Ecopoetry? Poetry Foundation, 4th January, 2016.
8. https://rupertread.net/writings/2023/the-power-of-the-climate-majority-taking-action-for-a-sustainable-future/
9. https://www.abc.net.au/religion/rupert-read-climate-grief-could-be-the-making-of-us/14076522
Jane Burn is an award-winning, working-class, pansexual, autistic person, poet, artist, essayist and was the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year 2023-2024. Jane has two poetry collections with Nine Arches Press; Be Feared (2021)and The Apothecary of Flight (2024) She lives off grid with her family in a Northumberland Cottage for most of the year.
Loved this Jane Burn. Thank you
This is so thought provoking. Thank you.