Where the Wild Things Are

John Davis on the Urgency of Expanding North America’s Wilderness

Tonino: Where would we humans go if we returned half the continent to the wild creatures?

Davis: Well, much of Canada and the American West is already rather uninhabited by humans. In fact, I suspect more than half of the continent could become ecological reserves. I like the idea that, instead of wilderness islands within a matrix of human development, we reverse the pattern, and humans live densely clustered within a wild matrix. It’s not politically or economically feasible right now, but some such arrangement might be possible eventually.

Keening for the Cailleach

The best nights are when moonlight comes through the trees, casting indigo shadows across the ice. My partner swoops around, his arms swinging in front of his crouched body. “It’s the closest we get to flying,” he said once as he sailed past me. Another time: “Maybe this is how a dolphin feels carving through the water.” He loves the tension of the blade slicing across the surface, the whoosh of his skates drawing elaborate patterns on the ice, the crunch of a hockey stop. I listen for the occasional owl.

The Only Alternative

I’ve taken to telling young people that it takes ten years to get from age twenty to age twenty-five, five years to get from twenty-five to thirty, and three years, tops, to get from thirty to forty. So far, forty to fifty doesn’t seem like it’ll amount to much more than a long weekend. The people my age and older laugh knowingly, and the youngsters nod like Sure, sure, whatever you say, Gramps, and I am left, every time, wondering why the only thing we know to do with the stuff that terrifies us is to make jokes about it that aren’t really jokes at all.

Taking Shelter

I like to be reminded—need to be reminded—that my father was young once, that he had a crush on a girl in his one-room schoolhouse near Ladies Chapel, that he looked forward to helping his aunt Alverdia tend bees or pick watermelon from the large patch near the creek, his feet smeared red with clay.

After All This

When twenty first graders were slaughtered and the country responded without a national gun-buyback program, national red-flag laws, universal background checks, a national wait period, a gun registry, an assault-weapons ban, disarming all domestic abusers, ending legal immunity for gun manufacturers, instituting mandatory yearly classes for gun ownership (list all your ideas that could help here), we became complicit.

This Is Hard To Write

I’m learning that crying is what it is, not bad, not good. And that dementia is what it is, not bad, not good. And anything can happen in anyone’s life, anywhere, anytime. Not bad, not good.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Riverside

Photographs by Brody Hartman

Once we had settled into the new post-Helene normal, I felt called to venture into Asheville’s beloved River Arts District to document the storm’s aftermath. I wanted to honor the artisans, artists, and small-business owners who have poured their souls into this vibrant, creative community. The scale of the devastation and the sheer power of wind and water and mud were almost beyond comprehension.

Wild

I was a sleepwalker through most of those days. A passenger in / my own life. I couldn’t look / to my family and see myself reflected there. I was / born to no one. I was wild.

Classroom Hatch

I try to feed the chicks mealworms from my hands, / crouching there sometimes for hours. // I can’t remember how / to make them believe in kindness.