This special issue distills High Country News’ mission: “to inform and inspire” our readers. Each article was commissioned, reported, written, edited and presented to send you off with a sense of collective power as we all work toward a more livable and just future.
With this in mind, we’d like to hear about the ways you or your community are working for a better future amid the climate crisis — perhaps flying less, or contacting your representatives, or pushing local leaders to make climate plans, or even using some ideas from this issue, such as starting a mutual aid society or encouraging your utility company to use more renewable energy.
Send your success stories, failures, in-progress initiatives or ideas to dearfriends@hcn.org
Your saved-my-life books
In November, I inquired about your “saved-my-life” books. Here’s a selection of your responses.
The book that had the most influence on Steve Wegner’s career with the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Geological Survey was A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold:
This book was required reading in an environmental ethics class for freshmen where I went to college. It really opened some new ways of thinking about nature, not just from my perspective but from a much broader view. It has and continues to influence my thinking on a wide array of subjects beyond “environmental” issues. It may not have saved my life but it certainly made me a better person and changed how I look at the world.
Karen Ireland said she still recommends How to Survive the Loss of a Love by Peter McWilliams, Harold H. Bloomfield and Melba Colgrove years after surviving her own loss:
It’s a slim, 119-page book written by a psychologist, a physician and a poet. It’s short enough to quickly reread but packed with helpful thoughtful information. Five years after my own loss, I had a celebration party like the book suggests. I survived and now thrive.
NC Weil offered two suggestions:
Ken Kesey’s epic novel, Sometimes a Great Notion. This book revealed to me that a writer could place their body in one character, mind in another, and spirit in a third, then mix them together and record what happens. Since I am a writer, Kesey convinced me that noticing, relating and honoring are the tools of the work, and whatever topic we turn our hands to, we can apply them.
The other is T.C. Boyle’s novel When the Killing’s Done, which raises all the gnarliest questions about “restoring” and “native” versus “invasive” and who wins and who loses. It mocks our claims of speaking for ecosystems, defending species and correcting our previous meddling (in the guise of “now we know the right things to do”). It makes for a hilarious and bitter cautionary tale.
SamMi Zelley’s choice was Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Writes Zelley:
I stumbled upon the book during my first semester attending college in Juneau, Alaska. I wasn’t prepared for the rapid loss of sunlight nor the burden of navigating a new life, alone, with no sense of direction and a load of courses that didn’t interest me. I return to the book again and again when I struggle to find meaning, or even when too many meanings burden my spiritual attention.
Thank you to everyone who recommended books and all the folks who continue to write in with stories about encountering HCN in the wild or having brushes with species protected by the Endangered Species Act. I appreciate you all taking part in HCN’s community, and I only wish we had the space to share more of your responses!
Michael Schrantz is the marketing communications manager for High Country News based in Santa Fe. Email him at michael.schrantz@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Community and collective action.
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