Books Like Robin Wall Kimmerer: What I'm Reading Now
One of my favourite things to talk about — alongside birds, oil paint, and the particular quality of light on a grey morning — is books. If you've found your way here through a love of Robin Wall Kimmerer's writing, I think you might be exactly my kind of person.
I Collect Books the Way Some People Collect Anxieties
(but I collect the anxieties too)
I am, let's be honest, a book collector. Some have said hoarder, but I refuse to accept that gross misrepresentation. If you want to call me a book dragon, I am absolutely here for that.
My particular flavour of neuro-spicy means that whatever subject is currently captivating me, I will have assembled a veritable library on it in the blink of an eye:
Deep space astronomy ✔️
Woolly Mammoth palaeontology ✔️
Celtic mysticism and myths ✔️
Medieval philosophy ✔️
Ancient Egyptology, particularly Old Kingdom ✔️
Western Medical Herbalism ✔️
Ecodying, quilting, and sewing ✔️
All of the crafts ✔️✔️
All of the gardening ✔️✔️✔️
All of the cooking ✔️✔️✔️✔️
All of the art ✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️
There is barely a room in my house without books in it. (The laundry doesn't have any. I'm considering buying a book on laundry and remedying that.)
Have I read them all? No. I sort of look at them as my retirement plan.
And don't ask me about my Kindle. I know I have over 530 books on there too. Shhh.
What I'm Reading Right Now: Rooted by Lyanda Haupt
A fellow nature-loving reader in Hedgerow, my membership community for women artists, recommended Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit by Lyanda Haupt. The recommendation came with the note that it reads along the same lines as Robin Wall Kimmerer - whose writing I adore - and I can confirm: yes, absolutely, yes.
Rooted opens with inner knowing, wild intuition, and the kind of ideas I wish I'd had in my hands a little sooner.
This quote stopped me mid-page:
"While we have more scientific knowledge of the universe than any people ever had, it is not the type of knowledge that leads to an intimate presence within a meaningful universe… The difficulty is that with the rise of the modern sciences we began to think of the universe as a collection of objects rather than as a communion of subjects."
— Lyanda Lynn Haupt, Rooted (p. 14)
A communion of subjects. I keep turning that phrase over.
The Shift That Changes Everything
Those modern sciences have, by and large, also led us to think of ourselves the same way - as objects. As machines that should be able to work non-stop, produce without pause, and keep up with a world that is very clearly on fire.
But we are not machines. We are wild beings, just like the Tiger and the Tawny Frogmouth.
We are creative, not mechanical. We are sensitive, feeling creatures, not blunt tools to be worn down. We are not a collection of disparate functions and organs, we are so much greater than the sum of our parts. We are interpretive-dancing, face-scrunching, laughing, crying, messy human animals, and I think that is worth celebrating.
What This Has to Do With Your Creative Life
The best way I know to celebrate our wild human animal-ness is alongside other wild-hearted humans who feel the same, people who place the rest of the wild world at the centre of their creative lives, too.
If that sounds like you, I'd love to have you in Hedgerow, my membership community for women growing a sustainable art practice rooted in nature. We have a dedicated reading thread called Bookish, and the inspiration (and damage to my book budget) in there is extraordinary.
What's on your bookshelf or TBR pile right now? I'd genuinely love to know — leave a comment below, or join Hedgerow and come and tell us in the Bookish thread.
Natalie Eslick is a wildlife artist and educator on the NSW coast of Australia. Her work centres on Creative Ecology, building relationship with the wild world through art, mythology, and seasonal presence. [Learn more here]
