Bridget Lyons | Entwined: Dispatches From the Intersection of Species

My guest today on Earthbound is Bridget Lyons. Bridget is a writer, editor, teacher, wilderness guide, traveler and explorer.She seeks unfamiliar territories that span the globe, the human heart, and the stories we tell ourselves and others about the world we live in.Her book, Dispatches from the Intersection of Species explores these questions through 14 original essays that bring the non human world to the forefront, suggesting how we can foster better relationships with nature, ourselves and each other. There is a story we've told ourselves that stretches back to the origins of Western civilization and the ancient language in the book of Genesis.We are so steeped in that myth that we have built an entire civilization on its central hierarchical dominion over creation. First comes God, then man, then the rest of Earth and all its creatures.We are thus separate from the living world, standing apart and somehow above it. All of creation, the forest, rivers, plants and animals, serve one purpose, to be here for us to exercise dominion.The idea didn't stay confined to Scripture. It evolved. It moved into philosophy through Aristotle's great Chain of Being, placing life in a hierarchy with humans at the top.It hardened with Rene Descartes, who split mind from nature, declaring the world outside us as a kind of machine. And it accelerated with Francis Bacon, who argued that knowledge itself was a tool for mastery and control.From Genesis to the great philosophers, the idea of hierarchy with humans on top, created in the image of God himself, spread into the Western psyche, embedding itself into everything.We find it in our economics, where instead of a holistic system of circular and reciprocal relationships, the Earth is reduced to natural resources meant to serve our ever expanding needs and appetites. It's in our policies, where ecosystems are managed, optimized, developed, or much too often degraded, if not destroyed.It's in our daily lives where we move from screen to screen, apart from the world outside, virtually insulated from the more than human world. And to be fair, it worked in its way. It built the modern world.It gave us, well, not all of us, but many of us, comfort, longevity and extraordinary technological power. But it also gave us something else. A climate crisis, a biosphere in collapse. A world where we are living through A6 mass extinction.A civilization filled with needless physical, emotional and mental suffering. What Bridget Lyons calls a polycrisis. A tangled, interwoven set of breakdowns.Climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem fragmentation, and something even harder to name, a growing separation between humans and the living systems we depend on. Or as Lyons puts it, a kind of forgetting. Forgetting that we are not outside the system or above it, and that we never were.That our place in the world is not one of supremacy, dominance or hierarchy, but of relationships, empathy and wonder. There's a deeper question that sits underneath all this. What if the problem isn't just what we're doing to the planet, but.But the way we see it, the way we relate to it?So what if we've been operating inside a worldview that assumes the Earth is simple enough to manage, predictable enough to control, and fundamentally other than us? It is a lonely and distorted assumption. In my conversation with Bridget Lyons, that assumption starts to unravel.Not through argument, exactly, but nor through data or policy prescriptions, but through something much more attention, curiosity and astonishment. In her book Entwined Dispatches from the Intersection of Species, Bridget writes about encounters with other earthbound beings.Owls that can hear the heartbeat of their prey from 200ft away. Elk navigating the pressures of human intervention, Octopuses, sponges, insects.Creatures whose lives unfold within systems of breathtaking complexity. The central theme of the book is fostering empathy and kinship with non human species.Lions demonstrates how deep personal encounters with other species can transform how we see the natural world and influence us to make choices that benefit these species. And in the process, human beings.Humility and a sense of joy emerge, a feeling of groundedness, a recognition that what we call management often rests on a profound underestimation of the living world.As she says in her upcoming conversation, we're not giving the environment credit for the incredible complexity that exists, despite how it often appears in the conflicted human sphere. We can act with good intentions. We introduce a species to stabilize a riverbank, for instance, or feed elk to help them survive the winter.But those good intentions end up triggering cascading effects we didn't and maybe couldn't fully anticipate, because these systems are not simple, they're not linear. They are a tapestry. And as Bridget says, you pull on one thread and the rest of it unravels.And yet we persist in acting as though we are sticking standing outside that tapestry rather than being woven into it.What Bridget suggests is not a new policy framework, as important as sound policies are, but a shift in perception, a different way of seeing, a forgotten way of relating.One that moves us away from hierarchy, from the hubris that we sit atop of some great chain of being, and towards something more relational, more horizontal, less stratified, as she describes it, a world where other beings are not beneath us, but alongside us. The trees, the wolves, the whales, the fungi, all participants in a shared living system.This shift in perception enables something subtle and profound to begin cracking at the hard shell of human centered arrogance. Slowly we see how so many of our behaviors don't make sense, at least not in the long run. Endless extraction and the pursuit of growth at all cost.Siphoning up the future. The conceit that somehow more control will somehow solve the problems it creates.When we let go of all that, we see relationship instead of dominance, participation instead of controlling, and humility in place of certainty and maybe most importantly, connection rather than separation. We talk a lot about empathy in our conversation.Not just as a human to human skill, as important as that is, but as something that can extend outward to all living creatures and as a muscle that we can exercise. And to exercise that muscle, Bridget suggests something almost disarmingly. Go outside, look closely and put your phone down.Pay attention to a plant, an insect, a bird, whatever it is, and ask yourself, what is it like to be this being?And in that small act we feel that gentle tug of nature calling us home, pleading with us to rejoin the web of life, not as a ruler, but as a fellow contributor. The world becomes less abstract, less mechanical, more alive, more entwined. This is not a roadmap or a list of solutions.That would be a little hierarchical, wouldn't it?But rather it's an invitation to reconsider the story we've inherited, to question the assumptions we rarely examine, and maybe, just maybe, to see the living world a little differently.Because if the polycrisis we're in is at its root a crisis of perception, then the way forward might begin not with something we build, but with something we remember. And now my conversation with Bridget Lyons, author of Dispatches from the Intersection of Species.

I really enjoyed your book Entwined. It was very compelling and very thoughtful.It seems like you're bringing your experience, your vast experience in the wilderness and your artistic approach. Do you see this as your contribution as you described in your last essay as the remediation team?Is this your approach to doing what you can to help the world?

Yes, definitely. I am very concerned about the state of the world and the polycrisis that we're in.And it's important to me to make inroads in helping to mitigate, reverse whatever I can do to that and help to repair the world. And I look around and I see many people doing an amazing job of explaining how we need to do certain tasks to move us forward.Whether that is something as basic as not buying products in clamshells or in single use plastic bottles, or it's looking at our transportation decisions differently, looking at our Land use decisions differently, inventing new technologies. And there are many people out there that are doing all of those things brilliantly.And so I don't want to do that because it's already being done and because I'm not sure it's my skill set and my calling anyway.So what I feel like I can contribute is, is a perspective shift or art forms that perhaps can catalyze a perspective shift that will potentially make it easier for people to do all those tasks.Because rather than feeling like those tasks are inconveniences or inefficiencies or a pain in the butt, suddenly that you're doing the tasks from a place of, oh, this is what's important to me. This is what I value. These connections are so much a part of my being in the world and our being in the world collectively.And this is a part of my worldview. So, of course I'm not gonna do this thing.Of course I'm going to oppose this initiative to deep sea mind because it just doesn't make sense, given my worldview.So, yes, I feel like what this book is, both as a written piece and as the art piece and as my, like, speaking tour piece, is ideally to help people reconnect with wonder in order to catalyze a perspective shift that makes all the hard work we have to do a little easier.

So in your book, you often describe a creature's unique abilities to be in the world. For me, sometimes it's things like our big brains have led us indoors apart from nature. A conquest of nature, domination.You know, a lot of religious, or at least Christianity, has this idea of domination over nature. How do you imagine we can counter that apparent malady?

Adaptation?

Or do you think that's endemic, kind of part of our species, that we have this maladaptation to how we are in the world, that we've let ourselves inside and apart from nature, and we have to bridge that gap somehow.

I don't think that is an inherent part of our species. I think it's a tendency that we have, but I think it's one that we can consciously look in the face and choose a different path.For example, I think that even just looking at the modern Western European mindset versus indigenous mindsets, and of course, many indigenous groups have existed throughout our planet's history, and they have different philosophies. However, we can say that in general, a lot of indigenous groups have been more connected to nature than modern European culture.I think that's a fair generalization to make. Despite all the differences among them.And I don't mean to group them all because they're all very different and special and unique, but just that alone suggests to me that, like, this Western European mindset is not an inbred, necessary part of our genetic structure and who we are. We have gone through a cultural history that has led us to this point.

Yeah.

And I would argue that that cultural history has been birthed from an idea of hierarchy, of, you know, Platonic, Aristotelian vision of there is a great chain of being and we are at the top of it. And not all other cultures in the world have felt that way.Many others see all other creatures as horizontal brothers and sisters, as beings that we share kinship with, as beings that we should learn from because they're millions of years older than we are. We've been around, you know, Homo sapiens as we know, it's been around for 500,000 years.Every creature I write about in the book is much older than that, evolutionarily speaking. So I think we have examples, many examples of other cultures who have looked at the role of humans on the planet through a different lens.Our modern Western culture has adopted this one where we're on the top and I think knocking us off of the top, recognizing that we have some unbelievable capacities for creativity and technological development and manipulation of the environment and all these things. They're very powerful, they're very impressive, and they're not everything.And in the process of getting so obsessed with how amazing we are at those things, I think we've lost some respect and wonder for. For all the other things that other creatures can do.So I think that's, to me, the entry point to disrupting this hierarchical narrative that we've become rather attached to. I don't think that it's inherent. I don't think that it's inbred. I don't think that it's in our coding.I think it's a choice we've made and it's a choice we can also make to not make.

To go into it. Yeah, right. To unmake.

Yeah, unmake, exactly.

Let's talk about empathy. You talk about empathy, interspecies empathy. You had discussed it, like with the elk in Yellowstone, wanting to help the elk.Yet what was happening, what is a century ago now, the feeding program might have been a good idea.My point here, balancing awareness of helping species thrive and survive without knock on effects that actually in the long run, do more harm than good. What other examples could you come up with where good intentions need to be More focused or thought through.Are there other examples, like the elk of wildlife management, where we're trying to do the right thing, but there's issues that we're not thinking about? Does that make sense?

Sure, yeah. I think that it's not always issues that we're not thinking about. It's that the ecosystems that we live in are incredibly complex places.And I think sometimes we sell their complexity short. You know, I don't write about this in the book, but I have lived through this as a river runner.Western rivers in America have seen an infusion of this species called tamarisk, which is an Asian shrub, you know, existed in a balanced ecosystem in Asia, and then someone introduced it here because they thought it would help stabilize the riverbanks of western rivers, which are constantly in flux because that's their natural state. And did it stabilize the banks of western rivers? Yes, yes. It also completely took over.And as all river runners know, when you're going down the Colorado or the Green or the Yampa, you can barely find a beach to camp on because the tamarisk have completely taken over. And they are one of those species that has developed the incredible creative ability to change the substrate in which they live.So they make the soil, they change the soil chemistry in such a way that it makes it impossible for other species to be there. So they move in, they make it better for them, and then boom, they've colonized the whole place. So then it's like, well, what do we do about this?They're really hard to eradicate. They have this giant taproot. So the question became like, okay, well, they have a natural insect predator in Asia.Let's introduce that insect predator to here. Like, oh, boy, oh boy. So, you know, again, I think intentions, to me, that's one of these examples of intentions are right.Like, okay, let's see if we can rectify this problem that we have introduced through decent intentions, really. But we sometimes or often fail to see the downstream effects of either the original intention or the attention to rectify the situation.And then we end up with a worse situation. And I think the issue there is not that we have the wrong attitude or that we're not thinking.I think we're not giving the environment credit for the incredible complexity that exists.Another great example is like some of the stuff that Susan Simard talks about in Finding the Mother Tree, where in her book she talks about how we've clear cut these areas and then replanted them and been like, well, there you go. We clear cut, we Replanted it. What's the problem?It's like the problem was that there's this unbelievably complex mycorrhizal fungi population that we didn't understand and we didn't give credit for. And so as a result, just replanting the species that used to be there after that fungal web has been destroyed doesn't fix the problem.So, you know, to get back to the elk that I talk about in the book that I talk about, the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, our intentions were good.Like the human population was making it impossible for the elk to live through the winter in the place because of cattle grazing and increased human pressures. And so we set aside a chunk of land for them and gave them supplemental feed to help them live. Great intention.But it turns out that when you concentrate that species in a small zone and you increase their concentration by feeding them, they develop a bunch of communicable diseases. So, you know, did we mess up? It kind of, sort of. But it's like, again, the intentions were good, but there's more complexity than we thought.So I think that, you know, what, what the solution is is not so much beating ourselves up or coming up with a simple solution, because the solution is not going to be simple.It's more like taking a step back, appreciating the complexity, being willing to own the fact that we might not understand all the factors at play, and then watching and observing and trying to do the right thing. And sometimes we will not. But I think starting from a place of like, we are entwined and ecosystems are complex and these tapestries are complex.And that's a place of humility, I think. And so start from that place of humility.And I think you're going to have more success than starting from a place of hubris, which is we're at the top of the food chain, we know it's right for everyone. No, we don't.

That's a good point. Humility and empathy seem to be the two factors that come into play as far as approaching issues like the elk reserve.Incidentally, what is the situation with the elk reserve right now? Are they still doing the feeding program?

Yes, they're very much still doing the feeding program, in large part because the consequences of not feeding them at all would mean a bunch of potential die offs in the immediate front. And we humans tend to play a short game, right? We don't tend to play the long game.And for local people and tourists to see that much population death in the short term is too Much for us to bear. So we continue the feeding program. It is supposed to be scaling back.The good news is that so far as I know, chronic wasting disease, which is the main threat to the population, has been found all around the borders of the Elk Refuge, but not actually on the Elk Refuge. Yet.People, including the managers of the refuge, are very aware of the impending threat that chronic wasting disease, or CWD poses, as well as the threat that Bruce Willis poses. And I think the local population is certainly more aware of it. And I think that there's a lot more openness to.Okay, you know, just continuing as we have been is not the answer. We're going to have to make some shifts. No one wants them to be sudden because no one wants to see this dramatic die off.And so what are some ways that we can transition through this shift slowly? So my understanding is that's more or less where we are right now.

It seems unlikely that the disease would, given things status quo, would stay away. Eventually it will get into the herd.

It seems likely. It's a very pernicious disease.It's been found in many of the, like, most of the states in the Western U.S. so it's a matter of time issue on the table. And. And what can we do to help allay the effects when it does show up?

It actually seems remarkable that it hasn't shown up.

Yes.

You talk about the Anthropocene. And how do you define the Anthropocene? What's your definition of it?

The definition that I read most commonly is the era in which humans are the dominant force on the planet.

Okay, yeah.

And I would go with that. You know, there's all sorts of other definitions or there's all sorts of other names for the epoch that are out.But I think that one is useful simply because it doesn't say that we should be the dominant force on the planet. It doesn't make a value judgment about that. It says that this is. This appears to be the current state of affairs.And I think it's worth nodding to that awareness.

It seems like it's a useful concept. And from that understanding we can approach how we are in the world and how we are with other beings in the world.One of my phrases is learning to live in the Anthropocene without dominating ourselves into extinction. I assume that you believe we are in the sixth mass extinction.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

There's no denying that.

Yeah. So in empathy, I think empathy is very important.But it strikes me in the world that I'm in right now here in The US empathy is being debated as something that might be like, bad. And we're talking about empathy with just each other. What is this kind of talk?How does portend to how we can approach empathy for the rest of the living world when we can't even decide that empathy is a good thing with each other? Do you have any thoughts about that?

I absolutely do. So I have a feeling we might be referring to the same thing.It was a handful of months ago that I heard a quote from Elon Musk that empathy is the seed of our destruction or it's making us weak or something like that. And I was crushed. Like, I literally cried that day when I heard that quote. Because I believe 180 degrees the opposite.I believe completely that empathy is the seed of connection. That connection is how we move forward.That if the world is in fact this entwined tapestry of interconnection where you pull on one thread and the rest of it unravels or, you know, there's an effect to everything we do, whether we are humans or we are seals or we are new to branks or there were all entwined. That's the name of the book. That's why I wrote this book.So to have someone who is participating in some of these unraveling behaviors come out and say that empathy is the root of our problem crushed me.Yeah, I think that, you know, the way again, other cultures prior to the Western European one, the way they lived well with nature, was from a place of empathy. Was from a place of. These are my brothers and sisters. Sisters.These meaning trees, these meaning wolves, these meaning whales, these meaning fungus, everything. These are my brothers and sisters. I need to care about them the way I care about my human brothers and sisters, the way I care about myself.That created a network that held together for many, many years. And now we have a network that's. That is deteriorating, disintegrating.And my belief is that the way to repair it and to stitch it back together again is through connection and empathy. Hearing stuff like that, yeah, makes me really sad.But it also makes me double down on the work that I feel like I have to do, which is to continue to come up with examples of like, well, here's where I feel empathy for creatures in my life. Here's where I've connected with creatures, whether it's on the beach in Santa Cruz or it's in the mountains of the Alps. Like, can you.If you can feel my experience of connecting and feeling empathy, then maybe you can sensitize yourself to it a Little bit more.And maybe you can listen to Elon Musk say that and be like, uh, buddy, I just walked on the beach by my house and I saw this sea star and I felt like it touched my heart. So I think my body, my mind, my soul is coming together to tell you like, nope, you're wrong. I'm not with you. I'm not on board with that.

I did take that away when reading your book.I've been out in nature, but I don't have the experience you do in the mountains of the Alps and diving and all that when you talk about the octopus and the sponges. I've seen the octopus at the aquarium, but I've dug through the layers of people to get up there.

Exactly. Excellent.

But your book did what you just described kind of gave me a connection to these species and a more an awareness and appreciation for.Now I might be somebody that you know a little bit preaching to the choir, but it does seem like taking the literary and artistic approach to build awareness is probably a good avenue for creating this empathy, this empathy that we're lacking. We can work on each other, but maybe empathy with other species, with the living world, that would help our inter human relationships a little bit.

Sure. I, I would argue that building empathy, like building anything else in life, it's a skill, it's a muscle that needs to be exercised.And if we don't try to do it, if we don't practice doing it, if we don't fake it till we make it, then we lose the ability to do that because we've just chosen to do other things with our time or our mental awareness.So my suggestion to lots of people who I've talked to in the course of touring around and talking about this book is like, well, how do I build empathy? It's like, just go outside and look around. It's that easy. And it doesn't mean you need to fly to the Alps.It doesn't mean you need to become a major outdoor athlete. I am, and that's important to me, but it's not necessary at all.I can also get that same thing from walking outside and sitting and looking at an insect in the grass and just pausing to say like, okay, what is it like to be this insect? What is this insect needing right now? Why is it crawling over here? Oh, look at those cool antennae. I wonder what those are do.Maybe I'll go in the house and try to figure out what kind of insect that was and what those antenna.If there's a cool factoid about those antenna or its wings or the spot pattern on its back, you know, and then I think, so then we've got curiosity there. We've got observation, we've got stillness, we've got reflection.And even if you do that for five minutes a day, that is already building this empathy muscle, if you will, that is going to get. It's going to get so much easier that it becomes part of your life that you can't really envision not going outside and doing that.And if you're doing that with.If you're doing that with earthworms and you're doing it with fungus and whatever it is, it's going to be way easier to do with your neighbor who you have some conflict with because. Because you perceive that you have very different values about something. So I do think it is an exercisable.It's a choice we can make, and it's a muscle that we can. We can strengthen.

All these things you described, the curiosity, the observation, just being. I think that's very important. Like you say, it doesn't require being an environmental athlete or outdoor athlete. Just walk outside and sit down.So I just wanted to emphasize that.

Absolutely. And I think it could also be, like, bring some outside in. Like, potted plants are amazing.You know, just staring at a plant and checking out all the different ways the stems split off from the main branch, and then watching, like, I have a lot of succulents, and you think a succulent looks one way and it does for a year, and then all of a sudden, one day you're like, wait a second, it's shooting up this random little sprout, and then a flower comes out of that. You're like, I didn't even know that this succulent flowered at all, much less that it was going to do this after a year of sitting on my porch.And that, again, observation. I have a daily relationship of looking at the plant and seeing what's going on with the plant.And then when they produce some new phenomenon, I allow myself to express wonder for it. And then I start to care for them.And like, this plant is, I have a relationship with this plant, and I'm going to think differently about myself and about plants in general because of the relationship that we've built. So I think it's really just not that hard. It doesn't require a lot of skills. It doesn't require a car.It doesn't require an extra set of objects in your life to do these things.It just requires being willing to Put the phone down for a bit and make a little bit of space and time and disarm yourself enough from your own problems to say, okay, there's other creatures on the planet, and I'm gonna tap into them for a few minutes today.

Yeah, yeah, you mentioned. Put the phone down. Talk to me about your thoughts on digital distraction.The impact of the world that we live in online, in human relationships as well as human interspecies relationships. So what are the impacts of our digital life?

Yeah, I would say that humans are prone to distracting themselves, period, to some degree. You know, life is difficult. We're not exactly sure. Most of us are not exactly sure why we're here.And we are asked to make our way through very challenging lives without a clear vision for why exactly we're here and where we're going and what we're supposed to be doing. And so we're doing our best to make sense of that. And it's hard.And so we find distractions to take us away from those big questions because they're really hard. And before digital distractions were around, we still had plenty of other distractions. And so I think this isn't a new behavior.I think what we've got going on is that the behavior has just gotten so easy.Like the distractions before, you had to walk down to the bar, you had to go to the movies, you had to, you know, we still did the distractions, but they weren't. We weren't carrying around the distraction in our pocket 24, 7.And then that distraction we have developed intentionally because the market has driven it this way. We have developed into the perfect distraction tool to the point that algorithms will show you what.Like algorithms know what distracts you the best because they're tracking what you like to follow.

Yeah.

So. So that that tool in your pocket knows your distraction tendencies better than anyone, including probably yourself and your partner, you know, so I.So we've crafted this ideal distraction tool. And again, we've been doing this for years, but it's so much easier to distract ourselves now. So I think it.It requires doing the hard work that we need to do to get out of the poly crisis that we're in is going to require focused attention that. That is able to happen away from distractions.So, again, I think that having some kind of a practice of being in nature, or if you can't get out into nature, being with your potted plant or, you know, whatever version of nature you have in your own space, some kind of a practice that you connect to that way is building some resistance to those distractions. But more importantly, it's building your interest in connectivity and seeing entwinement.And then just the distraction isn't as tempting anymore because it's like, well, sure, I could go on Instagram and troll this, that or the other thing, or I could go outside and I could see a hawk on the telegraph pole down the street and I could stop and connect with it.And that just sounds way better to me right now than scrolling through Instagram things that are going to tell me how to improve my romantic relationship or whatever they do.

You know, talk a little bit about the poly crisis. How would you define the polycrisis?

I would define the polycrisis as the combination of climate change, which I often call global warming, because that's what it is. I know that's the old school term, but that's what it is. Climate change, global warming, biodiversity loss, ecosystem fragmentation.That is the polycrisis. And then to me, there's another element of the polycrisis, which is the human separation from the environment.And whether you consider that as part of the polycrisis or the underlying cause for the polycrisis, I think it's both. And again, putting these things in boxes isn't the solution. Seeing that they're all massively interwoven and intertwined is the point.So I don't feel the need to tease out, well, this has caused this. And therefore this is like, nope, it's a big mess. It's a big ball of twine. It's all coming together at once right now.And because it's so messy, that's why we're having trouble addressing it, because we can't pull out an individual thread and treat that individual thread because it's attached to all the other threads. So that's how I would define it.And I would say that again, in order to address it, there needs to be a very big organic perspective shift that makes the individual actions that can address it easier or at least less.

Prone to our resistance in a larger social sense.What are the steps that you see we would need to take to start, or the changes in perspective and perception that we would need to take to start to address this mess of a polycrisis.

Yeah, that's the big question.

That's the big question.

Yeah.And it's interesting because my book, for listeners who aren't familiar with it, my book is a collection of 14 essays that each explore an individual creature and my wonder around that creature. I would not say that my book is about climate change and yet or about the polycrisis.It's about wonder and connecting with creatures and empathy and the creatures themselves and their value.And at the same time, I feel like climate change pervades every page of the book on some level, even though I'm not ostensibly writing about it on every page of the book, simply because it is this very. It's like it's in the atmosphere, it's literally pervading everything.And so if I'm gonna talk about a creature, almost certainly in every case, that creature is being affected by climate change in some way.And either they're being directly affected or they're ecosystem that they live in is being affected, or their future ability to thrive is being affected. So it's just there hanging over us, the, like the huge pervasion cloud that it is. So how do we address that?I think it's this looking differently at the world and seeing that our belief that we are somehow separate, that our actions can be kept in a box box, that they are not having ripple effects at all times everywhere, that that is an illusion.And the sooner we remove this veil of separateness, of hierarchy, of better than of all of that, then it's just like putting on a different pair of glasses. Like, oh, oh, the world looks like this. I thought it looked like this, but actually it looks like this from this new place with these new glasses.And now I can start to see how a bunch of things that we're doing don't make any sense. How things like spending your whole human life chasing money and power no longer makes any sense.And chasing money and power is why we exploit all these resources.If we all let go more of this, I don't know what I'm doing on the planet, so I'll find purpose by chasing money and power and exploiting natural resources.If we're not doing the chasing and money and power thing because we're more interested in connection and feeling and empathy and exploration and wonder, then all of a sudden drilling more doesn't make any sense. Like why do we need, you know, why would I, why would we do that? That's contrary to what we're here to do.So again, I know it sounds like super deep down like human psyche remodeling work, but I feel like human psyche remodeling work needs to happen first or at the same time as these direct, like, okay, we need to change our consumer behaviors, you know, we should order less on Amazon, all that stuff. I think those processes need to happen together.

I didn't get the idea that it was a book about climate change.It comes up, of course, as you describe what I did like was, I don't know if saying that you anthropomorphize other species, I don't think you did that.But you suggested, I wonder how this species, how it feels, how it's reacting, changed my perspective, made me put myself into the place of that species a little bit. The great thing about your writing is how you do that. You bring people into another perspective, another way of seeing things.And I think that's the power of art and writing in these issues and these very. Like the poly crisis and climate change, there's the technical, there's the policy, all these things are important.But to change the perspective as you speak of, I think that's where art comes in. Art and writing. I guess that's not a question, it's just an observation.

Yeah, no, thank you. I'm glad you noticed that. Cause that definitely feels like what I'm in the game to do. And I just want to comment.You were about to say that I anthropomorphize and you kind of pulled your punch there. And I would say like, no, I do, I do anthropomorphize. It's like I am embracing what I call healthy anthropomorphization.One of my favorite authors and thinkers today is Carl Safina, who has written a number of books about, you know, he's a PhD scientist and does a lot of writing about a variety of different creatures, although his background is in bird biology. And he is of the opinion that this virulent anti anthropomorphizing school that he was raised in, in the scientific community is part of the problem.And it came about for a really good reason. Like we want to study these creatures scientifically. We want to come up with objective data so, so that we can understand them.And if we constantly are putting our emotions onto these creatures and just looking at how they're like us, then we're not going to get good data and we're not going to be able to understand them as effectively as if we create some distance. Absolutely. And that worked. And we have the scientific method and we've gotten a huge amount of knowledge from it.However, he is of the opinion that this sort of absolutely do not for a second think that they're like us. They are not like us. Do not grant them emotions, do not grant them thoughts, do not grant them anything. That, that's nonsense. Like they do.Animals particularly. We know they have emotions. We have a common ancestor. We all evolve together with emotions. Are they just like our emotions?

No.

But do they not have them? No. Equally not true.So he believes that a certain amount of healthy, thoughtful anthropomorphization, where you consider the emotions of other creatures or the realities of other creatures, or as Ed Yang, another great author writing these days, would say, the umwelt of other creatures, the reality that exists because of their senses, but that by considering those their. Considering their realities, considering their emotions, considering their needs, et cetera, that what we do. Are we anthropomorphizing? Some, sure.But it's intelligent, it's thoughtful, it's considered. But then we're also decreasing our anthropocentrism because we're taking ourselves out of the middle of the universe and saying, like, you know what?Actually, elephants feel love, elephants feel connections to family. Elephants feel grief when other elephants die. That is true.And by sharing that with them, like I feel grief when someone dies and so does an elephant. Like, we have this thing in common that is beautiful. And it makes me way harder to.Makes it way harder for me to kill an elephant or eliminate their habitat because I want them to. To be able to survive and thrive also. So long answer to your comment. But I think that this, you know, don't anthropomorphize at any cost.I agree with Carl Safina that I think that has gotten us into the polycrisis.And one of the ways out is to gently, carefully look at what we have in common with other creatures and explore and celebrate that rather than put up another wall.

Yeah, you remind me of an elephant story. Jane and I, I think it was 2004. We were in a Botswana on a wildlife safari and in camp one night.This is like, I think maybe our last night in Botswana. Throughout the night, we heard this plaintive wail. We weren't quite sure what. Just the sound of a creature, it sounded like in distress.And the next day we went out and we discovered a dead baby elephant. So I imagine it was the mother or just grief over, you know, so it's very, very real. Were there any species or animals that.You know, I get that you approach this with a very open mind when you go out and experience the environment, but was there any species or animal that surprised you that you didn't expect a behavior or the way it it was, or was it just you observing and noticing and letting it be or did anything just like, whoa, I Didn't expect that.

I think all creatures surprise me because there's always more to learn about them. I am not a scientist. I didn't spend my entire academic background studying one creature the way often PhD folks do.Whereas they know, you know, they know black abalone inside and out. I'm not that person. I know a little bit about a lot of creatures, but I wouldn't say that I know very, very deeply anything or anyone.And so when I choose to write about a creature, that's my opportunity to get in, to dive in a little deeper to an awareness of them.So I'd say that with every essay in the book, I knew something about the creature, whether it's, you know, one of the essays is on owls, one is on fireweed, one is on sponges, one is on stingrays. So I knew something. But part of my process of writing is doing research. I start writing, I think about the experience I had.I write about the experience I had. But I also poke around websites and books and read stuff and learn things and say, oh, my gosh, that's crazy.And try to think about that crazy fact that I learned and think about how that helps me reflect on my experience of being human and does it bring clarity to anything that I'm struggling with? And so I'd say that all creatures surprise me when I take the time to get to know them a little bit better through both observation and research.And I think for me, combining those two, like, personal interactions with them, along with more drier, scientific study of them, that combination is a really magical nexus for me.

That was another thing I liked about Entwined was the weaving of the personal narrative and more of the drier, the scientific, though it was never too dry, it was never off putting. The way you approach the more objective drier material was very accessible. So, yeah, it was. How long it was what?

14 Essays.

14 Essays in this book.

How long did it.

What is the story? How long did it take you to put entwined together?

The first essay in the book that I wrote was the one about owls. It was triggered by me visiting a raptor center in Wilson, Wyoming, called the Teton Raptor center, which is.Is a fabulous institution that does rehabilitation and education around Raptors. And I had this experience where one of the owls, resident owls at this facility, just blew me away.She was amazing and beautiful and majestic and seemed so wise. And I learned that she could hear the heartbeat of her prey from 200ft away.And I was just like, wow, what would it be like to be able to hear the heartbeat of anything from 200ft away. And she. I learned about her vision. And, you know, I have terrible vision in the practical sense.And then I was thinking about how I had not great vision in the metaphorical sense either. And I was getting blindsided by a number of things in my life.And so I wove together facts about this owl with my encounters with a great horned owl in Wilder Ranch, actually, just outside of Santa Cruz, and my ideas about seeing and what I was being blindsided by, et cetera, et cetera. And that essay seemed to work really well.And then it almost turned into a recipe where I would encounter another creature and be like, oh, well, that creature reminds me of this. Well, I'm gonna do some research about this creature. And then, oh, that reminds me of this thing in my life.And so before long, I had amassed a collection of different essays which had a combination of a creature focus plus an event from my life or each of these creatures in the book I've encountered in the wild. So in no case, this is this like a zoo or me just doing research. Like, I have seen and observed and interacted with them in the wild.So it had that piece. It had some science. Often it had, like, ethical considerations. So I'm kind of putting all of this together in a stew.And then at a certain point, it was like, you know, I think I have enough for a book. And then it just became an issue of trying to choose an assortment that reflected both. I wanted marine and terrestrial creatures.I wanted creatures that were found in my backyard as well as creatures that were found on the other side of the globe. I wanted ones that were easy for most people connect to, like elk and ones that were harder, like sponges and stingrays.So I wanted that kind of kaleidoscopic combo of all those different types of creatures. So that's how it unfolded, if that makes sense.

How did you approach the order of the essays?

That's a good question. You know, when I originally pitched the book to publishers, I had an order.I did this little matrix thing with a bunch of pieces of paper where I was like, marine invertebrates close to home. So I took each of those factors and wrote it down.And then I took these pieces of paper and I assembled them in such a way that it was the most jumpy from thing to thing, that there was no repetitiveness.And then my book is published with an academic press, and academic presses require, before they contract you, they send the book out for expert readers to read and give you feedback. And then you're supposed to address that feedback before they're working, willing to commit to the book and sign a contract and the feedback.So I had two expert readers. One was completely positive. The other was positive except for one thing. And he was like, this order is totally unacceptable.There's clearly an order of things that happen here. It was totally linear. Like, I want linear time. I wanted to start when she was the youngest and move through when she was the oldest.And so the press approached me with that feedback and said, what are you going to do about this? I'm like, that's not going to work for me because this book is not about me. This book is not a memoir.If I wanted to write a memoir, I would have written a memoir. This book is about these creatures.And if people want to assemble a memoir about me and my development, they're welcome to do that, but that is not my intention. And I feel like if I put them in that order, I'm going to be centering that piece. So I'm not willing to do it.And they were amazingly like, good point. Okay, we need you to write a preface that says that or says something to that effect.And I did, and I sat down and I wrote a preface that talks about why I write this stuff the way I do that. There is memoir in it that you're welcome to assemble my life if you'd like, but that's not my intention.And so don't go looking for that to be the thread that connects everything.

That's interesting how somebody would just, no, you can't do it this way.

I mean, not. You can't. But he was definitely strongly like, this didn't work for me as a reader. I wanted more linear time progression. And fair enough.He is allowed to ask. He is allowed to want that. But for my creative impulse, that's not what I'm setting out to do.So I don't want to make the form mimic a function that I'm not interested in.

Yeah. Are there any other collections of essays.

On the horizon for you?

Yeah, I'm always continuing to work on these creature essays because it happens all the time. An example is I'm in love with Valella Valellas. I don't know which. You must know what they are because you live in the Monterey Bay.But those by the wind, sailor creatures that come splashing up on shore every spring when the winds come. So I see them and I'm like, okay, I need to write about, like, intentionality. And so I'm always writing, like, additional creature essays.I Don't know if that means it'll be an entwined two or whatever. I'm not sure yet. But one of the things I've really been focusing on lately is a collection of essays that explores my relationship with landscape.So moving even further away from easy to empathize with creatures to actually landscape.And looking at what, as someone who's been a lifelong outdoor recreationalist at a pretty high level, doing a lot of different kind of adventuring, looking at how I have evolved from someone who's done that a little bit from a place of conquest. And what do I want to say? Like a little bit of a colonial place, a little bit of an extractive place. Like, I want to have this experience.I want to prove myself in this environment. I want. And I definitely was at that place when I was young.And how I've moved from that place to one that's more relational, that's more like, I'm going out to do these activities not because I'm trying to prove anything or not because I'm trying to extract something from the landscape, but because I'm trying to connect with the landscape and create more relationality with the ecosystems. I'm moving in. So I'm writing essays about running the Grand Canyon, about trail running around Mont Blanc a year ago, about kayaking in New Zealand.Like, things that seem like big adventure things, but I'm writing about them from a place of how is my relationship with the landscape changing as I do these activities?

Yeah, it sounds like just your own evolution with the natural world.

Exactly.And how the sports that I have done in the natural world have contributed to that evolution and helped me develop the perspective that I have on the natural world and our role in it. Yeah.

Yeah. So to wrap it up, looking forward, where do you find hope for the future of our relationship with nature, and what worries you the most?

I mean, what worries me the most. I'll start with that. Is that time is ticking, right? That we just don't have a whole lot of time before things are really irreversible.And as we both know, you know, you and I could both probably quote all the things that are already irreversible, and every day there are more. And perspective shifts take time.And I'm deeply concerned that the perspective shifts that I think need to happen to get us out of this aren't going to happen quickly enough just because of the reality of the gears that we have set in motion. So that is the piece that worries me the most, for sure.Where I find hope is in you know, I've been doing book events for this book where I go to bookstores or the Raptor center or an environmental education place in upstate New York and talk about the book and talk about. And I ask people to tell me. I often ask people in the audience to say, like, hey, tell me about a cool creature encounter you had.And almost always there's like, 15 seconds of awkwardness where people. No one says anything. And then some brave soul raises their hand and starts talking, and then I can't stop them.And then it's just like everyone in the audience has a cool creature encounter they want to talk about. And sometimes they're the ones you would expect, like sea otters or sea lions or polar bears or elephants.And sometimes someone talked about spiders the other day, and that person called the spider who? Like, the spider who. They didn't say the spider that. They said the spider who. And I was like, yes, you just gave that spider.And spiders are a creature that many humans can't stand or they're afraid of. And this young woman gave that spider agency by referring to it, referred, to, you know, he or she as a who.And then just examples are spilling out of people's mouths about creature encounters that they've had that clearly fill them with joy. Because I see their faces light up when they're talking about them.So when those things happen, and because I'm doing a bunch of these events, I'm getting to see a lot of this. I come out of those with, like, okay, okay.You know, all it took was me prompting them, either through the book or through this question that I'm asking in this bookstore. It took a little prompting. And after that prompting, like, they're right there. It happened so fast.So then my initial concern about, you know, we're running out of time feels somewhat alleviated when I see, like, how quickly someone can step into that place of empathy and connection. So that's the hope right there, is that it does happen. It can happen quickly. It can turn on a dime.And everyone has the capacity for wonder and empathy. It's just a matter of exercising the muscle, as we talked about earlier.

And as you say, just maybe reminding them, asking the question.

Yes, yes, yeah.And if this book makes its way into a bunch of houses and sits on a coffee table or a bedside table, and they see, you know, a cover with this owl and kelp intertwined, looking at them saying, like, hey, connect with me. Connect with me. Fabulous. You know, like, job done. Right then. Then I've done something to move the needle, little bit.

And that's great. And I hope everybody does have a copy of Entwined on their coffee table soon. I think people should read it. It's a very good read. And it, it does.Even, I guess, even for people that aren't really naturalist, it brings, in a way, it brings nature home.

That's. That's certainly my intent, is for it to be home and accessible to a wide variety of people.

Well, I'll definitely encourage people to read Entwined. Get the book. It's definitely worth the read.

Great. And if folks want to find events on the book's website, there's events going on.And I think there's something to be said for the events, too, simply because a bunch of people who are interested in this topic end up gathering and sharing that energy. And there's something kind of catalytic about that, too.

Yeah, that's important, too. We don't have to do it online. We can do it in person.

Right. And we don't have to do in our silos. We can do it together.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, best of luck with everything.

Thank you, Thomas, and thank you for the work you're doing. I've listened to a bunch of your episodes and I think it's really important work. So thank.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Well, we'll just keep doing what we're doing.

Yep. Keep showing up. Yep.

Keep showing up. All right. Take care.

We can all, myself included, emerge from our disconnectedness through the simple act of observing the knowledge non human world. It doesn't require a trip to some distant exotic land, only stepping outside our front door and greeting the world outside.Thanks for listening to this discussion with Bridget lyons.Go to bridgetalyons weebly.com that's Bridget A. Lyons L Y-O-N S.weebly.com to find out more about her work and if you can, to or her book from an independent bookshop. Not today. Jeff Bezos. The link is in the show notes along with links to places and people mentioned in the episode.If you like what we're doing, please like and subscribe or leave us a review@earthboundpodcast.com if you can spare a dollar or two to help keep us going. We appreciate any of that. Visit our website@earthboundpodcast.com or global warming is real.You can help us shape the future of Earthbound by filling out a brief listener survey. Go to earthboundpodcast.com survey and let us know what you think. And that link will be in the.

Show notes as well.

Thanks again. Dear listener. We'll be back here in a couple weeks, and in the meantime, stay safe.