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By Salomé Gómez Upegui
Every time I read Willow Defebaugh’s lyrics, I feel hope. I am reminded that despite the genuine climate crisis we face, all is not lost and that this desirable planet we are lucky enough to call home deserves to be saved. Offering a sense of wonder and optimism in the midst of an overwhelming climate emergency is what Defebaugh makes most productive, and his first book, The Overview: Meditations on Nature for a World in Transition, published Jan. 25, is no exception.
“When I look at the history of life on Earth, it’s a never-ending story of resilience, of life moving forward and finding a way, shrinking and collapsing, expanding and thriving,” Defebaugh says of what encouraged her to write the book. As human beings, we’re not separate from it. “
As the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Atmos, a biannual nonprofit print magazine and virtual platform at the intersection of climate and culture founded in 2019, Defebaugh has also spent the last four years writing a weekly newsletter reflecting on deep ecology. (Also known as spiritual ecology, it is a philosophy that connects science and spirituality and considers humans to be an inseparable part of the plant world. )
Defebaugh’s new book is an anthology of 100 essays originally published in the newsletter, here arranged under four themes as she considers the core principles of deep ecology: reverence, balance, evolution, and healing. Replete with breathtaking nature photography, The Overview reflects on the many lessons we can take from nature while on our own, personal journeys of continuous transformation.
The Overview: Nature Meditations for a World in Transition.
One essay, for example, examines the slow and highly complex metamorphosis of certain insects, such as dragonflies, to reflect on the importance of slow evolution in the climate movement and in our lives in general. “We grow imperfectly, incompletely,” he writes. I’m talking about the sophisticated changes, the months of molting, of swimming beneath the surface, of wondering what’s the point of it all, until the moment comes when you’re out of the water and realize all the time you thought you were drowning. , you were learning to fly.
Over the years, Defebaugh says, her weekly meditations have traced her own history of metamorphosis as a trans woman. In a way, I wrote [these essays] for myself, to help me get through the last four years of my life, which were a time of immense change,” he says. Each week I look for another lesson from the tree of life that I can stick to: What can frogs tell me about how to stay porous when I’m feeling so vulnerable?What can butterflies tell me about the good looks and brutality of metamorphoses?It’s a way to move on, and the fact that it resonated with other people, well, I still don’t get it. But I’m grateful for it.
Reverence, the opening chapter of the book, is a theme Defebaugh has been familiar with for as long as she can remember. “My mother instilled in me a great sense of wonder for the world when I was a kid. Reverence invokes feelings of respect and honor, but it’s also humbling, and when I study the natural world, it’s one of the things I’m most grateful for—how much it humbles me to remember that I’m just a small part of this vastly interconnected entity,” she says. Indeed, spiritual ecology dictates that, as humans, we ought to understand ourselves as expressions of nature, and like trees, bees, or beavers, every one of us has a specific purpose on earth.
As a child, Defebaugh, who was deeply in touch with her own purpose, prophesied that she would one day become a writer. In fact, she even remembers telling her parents at one point that she would become the editor of an environmental magazine. “I don’t know how I knew this, but I’ve had this sense of awe at the global and understood that the only way to live in this global would be to fall in love with it,” he says.
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That’s not to say Defebaugh’s career path has been straight. When she was in her twenties, she worked as an assistant at primary fashion publications and held positions at V magazine for five years. After suffering severe burnout, she almost stopped publishing entirely, but in 2019, she was approached by co-founder Jake Sargent with the goal of launching a climate-focused publication, echoing the appeal of art and fashion magazines.
In just a few short years, Atmos has a beloved publication that balances a more artistic technique for the climate crisis with subtle imagery documenting the movement’s most pressing issues today, featuring iconic artists and activists such as Yoko Ono, Xiye Bastida, Rachel Cargle, and Quannah Chasinghorse.
The same year Atmos launched, Defebaugh was also encouraged by Sargent to start a newsletter writing about the science of the natural world in a spiritual way. “Indigenous science has always included the spiritual in so many different cultures and traditions. And, for me, without spirituality, science can feel cold—I don’t think that’s how you reach people,” Defebaugh says. “Ultimately, what we’ve always wanted to do with Atmos and The Overview was to reach people from a place of heart and a place of spirit—I’ve always understood the climate crisis as a crisis of spirit, because what else could’ve brought us here?”
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Throughout the book, essay after essay, Defebaugh speaks from her spirit, calling for more love, more joy, more acts of service, more compassion, more resilience, and more justice. Her ability to break free from the trap of binary thinking and instead embrace nuance is particularly refreshing. “We divide nature into night and day, but dawn and dusk are equally part of the cycles of creation. And so I long to live my life in the messy light of morning and the murkiness of eventide, for that’s where promise resides,” she writes in an essay exploring ideological divisions and the dangers of extremist thinking.
The theme of evolution, which Defebaugh describes as central to the book, is arguably the most private segment of all. As Defebaugh explains, “Being trans, I see everything through the lens of transformation, and I lived in worry for so long. “For a long time, thinking it was less difficult to stay with what I knew, to stay in the shadows until I knew it was just going to consume me. I think a lot of H. G. Wells, who said, “Nature’s inexorable imperative is to adapt or perish. I got to that point where I knew those were the only two possible options I had, and it was surely terrifying.
In the many stories of adaptation and resilience that nature has offered, Defebaugh has discovered solace, hope, and courage, a quality he has had to include in recent years and that he believes we can all gain more advantages from today. facing what is difficult, but also facing the option that life may possibly work in our favor. “I’ve felt and experienced everything that awaits me in the other aspect of fear,” he says. “And to feel Myself coming out of the chrysalis and waking up every day grateful that I chose to adapt. . . From the bottom of my heart, I wish the same for our species. Hopefully we can also see how beautiful this can be.
The preview: Nature Meditations for a World in Transition is now available on Atmos.
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