You may have heard of a zeitgeist. Others mention confluence. I recall that E.O. Wilson, famed biologist and conservationist, titled his book Consilience.
I am seeing this type of interspecies convergence of ideas in the morass of news and art and economics and everyday human social and political enterprise: we are coming together. Yes we are also coming apart but, we are coming together more and in more ways. I ask you to just pay attention.
One day you read or hear about awe as a critical part of sustaining ourselves through troubled times. Next thing you know it is in books, discussions, podcasts, etc. It has been bubbling up before it was seen then it comes at us from myriad sectors and myriad media.
We feel it as a species finally. The changing Earth, the related uncertainties. But also, the renascence and creativity rising to the challenge.
Will it be in time to preserve the Earth’s ecosystems that have been supportive of life for so long (to us) but briefly in stellar time? Maybe.
Kentucky is a land of dozens of tribal nations. Once densely populated with virgin forests, the people cleared some of these wooded areas to create meadowlands. Game inhabited these areas to graze on the wild grasses. Good hunting. The people kept the meadows productive with a light firing each season, creating the meadows seen today, a gentle impression on the land. See Native Americans of Clay County and Kentucky pdf below.
When I walk around the countryside in Southcentral Kentucky, I am aware of trees and farms and rivers and lakes and sandstone or limestone outcrops–a porous land on and through which waters flow. Karst landscape it is called. Carved by water, there are caverns, caves and blue holes where springs surface like eyes peering up at us terrestrial beings.
I am writing a new novel based in Kentucky in Bowling Green. The frame of the novel is the land. Its presence permeates the story about a young girl whose family has deep roots in the land, five generations of farming on what was indigenous land. She is a new generation with dreams in her eyes about regenerating her family’s land, back to what it might have been when reciprocity between human and soil was natural and both thrived.
She wonders, “What would reparations look like? What could I do to make it right?” See the PDF below about how many tribal nations originally inhabited the land on which the hunted and lived for thousands of years.
To tell a story set in the Sonoran Desert, which occurs in only one region of the world, we must include the iconic species of plants and animals who are its defining features. Their presence maintains the balance of life and contributes to the great beauty of this desert landscape. The saguaro cactus is its signature plant life, who some believe evolved from a tree in the tropical rainforest that dried to a savannah and then to a desert over thousands of years.
Saguaro in Tucson Arizona after a rainstorm. Its long shallow roots absorb water efficiently after a heavy monsoon rain.
Threshold tells the stories of many desert plants, trees, insects, invertebrates, and mammals. One strategy for conserving water is to be active at dusk and dawn. These animals are said to be crepuscular (as contrasted with nocturnal). The jaguar is thus, and also nocturnal. Panthera onca is the third largest of the cat family with a bite more powerful than the tiger or lion.
I named the jaguar character in Threshold. Duma. With the risk of personifying a wild animal by human standards, I tried to stay strictly to the known biology, behavior, and observed lifeways of jaguars in the Sonoran Desert. In my story Duma obtains his name from first graders in Phoenix. You’ll have to read the book to learn how that came about. Below you see another feature of this remarkable character: he is an albino, a White Cat, causing local observers to refer to him as the “ghost cat” as he moves about the fields and pastures of farms and ranches, terrifying livestock and infuriating their caretakers.
Duma is my writer’s device to represent wild nature and the impact of a changing climate and human activity on his lifeways. His story also allowed me to describe the labyrinth of environmental and conservation laws on both sides of the border and how Duma becomes, literally, emmeshed in them. He crosses the U.S. -Mexico border while roaming his natural range which stretches from Sonora in Mexico north to Phoenix in Arizona. Duma is caught up in the social and political turmoil.
It is important to me to consider the lives of other species who share our habitats in what is a human centric world.
Threshold was published in 2016. Seven years later the characters and the action are recognizable as the Southwest has continued to heat up.
Drought and worries about growing food, sustaining adequate water supply, a dying Colorado River from overuse, and threat of losing hydropower all are present day challenges.
Threshold is written with youth in mind. Three teenage characters in different circumstances, and their families, navigate climate change differently, but all are thrown into finding sustaining ways to live and work.
Teachers, Middle School to High School young adults, parents, youth leaders, book clubs, and environmental conservation organizations will find Threshold interesting and useful. Stop by my table on March 2, Sunday in the Young Adult tables in the Indie Author Pavilion at the Tucson Festival of Books.
For teachers, see the page titled Threshold the Novel on this blog to download a standards articulation for Threshold.
Church groups and book clubs will find this a thought provoking novel to discuss.
More conversation with Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg’s Curse on Emergence Magazine brings up similar themes incorporated into Threshold, a novel about climate change in the Southwest. In it, I layered the rich cultural endowment of the Tucson area, with ancient Indigenous and current day Native Nations wisdom, and Mexican American land and agricultural practices that have and continue to shape the local zeitgeist. But, like most communities in the Southwest, capitalistic systems drive commerce rendering the living Earth mute. All these ways of living mix together yet one has dominated the political and economic forces, imperiling Tucsonans to climate emergencies.
Listen to a chapter from Threshold as a major character of Mexican descent, Delores Olivarez, takes a hike up “A” mountain observing the changes in the Tucson valley that trace all these cultural ways of knowing. Thanks to Terrain.org for publishing this chapter of Threshold.
Amitav Ghosh’s book, The Nutmeg’s Curse – Parables for a Planet in Crisis – is an insightful genealogy of exploitation and extermination of people in Indonesia by Dutch explorers for control of a spice – nutmeg. The Plantation Economy.
He draws our attention to the ideas and practices that have led to destruction of entire civilizations for a profit. These destructive processes made European and American cultures rich while destroying cultures and landscapes of poorer countries whose people have been exploited.
Ghosh rightly points out that developed nations must reconsider how we live on Earth. Our way of life is clearly unsustainable. But, he asks, who is responsible for climate change? Who should pay?
In similar ways, the mesquite forests were cut down along the Colorado River for steamboat power during the Gold Rush. Native people harvested wood from the forests and piloted the boats transporting Europeans in search of treasure across the river near Yuma. By then, native culture had been so disrupted by the colonization of North America that these were their only options to sustain their communities. The forests had been key sources of food, shelter, and energy for the Colorado River Nations who had lived sustainably within the margins of mesquite forests for thousands of years.
Photo by Susan Feathers, Sonoran Desert near Tucson, AZ
I have introduced readers to the Volts Podcast with David Roberts on numerous occasions and topics related to decarbonizing the economy.
In this podcast about lithium mining constraints, David interviews Dr. Thea Riofrancos. Thea is a scholar on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America.
Listen to an expert describe the constraints on meeting the demand for lithium for EV batteries. We need to get out ahead of this because there are justice and environmental factors to be considered. During the discussion, Dr. Riofrancos reflects on this moment in history and forecasts into the future about economic and environmental outcomes. She spurs us to ask other questions such as how do we want transportation to look in the future? Does everyone need a car? What about public transportation?
Extraction has realistic impacts. We need to be informed and move carefully.
Southwestern Novel From Fireship Press—A fictional novel exploring the dramatic affects of climate change in the desert community of Tucson, Arizona
A Love Story in a Time of Climate Change
Susan Feathers will be present to sign and sell copies of Threshold during the Indie Authors Pavilion at the Tucson Festival of Books on March 5, Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Confronted by crisis in their own world—climate scientists, politicians, and desert museum curators face the biggest challenge man can encounter—no water, anywhere. In the barrios, families and community leaders, band together as they face unbearable heat and the crushing weight of the gangs that intimidate them. Amidst the turmoil, three teens navigate adolescence to become leaders in a new world. With shifting sand underfoot, characters follow their intuition and learn new skills as they chart a way into a viable future. Threshold will make you think while it celebrates the enduring nature of communities as they search for what is lasting and true. Threshold is a powerful new western novel in the best of its tradition. Appropriate for high school classes.
“In a riveting, multi-stranded plot, Threshold translates the conceptual worry over climate change into immediate, interpersonal dramas.” –Mary Lawlor, Muhlenberg College
“Such a well-written and thoughtfully conceived novel regarding very poignant issues of the day; THRESHOLD is a valuable contribution. The author continues a tradition in Southwestern Literature of social and environmental consciousness –Mark Rossi, Frank Waters Foundation.
About the Author
Susan Feathers is a writer and educator with 30 years of experience communicating science to the public. She served as the Director of Education at the Sonora-Arizona Desert Museum. Her writing focuses on the importance of place in forming character and destiny. Susan is an excellent speaker with years of experience delivering programs to the public. Her blog, WalkEarth.org, now in its 14th year, has an active following.
Threshold the novel published in 2016 has been selected for the Tucson Festival of Books Indie Author fair. I will be at the pavilion for Young Adults books at the Indie Authors on March 5, Sunday from 10 am to 1 pm. Please stop by to chat, buy a book, and pick up information for schools, home and community about resilience in climate change.
Threshold tells the stories of three teenagers and how they manage to find their place in a turbulent Tucson. It is getting hotter for longer. There is talk of water shortages and an unstable grid. Daniel, Luna, and Enrique navigate their own challenges and opportunities, while Duma–an albino jaguar–finds his own challenge on the U.S. – Mexico Border. Learn about the Sonoran Desert, conservation of animals and plants, and how communities can support youth to secure the future for themselves and those to come.
Susan Feathers 