On this week’s podcast, we welcome Indy Srinath. Indy is an avid homesteader, forager, educator, herbalist, and food justice activist. She is currently working in LA managing an urban farm on Skid Row. She shares with us her story entitled, “A Forest As Black As Me.”
“It’s such a different world that we’re in these days, and it is interesting how some of these themes that I touch on in this story transform and transcend time. And I think that’s both beautiful and slightly disheartening because I speak a lot about nature and being a person of color in outdoor spaces, and it’s a challenge I’ve had since childhood.” – Indy Srinath
You can learn more about Indy and the work she is up to on her Instagram page at indyofficinalis.
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Elizabeth Lashay: Welcome back to Woods and Wilds podcast. I’m so excited to be here. I’m Elizabeth Lashay with Slay the Mic, and I’m joined by my wonderful cohost.
Kimala Luna: I’m Kimala Luna with Dogwood Alliance, and we have the absolute privilege today to be here with Indy Srinath. Indy Srinath is an avid homesteader, forager, educator, herbalist, and food justice activist. And last year at Woods and Wild’s IRL, she shared a really beautiful story that she’s going to share with us again today, and we’re really excited. So, we’d like to welcome Indy. Hi, Indy.
Indy Srinath: Hey.
Kimala Luna: Hi.
Indy Srinath: Hi. I’m so excited to be talking with the both of you. Again, it’s such a different world that we’re in these days, and it is interesting how some of these themes that I touch on in this story transform and transcend time. And I think that’s both beautiful and slightly disheartening because I speak a lot about nature and being a person of color in outdoor spaces, and it’s a challenge I’ve had since childhood. And I think it resonates a lot more for a lot of folks in these current times. So, yeah, it’s one of those things where it’s fun to be back here again chatting with you all, but having the same conversation feels a little dystopian sometimes.
Indy Srinath: Cool. So, I will just go ahead and share this story that we all got to share together last year. So, this is a story called “A Forest As Black As Me”. I was seven years old when I found out I was black. It was Jacob Glastonbury who informed me, on the playground by the tire swing. His hair was the color of dark autumn rain flooding golden cornfields, with the solstice sun suspended in the broken sky. And he always smelled like kerosene and smoke from his dad’s pickup truck. Jacob Glastonbury had a small circle of my classmates standing around him, each with their palm outstretch, and he dutifully doled out one singular Sour Patch Kid to each of my friends. “Yellow for you, Lindsey,” he said, because your hair is yellow. Edwin, you get green because of your green eyes.
Following suit, I stretched my palm out toward him, hoping for the orange one. The taste of red number 40 already on my tongue. I longed to have fingers coated in crystalline preservatives and palm sticky with corn syrup and fructose juice. “You can’t have one because you’re black,” Jacob said, turning away from me. And his words, they hung in the air stagnant and heavy like a Louisiana night. I could feel tears pushing past the levy of my eyelashes, felt them falling down my cheeks like cold water raindrops tracing rivulets down a foggy window pane.
I pushed past Jacob and his kerosene tongue and pushed past the old tire swing and pushed past the Oak trees and through the goldenrod field and past the pine trees and into the rhododendron and into the place where we weren’t supposed to go, into the dark place, into the place as black as me, into the woods, into the woods where you couldn’t hear the bell ring and you couldn’t see the playground and you couldn’t smell the Sour Patch Kids and you couldn’t taste the metallic flavor of embarrassment and shame on your tongue anymore.
And in the woods, I became black like Jacob said, engulfed in midday shadow, where pine trees offered their darkness upon the forest floor and let me sink into the depth of their beauty. And rhododendron let me climb upon its shoulders like some older brother would so I could reach my black, soil-stained palms toward open sky. And Western wind sang gentle hymns as they caressed the tops of black cherry trees. And the stream flowed with midnight black water. I could taste the gilded drops of sunlight as they squeezed through the continuum of the place where night meets day.
And I watched the holy matrimony of a black spider and an Oak limb as she weaved a glistening web, invisible, if not for the blackness of the tree. And I tasted dew from the moss covering the black stones and watched black ants marched down the length of a fallen branch. A black parade in a silent forest. I found something honest in the blackness of the forest, the way the missed clings to the blue, black sky like a whispered prayer, the way sunlight bows in the presence of shadows and drips from the edges of black pine needles. Finally, I felt proud that the forest was as black as me.
I emerged from the woods a silhouette. All that was dark was contained within me. The beauty and the absence of light through black existence light was surely promised. Jacob came to me at the edge of the woods with our teacher in tow and smiled at me through gapped teeth and violet eyes. “Sorry I called you black,” he said. “I’m supposed to give you a Sour Patch Kid now.” I told him I didn’t want his damn Sour Patch Kids anymore, and I knew my mom wouldn’t be thrilled that I had said damn in front of my teacher. But I was shadow barreling through blind night, and I was the midnight sun trading places with the waning moon. And it was 1999, and I just became black for the first time. There was beauty in the darkened woods, and I was enamored with the starless sky. I couldn’t be bothered with artificially sweetened candy and boys who smelled like pipe tobacco and had scorched smiles and tire swings and yellow hair. Not now and not anymore, because I was seven years old and I knew that the forest was as black as me.
Yay. Thanks for listening.
Kimala Luna: Thank you so much. Oh my gosh.
Elizabeth Lashay: Wow.
Indy Srinath: Yeah.
Kimala Luna: Yeah. I’m so enamored with your writing style, Indy. It almost becomes like a song. It’s like you capture the emotion, the rhythm in the description and just like these really graceful sweeps.
Indy Srinath: Oh, thank you.
Elizabeth Lashay: Yes.
Indy Srinath: Thanks. I’m glad it resonates somewhere with you guys.
Elizabeth Lashay: I mean, it resonated when you said it whenever I saw it live, and then now it still has that power. And I think, again, coming to find our identity in a time where racial tension is running high, we still have young people who are waking up every day and finding out their racial identity. And what is something that you wish you knew back when you were seven years old?
Indy Srinath: Yes. When I was a kid, we would always kind of play that game like, “If you could go back into any time period, which time period would you go to and what would you do?” And I think for me and a lot of other children of color, we were like, “Dude, things are only getting better for people that look like us. There’s no way I’m going back in time to any time period.” And I just would want to let my younger self know that that’s okay, to know that looking toward the future and being excited about being represented more and having more of a voice in the future is great, and it’s not something to be kind of ashamed of. I always felt like I wasn’t living in the present as a kid because I was just hoping for a future where I would experience more equity and more opportunity. So, I would just tell my younger self that, looking toward the future and having these grander visions and dreams is totally acceptable to deal with the unpleasant reality.
Kimala Luna: I also, I wanted to know about this story feels really poignant in that it’s this moment where you turn away from the artificial and you really seek this blend of the natural, and that’s embedded in your whole life now. And I guess I wanted to know maybe about the first time that you tied together nature and community building because I know that’s a big part of your life.
Indy Srinath: Yeah. So, I think it really was this journey, especially throughout high school, where I started becoming really disenchanted with our current food systems and just the way they were unable to nourish me as a teenager. I drank a lot of Starbucks and ate a lot of popcorn from the movie theaters and then realized what a negative impact that had on my health. And as I tried to embark on this journey to get healthier and more organic foods, I realized that in order to do that in a way that’s financially sustainable, I do have to become more involved in my community, and growing food came to the forefront of that and realizing that I can’t just go to whole foods and purchase everything that I want. I have to find these really down to earth farmers who are growing this food and purchase it directly from them at an affordable price. And then, in turn, you’re doing that community building work and really getting more in touch with your farmers and the people who grow your food.
Elizabeth Lashay: I know within your story, there was such an intersection between race and then also nature and finding that beauty in nature, as well. And so, whenever you go out into this world, where is the place that really brings you joy?
Indy Srinath: Yes. I really do find joy in the deep woods and in the forest forest. I think that the forest, especially where it tends to meet the ocean, is very unapologetic. So, pine trees have no problem taking up as much room as they need to grow, and plants have no problem vining and taking up room and branching out and climbing on to other things and creating these support systems in nature and thriving through that means. And then, the ocean lapping away at the shore, it takes what it needs and recedes when it’s had a bit too much. So, I really try to emulate nature in that way and just let my existence be unapologetic because I think everyone appreciates the ocean and looking out on the ocean, and we never say it’s too big or too much or too anything. It’s just immaculate the way that it is. So, I try to emulate that a lot.
Kimala Luna: I bet this translates really well into what you’re working on right now. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re working on right now and the ways that you are unapologetically taking up that space?
Indy Srinath: Yes, absolutely. So, I am a female and I’m a woman of color, as well. I’m a black woman. And right now, I am managing an urban farm here in downtown LA in an area known as Skid Row. And so, Skid Row is predominantly houseless… It’s all houseless population. And so, all of the folks that I am in community with there live in tents and live on the sidewalk. Some of them live in single-room occupancy housing. And so, they don’t have access to a lot of resources, and that’s been the case for many of these people for the majority of their life. And many of the people that I’m in this community with are people of color.
Indy Srinath: So, we are creating this permanent space and this urban farm that I’m managing. We’re taking up space, and we’re showing that we are a permanent fixture of the community. And we grow food together and we eat food together and just create this mini community in a place where people really don’t think much grows and people think that there’s not a lot of love or intelligence or beauty. And we just, we’re loud and we’re proud and we dance and we play music while we’re gardening. And we give out food and play music and talk and laugh. And we just don’t back down to anyone, and we have definitely had instances where the police have come and tried to shut down our food giveaway operation, and we just keep going and let folks know that this is our community and we’re not leaving for anyone.
Kimala Luna: Wow.
Elizabeth Lashay: Such an unwavering person and human you are, and I love hearing what you’ve been able to do in LA. And how does it differ from being on the East coast and being in Asheville?
Indy Srinath: Yeah. Yeah. Asheville definitely has a little piece of my heart, but I grew up in North Carolina and I experienced a lot of racism growing up, as you heard in the story. And one of my last experiences in Asheville was actually pretty traumatic. I was out having lunch with some friends, and these people decided to start waving a Confederate flag and a Trump flag directed at me while I was just sitting and having a goodbye lunch with some of my friends. And this was right in downtown Asheville, so it wasn’t like we were on the outskirts or backwoods or anything like that.
Indy Srinath: And a lot of folks told me growing up that racism exists everywhere and it’s not something that you can run from, and I fully believe that. However, I do think that it’s important to go where you feel like you can grow and go where you feel comfortable. And it has been very refreshing to just not see Confederate flags in LA. I really enjoy that. And I’ve been able to delve into some really lovely conversations around race in the workplace. And right now, the people that I work with are all predominantly POC, so that was such a refreshing feeling. So, I feel a lot for Asheville, and I love how much I learned when I was there, but I’m really enjoying the lessons that I learned and bringing that into my current situation here.
Kimala Luna: I’m wondering about, you’ve worked in nature in several different avenues. You’ve been a forager, you do activist work, you build community gardens, so there’s a lot of work with communities and a lot of work in the woods. And I’m wondering about like, what are some really nice, universal truths that you’ve come away with that apply to the forest and also to community building?
Indy Srinath: Yeah. I think that just the overarching idea that it takes pulling all of your shit and your compost and your dirt out into the open for any kind of growth to happen. There was a time in my super early 20s where I felt like I didn’t need to address these shadow places and I didn’t need to address some of the negativity that I felt growing up. And I thought, “I can just be this happy farmer who grows flowers from flowers,” but that’s really not how growth happens in real life and in your farming life. So, once I started speaking out more about some of my experiences and seeing how that resonated with other folks, I realized, “Yes, it makes sense in and out of the garden that you need this compost in order for things to grow, and you need the dirt and the soil.” So, I think that that’s something that I’ve really carried with me, and it’s helped me be a lot more open about my story. And I hope that it helps other folks feel like they can be more open about their stories, as well.
Kimala Luna: I love that. Thank you.
Indy Srinath: Of course.
Elizabeth Lashay: So, not only fertilizing your growth and what you’re currently doing in your life and your job, what do you think is next in terms of being able to continue to cultivate your passion?
Indy Srinath: Yeah. What next? So, right now, I’m currently crowdsourcing funding to create a farm space to teach other people of color and indigenous folks, and black folks in particular, how to grow their own food, and it’s been really incredible so far and I’ve had so much support from different individuals. So, that’s what’s on the horizon for me, is I really want to create this accessible farm space within this super urban area that I live now, so that, yeah, people can get this experience that I didn’t have growing up and feel reflected by their mentors and see themselves in their teachers.
Kimala Luna: That’s awesome. If people want to support that, where can they find it?
Indy Srinath: Yes. I have a GoFundMe going right now, and there is a link in my bio on Instagram.
Kimala Luna: Great. And what’s your Instagram handle just [inaudible 00:18:51]?
Indy Srinath: Yes. My Instagram handle is Indyofficinalis. So, that’s I-N-D-Y-O-F-F-I-C-I-N-A-L-I-S.
Kimala Luna: Great. Also, I want to talk a little bit about mushroom foraging and some major aspects of that that you found [inaudible 00:00:19:17].
Indy Srinath: Oh, yes. Yes. Oh my gosh, mushroom foraging has been definitely the closest thing that I think I’ve ever had to spirituality or religion. I really, really enjoy how much you have to match the pace of nature and slow down and really become observant and tune into the kind of language of your surroundings when you’re searching for mushrooms. So, I think a lot of folks might have the preconceived notion that I had that you could just walk out into the forest or you just start scrambling around on the ground and look for mushrooms and they’ll pop up. But it takes this different nature literacy where you have to pay attention to the trees and identify what trees are around you and look at the weather conditions and pay attention to the soil. And once you’ve realized what’s going on with the surroundings, then you’ll know what mushrooms will grow there, and then you’ll be able to find them and identify them. So, I think it can be a really beautiful and soothing practice, and I encourage everyone to go out and get into a forest and start looking for mushrooms.
Elizabeth Lashay: We are in a movement, in terms of moving towards justice, but I don’t want to just say racial justice, I want to talk about what’s happening in terms of our forest. And what do you think should be happening and that we as a nation, as a country, as the world, need to be paying attention to.
Indy Srinath: Yes. Oh my gosh. I think that the forest and the way we treat the planet is a great reflection of the way we view one another, and I think that it’s so, so important to, when we’re talking abour racial equity and racial equality, to also bring environmentalism into that conversation. Because the tragedies that affect us in minority populations are oftentimes directly related to a lot of the issues that affect the land. So, when we think of the exploitation of labor and how Mexican immigrants are just so mistreated, so mistreated in their farm labor and they’re the ones who are providing sustenance for us in growing all of our food. And then we’re looking at areas that we’re deforesting in order to create more farmland in areas where that’s not necessary, we see that intrinsic tie between how we treat people and how we treat the land, and it’s just awful. It’s totally awful.
Kimala Luna: I want to jump back a little bit to when you were painting this really beautiful picture of this community on Skid Row, just reclaiming their food sovereignty and dancing and playing music. I was curious what the music looked like. If it was like people were playing it or if it was like you were listening to songs.
Indy Srinath: Yes. Oh, yes. It is soul train. We play the hits, all the hits. Yeah. So, we play a lot of music that I think is super… I call it like my mom’s Sunday morning cleaning mix, so we play the oldies. And I think that’s super nice and comforting for people who grew up black in America and the music that they’re listening to in their homes growing up and they’re hearing that blaring from speakers. Then we’re giving out food and we’re giving up this good food that they actually enjoy eating. So, it’s a really lovely time, and it turns into a fun dance party. A lot of times, we’ll play some of those classic middle school dance songs, as well. Like the Ying Yang Twins. I love that.
Elizabeth Lashay: Yes. I love [inaudible 00:23:38]. With that, to follow on your answer and what Kimala had asked, but how powerful is… Everything that you’ve just described is amazing, but the power of music and then the power of silence.
Indy Srinath: Yes. Yes. Definitely. I think the power of music is so incredible because, I mean, I always see it as a tool to bring people together, and if we already know all of the lyrics to the same song and we’ve never spoken to each other before, then we’re already in sync, we’re already on the same wavelength and able to communicate through that. And then, to the converse, the power of silence, just spending time in the garden with people in community, and you’re doing the exact same work and you’re weeding a garden bed together and you’re doing it in this beautiful synchronicity in silence, I think that is so powerful. And just communicating in that way through the soil is so healing.
Kimala Luna: Well, we’re nearing the end of our time here, but I wanted to ask two questions. I guess the first one would be, what is something that you tell yourself sometimes when you feel like maybe it’s a little overwhelming and you want to get back to a good base? And then, what’s your favorite song to listen to?
Indy Srinath: Yes. Yes. That’s a great question. So, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I often remind myself that rest is a form of resistance. It’s just that classic idea that you can’t pour from an empty cup. Taking a nap or just resting and closing your eyes during the day can really help you reset so that you can do some of this active work and really get into the depths of who you are as a person. So, I often just allow myself to relax even when I feel like there’s more I could be doing.
Kimala Luna: And then, what’s a favorite song you listen to and you just want to feel fun again?
Indy Srinath: Yeah. Honestly, I don’t know if this is the most fun song ever, but recently I have been listening to, and I think this speaks to what I was just speaking about about rest, Erykah Badu’s Bag Lady, and just, I love that song. It’s so, so beautiful. And just about like unloading and letting yourself put your bags down, and just this idea of… And I think also, too, honestly, in the work that I do on Skid Row, people are physically carrying around all of their possessions with them and aren’t able to be in this space of rest. They’re constantly in fight or flight mode. And if the garden that I manage can be a place where they can take a load off and put their bags down, literally and emotionally, then I feel like I’m really doing my job right. So, I love that song. It really resonates with me.
Elizabeth Lashay: Well, I’m just so appreciative of you taking the time to not only talk to us but share your story, so thank you so much.
Kimala Luna: Yes, thank you.
Indy Srinath: Yeah. Thank both of you. Oh, it’s so good to be back. I loved having this conversation, and it’s like a little mini-vacation to the East coast, so I really appreciate you guys having me.
Kimala Luna: Yay. Can you tell us one more time, where can we go and support you in your GoFundMe?
Indy Srinath: Yes. Yes. So, it’s in the link on my bio on Instagram, and my Instagram is Indyofficinalis.
Elizabeth Lashay: Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us and-
Indy Srinath: Yeah.
Elizabeth Lashay: [inaudible 00:28:11] we’ll see you next time on Woods and Wilds podcast.
Indy Srinath: Sounds great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
This very special issue of Biodiversity in Your Backyard features my favorite mammals: bears! Yes, there are all sorts of bears, like polar bears and grizzly bears around the world, but we’ll be focusing exclusively on the humble, noble Black Bear. Known in the scientific world as Ursus americanus, and in the not-so-scientific world as the Danger Floof, the black bear is one of the coolest big animals that you can see in the wild. Black bears are the only bear species present in the US South and Southeast, but other species of bear are present, alongside black bears, in the western half of the country.
Are bears related to dogs or cats?
In the great tree of life, bears are most closely related to dog-like creatures, including dogs, weasels, and raccoons as well as seals, sea lions, and walruses. This suborder is the Caniformia, whereas cat-like creatures belong to the Feliformia suborder. Both of these are “sub” orders within the Carnivora (meat-eating) order of Mammals.
What is the bear’s best sense?
Bears don’t see very well, but they sure can use their noses! A bear’s nose is seven times better than a bloodhound’s. Bears can smell a food source from over a mile away, which is why keeping your food safe from bears while you’re out on a hike or camping is so essential. A quick trip to YouTube shows countless showdowns between bears and cars…and usually the bears win.
Do all bears hibernate?
No. Some places where bears live are too warm for them to hibernate, like parts of the US South. If you talk to some scientists, they’ll tell you that bears don’t truly “hibernate” at all because hibernation is when the body completely shuts down for a few months, and can even freeze. Hibernation is useful for animals because it helps them get through long periods with little or no food. Bears don’t truly hibernate though; they just enter a state of “torpor”, which is like a deep sleep, but their bodies keep burning through fat stores. An important difference between the two: it’s easy for an animal in torpor to wake up and avoid danger, so don’t go poking a sleeping bear, especially in the winter.
If bears can find food during a warm winter, you’ll catch them wandering around occasionally. This behavior is more common in young male bears than females, probably because they’re not giving birth and rearing young during the winter months. Bears that do hibernate usually do so from late fall into early spring.
What do bears eat?Black bears tend to be mostly vegetarian. Although, like most mammals, they will take an opportunity for meat if it’s easier. Bears live on fruits, nuts, and greens as the bulk of their diet, with insects, fish, and scavenged meat after that. The amount of meat that bears eat really depends on where they live. In highly populated human areas, I’m sure their diet gets a fair amount of human trash, too.
What color are black bears?
Black, right? WRONG! Black bears can be varying shades of black, brown, and even white. Fur color, just like in dogs and cats, is mostly determined by genetics.
Black bears may have a fearsome reputation, but in the vast majority of cases, encounters with black bears leave both parties uninjured. Bears are most aggressive when they’re habituated to humans or have something (like their cubs) to protect. Other species of bear, like the grizzly, are larger and potentially more aggressive.
Image credit: Jon Albert
If you encounter a bear in the wild, back up slowly to a safe distance as soon as possible. If a bear charges you, stand your ground. Running from a bear is a bad idea. They’re definitely faster than you, and running can activate their prey drive. Bears sometimes do “false charges” where they charge you but stop short. Carrying bear spray, noise makers, and minimizing the food smell coming from you are great ways to minimize the chances of bear encounters and attacks.
Prevention is the best medicine. If you’re camping in bear country, be sure to store your food in bear-safe containers, and make sure that you do not smell like food. I’ll never forget a story I read while I was researching hammock camping: Someone had cooked and wiped hamburger grease onto his pants, then went to sleep in those same pants. He referred to himself as a “bear burrito” because the bear had thought his hammock was full of food. He suffered a bite, but survived. Most importantly, he recognized his mistake and didn’t blame the bear. Bears also sometimes go through tents and cars in search of food.
Finally, if you live in bear country, invest in mitigation measures before the bear gets labeled as a nuisance. Bear-proofing your trash cans and bird feeders, as well as deterring bears through loud noises when they’re on your property can ensure that you enjoy each other’s company from a safe distance.
Black bears are not an endangered species, although subspecies of black bear (like the Louisiana Black Bear, found in wetlands) were listed as vulnerable and endangered in the past.
Louisiana Black Bear
The biggest threat to bears is humans. When we don’t interact with bears safely, bears get labeled as a nuisance and killed. Bears also get hit by cars or accidentally poisoned/injured by human garbage.
More broadly, however, bears are at risk, just like we are, from climate change. Warmer weather means that some of their food sources may change: come out at different times of the year, produce less seed/offspring, or die off entirely. Warmer weather also affects how well bears can hibernate and how long they have to hunt for food while they’re awake. As natural disasters increase from climate change, bears are also subject to many of the same problems that we’re facing: hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, and forest fires.
The best thing we can do as stewards of the environment is to continue to combat climate change through holding the largest greenhouse gas emitters — polluting industries like oil, gas, and wood products — to account. We also need to invest heavily in proforestation: let our forests mature into old growth, preserve high quality forests across the US South, reduce the amount of logging in forests, and take steps to improve biodiversity.
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The biomass industry is expanding pollution in the South under the greenwashed banner of clean, green, and renewable energy. In this time of an international pandemic and climate change, it is immoral, unjust, and irresponsible to let this industry keep expanding.
For example, similar to other wood pellet production facilities in North and South Carolina, the Enviva Greenwood SC plant is located in an environmental justice-designated community. Within a 2 mile radius around this Enviva plant, approximately 2,200 residents are already ranked above the 75th percentile for exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone, diesel, air toxins, cancer risk, respiratory hazards, Superfunds, and hazardous waste. Increasing production at the plant would further heighten the risk of exposure to many of these common pollutants, especially the PM2.5 and respiratory hazards risks.
Yet the wood pellet industry wants to expand their biomass production in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi in these targeted BIPOC communities.
Wood pellet plants are expanding throughout all of the US, polluting our air and clearcutting the best natural tool we have against climate change: our forests. Click to enlarge the image.
Enviva Greenwood SC’s sourcing radius extends into Georgia, and Enviva Hamlet NC extends into South Carolina. Enviva North Hampton NC and Enviva Ashokie NC extend into Virginia. Enviva Southampton VA extends into North Carolina, and The Renewable Biomass Group’s proposed facility in Adel, GA would extend into Florida.
All across this country and around the world, essential services and products have been limited in order to ensure the safety of people.
Its biomass wood pellets are burned along with coal to produce electricity in Europe and Asia.
Click to enlarge the image.
Enviva-Greenwood SC wood pellet plant. Image courtesy of Views from Above
Wood pellets are nonessential both to our economy and to the citizens of South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Wood pellet production reduces the biodiversity of harvested areas. Making wood pellets uses a lot of land. This means that fake forests, plantations made up of one type of pine tree planted all in a row, will continue to increase.
Even the IPCC, the world’s climate change authority, says that we will lose wildlife by using more wood pellets and other biofuels. Since burning wood pellets releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, they actually make climate change worse despite industry claims that biomass wood pellets are a climate solution. This, in turn, increases the frequency and severity of hurricanes and natural disasters.
Together we must be a united front of communities, environmental organizations, science, and policy that speaks with one voice. We are all fighting for the same goal: to unveil the truth about this dirty industry. Logging forests, shipping them overseas, and burning them for fuel to meet other countries’ needs while we get all the negative side effects is a ludicrous model.
If the wood pellet industry continues to expand, it will have disastrous impacts on the health of local residents, the ability of natural ecosystems to support greater resiliency to storms and hurricanes, and contribute to global carbon emissions at a time when community health and safety rely on reducing those emissions.
At Dogwood Alliance we believe in thriving communities and healthy forests. We also believe that prioritizing the health and well-being of both is our only chance for surviving the most catastrophic climate impacts, but as we work diligently towards that vision, we wonder: is it enough?
Meanwhile, the largest wood pellet manufacturer, Enviva, continues business as usual to push for new facilities and expansions of their established facilities while not meeting regulation standards for their pollution output. Enviva harvests trees and processes them into tiny wood pellets that are shipped overseas to be burned for biomass electricity to power Europe. This is an inefficient process that makes little sense.
For years each public hearing determining whether or not to approve Enviva’s permits has felt more or less the same. Enviva industry people show up and alternate between intimidation tactics and talking about how this will be so good for the local economy, provide jobs, etc. In advance of these public hearings, they usually provide charitable donations to some of the community members. Those who have accepted gifts also stand up and say that this will be good for the local economy and provide jobs. In one town, they bought the community center new computers and in another, they bought children backpacks. At a recent hearing in Greenville, South Carolina, a community member said they went around to all the neighbors and offered gift certificates. Simultaneously, Enviva covers all residents within a mile of their facility with a blanket of fine carcinogenic wood dust, contributing to rising respiratory illness, destroying the local landscape, running noisy trucks through the neighborhood at all hours of the night, and making the surrounding communities generally unlivable. Most residents who are able to be present at the public hearings have opposed Enviva expansions, citing decrease of comfort and deterioration of health.
All of this would normally be infuriating, but in a global pandemic that links respiratory illness with increased COVID death, we view it as a direct attack on the communities where Enviva builds their facilities.
If the economy boost Enviva always promises was an actual truth, we would see thriving wood pellet towns and an increase in employment for local residents. As it stands, Enviva targets low income towns with a majority Black population. After Enviva swoops in, the poverty rate in those towns remains more or less the same. In fact, Enviva often brings in their own people, providing minimal job opportunities to local residents.
When we zoom out and look at what Enviva is doing across the East Coast, our hearts sink. As a group dedicated to forests, we know what forests do because we’ve spent years studying them. We know they protect us from storms and flooding, filter our air and water, bolster economies with outdoor recreation and tourism opportunities, and provide homes for a rich biodiversity of plant and animal life. We all share a special connection to nature that allows for healing and serenity.
Here’s what else we know: We know that people united will never be defeated. We know that we will continue this fight until we see the future we believe in. We know that as we follow the lead of the luminaries of the forest, climate, and justice movement, we will win.
Dogwood Alliance supports the Breathe Act and we encourage our members to read it.
In closing I’d like to leave you with a poem that was cited in Assata Shakur’s autobiography, a book I highly recommend:
If We Must Die By Claude McKay If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
During the spiking outbreaks of COVID-19 cases throughout South Carolina, nonprofit and community-based organizations are hosting a caravan protest at the state’s capital. Protesters will be able to show their dissent while safely social distancing in their own cars. The outcry began when ENVIVA, the world’s largest biomass wood pellet company requested a permit from South Carolina DHEC to expand its production in Greenwood, SC. Greenwood, like many other communities throughout the states, has BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and low income citizens who suffer disproportionately from preexisting conditions like respiratory illnesses. It is a well-known scientific fact that people with preexisting conditions have disproportionate health impacts and our senior citizens are more susceptible to contracting COVID-19 and becoming ill or a fatality. During the recent virtual public hearing on Enviva’s expansion request, community members and organizations asked that the permit be denied or postponed during the pandemic.
Photo Credit: Views From Above
All across this country and around the world, essential services and production have been limited in order to ensure the safety of people. There is currently no market for Enviva’s products in the United States. Its biomass wood pellets are burned along with coal to produce electricity in Europe and Asia. So, if schools, businesses, governments, and the lives of everyday citizens can be reduced, restricted, or shut down because of COVID-19, then Enviva should be able to do the same.
Many other organizations throughout the state of South Carolina, have expressed the same concern and are joining the protest caravan. Some of the organizations include Dogwood Alliance, New Alpha CDC, The Whitney M. Slater Foundation, Midlands Sierra Club, Kingdom Living Temple, Healthy Communities Sierra Club, Pee Dee Sierra Club, Beyond Coal Sierra Club, Richland County Black Collective, Environmental Action Group, SC EJ Network, Sankofa, Carolina For All, and The Pamplico Stop The Pipeline Committee.
The protest will then proceed to SC DEHC state office at 2100 Bull St, Columbia, SC 29201 and on from there to the Governor’s Mansion at 800 Richland St, Columbia, SC 29201.
Over and over again, destructive polluting industries sweep into rural communities and make sweetheart deals with a few “leading citizens” who help them push tax breaks, subsidies, and rezoning through local governments. Once they get their way, local residents are left to deal with the aftermath – the smell, the chemicals, the blazing lights, the road traffic, the health consequences, and a decimated tax base. All in exchange for a few jobs that may or may not last beyond plant construction.
The misleadingly named The Renewable Biomass Group wants to change zoning laws in Adel, Georgia so they can start the polluting. They will also destroy a beautiful natural environment and may even put the iconic national treasure, the Okefenokee Swamp, at risk. If the city agrees to their plan, the company will open a wood pellet manufacturing plant that produces nearly 500,000 TONS of wood pellets per year, cutting down almost 12,000 acres of forested land each year that will take decades to grow back. All that only to send pellets to Europe to burn for dirty electricity.
The city has an opportunity to stop this planned biomass plant by voting to simply uphold current zoning laws. Now that these polluting biomass corporations have stripped North Carolina, the largest exporter of wood pellets in the nation, they are targeting Georgia, and Adel is right in their crosshairs.
They also consistently target Environmental Justice communities (rural low income and BIPOC communities), believing that those communities won’t have a choice in the matter. But Adel does have a choice. You have a choice.
In Georgia, we have seen how that leadership looks. During the last session of the General Assembly, Stand4Forest resolutions were submitted in both the Georgia Senate and House. Because of the pandemic, they never made it out of committee, but the sponsors of these resolutions stepped up to show what leadership on forest protection looks like.
Adel needs leaders like these.
Asheville, NC, September 1st, 2020 – Today, environmental campaigners from the USA and Estonia delivered a letter to Minister Jørgensen [1], warning that the new Danish Climate Agreement fails to protect their countries’ forests and perpetuates Denmark’s contribution to climate change by allowing large-scale biomass burning to continue unabated.
The groups call on the Danish government to phase out the use of biomass for district heating and incentivize low-carbon clean alternatives, such as heat pumps. They warn that binding sustainability standards, which are to be developed under the Climate Agreement are unlikely to do anything to protect forests and climate. A recent in-depth NGO investigation found no evidence that sustainability standards for biomass anywhere in the world have had any meaningful impact on companies’ wood sourcing, especially where imports are concerned [2]. Moreover, as highlighted in a previous Open Letter by 800 scientists, sustainable forest management makes no difference to the amount of carbon emitted from burning wood for energy [3].
Pellets exported from the Southeastern USA to Denmark regularly include wood from clearcutting of wildlife-rich natural forests. Rita Frost from Dogwood Alliance explains:
“The Southern USA has lost 30 million acres of wildlife-rich forest ecosystems over the pasts six decades. Now the growing demand for wood pellets has become yet another driver for clearcutting what remains of our forests, often replacing them with sterile monocultures. If we are to save those forests, Denmark must help by rapidly phasing out biomass burning in its heat and power plants.”
In Estonia and other Baltic States logging rates have accelerated in recent years, with ever larger areas of mature forests being clearcut due to the growing demand for biomass energy. According to a recent study in the prestigious science journal Nature [3], this is part of a trend seen across much of Europe in response to the growing demand for biomass energy.
Siim Kuresoo from Estonian Fund for Nature states:
“Sustainability standards such as those considered by the Danish government cannot protect our forests from increased logging to meet the growing demand for wood pellets in Europe. Denmark, as the number one importer of wood pellets from our region needs to act quickly to reduce this unsustainable demand, instead of allowing it to increase further.”
Contacts: Rita Frost, Dogwood Alliance: Tel +1 512 423 0620 (USA), [email protected] Siim Kuresoo, Estonian Fund for Nature: Tel: +372 7 428 443 (Estonia), [email protected] Notes: [1] dogwoodalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Danish-climate-law-letter-Summer-2020.pdf [2] biofuelwatch.org.uk/2020/sustainability-standards-briefing/ [3] pfpi.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/UPDATE-800-signatures_Scientist-Letter-on-EU-Forest-Biomass.pdf [3] nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2438-y
For historical context, please see these letters and posts: September 2017: Danish Pension Fund’s Green Credentials Questioned October 2019: Track & Trace? More like “Trick or Trace.” Why sustainability certification schemes fall flat in protecting forests & climate October 2019: Groups call for Denmark to Protect Forests & Climate
Enviva depends on overseas sales for its product: wood pellets.
The Netherlands are concerned about the perverse effects of importing vast amounts of wood from overseas for combustion in coal-fired power stations, the high level of continuous subsidies involved, and increasing public outrage. For Enviva’s investors, this should inspire hesitancy on any Enviva proposals to receive more capital for a facility build-out in the Southern United States.
Burning biomass like wood pellets for energy is not cost-competitive in the electricity marketplace without subsidies, which is why it plays such a minor role in the US energy system. Subsidies to wood pellet companies are based on the belief that the pellet industry is “green” and sustainable, but over the past 10 years, this industry-led story has been proven false by scientists and community testimonials. Cleaner and more affordable forms of renewable energy, such as solar and wind, offer a host of economic benefits to communities, reduce carbon emissions, do not degrade natural forests, and can pave the way towards energy justice.
While the EU erroneously counts electrical energy produced by burning biomass as carbon neutral, science has shown unequivocally that wood pellets release more CO2 than coal. As problematic as the Renewable Energy Directive set by the EU is, it allows member states to set further sustainability requirements on what qualifies as renewable energy.
Last year, the Netherlands government announced an additional EUR 11.4 billion for biomass installations. Immediately, protest sparked from communities all around the country. A poll in a conservative newspaper found that 98% of readers favored ending subsidies for forest biomass. Motions to place limits on biomass and the accompanying subsidies began popping up in the Senate continuously, slowly but surely gaining more political champions. The SER, the Netherlands’ Social and Economic Council, just released a report calling for an end to biomass subsidies, a phase-out of biomass use for energy, and a priority for forest-materials to be used elsewhere. Among the list of concerns for the public are greenhouse gases, air pollution, subsidy-dependency, the need to protect biodiversity, resource inefficiency, and limited place for biomass in a long-term energy transition. Clearly, the fate of biomass is uncertain.
They are protectors from soil erosion, natural water purifiers, cool the air, and store carbon dioxide. As forests are carbon sinks, they mitigate climate change and its related disasters such as sea-level rise and natural disasters.
These costs are preventable if we scale up the protection of forests, especially from unnecessary “false renewables” like harvests for biomass energy. In the United States, understanding the political debate in importing countries is particularly necessary before investing in production facilities at home.
Biomass power has never taken off in the United States, and for communities that have invested in energy plants reliant on biomass, they have literally paid millions for that mistaken investment. For example, the Deerhaven Renewable Energy Plant in Gainesville, Florida has been idle for almost the entirety of its lifespan, since 2013, as the energy it produces is too costly. Because the city entered into a 30-year + $2.1 billion agreement with the plant, citizens have paid $70 million/year through their electricity bills for a power plant that produces no power. Recently, the city acquired the plant and is now using it to produce a very small amount of energy, a fraction of the capacity it was constructed for.
Coming with the promise of jobs, though, they have been government sweethearts for too long. For states in the Southern US, where companies like Enviva and Drax are turning their attention to large production facility build-outs, state governments should be wary of subsidizing an industry whose customer base threatens to shrink. To learn more, we encourage you to check out other resources on this topic:
In Episode 4, we interviewed Dogwoodâs own Marketing Director, Amanda Rodriguez. Amanda is a published author and the director of the award-winning documentary Stories Happen in Forests. Join us as we explore her creative inspirations, the power of story and forests, and the many moving and inspirational interviews she captured for the documentary.
“My goal was to just interview as many different people as possible with different backgrounds and different connections to the forest to really showcase the diversity and the beauty of these various connections that people have, and also hopefully inspire people who watch them to connect with the forest, to be able to see themselves in that connection and remind them of their own connection.”
Amanda is a queer, first-generation Cuban Sicilian American. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, NC. Her short fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry can be found in Germ Magazine, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Mud Season Review, Thoughtful Dog, Rigorous, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Change Seven, Image Out, Cold Creek Review, The Acentos Review, Label Me Latina/o, Lou Lit Review, Scalawag, Indolent Books, NILVX, PANK Magazine, and The Rumpus (coming soon). She is also the first-time filmmaker of the award-winning short documentary Stories Happen in Forests. Find out more about Stories Happen in Forests by visiting www.storieshappeninforests.com.
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Elizabeth Lashay: I am Elizabeth Lashay with SlaytheMic and I am so excited to be with you all today. And I am joined by my cohost…
Kimala Luna: I’m Kimala Luna, and I’m with Dogwood Alliance. And today we have a very special guest. We are joined by Amanda Rodriguez, who is a queer, first-generation Cuban-Sicilian American and the marketing director for the environmental nonprofit that I also work for, Dogwood Alliance, which is based in Asheville, North Carolina. Amanda holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina. Her short fiction, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry can be found in Germ Magazine, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Mud Season Review, Thoughtful Dog, Rigorous, Stone Boat Literary Journal, Change Seven, Image Out, Cold Creek Review and several others. She’s also the first-time filmmaker of the award-winning short documentary, Stories Happen in Forests, which you can find out more about at storieshappeninforests.com. But it’s also going to be a lot of what we’re talking about today. So hi, Amanda. Thank you so much for joining us.
Amanda Rodriguez: Hi, thanks for having me. I’m very excited.
Elizabeth Lashay: What a bio.
Kimala Luna: I know. So Amanda, we’re going to talk a lot about Stories Happen in Forests today. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what that’s about and maybe how it started?
Amanda Rodriguez: Sure. So, Stories Happen in Forests is a short documentary that is right now running the Film Festival Circuit, but it started out about three or four years ago where I started doing these sort of short vignettes where I was going out into the forest and meeting with someone and just capturing their story and their connection to the forest. And my goal was to just interview as many different people as possible with different backgrounds and different connections to the forest to really showcase the diversity and the beauty of these various connections that people have, and also hopefully inspire and people who watch them a connection to the forest, to be able to see themselves in that connection and remind them of their connection. Because I know that, especially as a nonprofit environmental organization, a lot of folks can get tired of hearing stats. That forests are good for the air, forests are good for water. They’re good for carbon sequestration, but they’re also really important to humanity as part of our legacy and our connection to the earth and our stories. And so once I’d done several of these, I decided to go ahead and put them together into a longer form, 30-minute documentary so that people could see them all together instead of just one-off and then submit them to festivals so that they could reach more people. And it’s very exciting to see how well they’ve been received. They’ve been accepted at a lot of the festivals, and they even won an award at one of them. So, I’m very happy that so many people are really feeling that beautiful connection that I feel when I watch them.
Elizabeth Lashay: What age did you really feel the connection to nature, to the forest, to the outside?
Amanda Rodriguez: Well, I am actually, by birth, an ocean baby. So I’m from Florida originally and I was in love with the beach and in love with the ocean, just always wanted to be outside in the sunshine. And it wasn’t until later when I was a little bit older, maybe in, I think it was in fourth grade, I don’t know how old that was, but we moved to West Virginia and it was a much more rural area. Mountains became a thing and it’s sort of awakened my senses to an entirely different ecosystem and an entirely different way of connecting with the natural world.
Kimala Luna: Do you remember your first moment of awe in the forest since you were older?
Amanda Rodriguez: I think so. I have not honestly, I’ve not gone on a lot of camping trips, but I remember we went on one as a family when I was probably around fourth grade, we went camping and it rained and we all got sick, but I do remember just being out in the woods and seeing a deer.
Amanda Rodriguez: And that was the first time I’d seen an animal like that before, like a wild animal that wasn’t a fish or a squirrel. And I was just so captivated by it, to be in this like a magical place where your imagination can run wild because, I guess as a creative young person and a writer, it’s really all about connecting to that imagination and forests are an endless wonderland of imagination.
Elizabeth Lashay: So whenever you are creating now and trying to find inspiration, is there a place where you like to go or draw from?
Amanda Rodriguez: I guess I don’t have a particular place. And it’s also hard to think about in quarantine. I know that I am very connected to my backyard and I feel very lucky and privileged to have a backyard and access to trees and green space and to just sort of be out there and get that sort of renewal. And I don’t know, I don’t know if there’s a particular place, but I am always, I think inspired when I’m out in nature on a hike, say. It sort of opens my senses to make connections in a different way like seeing shapes in the clouds or seeing a rock formation and imagining what it could be, if you took it on a supernatural bench, say. So just sort of those little things out in nature is really kind of what inspires me.
Kimala Luna: I want to jump forward from your initial discovery of nature to the first time that you recognized… because you brought this up when you said the privilege of your backyard and this comes up a lot in our work about access to nature and how that’s a privilege that we take for granted pretty often. So when was the first time that you recognized that divide and then really owned the space of this is something we need to fight for?
Amanda Rodriguez: Well, I guess having grown up in more urban environments as a small child and being introduced to the natural world as a nine or 10-year-old. I probably intuited that there’s definitely a difference between what I and other people had access to in a city or in a suburb than in a more rural setting.
Amanda Rodriguez: Certainly not anything very nuanced, but I guess it probably happened where I fully understood the difference in accessibility to outdoor spaces When I started doing the stories happen in forest. Just based on interviews with folks I’ve definitely had several BIPOC storytellers and several of them have told stories about how their first experience of nature wasn’t until adulthood and that there’s a sense of a state of a stigma around it, or fear, or just literally a lack of access because green spaces are not available to certain communities. I think that’s also a part of the mission of stories happen in forests is to kind of help expose that sort of inequity and I guess, encourage a more equitable access to the forest because it shouldn’t belong to any one of us. And I think you had Dr. Thomas RaShad easily on your episode one who was one of my interviewees. And he says this thing where he’s like, we don’t own this pointing at the forest. It owns us and it’s really true. The forest could exist without us, but we could not exist without the forest.
Elizabeth Lashay: Going off of that, I feel like there is a disconnect that’s within our world, that we do need the forest and what are some things or ways in which we can create awareness really of what is happening and what we can do to connect our experiences with nature?
Amanda Rodriguez: Well, I definitely always recommend getting involved with organizations who are doing the work or whose mission you feel excited by, or that you sort of align with and sort of tapping into the work that they’re already doing. And I especially encourage folks to look at organizations that are BIPOC led that really center BIPOC perspectives, especially in regards to the environment and environmental justice and access. But I guess kind of on a very simple level, I think it’s important to share. Share your story. Nobody has a monopoly on storytelling. Stories don’t belong to anyone. So, I would love if folks were to watch the stories and share it and then be inspired to share their own stories of connection. Because I think that’s really what it is that drives people to make change is when you have a connection to a place versus kind of an abstract forests are important for air.
Kimala Luna: Can you talk about the first time that you were working on this project and you got chills and you were like, this is something really special that I want to continue with?
Amanda Rodriguez: So I interviewed a retired biologist. His name is James Woodley. Maybe he’ll someday be on What’s in Wilds the podcast because he is fantastic. And yeah, so he’s a retired biologist and his story is about how he grew up with polio. And he grew up in an Environmental Justice Area. So his access to nature was diminished, but he found that when he would go into the forest, he would feel strength and beauty and wholeness and part of, I think he says, that his disability I’m quoting did not affect him negatively. It was just part of the complexity of life.
Amanda Rodriguez: And I’m getting chills saying it right now. I can feel it. And every time I watch his story, I have to push back those tears because it’s just so beautiful and so important. Like his strength is such a beacon to others.
James Woodley: Well, I was diagnosed with post-polio and I had to move back to North Carolina to come back to the forest and hopefully recapture some of that spiritual inspiration that I found as a youth that got me through everything that I needed to get through. I began to remember what the forest meant to me and what I can overcome and what I can deal with and how I can deal with it. And I began to pull on those kinds of feelings again, that I can be okay, that I may look different, but I don’t have to give up. I don’t have to give up. That is my message. Find your light and hold onto it with everything you’ve got. So, and this is mine, this is mine.
Elizabeth Lashay: I do think we forget how powerful just being outside and not just seeing it through a window or yeah, just actually being. What are some things that you want to continue to do? I mean, you have been published in so many publications and receiving national and awards and recognition. So what is next?
Amanda Rodriguez: Well, I definitely want to continue to promote the Stories Happen in Forest documentary and I’m so excited to release it. I’m hoping we’ll be able to release it at some point next year to the public, which is just going to be so fun, but I also really want to fill more of them, maybe a different style, but I’m really thinking how can I grow this project into something more and have it evolve into something different. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, I’m certainly not asking folks to come out into the woods with me and film, but I’m also… I also feel like my writing… I guess I’ve always been from a young age, a bit of a political activist. So I always… It’s very backwards from the way that all the teachers I’ve ever met say where it’s like, the story should drive the message. And that’s not really the way I think about it. I always think that you should be trying to say something, you should be trying to change something when you write. I remember reading this article about, they were saying that the London fog that is so famous. It didn’t really exist in people’s consciousness until Charles Dickens wrote about it and manifested it to their consciousness. And then they started to see the London fog and it became this thing that is associated with the signature of London.
Amanda Rodriguez: And I just think that’s such an important way to think about writing is that you’re trying to uncover things that people aren’t seeing. You’re trying to write into reality or create into reality the future that you want to see, one that is more just, and is more equitable for all people. Not just for some, I’m going to continue to write and I’m actually working on a website right now. So hopefully I’ll be able to catalog some of those things and make it easy for people, should they feel inspired to read them or watch the stories happen at force trailer, or be notified of release dates.
Kimala Luna: Since you mentioned the future too. And I’m cheating a little bit because I’ve seen some of the segments and I have my own personal favorites, but I want you to talk about the youngest Stories Happen in Forest participant and what that experience taught you.
Amanda Rodriguez: So the youngest participant was Lila. She is part of, or she was part of… She’s a fifth-grader at time, the Muddy Seekers Program that’s based out of her Bard, which the goal of that program is so incredible. It’s to get young people into the woods to learn science through experiential learning and connection to nature, which is so cool. When I interviewed her, I mean, it was such a different experience from interviewing all the other adults.
Amanda Rodriguez: It was just like you just never knew what she was going to say next. And just like the wisdom, the wisdom of a fifth-grader, it was like, she would crack me up and then she’d break my heart. It’s just like kids just intuitively know, they just know that forests are important and that the animals in the forest are important. And we can learn things from our forests. Also, she really loved bugs, which I found incredibly endearing. She must’ve mentioned bugs 10 times during the interview. Maybe more.
Elizabeth Lashay: Yeah. I’m not the biggest fan of bugs. That’s what [crosstalk 00:19:04]
Amanda Rodriguez: Me neither. Me neither.
Lila: My name is Lila. I’m in fifth grade. I like to pick up bugs a lot. I like to put ladybugs on my hand. Sometimes help a frog get to where it’s going, probably to the pond. And I like to dig in the dirt a lot. I don’t mind getting dirty.
Amanda Rodriguez: It’s just so cool that this fifth grader loves bugs. She loves spiders. And she taught me things. She taught me about that North Carolina has a state salamander. I had no idea that we had one and she was explaining to me convection and how they learned about convection. I mean, this girl is going places.
Elizabeth Lashay: I’m so happy that you interviewed someone that was being fifth grade at the time. And that’s something that we don’t talk about is the different ages and the generational wisdom that we just need to continue to move towards. And we forget about our identities and we stay locked into just this one area. And so when we talk about nature and the forest and the potential and the wide openness of it, what do you think people are missing out on?
Amanda Rodriguez: By not connecting to nature?
Elizabeth Lashay: Right.
Amanda Rodriguez: I mean, so many things. I know a lot of folks use it for recreation, exercise, solitude, anxiety management. And one of the stories in Stories Happen in Forest that I also found really moving was his name is Noah. And he went through a wilderness therapy program to help him recover from drug and alcohol addiction. So just the idea that connecting with nature and connecting with yourself can heal you in so many different ways. It’s just so incredible. And I also think there’s… There should be a sense of humility about the forest. It’s so big and we’re so small and it’s so complex. And as much as I say, it’s so important to, to think about our human connection to forest. It’s also… It isn’t about us. I mean, the forest has its own really complex ecosystem full of animals and plants that are doing things that we still do not fully understand, from trees communicating with each other to different organisms relationships with fungus.
Amanda Rodriguez: I mean, it’s so incredible, to just be able to experience something like that and be humbled by it. I think is really important. And if folks are either not going into the forest or can’t go into the forest, it’s just really a shame that they’re missing out on that.
Kimala Luna: I guess now I want to ask, and you don’t have to get into specifics. You can speak in just feeling words, but maybe talk about a time where your connection to nature healed you and like what that experience looks like.
Amanda Rodriguez: I think that… I guess I might be one of those people that really benefits from the sort of silence that you can find in nature. Certainly there’s all the sounds of the wind and the birds and the insects. But I think you really find a silence inside yourself that… I struggle with anxiety so it is such a rarity for me to have my mind calmed and silenced and slowed and to actually be able to feel fully present and immersed. And I think being in the forest is really one of the only ways that I experienced that.
Elizabeth Lashay: I’m just trying to think is because you said you moved from Florida to West Virginia, correct?
Amanda Rodriguez: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Elizabeth Lashay: And that is such a big change and not only the culture and the feeling and people, but again, like you mentioned the atmosphere outdoors. Do you prefer to be at the beach or in the mountains?
Amanda Rodriguez: That is a tough one. I mean, I definitely love to visit the beach now as an adult. I love to spend time there. I guess, because just like the forest, I do feel more of that sort of like calmness settle into me just like being near the waves and being under the sun, but there’s always like a sense absence until I see those mountains on the skyline when I’m heading home. And that’s when I feel like I’m really home.
Kimala Luna: I also want to touch on, we talked about stories happening for us a lot, but you’re a pretty prolific writer and nature plays a predominant theme in a lot of your writing. And so I guess I want to talk about the last meaningful time that nature really hit you and that you did like tap into those supernatural elements that you talked about and were creatively sparked.
Amanda Rodriguez: I wrote a poem about, I think I called it something like the Death of Magic. And I think it is actually published as part of an environmental disasters edition. I’m terrible and cannot remember where it was published. But the connection that I was drawing was this idea that… So this idea of unicorns are magical, mermaids are magical and fairies are magical, and they’re all gone from the earth. And so much of the natural beauty of the earth is that it is magic. Narwhals are magic, glaciers are magic and we are losing that magic. I guess that was a time when I sort of melded the natural world to a sort of supernatural, I guess, lent through a supernatural lens.
Elizabeth Lashay: So this is completely different. If you were to be in a fairy tale, what would be your go-to animal? Because I’ve always seen entangled. There’s, I believe, a lizard. I can’t remember at this point, but princess and the frog, the frog, Pocahontas. So what would be your go-to animal in your fairy tale?
Amanda Rodriguez: In my fairy tale? It’s funny. You should ask that because I actually do write a lot of fairytale retellings. They tend to be dark though. And I’m thinking a little bit more light about this. I guess I keep feeling like it would be a fox.
Kimala Luna: I could see that.
Amanda Rodriguez: Yeah. I mean, they’re just, I love red for one and they’re just so I don’t know. They’re beautiful. They’re elusive. They’re also misunderstood I feel like, yeah.
Elizabeth Lashay: I love that. I love that a lot.
Kimala Luna: If there was one main point that you wish everybody could understand about the connection to nature, what would it be?
Amanda Rodriguez: It’s hard to narrow it down. It really is.
Kimala Luna: You could do points. You could do multiple [crosstalk 00:27:01]
Amanda Rodriguez: Of a multi-point system. Well, certainly do viscerally immediately need our forests. [inaudible 00:27:16] Not Sunday. It’s not far away. It’s now. And we need natural forests. We don’t need pine plantations. We need real genuine forests that can thrive, protect us from storms, house Biodiversity, all those stats I said that I try to avoid. I guess if I had to boil it… I guess if I had to boil it down, it was we need forests now. I guess I would also like to stress that the environmental movement needs to become more broad. I think that it really needs to center BIPOC perspectives and the struggles of environmental justice communities who are… Industries are coming in and they’re taking resources out of those communities and depleting them, making them sick and economically depressed. There’s always a jobs argument, but it’s not true. If you take away a forest and clean air, clean water there, there’s not much left. So I really want to sort of like lift that up. And I just think it’s really important to not forget that. That deforestation isn’t happening somewhere else. It’s happening here. It’s happening now and it’s not new.
Elizabeth Garland: As the Director of Marketing Communications. And like, how does that intertwine with the awareness of nature?
Amanda Rodriguez: I guess I feel like… I also feel like marketers get a bad rep, and I think it’s often deserved, but I don’t work for a for-profit. I work for an organization that I really believe in, which is really trying to do good in the world. And it has had a lot of successes and has managed to grow and evolve over almost 25 years. So I’m really passionate about what we do and how we try to move through the world. So I certainly come at it from… Come at marketing from a place of political and social change. My goal is to, I think even as a marketer, tell a story, tell, share stories, lift stories up, tell stories to inspire of that connecting with nature. Because if you don’t know about it, you can’t do anything about it. Yeah.
Kimala Luna: Well, I think I get the last question. And so what is the call to action? What do you want people to do? And then also, what are some of things that people can check out to get involved, get outside, et cetera?
Amanda Rodriguez: Definitely. I’m going to plug Dogwood Alliance, visit Dogwood alliance.org. Visit our ActNow page. There is such a wealth of information on that site. Your eyes will be open to things you did not know were happening, and hopefully that’ll get you fired up and ready to take action on that ActNow page.
Amanda Rodriguez: But I guess in the short term, I guess I just really encourage people to reflect. Reflect on your experiences with nature and what have those been like for you and how can you draw upon those experiences or remember what that was like in order to hopefully inspire you to connect again with nature, if your connection is gone dormant, say. But also to consider if you are somebody who spends a lot of time in nature, what can you do to help increase accessibility? What can you do to sort of share that privilege and share that wealth, which it really is a wealth to be able to experience a natural forest with others.
Kimala Luna: Yes. That’s beautiful.
Elizabeth Lashay: It is. Thank you so much. Thank you for what you’re doing. You are really making a huge impact and it’s a ripple impact that is spreading all over, not just within your writing, but your documentary and tapping into a place that we tend to forget about.
Kimala Luna: Yes. Oh, oh no. I forgot to ask. What was the award that your documentary got? And what do you think about it like stood out beyond the other documentaries?
Amanda Rodriguez: So it won an Award of Merit from the IMPACT DOCS award, which I think… I know when I first started submitting it, I was pretty nervous because it was a two-woman crew. It was just myself and Andrea Desky from Call to Action Creative filming these. It was not high budget, very much a shoestring, very much as traveling across the country, trying to capture these stories. And I guess I was… Since it was my first film, I was intimidated by the sort of like gorgeous cinematography of some of these nature documentaries. And these folks who really have a lot of experience in making films. But I think that what I learned was that it’s not always about that. And that’s not necessarily what people are looking for. It really is about the story. It really is about how it makes you feel. And you can do that without a lot of money. And I would certainly encourage other folks to do the same. You can make a movie on your phone. So if you’re inspired to make a documentary about whatever is important to you, whether it’s nature or something else, I think it’s so important that folks be empowered to tell their own stories.
Kimala Luna: Yes. Well, thank you so much, Amanda. And again, you can find out more about Stories Happen in Forests by visiting storieshappeninforest.com. And we want to thank everybody who tuned in today.
Elizabeth Lashay: Yes. Amanda Rodriguez: And we will thank you so much for having me. I so appreciate you.
Kimala Luna: Yeah, Thank you.
For 6 consecutive weeks in July and August our Stand4Forests Georgia team produced The Georgia Enviro Show, a first of its kind online series featuring news about the key environmental, climate, and justice issues affecting the state. Programs were hosted by Stand4Forests GA, Georgia Forest Watch, Sierra Club Georgia, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, and Beyond Coal Georgia.
This series is unique in many ways. As far as we know, it is the first online series completely focused on bringing current state environmental updates to an online audience. Beyond that, while the participating organizations highlighted issues relevant to their own mission on their show, they also all worked together to mutually promote every show.
Why? Because each organization came to the project understanding that, whether we’re working to save forests, rivers, marshes, oceans, or the climate, the work is all connected. The coalition also realized that, even if the entire environmental sector were to pool our financial resources, we would never be able to match the financial power of the deep pocketed, well-connected industries that profit from climate and environment-destroying products and activities.
Despite some bumps and technical issues, all of our partners put together great programs, all with a citizen action opportunity.
From our Stand4Forests Georgia recap of last session’s environmental state legislation, to the impact of coal ash on our water supply and the work to save the Okefenokee Swamp from miners, to the importance of Georgia’s old growth forests in our national forests and the expansion of the creation stewardship movement, we brought over 2500 Georgians and counting the environmental, climate, and justice news they need to know.
Don’t worry if you didn’t catch them all because we’ve compiled the entire series on our Dogwood Alliance YouTube channel! And be sure to let us know what you want to see in another season of The Georgia Enviro Show.
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April 5, 2026