If you’ve ever run into an old love for whom you’ve always had a soft spot – and then had the chance to spend some quality time together reminiscing – you will know just how it has felt to come back as Guest Editor to help produce this issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.
It has felt like the biggest treat ever!
I was the editor of both Resurgence and then, at one point, The Ecologist website for several years back in the mists of time and have always looked back fondly on my time working with Satish and the creatives who put this inspiring publication together, issue after issue, no matter what is happening in the wider world.
But I had forgotten the pleasures – big and small – of both being a part of that team and being the first recipient of the unedited articles and images that come across the Editor’s desk, so many of which leave you feeling connected to what really matters to you.
I think what I am really talking about is food for the soul. Because if this magazine is anything, it is a veritable feast for those of us who have spent a lifetime ‘seeking/asking’, and this issue is no different.
I savoured every exquisite word of Ginny Battson’s beautifully written Feature Story Home, and immediately rang my local bookshop to order Nick Hayes’ The Trespasser’s Companion, which I can’t wait to get mud-stained when I’m out on my next long walk.
Nick’s article opens up this issue’s main theme of Immersion which is simply an invitation to find yourself in that other-than-human space that walking opens up for us – as does, if we stay open to that invitation, meditation, swimming, or even washing the dishes! And of course walking offers so much more by way of activism, which our main theme articles all go on to explore.
Finally, I also rang two of my arty pals: the first to book a trip to Tate Modern to see the exhibition of the Slovakian sculptor, Maria Bartuszová, whose work we explore in the Art & Culture pages of this issue, and the second, the artist Gary Cook, to see if he would share some of his work with us in this issue – and happily he said yes! And it is his atmospheric woodland painting that opens up that invitation to immerse ourselves in walking and Nature.
I can’t think of any other publication I have edited that, thanks to its inspiring content and images, leaves me as busy (reading and making plans) away from my editing desk as I am at it.
And I am grateful to be able to savour every word and call it work!
