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Resurgence & Ecologist magazine Restorying the world
What might change if our language began to reflect a more entangled relationship with the living world – one that is more relational, perhaps even guided by affection?
In May 1966, the first issue of Resurgence was published. That’s 60 years of stories and 60 years of asking how we might live more gently and more attentively within the living world. Across those years, the words we use – and the ways we use them – have helped to shape that asking.
When commissioning writers for this magazine, I invited them to avoid using the word Nature altogether. In her introduction to the themed section, gardener and writer Sui Searle writes: “The story of separation runs through our culture: that humans stand outside and above this thing we call Nature. Nature as object, as noun – distinct from us: something to be used in our service.”
Much of our language carries this inheritance. Words shape the stories we tell, and stories shape how we live our lives. The poet and writer Sophie Strand says she doesn’t like to work by banishing words “by subtraction” and instead likes to “add enough on top of them that they meld and rot and grow something new”. Language, after all, is never fixed. In late Middle English, the word nature could also appear as a verb. To nature something was to bring it forth, to foster its growth, to nurture and sustain life. Perhaps the question, then, is how such shifts in language might shape the stories we tell today.
So, the invitation to readers is this: how much do we need to rewrite our own texts? How much do we need to change the stories that we tell about the world – and about our place within it? And what might happen if, like the writers in this issue, we allowed our language to grow a little wilder?
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Contents
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Welcome
The wilds of words • Dave Reeve
How much do we need to change the stories we tell?
Regulars
Noticeboard
Highlighting stories for change
Restorying the world
Coming into relationship with Earth • Sui Searle
A conversation on story, animacy and the possibility of living in deeper relationship
Changing the story • Sarah Woods
Exploring why we need new stories beyond the hero's journey in a time of crisis
When Earth speaks back • Sophie Pavelle
How might a grammar of animacy reshape science and storytelling
The subtle logos of place • Rachel Fleming
Reflecting on a mountain encounter and relearning the language of place
Romancing the world • Sophie Strand & Dave Reeve
Discussing myth, love and renewing our relationship with a living Earth
Feature articles
My greatest teacher is the mushroom • Tori Tsui
Reflecting on fungi as teachers of interdependence, impermanence and collective action
Ecologist
The untapped power of fungal networks • Catherine Early
Evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers explores how fungi sustain ecosystems and regulate carbon flows
The giving imperative • Edward Davey
Reflecting on philanthropy's urgent role in protecting and restoring the natural world and stabilising the climate
Connected life
Reaping what she sows • Nancy Matsumoto
On why she wrote about the women restoring soil, community and justice through regenerative food systems
Voices in common • Craig Jordan-Baker
Exploring the lives of New Forest Commoners and how language roots them in an ancient landscape
Wisdom and wellbeing
Celebrating diversity, embracing unity • Satish Kumar
Radical love and diversity together offer us a path of peace with each other and Earth
Building the foundations within • Sunil Malhotra
Reporting on Karen Singh's call for inner coherence as the basis for outer change
Art and culture
Imagining with the more than human • Elena Landinez
An invitation into a dreamlike practice where art reimagines our kinship with rivers and forests
Connecting threads • Tom Jeffreys
Reflecting on the work of Connecting Threads and how collaboration deepens relationships with rivers
Echopoetry • Briony Hughes
Listening to bats and finding kinship with these often misunderstood mammals
Reviews
The mysteries of transformation • Sophie Yeo
Review of Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human History
Time for radical change • Adam Weymouth
Review of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism
Optimism rather than hope • Diyora Shadijanova
Review of A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future
Revisiting the mother trees • Martha Dillon
Review of When the Forest Breathes: Renewal and Resilience in the Natural World
Total immersion • Kate Blincoe
Review of The Waterlands: Follow a Raindrop from Source to Sea
Revelling in wildness • India Bourke
Review of The Wild Within: What Plants Taught Me about Life, Recovery and Renewal
Weaving wisdom • Holly Rose
Review of Wild Basketry: Making Baskets and Natural Cordage from Foraged Plants
