After the Storm by Susan Cerulean

LUCY BURDETTE: You might remember my sister, Susan Cerulean, from her post about standing with the people of Standing Rock two years ago. She is a talented writer and a tireless and fierce advocate for the natural world and its creatures. October 10, she and her husband and millions of North Florida residents hunkered down through the harrowing winds of Hurricane Michael, and have been reeling from the damage. (The link is to her article in Sierra Magazine about this experience.) I thought this would be a good time to invite her back...

SUSAN CERULEAN: On November 13, Rhys Bowen mused on this blog about escaping to special places she loves, in these troubled times. Places that might be safer. Places untouched by violence and wildfire and climate change.

Part of me wants to escape, too.  But what happens when even your beloved place of solace is hurt or destroyed by fire, wind, storm or violence?

Hurricane Michael, a Class 4 hurricane with wind speeds topping 150 miles per hour, buzz-sawed through North Florida four weeks ago.  My special place, a coastal barrier island with wide beaches, enormous sand dunes and green pine forests, was slammed by the eastern bands of that storm.  The island, a national wildlife refuge, didn’t receive the attention of nearby, hard-hit communities of Panama City, Mexico Beach and Port Saint Joe, because no people live there. 

But a week after the storm, my husband and I kayaked over to the island, and were shocked at the loss of miles of tall, 800-year-old sand dunes, the island's first line of defense.  Nor could we account for the hundreds of brown pelicans, black skimmers, gulls and terns that had made their homes--the places where they nest and rest and raise their young--on the island.

I knew I couldn’t bring back the birds or the dunes, or stop hurricanes or the sea level from rising, but I knew what I could do: pick up trash left behind by the storm.

I cleared about a mile of the beach of plastic, enough it seemed, to fill a Walmart.  Four enormous trash cans, watering cans and golf tees, fishing poles and buckets, chairs and children’s toys, and even the signs that had marked off the nesting bird areas.

It was a cool beautiful day, and somehow, in all those hours of schlepping and hauling trash, I found some happiness.  When the birds do come back, they won’t find their refuge choked with storm debris.  And perhaps, I thought, the beaches, now doubled or tripled in width, would offer attractive nesting to sea turtle nesting next year.

What do you turn to when the problems of the world feel overwhelming?

Writer and naturalist Susan Cerulean divides her time between Indian Pass and Tallahassee, Florida. Her most recent book, Coming to Pass, Florida's Coastal Islands in a Gulf of Change, won a gold medal from the Florida Book Awards in 2016. The book is now available as a paperback from the University of Georgia Press.

You can read more about Susan on her blog

Attachments

Reflections on Standing Rock @susancerulean

LUCY BURDETTE: Today I'm honored to introduce my sister, Susan Cerulean, who is a nature writer and a fierce advocate for the environment. When we heard that she was going to visit Standing Rock Reservation to support the Sioux protest of the Dakota Access pipeline, we all agreed we'd like to hear about her experience. I asked some questions (in bold) and she'll be happy to answer questions and comments from you as well. 

SUSAN CERULEAN: On the snowy, stinging cold prairies of North Dakota, encampments at Standing Rock have evolved into the longest running protest in modern history.  The main camp—Oceti Sakowin--sits on Federal lands that legally belong to the Standing Rock Sioux under the terms of an 1851 treaty.  On that site, thousands of Native Americans and others are seeking to halt completion of the 1172-mile Dakota Access pipeline, which is being constructed to transport fracked oil from the Bakkan shale oil fields of North Dakota, to southern Illinois.  The concern about an oil spill upriver from the tribe’s water source has resonated with groups across the country.  Militarized law enforcement has responded to the nonviolent prayer marches and actions with road blockades, illegal eviction notices, arrests, tear gas, rubber bullets, attack dogs and water cannons.  This is why the Sioux people invited us to come stand with them.

What made you decide to go to Standing Rock, and what did you hope to accomplish or offer?

In the first days after the devastating Nov. 8 election, like so many others, I searched for a larger context of hope, and for personal direction.  I have worked my entire life as a wildlife biologist, an environmental advocate and a writer, and it’s clear that we have entered a time when we can no longer count on politicians or the government to protect our life-giving planet Earth.  We must find a way to wake up ourselves--and every other human being--to the utter gravity of our situation.

I saw a Facebook post from Tallahassee-born Caitlin McMullin, who had just spent 7 days at Standing Rock with her 3-month old baby boy, Clay.  Should I go, would it be helpful? I asked Caitlin.  ABSOLUTELY! she messaged in return.

So, hoping to support Native Americans, and on behalf of the river, and very much hoping to understand the disconnect between most people and our climate crisis, I traveled to North Dakota for a week with my niece, Erin Canter.  We went because what is happening on the banks of the Missouri River and all along the pipeline path is a one-sided war.  We went to witness, to learn, and to work, however we might be needed.  With us we brought $3000 in cash contributions from generous friends, and two enormous boxes of wool clothing to give to people there.

What expectations did you have about the camp and the protesters, and how were these either met or changed? What surprised you most?

I didn’t expect there to be so many young, white people at the camp, eager to contribute and to risk doing direct action on the front lines.  A good thing, because it meant support and media attention; and a challenging thing for the Native Americans, because it required a steep training curve for the influx of newcomers.  There were orientation meetings every day led by Natives, reminding us that we were there to pray, and in no way to bring violence to the struggle.  The camp swelled to about 10,000 occupants during the first week of December when we arrived, and although people were asked to provide for themselves, many were not prepared for the cold, and the primitive conditions.  We were asked to be mindful of our status as “allies,” that this was a Native struggle, and that their thinking needed to always be central.  As white people, many of us don’t realize how front and center we put ourselves (which perpetuates colonization).

Don’t we need that pipeline as a step toward energy independence?

We’ve got to look at a much bigger picture.  If we’re going to have any hope of slowing climate change, remaining fossil coal and oil deposits– and carbon dioxide they would generate– need to stay in the ground.  In precisely the way we hope Brazil guards the Amazon rainforest, that massive sponge for carbon dioxide absorption, we need to slow our mining and fracking, and invest in true energy independence—meaning cutting back our consumption of fossil fuels, and investing heavily in renewable sources, such as solar and wind.

The day that you left North Dakota, the permit for the pipeline was denied. That's a great step. Now we can all breathe a sigh of relief, right?

Ever so briefly.  I take my cue from the Standing Rock peoples, who are cheered, but know this is just a respite. Every single Cabinet pick made by the Trump administration this week is ready to dismantle all the protections we have in place for clean air and water, wildlife and public lands.  I’d say we are looking at some rough times ahead.

How is this issue related to other environmental issues that you've gotten involved in? What can ordinary people do to help?

All of my life I’ve worked on behalf of the natural world, for several nonprofits, for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, on the Board of the Nature Conservancy, and now as a board member and volunteer for St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge.  I primarily identify as a writer, though, and all of my books and talks are interpretive: where do we live, and with whom do we share our space?  Why is it so hard to protect non-human species and natural landscapes, when we love them so much?  I love that I get to be a voice for birds, islands, the Earth.  It’s such a privilege.  People should sign up for my blog, and read my books.  I’ve got plenty of answers!

This election, coupled with raging climate change, offers us a wake up call we ignore at our peril.  Every single one of us needs to step our game, our activism.

And me being me, I have to ask, where did you sleep and what did you eat? What was it like physically in the camp?

As you know, we came prepared to camp, and therefore had no reservations to stay at the closest and only hotel, the Standing Rock Prairie Knights Casino (7 miles south of the camp). 

But our gear was no match for the subfreezing temperatures, so we crashed with friends who did have heated rooms up the road.  During the daytime we subsisted on peanut butter and energy bars, but at night I splurged on the buffet at the Casino.  It wasn’t delicious, but it was hot food!

And ps, for anyone in Key West on December 22, Susan will be speaking at the Key West library at 4 pm. 

COMING TO PASS: Florida's Islands in a Gulf of Change @SusanCerulean

LUCY BURDETTE: I'm completely delighted and honored to host my older sister on JRW today. After the shock of having me arrive eleven months on her tail, Sue has always been gracious about sharing--a room, or even a writing career. (She was a writer long before I even considered getting into the business.) She's also an activist and a tireless voice for the natural world, especially the endangered places and creatures in Florida. And she's here today to tell you about her new book!

SUSAN CERULEAN: The writing of Coming to Pass: Florida’s Islands in a Gulf of Change began on October 22, 2007, when I inscribed a fat black journal with a single word–COAST–and then cut out pictures to decorate it.

I didn’t know what this book would become back then.  In 2007, I was trying to reconcile my roles. Mother and stepmother to three sons growing out and away. Daughter of an aging father needing a good deal of my help. And lover of an earth increasingly precious, and increasingly under assault.

The wonderful Montana writer, David James Duncan, helped me enormously.  “At the core of every piece of work is the question,” he writes. “You may not answer it, but you are always moving towards it. Your ability to articulate a question is what will make for a good writing. It’ll be a trail marker.”

In my commonplace book I began to articulate what I wanted to learn: What is the nature of this coast, geological, biological, human/cultural? How were the islands formed, and how are they changing? What makes this place unique, and what special things live here? And, most important of all, was there ever a time when people lived inside the shape of this landscape, in reciprocity, not simply on top of it? What would that be like?

My new book Coming to Pass is built upon the whole of my life in relationship with saltwater shores.  It is also a response to living at a pivotal time on our planet.  When I was born in the 1950s, there were but 300 ppm carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.  Over the course of my life—and yours—that number has risen to an increasingly catastrophic 400 ppm.

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story, or tell a story about them,” wrote Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa and Babette’s Feast.  

And Dinesen’s stories, says native American writer Scott Momaday, verify that literature is, after all, nothing so much as profound consolation. That sounded good to me. I wanted to be consoled. I wanted to dedicate myself to writing. And I wanted to spend more time–days and weeks and months–at the coast.

I copied these bits of advice and many more onto the first pages of my coast journal, which I kept in the fashion of a commonplace book (as taught to me by the gifted writer and teacher Sheila Ortiz Taylor). I began to record interviews with scientists, jot notes on the tides, sketch snowy plovers, copy passages from the myriads of experts whom we really ought to pay attention to, like Orrin Pilkey and Cornelia Dean, and from poets and sages like Henry Beston, John Hay, and Leslie Marmon Silko.

You can see that the direction of my course was heavily influenced by others before me.  But gradually, I allowed my own body and my own senses to listen to what the coast might want to be said directly. I offered myself as a conduit.  More and more space in the journal became devoted to me–the listener–and to the voices of the birds.

“Align me, O Earth, with your purposes,” became my daily prayer. It still is.

I lay my words, my tracks, on this paper, next to the tracks of rare shorebirds, and side by side with the paw prints of St. Vincent’s she-wolf and her pup on that island. Our tracks say: We were here, and we found it beautiful beyond all imagining. And that is the story of how Coming to Pass came to pass. 

What subject might you tackle in a book of your heart? 

For more information, read about Susan on her blog, or to watch Susan in action along the coast, check out this NPR story.

You can find the book on Barnes and Noble,  Amazon, or the University of Georgia Press, or at Downtown Books in Apalacicola, Florida.