poetry to celebrate the earth, its people and getting outside

April 20th, 2024

April is National Poetry Writing Month, and it got us thinking about the relationship between poetry and our principles of buying less by buying right, expanding accessibility and inclusivity in the outdoors, and caring for the planet and the future. In particular, we are interested in ecopoetry, a subgenre of poetry that is both environmental and environmentalist. It is nature poetry that also takes responsibility for the care and future of the planet.

Ecopoetry has existed as long as people have been sharing poetry, though the term itself has gained in popularity in the last century. Our staff wanted to engage in this practice by writing our own ecopoetry. Below are poems written in a variety of formats–free form, haiku, ode, and golden shovel–that celebrate the outdoors while speaking to aspects of our mission.

We see poetry as a necessary art form that supports, comforts or discomforts, and guides us through the human experience. It has the power to point a mirror at us and aspects of society, and it has the power to inspire change.

As National Poetry Writing Month comes to an end, we hope our poems inspire sustainable, respectful, loving stewardship of the outdoors, and maybe even encourage you to create some environmentalist poetry or art of your own!

Outside

a haiku by Katie Hawkes

The weight of proving

Lifts, and my soul breathes in deep

Im here; that's enough.

Future Facing

by Aubri Drake

I see a future where it snows during the winter and we don't fear sunny days or thunderstorms in summer. Where 'fire season' means that time in the fall when we wear flannel shirts and get cozy around a campfire and share long trail stories, not the volatile devastation of millions of acres of wilderness.

I see a future when our food is grown nearby, sustaining our bodies and our communities at the same time. Dirt is encrusted under our fingernails, as we labor together in the earth, side by side, growing with earth's rhythms.

I see a future where everyone has health insurance, because it is not tied to a job or a place. Where we all have kind, life-saving and life-giving health care, regardless of how many miles we've walked that day, to live full healthy lives with autonomy.

I see a future where we are all free and supported in becoming our best selves. Where every day is more like a thru-hike: within a community that values authenticity and unique differences. Where we work together like the ants in the desert, bringing home plentiful food and resources for everyone.

I see a future where we listen closely to each other, finding connection. Hearing new stories and old stories, and seeing all of the things we have in common. Creating communities where we are embraced, where we belong, just as we are.

I believe in a future just like this one.

This Connection of Everything

by Sam Schild

Hear the music of the trees
Among the roots twisting to reach

The same water that we
Followed, drank, and lulled us to sleep

Here in the trees we’re empowered
When our ears, the same ears

Listen to the world as it echos
Like a watch on a wrist on a body like all the other bodies

A deep valley, cutting backwards through time
Stratum stacked like CDs

More permanent, the kind of music that you remember but can’t sing
We deserve to be, listening to the quaking trees

To the smaller shades of green that breathe and whisper
While we pull thinner air on a trail to the sky

Above the trees now, the same air passing
Through our throats and noses, the same water trickling, the same song

The same throats and noses, like the same ears
Listening to the same trees in the valley below,

Feeling our lungs and the connection to everything also in this air
The sound of leaves bouncing off of rock

A choir of individual stratum, strata telling the story of We
Swimming through the wind, passing through the leaves

The same story, with the same lungs, the same strip of dirt,
The same music of water trickling over rock

Pulling earth across roots, cutting valleys, leaves dancing,
Our noses frozen, feeling the day’s first warmth in a sunny patch of earth.

This is where we all deserve to be

Miss Me with Your John Muir Quotes
a golden shovel for Indigenous Women Hike

by Becca Downs

“...they seemed to have no right place in the landscape, and I was glad to see them fading out of sight down the pass.” - John Muir, from his writings on the Miwoks in Yosemite

I have seen protected lands some vague they

call breathtaking, a word that has seemed

true enough at 10,000 feet with lungs I need to

remind were younger once. You’ll have

to bear with me as I search for a better word. No,

I’m still breathing and I detest careless words. The right

ones come if we wait, sit still in this place

where someone’s ancestors once slept in

homes another ancestor swept under the

colonial history books. Here is a landscape

ritual of changing colors, churning clouds, and

pulsing sunlight. There is no language for I

here, no such thing as untouched, was

never a wilderness separate from our own. I’m glad

you’re here with me. Let’s stop talking to

listen closer. Hear the birds echo other birds? See

the way one lake ripple follows another? Watch them

slow and tumble ashore. Catch the pink fading

into purple twilight. There is no way out

when there was never an in. We are nearly out of

chances to get this right. The breathtaking sight

we witness is not discovery, maybe another chance. Down

river people are waking. How many have been blood-drained on the

paths we walk, their breath taken long before us who now pass.

Ode to a technical jacket

by Liz Thomas

You are only a tool

Others may see you and think they know me.

But you are not me.

I am that gust at the top of a pass

I am scrambling up red rock against dry sky

I am raindrops running down strings of hair

when there is no shelter to take

and movement is the only way home

Sure, you keep me from burning.

I am not dead – many times over –because of you.

My skin is free of rashes and cuts,

frostbite and mosquito bites.

My body has been warmed by you.

But you are not the reason I am here.

Though you are with me when I feel most alive,

in your finest hour

I will forget you are here with me.

And it will be like I’m wearing nothing at all.

EcoPoetry for National Poetry Month