Postcard From North Carolina - September 2025
Sep 05, 2025
Remarkably Wild
Recently, I was invited to become a barn swallow.
This came as a surprise in the moment. How does one become bird? What is barn swallow, and what could possibly be gained by becoming one? I looked around the room at how others interpreted this request, and let my body do the thing. I ducked and flew, swooped around, veered up, and dove down.
Maybe I should have expected it. After all, I had gone to a lot of trouble to be in that room. I’d made several reservations on different modes of transportation and flown several thousand miles - in addition to taking two ferries (in costume no less). I braved a border crossing and planned considerable time away from work.
Becoming barn swallow was just the beginning. I was bumblebee, Gladiola and Zinnia; becoming pear tree wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Becoming a part of earth, a part of the ecosystem. Returning to my creature self. Remembering what it is to roll around in grass, smell dirt, rejoice in the aliveness of world around me. Become creek, sunset, and artichoke plant. I “breathed in sky,” and rolled over with my heart basket leading the way. The tingling exhilaration of being a body in motion, a body among other bodies, is still with me a week late
Becoming barn swallow was just the beginning. I was bumblebee, Gladiola and Zinnia; becoming pear tree wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Becoming a part of earth, a part of the ecosystem. Returning to my creature self. Remembering what it is to roll around in grass, smell dirt, rejoice in the aliveness of world around me. Become creek, sunset, and artichoke plant. I “breathed in sky,” and rolled over with my heart basket leading the way. The tingling exhilaration of being a body in motion, a body among other bodies, is still with me a week later.
To touch the energy of childhood again. To remember before. Perhaps, as a friend offered, to be uncivilized again. Wild. To throw off the conventions of oppression and institution. To return to something primal. Embodied.
Flash: Bamboo forest behind Jardin D’Estelle in Cagnes Sur Mer where we flew through the reeds, chasing, screaming, howling. Our bodies pulsing with excitement, exalting the freedom, the raw abandon moving through our systems.
Flash: After school program in Northampton MA, I witnessed children invent their elaborate “slate trade” in the woods, raiding each other’s stashes with glee and abandon, trading stone for stick and leaf, faces eager to win, happy to be in the dirt, in the luxurious evening woods, abundant.
The ferocious, the loving, the ways that bodies deliver a sense of the pack.
Over the course of the 3.5 days, we growled, howled, rolled and twisted, bowed and purred. We made a puppy pile in the grass. Most of us began as strangers. We unwrapped our rational minds and set them aside, on an altar of play, compassion and grief.
So much to reflect on about safety, belonging and dignity. My white cis middle class mostly able bodied body felt safe in the space safe enough to become a wolf, a dragonfly, a barn swallow. I was also moved at my margins, my vulnerability, the tenderness of a slow-motion hug.
Now, some of you are reading what I’ve just written and are thinking. “What the hell is she talking about?” Some of you read what I’ve just written and have longing for such a space. You might be wondering: How do I get that experience? Or what could be gained by such a thing? Maybe some of you are ambivalent, 1 foot in the puppy pile & 1 foot on the treadmill. There’s no right or wrong.
What my/our wildness affirmed in me:
** my nonverbal self contains a wisdom beyond measure. All this talk of slowing down is about returning to my body wisdom.
** trust, belonging, & hope can be curated generously and boldly at the level of the body.
** I am simply a creature of earth like any other, responsible for my part of the ecosystem, capable and fallible.
** I can return to myself as barn swallow, wolf, willow at any time.
** caution when the call from civilization brings force rather than softness.
** there is deep longing in our collective body for embodied expressions of grief and joy.
** words are important, and not the only path forward.
** my croning has begun, let this next chapter be embodied and exuberant!
The simple love of creatures becoming creatures is a memory that will stay in my heart basket, in my hips, in my breath for the remainder of my life.
More about BODY AS WISE HEALER
Poem of the Month
Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People are Dying
By Noor Hindi
Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks
seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.
It’s so beautiful, the moon.
They’re so beautiful, the flowers.
I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.
Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.
Provocations and Nourishment
Carl Safina Takes Us Inside The Cultures Of Animals In 'Becoming Wild' : NPR
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Mud play in early childhood education
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Racism and Gatekeeping in the Outdoors — Melanin Base Camp Libertroph Magazine - white anti-racist organizing archive
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The Love & Justice Quarterly Subscription Box
Each season, Love & Justice subscribers will get a box of BIPOC hand-crafted whimsy, and an invitation to connect to discuss the enclosed book.
Upcoming Opportunities
Ever wonder how to interrupt bad behavior? Do you want to connect your values to your life more boldly? What are you doing to feed your social justice heart? Antiracist Coaching Group for white people: New Ancestors begins October 9th. Room for 2 more! Join us for 12 weeks. It’s an adventure, a community, a place to push yourself just the right amount. LGBTQ Led, sliding scale. NOTAFLOF*. More information here
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Finding Freedom: White Women Taking On Our Own White Supremacy
October dates! 5 weeks in an online workshop to transform your relationship to racial justice and collective liberation. Begins October 15th, 6:00-8:30PM ET. Get it!
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Unfreezing the Fawn: Working with Appeasement Patterns in Somatic Experiencing®
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A project inspired by the Popular University for Gaza and the legacies of the student intifada, we dream of a world where learning and education is marshaled in service of Palestinian liberation rather than the death-making profits of university board members.
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Awesome Human
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Toward Justice,
Evangeline
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