Something in the Woods Loves You by Jarod K. Anderson

Author:Jarod K. Anderson [K. Anderson, Jarod]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: 2024-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The crows taught me something about giving myself permission to feel wonder, to respect myself more by taking myself less seriously, by stepping away from a just the facts mentality. I did not need objective confirmation that my meaning was correct any more than I needed permission to be awed by the sight of a bluebird. I did not need authorization to plant a wildflower garden within my own perspective.

That May, I started writing poetry again.

I had been struggling to write, afraid that it was wasted effort when my energy levels were already sapped by depression.

I realized that much of the poetry I had written over the last decade or so felt strenuous. Dense, academic, trying-too-hard lines aimed at communicating sophistication as much as sharing ideas.

I wanted to do something different. I wanted to break in order to create. I wanted to give up trying to be impressive or correct.

I learned that play is an essential part of my creativity. Perhaps more importantly, I realized that if you can fail doing it, then it doesn’t count as play.

I wanted to give new shape to the magic I was allowing myself to feel. This wasn’t the magic of esoteric knowledge or daunting complexity. This was the magic of campfire sparks or finding a wild turkey feather. The magic of unexamined joy and play. Capturing that magic meant writing something easy and welcoming, a simple stroll through the trees. I wanted to write thank-you notes to nature and try to map out the intersections between personal meaning and our beautiful, tangible world.

Compared to the poetry of my academic training, I was writing what I thought of as aggressively accessible poetry, poetry aimed at connection and communication more than artistry. And, to my surprise and delight, I found a receptive audience on social media, a community that grew quickly and gave me a new sense that I had useful things to share.

I allowed myself to build a frankly confusing online presence under the name The CryptoNaturalist. It was the title of my strange indie podcast about fictional nature—real love for pretend creatures, a metaphor for the magic I felt just beneath the surface of our visible world. In retrospect, the premise of my podcast arose from giving myself permission to place enthusiasm well out in front of expertise. I suspect I was worried I didn’t know enough to discuss real nature, so I preemptively removed fact from the equation entirely. Later, with the increasing prevalence of cryptocurrency, I would regret the confusion sometimes caused by the first six letters of my online name. Still, I cherish a slim hope that one day crypto will go back to being just an evocative prefix meaning “hidden.” I probably shouldn’t hold my breath.

One of the readers who enjoyed my poetry sent me a message with a picture of a crow. She apologized that it wasn’t a very unusual bird, but she thought crows were beautiful and fascinating. She went on to say that she wanted to get out and hike, but she really wouldn’t know what she was looking at once she was out there.

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