Episode Transcript:

0:00:12 - Dori

Welcome to Tree Speech, a podcast that strives to hear the forest through the trees. I'm Dori Robinson.

0:00:20 - Jonathan

And I'm Jonathan Zautner. Join us as we seek fresh perspectives and deeper understandings, illuminating the profound impact of trees on our lives and the planet we call home.

0:00:32 - Dori

Through our conversations on race, religion and resources, we engage with an array of voices, all sharing profound connections to the majestic trees that shape our world, and we just love trees. Thanks for joining us, and let's begin today's episode.

0:00:56 - Jonathan

Happy Pride, dory. As we all know, june is Pride Month, a time to celebrate diversity, identity and the strength and community that occur when all beings can stand firm in their own truths and coexist together in unity. I know for both of us that a great place that we look to for inspiration in how to celebrate our differences is nature, which is inherently queer.

0:01:33 - Dori

Yes, it is indeed, and in today's episode we are excited to discuss how queer ecology could contain the solutions to reversing climate change and living in harmony with nature. We also have an inspiring interview with walking artist and pedestrian dignity advocate, artist and author, jonathan Stahls, and we'll examine the history of the first gay liberationist environmentalist group and how trees were the reason the group was formed.

0:01:54 - Jonathan

I am excited for this big gay episode Woo.

0:01:59 - Dori

Yeah.

0:02:05 - Jonathan

But before we get into queer trees, I want to discuss a few thoughts on the term queer, as it can mean many things depending on who is using it. For me, the word queer is a way to create space for those who have been othered by social norms and customs and by outdated notions of gender relationship and social and family structures. Many others, though, still see the word queer as a degrading slur, and the first recorded use of the word queer goes back to 1894,. This is very interesting when John Douglas, the 9th Marquis of Queensberry, called his son, lord Alfred Douglas, and his alleged lover, oscar Wilde, snob queers in a public court trial, soon after American newspapers began using queer to refer to gay men in disparaging articles which introduced the term into the popular lexicon. Some still find it hard to shake the term's derogatory history, but many other people are reclaiming queer as a way to self-identify, and its use and meaning are constantly changing and evolving as the LGBTQIA plus community also grows and changes.

0:03:21 - Dori

You know that I would do anything to weave Oscar Wilde into a conversation. Now, what does this have to do with trees? There is a school of thought known as queer ecology, an increasingly popular concept that looks at nature through the lens of gender and sexuality, the key component being that queerness is natural. Being that queerness is natural, queer ecology takes the understanding a step further, positing that society norms around gender and sexuality are harmful to the earth and that queerness can offer a different paradigm for our relationship with the natural world. This connection between humans and nature leads queer ecologists to challenge the idea that humans and nature are separate. Instead of something to be exploited or tamed, through a queer ecology lens, non-human species can be viewed as family and community that we belong as a component of nature versus being a dominant force.

0:04:33 - Jonathan

Now regarding relationships and sexuality. The natural world also embodies a full spectrum of possibility that is way beyond the binary. Same-sex behavior has been observed in about 1,500 species, from dolphins to rams and, more locally, including Roy and Silo, the male penguin couple at New York City's Central Park Zoo, who performed mating rituals and tried to hatch a rock like an egg. The zookeepers gave them a fertile egg that another penguin couple couldn't handle and they raised the female chick who they named Tango and who became the subject of the children's book and Tango Makes Three. Also in the tree world, redwoods, for example, like many plants, actually have both male and female parts, but often reproduce asexually by cloning themselves and growing new trees as stump sprouts.

0:05:29 - Dori

Another example of a delightfully queer plant is the mulberry tree. Mulberries are normally dioecious, which means that there are both male trees that produce pollen and also female trees that, having received the pollen, produce berries. But it gets a little more complicated because some mulberries, in certain conditions, are manoeuvres, meaning that they both produce and receive pollen, so they're both male and female. Mulberries also change sex quite frequently. This can be frustrating to certain growers, as they discover that a certain proportion of their trees have decided to become male, thereby not producing fruit, and the reverse can also be true.

The trees are favored as street trees, specifically the male trees, because they don't produce large amounts of purple splats on the sidewalk. And those male, lonely, root-produced trees are becoming a real problem because they are producing prolific amounts of pollen, which I'm sure you've all experienced. So they're actually also one of the most allergenic trees in the world. You cannot legally plant mulberry trees in some cities in the United States for this very reason. So it is interesting that this attempt to use sex as a way of controlling the tree's behavior completely backfired and the trees got their revenge.

0:06:55 - Jonathan

I love when the trees get their revenge.

0:06:57 - Dori

The trees get their revenge.

0:07:02 - Jonathan

One last example of the vast world of queer nature is the jack-in-the-pulpit. Now it's a plant with green and maroon striped flowers and red berries. It switches genders from year to year based on environmental conditions. One year it might produce fruit and another year it might produce a flower and another year it might produce pollen, depending on the environment. Many plants have all the parts to do what they need to survive.

0:07:31 - Dori

We love a queen who makes her own choices.

0:07:35 - Jonathan

I will survive. Also, I'd like to mention shiitake mushrooms, which are considered non-binary Fungi are famous for reproducing in a variety of ways. Some are asexual and multiply by spreading their spores far and wide. Others are able to mate with themselves, making mushrooms super queer in so many ways mushrooms super queer in so many ways.

0:08:09 - Dori

For too long, Western ideas about gender and sexuality have been imposed upon the human and non-human worlds, most often for capitalistic or religious purposes. Any arguments which claim that LGBTQIA plus people are unnatural stem from the same thinking that separated humans from the rest of nature in the first place and has led to our mistreatment of the earth and its resources. Humans are queer, just like nature is queer, because we are nature. Imagine if, instead of learning about the birds and the bees, that students learned about the mulberry tree and the mulberry tree in schools.

0:08:50 - Jonathan

Now, modern life also deprives people of wonder and awe. Separated from the earth and one another, we lose the capacity for storytelling. Delight in natural environments and talking to nature, and especially to trees. Delight in natural environments and talking to nature, and especially to trees, instead of interacting within it. Nature is something that is seen in high definition on Netflix through a speeding car window or confined to parks, where people are not always encouraged to be themselves proud in their own identities. But our guest today is working tirelessly to make the outdoors more accessible for all people.

0:09:30 - Dori

We were so happy to speak with Jonathon Stalls, a multidisciplinary walking artist who spent 242 days walking across the United States in 2010 and who continues to move alongside a wide variety of people and landscapes for days, weeks or months at a time. He says that walking has become his primary medicine and teacher and informs most of his creative work, which includes stunning drawings, hosted events, writing and activism. All his projects center around the themes of human connection, personal and planetary healing, racial and environmental justice, lgbtqia2s, plus belonging and nature wisdom. His first book, walk Slow Down, wake Up and Connect at 1-3 miles per hour, was released in 2022, and is available nearly everywhere books and audiobooks are sold. Be sure to check your local bookstores and public libraries. He also started and co-created Walk to Connect, now a program of America Walks, the Pedestrian Dignity Project, and attended the Living School for Action and Contemplation. He resides in Denver with his husband, ben.

0:10:49 - Jonathan

Our conversation was thrilling and inspiring. Let's listen. Well, hello, jonathon. It is so wonderful that you are joining us today. We are ecstatic to speak with you. I was speaking with Dory about your book, which we'll talk about in a moment, and about your work and how inspiring it's been to us, and I honestly can't remember when I was first introduced to it or how we happened upon it, but we're so thankful it's really made a difference in our life.

0:11:27 - Jonathon S.

Oh, I'm so honored. I love that it just organically found its way to you all too, so it's a gift to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

0:11:34 - Jonathan

Let's jump right in, if that's okay, and we'd love to start by talking about pride. A few weeks ago, the National Park Service issued a memo prohibiting uniformed employees from marching in public events. That could be construed as agency support for a particular issue, position or political party. This effective ban would extend to pride marches, which I think had to do with the timing of the memo coming out and caused an uproar timing of the memo coming out and caused an uproar. After a backlash, the ban has been reversed, but the relationship regarding identity and self-expression as it applies to work and to having an openness of self, especially within natural spaces, remains very fragile. Within your book and in interviews and places where I've heard you speak and on your social media, you are very open about your identity as a gay or queer person, and I'm wondering if you could speak to the intersection between your identity and how you move through the world and the wild outdoors.

0:12:41 - Jonathon S.

Thank you, jonathan. Oh, there's so much to share there. You're getting me fired up right right from the start. Getting fired up it's for me, are so nurturing. They mirror back to me so much around creativity, around expression, around adaptation, and so to have a podcast centering the gifts and wisdom of trees and other things, so many things and then related to your question of identity and expression and queerness, it all intersects for me with the natural world being. I just think about the way these branches just bend and twist and reach and all the places in between, anything but mostly, but linear, straight and narrow. So in thinking and feeling this, you know specific to the national national park service stuff, but just things that we're seeing all over, related to what a lot of times feels like a clinging, like a holding so tightly to a binary, like to this or that or an understanding of something that is. You know, it's a grip, like holding on so tightly to a way of thinking, living, existing, believing, whether that's religious or political. I know for me, being gay and queer, my main form of medicine is unhurried movement, and then, right next to that is moving and depending on and being seen by and seeing trees. So those things are medicine that fill me with permission to only be more open and out.

As a gay person, this goes back 2010.

I did a walk across the USA and this was eight and a half months of walking, moving through a wide variety of park systems and trail systems, and I was seeking new teachers.

In this eight and a half month journey, I was going through a lot of really hard things. My coming out experience was really difficult, really intense, brought me to a lot of edges because I was feeding for 18, 20 years, these binaries, these stories of in or out, good or bad, what is of God, what isn't of God, all the things. I just was feeding them because it was the environment that I had grown up in. I wasn't exposed to things that were different. I didn't have a lot of nurturing spaces or even people that would create a safe container for, like, oh, all of these things can actually belong. And you, what happened, specifically with the National Park Service and this ban or this fear or this? Just real, just to me, it's just a really big disconnect that we're not just existing, more curious and more open with each other and I think, just a lot of the grief that lives in the quickness to control and to limit and to block expression and healing.

0:15:47 - Jonathan

As you brought up, it's all of these things the national parks and the political environment in our country and world really represent a disconnect from nature and not being within it, not learning from it, not respecting it, and also the ways that plants and animals and things within nature live and coexist together. Which brings us, then, to your book, because, as I said, we really resonated with it. So your book is entitled Walk Slow Down, wake Up and Connect at One to Three Miles Per Hour, which is an amazing title. The book is a transformative collection of essays, stories and practices on the power of walking to connect with ourselves, each other and with nature. So what led you, then, to want to write this book, to tell your story in this way and to put this out into the world?

0:16:42 - Jonathon S.

I'm so honored that it resonates with you all. I love that so much. It was such a labor of love and honesty and taking a lot of risk too, as someone who can still get angsty or anxious around putting your kind of full truths out in the world or at least experimenting with that imperfectly. And it's funny, you know, for many years, the kind of floating invitation to write a book was there, but I just was like, ah, I just it's funny, you know, for many years, the the kind of the floating invitation to write a book was there, but I just was like, ah, I just it's not there yet. I, I default, I think, around things that I learn or that I absorb, so for so many years.

After I did a cross-country walk in 2010, that was a huge shift for me because it was, uh, you know, in the book and in other things I reference it, um, a lot as like a rite of passage or just this. It was a transition. I was like shedding an old skin, a skin that didn't serve me anymore, and kind of walking into a place of healing and connection and wanting that, like wanting, as I call, kind of new teachers in the natural world and other people in my own self in an unhurried way, and I was terrified. I had no idea what I was doing. My backpack weighed 95 pounds when I started, so for anybody that's done long distance walking or hiking you know oh yeah, he doesn't know what he's doing which was kind of exactly what it was and needed to be, and my blue heeler husky went with me and it was really precious and so much learning and so much opening and hard stuff too. And prior to that I've always been an artist.

I moved every two years of my life, growing up as a kid, so I went to 14 different schools. I was teased a lot as a kid, so I, you know, carry complex bullying. I carried being gay and queer and really sensitive, all this stuff just kind of burying it because I never felt like it had a place or it could come out, and so I knew that a bomb was about to go off inside or something was just going to like erupt and I needed to take care of this thing. Um, I also just um, pre-warning there's a lot of suicide in my family history, family lineage, and so at the times when I was really on edges, that kind of just came to the surface as well. This is the way out. It's too much to carry, you know, in my body and story, and so this is the way to deal with this and that's a part of my history too. And so all of that to say that my most trusted way of bringing connection into these things that I was learning was just through Unhurried Movement and hosting events and hosting groups and hosting people in lived and shared experience. So writing a book was always so like oh, I don't even know how to put words to the drums that are going on in my stomach around how good it feels to be near this flowing water or to have a sunset bring me to all of my tears and to scream because I'm angry and like in the desert. And how do I write it in a way that?

So years passed and I just I took a lot of notes around things that I was learning.

I noted different stories that just felt meaningful to this journey of that I was on, and then it wasn't until the mobility justice work that I really really got into around a project called pedestrian dignity, where I focus.

When I'm out walking I'm recording a lot of unsafe infrastructure for people who have to walk or use a wheelchair, take transit, or who would choose to if it was easier or safer or more accessible.

It wasn't until I really got into the weeds of that project that I saw the thread of this unique, creative nonfiction book. There's this personal story that I can weave in, there's the stories of other people that helped me to like, feel invested in a long form writing project, and then there's this punchy invitation that honors my fire around mobility and I felt like it could all belong because I care so much about practice and embodiment and so finding a publisher that would work with me around my art and my poetry and stories and practices. Anyway, I know that's a lot of backstory, but I think it's so helpful because it wasn't just like oh, I want to write a book and I did it. I wasn't sure that a book was the right path and then it became a really clear path at a certain point and it's just so fun that it's out in the world now clear path at a certain point and it's just so fun that it's out in the world now.

0:21:04 - Jonathan

Thank you for sharing all of that. And it was, I think, about 12 years between the walk and the book being published. Is that right? So there was some time for these things to marinate and to come together in such a beautiful form. The book, as you said, it takes on many different forms and shapes. It's the overarching story of your walk and where that began and ended, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well as sort of a how-to guide. There's prompts, there's exercises, there's stories other people have contributed. There's stories other people have contributed. So it really is a wonderful guide of everything that you would, you would want to reintroduce or to introduce yourself to nature and to being comfortable in natural spaces. What has the feedback from the book been for you? So, after it's published, were there surprises for people that knew you? Did anything surprise you after you put this work into the world?

0:22:07 - Jonathon S.

That's a great question. Yes, several. I mean it was such a personal book. One of the things that I quote in the book as a part of the walking as resistance chapter is I'm like this, like I never, growing up, wanted to be the reason for conflict. I never wanted to be the. I always was like, okay, as long as I can keep the peace, keep the peace in the family chaos, keep the peace around me at all points. There's so much conflict and chaos in my upbringing in different spaces, so not even at all tracking that there was this whole thing that was being ignored in my own health, mental health, processing, existing as a contributing, honest person, or at least trying to be that it was just blocked and locked for so many years. And so to put a book not only a book that is just like my first kind of like thing that I know is going to go more public, it's a wonderful publisher, it's going to just land on shelves but to also a book that's extremely raw and personal. It's almost like the exact opposite of what I had kind of grown up managing at such a high level, and so the responses were always just as I expected.

I learned a lot of things. Putting the book out there, I would say there's this beautiful spectrum. There are something so raw and personal where it's just like we're going to talk about infrastructure and sidewalks and then we're also going to talk about hugging trees, and then we're also going to talk about vulnerability, and then I'm going to talk about vulnerability and then I'm going to throw practices out out at you and this, and then I might come back to the cross-country walk at the end and then I'll start with it. Like I'm gonna be pretty non-linear with this thing. I'm sharing all of that. Just to say the the the spectrum of feedback was. It was pretty incredible. I will say just in a, in summary, the most beautiful things is just all the messages I would get from people, um, and, and the ones that give me the most life are the ones that are like.

I found this at my local library and I feel, seen I'm out walking, I've taken my neighbor out walking. I reached out to my city council member for the first time. I'm planning a long distance walk with my dad for the like. He's been wanting to do this with me for so many years and I've just been so busy and now we're planning it because this, you know, there's these really intimate, personal, relational, civic, very just, precious stories that I receive and when I see that they found them at the library, I mean that's like, that's like libraries are like, they're just, I love them and they've always been an oasis and a safe place as somebody you know, especially on my long cross country walk, in so many different ways. So that feedback when I get like those I found this at the library, here's how it's impacting me, here's what I'm doing. Hey, I'm out on a walk for the first time in six months because I'm trying to trust my body and I'm trying to listen to trees and I think about this one thing, this one feedback. This was from last week.

I was in this meeting with just.

It was like a book talk kind of thing, and everybody had just read the book, maybe the the month previous, and one of the participants was just like one of the practices in the book is titled nature sees me and uh, and she just was like I just need you to know how this has completely changed my everyday walks.

I walk primarily for my mental health, um, and for my grief, because I just lost several people in my family and I feel really alone and I don't even really know how to grieve. And your practice of the fact that I'm literally trying to train myself that the trees and the sunsets and the birds and the things that are existing in the natural environment are actually seeing me. They see me moving, they witness my existence, they're spacious enough to hold all the things. I'm like that, that kind of stuff For me. It was a big risk to make it so personal and raw and to not fit in one genre, because it just wouldn't have been honest for me. I'm just really grateful for that and that's exactly what I had hoped for that this would just be a unique mirror for different kinds of people who are meant to fall into it.

0:26:23 - Jonathan

Right and such a reflection of how you see the world, how you move about the world and those that resonate will, and others will, be pulled along. It requires growth and challenge, but also it's so entertaining and so beautiful to read and it's new in the world. So the feedback is just continue and continue and continue, which is exciting. A particular part in the book that I loved was around your meeting with the artist named Terry, who had a great impact on you, and you stayed there, I think, one night, and then as part of your walk across America, and you write I'm going to quote you that as you left her house, you promised yourself to commit to always seek a third way, a way in between the lines, a way that honors awe, hospitality, compassion, creative expression, wildness, wonder, human dignity and possibility. I mean those are the most wonderful things in the world and this is a powerful promise that you made to yourself. I'd like to look at awe in particular and I'm wondering if you could tell me how you do this.

How do you honor awe? And then also, maybe, how would you suggest that anyone could start to introduce this practice of honoring awe into their daily life?

0:27:44 - Jonathon S.

Thank you, jonathan, I love it. I was brought right back to Terry's place. So I'm looking at her blue bottles with the sun glowing. I'm looking at the just the way it felt to sleep on her roof with those stars. I'm looking at her openness and her hospitality. She was wearing I think it felt like a hundred different bracelets and jewelry pieces. I mean, she was just such a bright light.

You know, when you're walking in the middle of the desert for hours and hours and hours and you, you kind of fall into the, the arms of desert people who are willing to, you know, provide food and shade. Um, in the desert there's so much there. This is where it just comes back for me, with the thread in the book being the unhurried and the like, the movement aspects. The unhurried aspects of, uh, moving, the way we're made to move in in a way that is, in it of itself, the medicine that will, that will open spontaneous exchanges, uh, moments of awe that we're surprised by, and I and I try to do this in the book, which is why there's so many practices and I'm always saying look, it's different for everybody, make it yours, make this yours, your unique body experience, sense of safety, identity, like like, however, like just you know, and trying to put some tips in there to help people like really do that with some good cushion. You know, if you need to scout a route first with a friend, if you need to just care for and be curious about a place with other people before you go out and maybe like slow it down in a meditative way. You know, like caring for how you set yourself up, to then be more present, to nurture your movement and to be more open. So I think to your question for awe in particular, it is always, always, always showing up, always and we were talking, you know, things that grow out of the cracks of sidewalks, the wisdom of seasons and transition, the miraculous details of texture and color and what happens in the natural world with plants and water trees. Obviously, I mean, there's just there, there's a there, it's miraculous, it's incredible, the, the details of and the beauty of these things that are all around us and and obviously, inside of us. So I think, more than anything, I just find that protecting the time to have intentional, unfurried movement, so that you're just open and available to what might show up in the realm of surprise and awe and beauty, and it may it, you know, and just and having a lot of compassion around, just protecting the time to be available to it.

There's something that you know when we think about the neuro, you know getting a little nerdy in neuroscience and understanding what happens in the brain. After 20 minutes of unhurried, regulated movement, you know walking. Or if you're on a powered scooter or a wheelchair, after 20 minutes of unhurried, regulated movement, you know walking. Or if you're on a powered scooter or a wheelchair, after 20 minutes your brain is creating new neural pathways.

So I mean, I'm like, every anytime I'm hosting an event, I'm like I need everybody to repeat it back new neural pathways for our own just capacity to have new connections to maybe the tree that we've walked past every day for the last several months that we haven't even seen and we don't even know her name, and and having this whole renewed relationship to the trees that are right outside of where we live, revisiting them, seeing them as relationships. To me that's such a great way to start. But 20, 30 minutes so you can open up those channels and release some stress, no expectations and protected, intentional time to be unfurried and available, and that combination can be pretty powerful. Simple too, like it doesn't need to be fantastic or overly loud, but precious simple and gentle. I think gentle is a good word too, that there's a gentle frame, gentle to yourself, gentle to how you're moving through a space word that we hear a lot, especially when we think about movement.

0:32:03 - Dori

I think that there's an association of intensity. Thank, you for bringing that up as well. Something that I really appreciate about you is your ability to integrate all these different elements of you and all these different elements of life. You started a creative journey titled Intrinsic Paths that focuses on artistic expression, nature, connection and unhurried movement. Projects range from detailed pen art, walkbook gatherings, mindfulness practices, long distance walking experiences and pedestrian dignity, to name a few. Could you tell us about this journey and how these projects all fit together?

0:32:47 - Jonathon S.

I think this is part of, this is part of, and I just and I always like imperfect, like I have to, and constantly imperfect, like constantly fumbling, experimenting, sitting in my own, like what are, who are, what am I doing? It's too much, or it's too, it's not enough, or it's like is it anything what you know? So I need us to share all of that because it's an, it is an ongoing experiment, to be honest, around and iterating a lot, and I just, I'm always referencing branches and how they bend and twist. They're constantly reaching to find that nourishment in the light they're. You know when they need to break, they break, they go into a different direction. But some of the branches, like I think about, to your question, one of the projects, let's say it's pen and ink art that might have a really long branch for the rest of my life, but it's just going to bend and evolve and twist.

The pedestrian dignity project. That has had some sharp changes but that branch is still finding nourishment and growing. Some of the branches from previous work have had to break, but those wounds are just, you know, the way it heals, the way the tree heals. Everything's constantly shedding. So I think about a mature juniper tree or a mature hawthorn, just some of these slow, growing, incredible, twisted stories. That's how it feels, with intrinsic paths for me, and that's why the juniper tree is kind of the logo of it, an intrinsic being, a term that is trying to source from within inherent wisdom, inherent worthiness, belonging. What I have gone through is valid, and what I'm feeling if I'm angry, that's valid. If I'm sad, it's valid. If I'm happy and joyful, it's valid. It's connected, it's real, it's just, it's real. And so, as an artist, art has always been, you know, an escape, but also an exploration. It's been home for me, and so I think to that. Quite to your question, this was maybe two years ago when I finally was noticing some different terms that people were using, uh, just in different ways multidisciplinary, and there's other folks that are that have used the term walking artist, and I'm like that's it. It For now. My intrinsic paths tree is a multidisciplinary walking artist.

Oh, I feel like I can breathe, I feel like I can experiment, because the cross country walk in 2010 was a real recalibration. It's like, if I'm going to live this life, I'm going to be here and be present and be alive with a new story. If I'm going to do this, then I want to walk myself into imperfect always, but I want to walk myself into a place where I feel more grounded and that ability to let the things out, let them move and not be stuck, the pedestrian dignity thing. For so many years I would and I still do. Oh gosh, I will always be such a unique suppressor of anger and fire and injustice.

And where to put it?

Anger can be so destructive, and I think about fire in the forest and where is purpose in destruction?

I prefer the term intuitive unrest more so than anger, because I think anger can get stuck in different frames of thought and I think intuitive unrest is the place that's like oh yeah, there's something not okay about how someone or how I or how the space around me is being treated, or there's something that's blocking my path or maybe a path for others to more healing and more connection.

But I would have hosted these events with different elected leaders and engineers and urban planners, because I walked so much, I would experience so much disconnect around how our places are built to make walking or moving on a wheelchair, or to make pathways for elders who can't drive a car for any number of reasons, carrying six bags of groceries waiting at bus stops without shelters or benches, in the rain, getting splashed by high-speed car traffic.

How often I witness this, how often I'm seeing, and specifically when we think about racism and class and we think about red lines and we think about who is being impacted the most by systems that don't make it easy or safe or accessible. You know, when I started really putting these really intentional filters on my movement journeys through a city or through a community and started to connect with a lot of people who are outside of our travel, it really really frustrated me. Like I want to be inviting and I don't want to shame people. It's really important to me that I'm not shaming people, but I'm okay with shaming some really really harmful systems and systems that are really hurting people. And so how to experiment with like, oh how do I honor a circle of people? We're about to go on a walk and we're going to be co-guided by residents who are risking their lives every day, some on wheelchairs, to get to the grocery store with their family.

0:37:48 - Dori

And there's something so, first of all, deeply beautiful and compassionate about the work you do and the way you speak about it, and I think I'm speaking on a personal note I really do think that it takes a creative or artistic person. I mean, part of what you do is you create new intersections and create new names. You know, at the beginning of our interview you were speaking about living in binaries and then here you are, a walking artist, a multidisciplinary combinations of things we didn't necessarily have when we were growing up pedestrian dignity, like putting the two things together, and the power of naming something.

0:38:33 - Jonathon S.

So life-giving and sustaining.

0:38:36 - Dori

For those listening who are inspired to get out and walk or roll and be a pedestrian advocate for life outside the culture of driving, besides reading your book. Where do you suggest that they start?

0:38:50 - Jonathon S.

Just sharing about right outside your front door and recalibrating your pace, really recalibrating this. You know this theme of being gentle and moving slowly and just being open and curious about this life-sustaining mother tree, teacher roots reaching deeper into the soil, reaching higher into the sky, branches breaking when they need to, thriving in new directions when they can and need to, shedding bark constantly, habitats that are nurtured mother trees nurturing other young trees from different species. I'm just like be open and curious to the actual, actual medicine of the trees that are around you, alongside your unhurried movement. And I think a lot of people experience this but maybe aren't as conscious of it.

You know New York City, boston, some of these cities and areas where people really are walking, you know hours in a day to get to where they need to go, and even just in an urban environment like that, that the conscious shift to bring it down to a more gentle pace, and so you're only going to amplify the benefit, the breathing, the stress, but also the creativity. You know. So it's protecting time to be unhurried for at least 30 minutes right outside your front door and to really be. And if you're feeling like the thoughts are just it's hard to then then you know, seek the trees as your partners in this practice. Jonathan, you were talking about awe and being open to awe, being open to wonder, being open to beauty, even just in really small moments, and not always needing it to be overly profound. It doesn't need to mean anything, but it's just this that you're being, you're connected to this really big, complicated, precious wild story.

0:40:51 - Dori

That's beautiful and it makes it so much more accessible. Rather than you, you need to go to this national park with this kind of gear and da-da-da Right.

0:41:01 - Jonathon S.

Yeah, 100%. That's exactly right yeah.

0:41:05 - Dori

Yeah, then it can be, every day it can be every day.

0:41:08 - Speaker 4

That's exactly right.

0:41:09 - Dori

Where can we find you to connect, to learn more, to stay in touch? How can people keep connecting with you?

0:41:18 - Jonathon S.

Well, thank you. I have an email list that I just I will plant different practices. This is on the Intrinsic Paths website, so the website really kind of has a lot of the different invitations, dory you were asking about. Some of it is I share pen and ink art through Intrinsic Paths, like on Instagram and other things. I'm leaning a little more into in real life at markets with some of that, but I still try to share it on Instagram.

I have a Patreon and so, as a multidisciplinary walking artist, it's life changing when you have people who believe in what you're doing, who are contributing every month. It just really nourishes. I can plan, I can project projects, I can do really meaningful things, not always needing to have a financial exchange. So I think becoming a patron, if you really connect to this work, would be an amazing. Next thing, and the last little thing I'll just say, is the audiobook. If you're curious about my vocal inflections, as you've heard in this podcast, I get really into it. So if you, you're, if you're, if you're curious about that in a meaningful way, then the audiobook. Just that's why I really push the publisher to like you gotta have an audiobook, something that um is focused on, unhurried movement that can be easy for people to take with them. And if your library doesn't have it, encourage that they carry it, because libraries are amazing. So there's yeah, those are some invites. Just get out there, hug some trees.

0:42:46 - Dori

Hug some trees, seek the trees.

0:42:51 - Jonathan

We'll be sure to connect, and I read the physical book, but I love the idea of listening to the audio book while being outside. It's like all the senses are being used, which is so fun. Well, jonathan, you are creating a legacy, albeit a slow one that moves at about one to three miles per hour, and we are so grateful for your courage in sharing your story and also the example of how you move throughout the world, including its wild spaces. You do inspire us to live with more compassion and kindness and to move beyond our experience to think about the well-being of others, which may be the most important thing of all.

0:43:30 - Dori

We're so grateful to spend time with you today. Thank you so much, Jonathan.

0:43:35 - Jonathon S.

Oh my gosh y'all. Thank you. Your questions are so meaningful and I feel your just how much you pour into the space that you're holding here and so thank you for your care and I'm just so grateful it all resonates. So thank you for honoring just my, my art, imperfect art in the world. So thank you you.

0:44:06 - Dori

That was a great conversation and we hope you take time to find Jonathan on Instagram or online to see his work and advocacy firsthand. Find links to him in our show notes. Jonathan's work is admirable and fits into a lineage that goes back through many years of members of the LGBTQIA plus community working toward making outdoor spaces safe and inclusive for all. In fact, the first gay liberationist environmentalist group started in Queens, New York, a few days after the Stonewall uprising in June of 1969. This was a time when queers in New York City were politically energized by the hotbed of activity in the city and motivated to defend their territories.

0:44:49 - Jonathan

Often, the outdoors have been a safe spot for queer people to gather and meet, especially in times when it wasn't lawful or acceptable for them to do so.

A particular place where this would happen was the Kew Gardens area of Queens where, late one night in 1969, a group of local residents formed their own vigilante committee to harass gay men in the park. Armed with chainsaws, the group cut down at least 30 trees and cost the city thousands of dollars in an act of vandalism to prevent the gay men from congregating there. In response, several groups, including the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Belitis, joined forces to organize a rally Fueled by the slogan homosexuals have rights and so do trees, by the slogan homosexuals have rights and so do trees. In what is now remembered as the earliest known public event for LGBTQIA plus rights in Queens, and also dubbed at the time the birth of gay power by the Los Angeles advocate, a fund entitled Trees for Queens was started to replace the trees, which is what eventually happened as part of the rehabilitation project. This intersectional work between human rights and environmental stewardship is still as needed today as it was 55 years ago.

0:46:15 - Dori

On a sadder note, we dedicate this episode to Meghan Buell, the founder of Trees Inc, standing for Transgender Resource, education and Enrichment Services, who I interviewed in a past season of this podcast, and we will never forget her life and legacy as a leader and educator who affected many lives with her bravery and ability to create conversations that shed insight and understanding in the transgender community, both locally and nationally. Please listen to our past episode entitled Trees Inc to learn more.

0:46:58 - Jonathan

The thing that is so thrilling about pride is that it is constantly looking back in order to move forward to a time when everyone and everything is accepted and celebrated for who they are, identify as or love. We conclude today's episode with Meghan's words about what she hoped for the future, taken from our conversation with her.

0:47:25 - Meghan B.

Trans people are just people and their way through life is different than the person standing next to them. But we all are different than the people we stand next to and again, not one way is better than the other and we have to get past thinking that we're right and somebody else is wrong. Legislation is not going to stop trans people from existing. All it's going to do is make it harder for them to exist and we're going to continue to lose lives when we do that. Let people be who they are and the goal should be everyone should have be able to have a happy, fulfilling, enriched life in this country, and too many people are trying to stop that because they somehow think that it's going to change their ability to have a happy, enriched life when it really doesn't.

You don't have to manage it, you don't have to control it, just because you don't understand it. Learn about it. Have a conversation with me and you'll find out that it's nothing more than one sliver of my whole identity and I think we can all coexist very peacefully In the forest. It's not all one type of tree and they all don't look the same. There's lots of different trees. The canopy you see from the sky is not made up of one type of tree, so let all the trees grow and prosper and multiply and make this place a better place.

0:49:04 - Jonathan

We wish you and yours a happy pride.

0:49:08 - Dori

Happy pride everyone and thanks for listening to Tree Speech today.