Love, Part II: The Wisdom of Creatures

Nov 20, 2024

Continuing this short series on love, I wanted to take a moment to share several of the creatures featured in MOTHER, CREATURE, KIN, and why I was inspired to write about them. This was the first time I’d ever done this much of a deep dive into the lives of other-than-human-beings (I still barely scratched the surface). The effort, limited though it was, cracked my heart open in ways I did not expect, and was not always prepared for, and am still working to understand.

I’ve been explicitly and implicitly cautioned against anthropomorphizing, especially in creative writing about plants, creatures, and ecosystems, and I’ve heard it said that love is not objective or scientific. Well, that’s okay. With deep gratitude to the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer and others, I no longer believe that love and science are mutually exclusive. Not only that, I fully believe they can be mutually inclusive. Love can serve rigorous science, and rigorous scientific study can deepen love. I’m comfortable striving for a deepening knowledge, alongside a deepening love, even if it only ever leads to mystery and to unanswerable questions. Even if I stumble along the way and write about it in my limited language and inevitably make mistakes in attempting to express the lives of other creatures.

These are several of the creatures that have started to teach me what it means to trust love as an ecological practice and to allow creatures to do the work of opening our hearts as we do the work of learning about their lives and their worlds. They helped me to understand that mothering practices, too, extend across such boundaries. Whether or not we have children of our own, we are all creatures—children—of Earth’s body. We are interconnected beings, intimately tied to the lives of others. That intimacy invites us into practices of care and attention—to both give and receive nourishment within a widening circle of care.

Here, then, is a sneak peek at three of MOTHER, CREATURE, KIN’s creatures:

North Atlantic Right Whales

“In this way, their movements in these early days of their lives together are a perpetual, revolving conversation: two bodies in motion like the moon orbiting the earth, held close by the tether of gravity.”

On a bright January morning off the coast of Georgia, I met Spindle and her newly born calf aboard a small boat operated by three members of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. A whale mother and her calf are rarely more than a body-length away from each other in their early months of life together. They spin and breathe and nurse in each other’s close company. Fewer than 350 right whales remain and female whales in particular are being killed by fishing gear and ship strikes. This species is losing its mothers. Meeting Spindle and her calf as I learned about the plight of this species brought me, painfully, into the heart of my vulnerability as a new mother, ever concerned for the safety and well-being of my own child.

Barn owls:

“But it is not, in fact, the eyes of barn owls that crackle and spark. It is the ears. The body and mind of a barn owl are wired for sound. The map by which the owl navigates and survives her world is built of vibrations through air.”

As I watched a clutch of barn owl chicks hatch and grow, I learned about the aural existence of the barn owl. With a brain that is wired for the world of sound, this bird can strike prey in tall grass and in total darkness. The barn owls appeared in my life in a moment when I was struggling to set bearings. Learning about the deep sensory belonging of the barn owl helped me to make sense of why, in that moment, I felt uprooted and adrift and guided me as I began practices to establish my own belonging.

Salt marshes:

“I came to the tides to ask: what can be learned from the beings who inhabit the edge—the creatures who do not resist the ebb and flow of water but exist as part of it, who live because of it?”

Salt marshes are liminal ecosystems, mediated by the ebb and flow of the tide. As I was beginning the work of understanding what mothering might look like in this moment of perpetual change, I was having a hard time finding ecosystems which reflected this sense of ongoing transformation—until I came to the marsh. While facing sea level rise and other threats, marshes also model resiliency, adaptation, and how to exist and find agency within change.

Mother, Creature, Kin available for pre-order!

You can now pre-order my forthcoming book, MOTHER, CREATURE, KIN: What We Learn from Nature’s Mothers in a Time of Unraveling.

“In prose that teems with longing, lyricism, and knowledge of ecology, Steinauer-Scudder writes of the silent flight and aural maps of barn owls, of nursing whales, of real and imagined forests, of tidal marshes, of ancient single-celled organisms, and of newly planted gardens. The creatures inhabiting these stories teach us about centering, belonging, entanglement, edgework, homemaking, and how to imagine the future. Rooted in wonder while never shying away from loss, Mother, Creature, Kin reaches toward a language of inclusive care learned from creatures living at the brink.”

Writing workshops for the New Year:

(Re)Connecting to Creative Practice: Finding ritual and rhythm in the midst of uncertainty

With everything going on in the world, it can be a challenge to maintain both the joy and the discipline of creative practice, and to remember and re-inhabit it as worthy and valuable. Over three sessions, we’ll explore together ways of reconnecting to our writing as a creative and nourishing practice, weaving together elements of ritual and community.

For the duration of the three-week course, participants will have the option to write together every morning over Zoom. These writing sessions will entail a brief check-in followed by time to write in silence and community.

Dates: January 9th, 16th, 23rd from 7:30-8:30pm EST (plus: optional morning writing sessions from 8:00-9:00am, weekdays from January 9th-23rd)

Cost: Sliding scale, $25-$75

Register HERE.

Writing Creatures:

Is there an animal or plant you’ve been longing to write about? Are you looking for ways to bring more wildness into your writing? Over three sessions, we’ll delve into the world of a creature we’re interested in learning more about, stretch our writing practice across the species divide, and consider how writing can be a space to build bridges of empathy and care with the living world.

Dates & Time: February 6th, 13th, & 20th, from 8:00-9:00pm EST

Cost: Sliding scale, $25-$75

Register HERE.