October 17, 2025 • 49 mins
We talk with writer and poet Jarod K. Anderson, aka the Cryptonaturalist, about mental health, ADHD, and rediscovering wonder through woods, poems, and honest work. From “brain weather” to dandelion myths, we explore how stories shape healing and how nature keeps us present.
• origin of a lifelong nature connection and early poetry in a “land lab”
• leaving academia, starting therapy, and naming depression as “brain weather”
• enthusiasm over expertise as a path back to the woods
• the Cryptonaturalist: blending natural history, humor, and gentle horror
• balancing sincerity online with a creative career
• separating dandelion facts from internet folklore
• ADHD frameworks: “more than nothing” and consistency over intensity
• sitting still versus covering ground as different forms of success in nature
• poem “Woodland You” and the idea that self-worth is innate
• book recommendations and where to find Jarod’s work
Pre-order the new novel, Strange Animals, anywhere you buy books. We’re fans of ordering from your favorite local bookstore. Find more at jarodkanderson.com and follow the Cryptonaturalist on social media
If you want to connect with the show, go to planthropologypodcast.com or follow along on social media, either Planthropology Pod or The Plant Prof. Send me an email at planthropologypod@gmail.com
As always, thanks so much for listening! Subscribe, rate, and review Planthropology on your favorite podcast app. It helps the show keep growing and reaching more people! As a bonus, if you review Planthropology on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser and send me a screenshot of it, I'll send you an awesome sticker pack!
Planthropology is written, hosted, and produced by Vikram Baliga. Our theme song is "If You Want to Love Me, Babe, by the talented and award-winning composer, Nick Scout. Midroll tunes are by Rooey.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
What is up, plant people?
It's time once more for thePlanthropology Podcast, the
story where we dive into thelives and careers of some very
cool plant people to figure outwhy they do what they do and
what keeps them coming back formore.
I'm Vicarum Beliga, your hostand your humble guide in this
journey through the sciences.
And as always, my friends, I amso excited to be with you today.
Y'all, my guest for today is sogood, and it's someone that I've
followed on social media for along time because his work is so
(00:24):
wonderful and thought-provoking,and he is the creator of several
books, of a lot of nature-based,sort of spooky, creepy poetry,
uh, I don't know if likeeco-poetry or how you want to
cut it, but my guest today,Jared K.
Anderson, goes by the CryptoNaturalist online.
And if you're in some of thesenature spaces and if you've
(00:45):
spent a lot of time on Instagramand different places, you've
probably seen his stuff.
He puts out these reallypoignant, short little poems on
social media, and they're aboutnature and they're about our
connection to it.
And I think about what embodiesthis podcast and our connection
to nature and the world aroundus.
(01:05):
A lot of the work that Jareddoes speaks so directly to me
about that that I was so excitedwhen he agreed to be on the
show.
A couple of things about thisepisode that I I'm not gonna say
I'm gonna warn you about, but alittle bit of a content warning.
We actually have fairly frankdiscussions in this episode
about mental health and ADHD andjust some other issues that
(01:26):
Jared and I both deal with inour lives.
And there's nothing too heavy uhor too dark that we talk about
except for some dark parts ofnature.
But if you're sensitivediscussions about mental health,
I would definitely just cautionyou that that's in here.
But we talk about it and Jaredtalks about it in a way that's
so approachable, and he gives ussome like practical tips that
he's learned.
(01:46):
So we talk about everything fromdealing with your mental health
and working with your brain toaccomplish things in your life
and with nature and how we canuse our sometimes challenging
minds to go and just experiencenature better.
So we talk about his socialmedia work, we talk about all of
the books that he's written andall of his poetry, including a
(02:07):
new one that's coming up calledStrange Animals, which we should
definitely go and pre-orderright away, and just so much
more stuff.
Jared's a cool guy.
I feel like I've found ankindred spirit in a lot of ways
in him, and I think you're gonnareally enjoy this episode.
Uh, one other thing, I forgot torecord a mid-roll, so I'm just
gonna throw out right now if youwant to connect with the show,
go to planthropologypodcast.comor follow along on social media,
(02:30):
either Planthropology Pod or ThePlant Prof.
That's me, and uh send me anemail at planthropologypod at
gmail.com.
But aside from that, so I'mgonna jump right into this
really insightful, poignant,funny, and sometimes even maybe
a little creepy discussion inepisode 124 of the
Planthropology Podcast,Thunderstorms, Hidden Nature,
(02:51):
and the Crypto Naturalist withJared K.
Anderson, I'm gonna be a littlebit of a lot of money.
(03:31):
Let's learn all about you.
SPEAKER_02 (03:33):
Awesome.
Thanks for having me.
Excited to talk with you.
SPEAKER_00 (03:37):
Yeah, so to kick things off, just tell us a
little bit about yourbackground.
What did you do?
How did you get into nature?
Why do you do what you do today?
SPEAKER_02 (03:45):
Yeah, so so I've had a bit of a winding trail to get
to where I am.
Um, always been a huge naturelover, grew up in sort of rural
Ohio with a mom who used to takeme on daily nature walks was
some of my earliest memories.
So we would just go to the woodsevery day and see what was
blooming and what animals werearound, and she would quiz me on
(04:09):
spring ephemerals, and we'd finda green heron that fell out of a
nest, and we would work onrehabbing it, and so that was
always such a central part of mylife.
And we were not a religiousfamily at all, but my mom always
called the woods her church.
So that was my background.
So I don't remember a timewithout the nature connection.
(04:32):
But for me, a sort of centralpart of my story was drifting
away as I kind of internalized alot of sort of our own kind of
cultural separation from nature,the sort of American capitalism
I was raised in, and then tryingto figure out what was missing.
And what was missing was a thingthat I had once understood
(04:54):
instinctually.
And the nature writing, it'sfunny, I have kind of a pinpoint
of where I got into naturewriting because I had a teacher
in fifth grade named MissWillard, who used to take us out
behind the school, and there wasjust acres of woods back there,
and they called it the land lab.
And I don't know if you could dothis anymore, but she would just
(05:14):
take a bunch of fifth gradersback there with pen and paper
and say, okay, just go find aplace to sit in the woods and
write down what you see.
She would read nature poetry tous, and I started writing nature
poetry.
I won a Ohio poetry contest whenI was 10 with some nature poems,
and um yeah, I never stopped.
(05:35):
So uh that that's when I gotinto nature writing.
Growing up, I started to kind ofget a sense that some of my
passions weren't necessarilycool.
And then in college, I uh I wasa non-traditional student.
I did sort of a lot of otherthings before I realized like
I'm a real book nerd, what am Idoing?
But I worked in construction andsurveying and all sorts of stuff
(05:58):
before I eventually went and wasan English major at Ohio State,
and then I got a master's,started teaching literature at
Ohio University, and was off toa PhD, and then I realized that
I really didn't love the job,and that wasn't a goodie to have
going into a PhD.
But I had it in mind that if Iwanted to be somebody who wrote
and read, and that was my life,that I needed to be an
(06:20):
academian.
But the job was grading hundredsof essays by students who didn't
want to write them.
And I would get home at nightand was like, okay, I hate words
now.
I didn't want to work on mywriting.
So I ended up kind of shiftingas a kind of refugees from
English programs do.
I ended up in marketing.
(06:40):
Um and I tried to mostly dononprofits because I still
wanted to do mission-drivenstuff.
So I worked for Franklin ParkConservatory, which was cool,
and I started doingscholarships, that kind of work.
And then I ended up back at OUas a director of external
relations.
And I I was really miserable.
And I also had really kind ofunacknowledged, serious major
(07:04):
depression.
And my job, I would describe myjob as being in meetings about
future meetings.
SPEAKER_00 (07:10):
And I just that feels that by the way, it feels
like way too real.
Being in academia, that feels soreal.
SPEAKER_02 (07:17):
Yeah, it was and something about the depression.
It was so hard to get out of bedthat to make myself do it, and
then and be in these meetingswhere I thought to myself, like,
well, they didn't need me hereat all.
And these are my sort of limitedlife minutes ticking past.
And eventually I had a verysupportive partner who had a
(07:40):
good job, and uh eventually shewas just kind of like, Hey,
quit, we'll figure it out.
And I did.
And then I was a little bitcrushed to find that I wasn't
instantly happy, that leavingthe job behind didn't fix
everything.
And it was like I had toacknowledge, uh-oh, maybe this
is me.
Maybe there's something moreinternal happening with my
(08:00):
mental health than gripes aboutmy job.
Um and I started going totherapy eventually, finally,
which was terrifying to bevulnerable in that way.
Um and what was monumental forme is I started getting back to
the woods and getting back tocreativity and finding that I
(08:22):
felt sort of nourished and wholein a way that it was hard for me
to articulate at first as awords guy.
And I've been kind of pullingthat thread ever since as I've
come back to nature in a varietyof ways, and sometimes it is
coming back as an enthusiast.
(08:43):
I think of myself as anaturalist.
Um it's funny, I use enthusiastbecause sometimes my
perfectionism gets caught up andlike, oh, I don't have any
business in the in in theseconversations because I'm not an
expert.
And so enthusiast means like,okay, but I can come as an
enthusiast, which gives myselfpermission to put my enthusiasm
(09:07):
first and and boost otherexperts and kind of embrace the
role of an enthusiast.
Um, and it also that carriedover to my fiction and poetry,
too.
Like sometimes my love of natureis in rooted in science, and
sometimes it's rooted incapturing the wonder I feel
through metaphor.
(09:27):
I have a six-year-old son, hecame up to me a while ago and
said, Hey, are electric eelsreal?
And I just said, like, oh man,what a reasonable question.
And what a no right?
Yeah, what a reasonablequestion, and what a bizarre
answer I have for you.
Like, yes.
And sometimes I like to do thatthrough fantasy and science
fiction, kind of to put the realmiraculous nature and fictional
(09:53):
elements side by side and umconflate them in a bit to try to
recapture that childhood senseof holy crap, our electric
heel's real.
Um so yeah, that has landed mewhere I am today.
I'm a full-time writer now,shockingly, not a thing I
thought was possible, but that'skind of that's kind of my gig
right now.
SPEAKER_00 (10:13):
That's awesome.
And I want to go back to whatyou just said, that it there's a
kind of a fantastical answer toa reasonable question.
And that for me, as someone wholoves nature and spends a lot of
time, or now I live in Lubbock,Texas, which is about the
flattest, driest place on theplanet.
It feels that way anyway.
(10:34):
And uh but nature, I think, iswhere you look for it, and the
wonder of it sometimes is whereyou look for it.
And so to have a question that'slike, are electric eels real?
What's the deal with narwhals?
And the answer to be wow, do Ihave a story for you?
Yeah, you are not gonna believethis.
That is just such a cool thingthat like you said, that's
(10:58):
sometimes we lose along the way.
We we forget to look for orsomething.
I I don't know how to articulatethat, right?
SPEAKER_02 (11:04):
But I think that's right.
And I think a lot of it is amind game that I know I played
with myself where I thought,like, okay, well, childhood
wonder is a thing forsix-year-olds.
Like it's a thing that's kind oflocked in the glass case of the
past or in childhood.
But like you think of theenormity of nature anywhere you
are.
I mean, you can be the studentof one tree species in your
(11:27):
yard, and you will never masterit.
Like, you think of the enormityof it.
Wonder and surprise at even thebare facts of nature.
Like, there is no reason forthat to live in childhood.
Like, I I'm currently writing abook about dandelions for Timber
Press.
I thought I knew.
I thought I knew a fair amountabout dandelions and very common
(11:50):
plant, and I've been shocked,just kind of again.
And it's just so fun to to kindof acknowledge my own
limitations and to think ofthose as a doorway to wonder and
not something to be frustratingor galling.
I think that's a thing that welose sometimes.
Like we're used to being in thenewcomer mindset when we're
(12:13):
kids, and then sometimes ittakes a bit of intentionality to
get back there, I think, asgrown-ups.
SPEAKER_00 (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I think there is somethingin a lot of us as adults that
that just constantly reaches forthat, like we're constantly
longing for it, even if we can'tlike point a finger at it.
You know what I mean?
I think back to when the firstuh Avatar movie came out, and
there was like this documentedphenomenon where people would go
(12:45):
and see this movie and walk outof it and be depressed because
of this fantastical world thatthey were just immersed in.
And that comes out of, I think,not spending enough time looking
at ours because yeah, there'slike weird blue aliens and glowy
things, but there is so much outthere that will just blow your
(13:05):
mind.
It's just like, how does thatwork?
Why does that work?
Like, what trick of evolutioncame up with this slug or this
snail that lives in volcanoes?
Why is that a thing?
Like, that's incredible.
SPEAKER_02 (13:17):
Or ways you can find other fantastical worlds kind of
hiding in plain sight.
Like, I went on a night frogwalk not too long ago with
somebody who'd never done onebefore.
And like, I think she lived amile or so from where we were,
but we got a little out in thecountry.
And it was like the sounds likewhat is that?
And it's like, well, there arelike six species of katy dids
(13:40):
you can hear right now.
Like, there are three differentspecies of frogs we can hear.
Like, there was somebody with uswho was a real entomology nerd,
and was like, oh, that's thiskaty did.
I'm gonna try to find it.
And we're like, You're gonna tryto find it?
That sounds impossible, but theperson I was with was just
really blown away by how strangeit was to just be a mile from
(14:02):
her house in the dark.
Um, and what a different worldit is.
And I mean, doing that is a wayto find a different world.
Sometimes I talk about justzooming in.
Like, I mean, turn over a rock.
Like, I think of myself as anature nerd, and how often am I
surprised by something that Ihave no idea what it is?
Constantly.
I have I have a mushroom nerdpal, and we go out in the woods,
(14:24):
and she's constantly showing methings that's like, nope, never
noticed that before.
This slime mold or this tinypinprick of a mushroom.
And it's funny, like mydepression can constantly um
badger me with sort of impostersyndrome.
And that's one way to look atit.
Like, I remember when I wasgetting myself back to the woods
(14:45):
thinking like I'm gonna do thiswrong somehow, which is on the
one hand tragic, and on onehand, but if you think of it as
more like a menu of differentwonders that that are just there
if you take the time to reallytry to acquaint yourself with
it.
Because it's not I don't careabout facts or names because
(15:09):
someone's gonna quiz me.
I do it because I'm trying tomake a connection, like learning
a stranger's name, so they'renot a stranger anymore.
Like these are like breadcrumbsof information that help me feel
more more connected.
Um I live next to a cemetery, solike lichens are one for me.
That I mean, lichens areamazing.
(15:31):
It's I didn't know where theywere, and then you start looking
into it and to have aphotosynthesizer and a fungi
working together, and then mypoet brain is like, okay, so
it's like uh it's like ashepherd and its flock living
together, but it's hard to saywho's the shepherd and who's the
flock in the relationship, andso it's cool in like a meta way,
(15:52):
but then you can kind of diveinto like, oh, this one's
edible.
Oh, this one is this colorbecause of this element, and I
mean, most you can find lichenon sidewalks, yeah.
It's there, it's just like it'salmost giving yourself
permission to take it seriouslyenriches your world.
Because I think that's part ofthe disconnect.
(16:13):
Like, if it isn't part ofproductivity, and if it's not
making you money, and if it'snot part of your direct career,
why are you making time for it?
SPEAKER_00 (16:22):
Yeah, oh yeah, that's so well said that I joke
a lot, and my wife and I talkabout this a lot that I have
this really nasty habit ofturning like my hobbies into
side hustles because it's in mybrain, right?
It's one of these things thatlike what you just said, if it's
not producing something, if it'snot part of this unit of
(16:44):
whatever, why are you doing it?
And I've had to really take astep back recently.
I'm in my late 30s now, and Irealized that I got to where I
wasn't doing things that werejust for me.
Yeah, you know, I wasn't doingthings that like built into my
own life.
I did it because I needed to gosell something or I needed to go
do something.
And so, like, whether that'sgoing out in nature and looking
(17:06):
for liken, or what I kind ofwant to get into next is some of
the social media stuff you do.
It can be both.
Like it can be a job, it can bea personal thing.
But I think for me at least, andand I I'd be interested to hear
your take on this.
Like, when it starts to feellike just another job, like
that's when I really have toreflect a lot.
(17:26):
I really have to look at it andbe like, okay, what are my
motivations here?
Why am I doing this?
SPEAKER_02 (17:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's gotten muddy for me lately
because it was like accidentallymy side hustle became the job.
And so sometimes I feel a littlelost in the sauce when I'm
trying to think of what I wantto do next, because it's like,
all right, a lot of the things Iattribute the success of some of
(17:52):
the books I've written and thesocial media to sort of the
human innate sense of sincerityand authenticity.
So on the one hand, I feel likewhen what I do works, it's
because people sense that Iactually care about the things
I'm talking about.
(18:13):
And I think that's true.
And yet that is also my job now.
So I'm like, okay, but what isthe smart career thing to do
next?
And then it's like, okay, butthe smart career thing to do
next is the thing I care about.
And so that starts to feel likeweird in a way of like there
used to be a firmer separationbetween these things.
SPEAKER_01 (18:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (18:34):
And sometimes it leads me to have like secret
writing projects that I don'tshow anybody to kind of like
remind myself that this is forme, or like I'll co-write
something with Leslie, is ahorror writer.
She had a horror novel come outlast year called The Unmothers.
Yeah.
So so we're both writing nerdsfrom way back.
(18:55):
Yeah.
So it is, it does get kind ofmuddled sometimes for me.
That's true of everything interms of.
I wrote a book called Somethingin the Woods Loves You about my
struggles with mental health.
Um, but one of my bigbreakthroughs in mental health
isn't that I feel like I'vefigured out depression.
(19:16):
Like I was so worried aboutwriting that book that I
desperately didn't want to writethe book that's like, go touch a
tree and you feel better.
Like the toxic positivityuniversalizing my per my
experiences, stuff that I hate.
But like the thing I felt that Igot through sort of the mental
health journey captured in thatbook was more like a rejection
(19:38):
of shame as the thing that madeeverything else harder.
And the four that I came up withwas thinking of my depression as
brain weather, as part ofnatural cycles.
And just quickly, that metaphorgoes like this: like if I
planned a picnic and it wascanceled by a thunderstorm, I
would be disappointed, but Iwouldn't be ashamed.
(20:00):
Why?
All right, well, thunderstormsare natural phenomenon, I didn't
invite it, I don't controlthunderstorms.
So why would I feel ashamed ifit canceled my picnic?
All right, well, mental illness,in my case, depression, it's a
natural phenomenon.
I didn't invite it, I don'tsteer it, it's a thunderstorm.
So, like, I can be disappointedwhen I wake up and feel a real
(20:24):
serious burden of depression.
But I can kick shame out of theequation with that trick.
And so that lets me um be kinderto myself, because it used to be
I wouldn't acknowledge itbecause I was too ashamed to
think of myself as somebody whocouldn't think my way through
depression.
(20:45):
But what we're talking abouthere, the hustle culture versus
leaving time for what youactually like.
I talk about that in the book,but it's funny, like, even
though I know that, air quotes,in kind of an intellectual
level, it doesn't matter.
Like, I have to continually, inthinking of my own internal
landscape as a naturallandscape, it's subject to
(21:07):
cycles and seasons.
And understanding that meansthat, like, all right, I'm not
crushed when I realize I've kindof fallen into the same like
ditch that I've been in before.
Um, and then sometimes at thispoint I laugh at myself, like
opening to the chapter about thething that I had figured out two
years ago that now I need toremind myself of.
(21:29):
It's like a note slipped acrosstime.
SPEAKER_00 (21:33):
I I really like that's really interesting.
And I think that so much of whatyou say resonates with me too,
because I I often, when I'mteaching, I talk about
ecosystems.
We talk about ecology in myclass, and I relate that in my
own life to my life and myinternal, external environment,
everything around me.
And like in any healthyecosystem, there's all these
(21:54):
pieces that that fit together.
And sometimes one of them gets alittle out of whack for a while,
and the ecosystem figures outhow to recover, but with enough
little pieces and enough enoughtime and enough care, like it
recovers, and it's something alittle bit different, but it's
still something that functionswell, and it's still something
that's that's good and that'snew and all that.
(22:14):
And I think that's really cool.
And okay, so that that leads meinto my next question or my next
kind of big topic is uh your uhsort of persona is not the right
word, but your outlet of thecrypto naturalist, which again I
discovered a long time agothrough some of the nature
poetry and stuff that you putout there.
And for any of the uh for anyonethat hasn't like experienced it,
(22:37):
like you go go follow the cryptonaturalist because it's this
interesting mix, at least in myopinion as a as a fan, as a
consumer of it, uh, of reallylike poignant deep stuff and
then like really funny thingsand then like almost creepy
stuff, which I reallyappreciate.
And it it melds together intothis really interesting vibe
(23:00):
that in my mind encapsulates somuch of what how nature feels
just in general.
Like I think you write thatreally well.
So I'm curious just to hear howyou decided to start that and
and where like how thatdeveloped over time.
SPEAKER_02 (23:15):
It first developed when I was still in those
meetings about meetings as justa full act of rebellion of like,
all right, I want to dosomething just for me that is
the opposite of what I amcurrently doing, trying to be
very suit and tie.
I was kind of on the I don'tknow how this happened, but I
found myself on theadministration side of academia,
(23:37):
and that was, if anything, evenmore uncomfortable.
Um but so I'm like, all right,well, what if I just do
something just for fun, justutterly for fun, that resolutely
reject is for anything.
And so it was all right, love ofnature and fantasy, science
fiction, monsters.
(23:58):
It's like, all right, perfect,easy.
Like I had I started thispodcast that was scripted, um,
short episodic fiction.
That's just this one guy who wasthe crypto naturalist, and he
was a bit of an homage.
I think of him as a characterhomage to the sort of nature
(24:18):
shows I liked in the late 80s asa kid, and in particular was
called Wild America, which wasthis dude from Tennessee.
Yeah, who just was like, Oh, I'min a swamp and now I'm picking
up an alligator snapping turtle,and oh, he's pretty angry.
Uh I was like that guy, but it'sthe X-Files, yeah.
(24:38):
Um so that was the premise.
But since it was just for me, Iwasn't really thinking of like a
brand in the sense.
So, like, yeah, I would throw inpoetry, or I would have on guest
poets, and on the social media,sometimes it would be the creepy
stuff, and sometimes I wouldjust post a nature poem I wrote,
(25:00):
or a cool thing that happenedwhen I was volunteering at a
wildlife rescue, and all of itjust kind of I would say to
people later when it started tohave more of a following that
like I understood that I hadlike an inscrutable brand and
that that was strange.
And somebody pointed out to meat one point, it's like, yeah,
but you are the connectivetissue, like this is all stuff
(25:22):
you're interested in, and so itcan feel connected because it's
all coming from your brain.
And it's like, all right, yeah,I like that because it gives me
permission to continue to dosort of whatever I want.
And that's that's how that thesocial media presence in the
podcast grew.
Um, it does now sometimes createsmall friction because, like,
(25:45):
this novel I have coming out inFebruary, it's from Ballantine
Books, big cool fantasy sci-fipublisher.
My editor was the editor for TheMartian and Ready Player One.
Really cool.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
Julian Pavia, awesome guy,awesome editor.
Um, but like it leads toward thecreepy.
Like it is more of a story ofhidden nature being foreboding.
(26:11):
Now it's about someone coming toterms with it and realizing that
the sort of mysterious natureand real nature are both
miraculous in their own way andkind of finding his place in in
this new landscape.
But some advanced copies havegone out, and there's a website
that sort of gets opinions fromadvanced readers.
(26:33):
Great response to the book.
But one review I saw said, like,well, I really loved his memoir
about depression, and it was sogentle, and honestly, this was
just really too scary for me.
And I was like, Yeah, fair.
Like, I I publish a lot ofgentle nature poetry and uh and
stuff about the poetic side ofnature and mental health.
(26:54):
And it's like, all right, well,now but here's horror elements
in a fantasy novel.
So yeah, so sometimes it can beconfusing to people.
SPEAKER_00 (27:03):
Yeah, I I I I can see that.
I can see that, but at the sametime, what a cool picture of how
nature is just uh at a largescale, right?
And and I'm thinking throughthis as I'm saying it, but I I
have always thought that we putuh like value judgments on
(27:26):
things that just are.
Yeah, nature is just beingnature, and so you'll watch this
documentary and you startrooting for the the penguin or
the baby seal, and then oh, herecomes the polar bear or the
orcas, and it's an emotionalroller coaster.
And there are uh quote unquoteor or what we would think of as
like dark, scary parts ofnature, but it it also just is
(27:50):
what it is, right?
And I think that one of thethings that uh at least in my
opinion, or in my experience andthe people that I've talked to
and worked with, that one of thethings that gets people off
track sometimes is that we uh ashumans, and maybe this is just
part of our nature, we try toput everything in neat little
boxes, right?
Like this is this is this, andwe're over here and nature's
(28:14):
over here, and all these, butlike it's it's all just part of
the same thing.
Absolutely.
And if as people, as our ownlike internal ecosystems, we
have the happy fun parts and thewhimsical parts and then the
dark parts too, like nature'sthe same way.
And but I I do take that thatcomment though of someone
commenting like oh is a littletoo scary based on this.
(28:35):
Like, I I've written achildren's book and then I post
like some really most of mystuff on social media is me
yelling about five-minute craftsand the which I love.
SPEAKER_02 (28:46):
I love the I love the There Are No Seeds and
Bananas trip.
SPEAKER_00 (28:50):
Oh my god.
It's just you Jared, I get somany of those in my inbox.
It's like everyone sees them andthey're like, oh, I know exactly
what some must do.
SPEAKER_02 (29:00):
Well, you're doing good work, someone needs to be
answering these.
They're shocking.
SPEAKER_00 (29:06):
And so someone made a comment.
There's actually a section in mybook talking about things that
we can actually do with bananasand and ways that like we can
use it to do everything fromlike hair products to shoe
shine, to there's all these wayswe can repurpose the peels that
actually do things.
And someone was like, Don't youspend all of your time yelling
(29:27):
about bananas?
I'm like, okay, listen.
SPEAKER_02 (29:30):
Specifically, yeah.
Specific context, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (29:35):
So, no, I I totally get that.
So you've written a lot betweenyour poetry, your fiction, your
memoir, everything else.
Like it's really a great body ofwork.
Like, how do you decide?
And you kind of answered this alittle bit already, but I I just
wondered if you have a processof like what's next.
(29:55):
How do you think through likewhat's on the horizon sort of
project plan?
SPEAKER_02 (30:00):
I try to respect my ADHD, where like my ideal career
really is like this year is anonfiction year, and this year
is a fiction year.
And if I have my way, I willsort of do that kind of
alternation into the future.
And then the poetry just kind ofalways happens.
Poetry always happens becauseit's a tool for me.
(30:24):
Geez, it's cathartic, it's anoutlet, and maybe most
importantly, I'm always saying Idon't know what I actually think
about a thing until I write itdown.
Um because my brain is a noisyplace, and sometimes it's a
tough place.
And things can remain slipperyand abstract as ideas until I
(30:48):
start tethering them to wordsand anchoring them to the page,
and then they take shape in adifferent way for me, and I can
like have a conversation, I cansit the idea down and talk to
it.
And poetry does that for me.
And so I have a fourth poetrycollection that's getting close,
but what getting close means iswhen it's long enough to be a
(31:09):
poetry collection, I'll put itout as a new poetry collection.
So like the poetry accretes, andthen the longer projects, like I
just I really do have eclecticinterests, but you've hit on it.
I don't find them to be asseparate as sometimes I think
other people do.
Like, I don't find there to bethat stark of a separation from
what it is to write fiction andwhat it is to write nonfiction.
(31:33):
Because even like this book I'mwriting about dandelions, Timber
Press published the memoir, andthey came to me and said, We're
just doing this series of shortillustrated books on specific
plants and animals.
Do you want to do one?
And I said, Yes, dandelions.
Um, which really came from mestruggling with all or nothing
(31:54):
thinking in my own life.
And dandelions are aninteresting subject in terms of
the conversation of thinking ofnon-native versus invasive, how
we categorize them, what we doabout them, what does it matter,
ecosystem services they provide.
So I picked dandelions becauseit was a thing I wanted to think
(32:15):
about.
But even though it's nonfiction,the way I think about it is
still as a storyteller, it's thesame as when I wrote about
depression.
So, no, I'm not inventing plot,and I'm not thinking about
character arcs, but I amthinking about putting myself in
the reader's shoes, and I'mthinking about human animals
(32:38):
being creatures that understandthe world through stories.
So they don't feel thatdifferent to me.
It's more like a flavor thing ofwhen I'm working on the
dandelion book, I go down rabbitholes where somebody will make a
claim on a blog, and then I'llspend the next hour looking up
peer-reviewed papers to see ifthere's anything behind it.
(33:01):
Yeah.
And often there's not.
It's interesting.
Like, dandelions are so commonthat somebody'll say a thing,
and then you'll see the game oftelephone on the internet.
Where like seeds can travel 500miles.
Okay.
Like, I see this here.
I see it repeated on a paper atCornell.
Not a paper, like a blogarticle.
(33:21):
And then, like, I'm like, basedon what?
Well, based on nothing.
Someone said it once and then itgot repeated.
Like, could that be true?
Yeah, sure.
Under ideal circumstances.
It's that repeating for thedandelion paper.
So that's part of the process.
When it's the novel, it's notthat at all.
It's I'm bored with thissection.
So I will write in all caps,write a transition later, and I
(33:45):
will move on to the next thingthat's fun.
So um they don't feel thatdifferent, but what's fun for me
is to add variety to the writingjust to kind of keep it all
interesting for me.
SPEAKER_00 (33:58):
I totally get that.
And I I identify strongly withhaving to wrangle or work
towards the strengths or thepatterns of an ADHD brain.
And like having the people arealways like, you do so many
things.
I'm like, yeah, I do, because Ihave to, yeah, or I get like in
like I'll vapor lock at somepoint if I get a it hurts to not
(34:21):
to try to lock yourself into thesame pattern for too long.
SPEAKER_02 (34:25):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:26):
Yeah.
And I'll like sit down to writea paper or work on a book or do
whatever.
And then after a while, mybrain's just like, no, you're
done with this today.
SPEAKER_02 (34:36):
And respecting that is is important.
It doesn't always play nice withlike modern work culture, right?
So it's hard, but I do try tothink of it as a feature, not a
bug sometimes.
Because it also can do hyperfocus sometimes.
I mean, did you ever get that?
Like we're just all in in a waythat that people who don't have
(34:58):
don't struggle with ADHD don'tdo.
The problem is I don't controlthat switch, right?
Like there are times I wish Icould flip on the hyper focus
mode because I really want towrite 2,000 words today.
And yeah, I don't control it.
Sometimes it happens, sometimesit doesn't.
SPEAKER_00 (35:14):
I totally get that.
And then you do what you can andthen you work around it.
And eventually, what what I tellpeople a lot is in the end, like
it gets done.
It all gets done.
The time scale may be a littlegoofy, but it all gets done.
And then sometimes it's like waymore than I intended to get
done.
SPEAKER_02 (35:31):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, my whole thing, likesometimes people be like, Well,
how do you write a whole novelor how do you write a whole
book?
And it I have this more thannothing mantra, is all it is.
I have I have the saying,consistency over intensity.
Like, stop thinking about thewhole book.
Start thinking about I'm gonnawrite at least a paragraph every
(35:51):
day.
Like, that's how you write awhole book.
Um, so it's like it's almostlike I can't think about the
book, I can only think aboutlike the pattern, like the
habit.
Like I yeah, and and for me,with the with the weird brain,
like I will loosen it sometimesso I can continue to feel
successful of like it's 500words or it's 20 minutes of
(36:14):
dedicated effort.
Yeah, because sometimes it'sjust that squirm me in the
chair, I don't wanna.
And but like if I sit with thatfor 10-15 minutes, like like
sometimes it'll break loose.
But if it doesn't, I'm stillcounting it like as a win if I
do the 20 minutes, like stilleffort, yeah.
(36:36):
It's just again, all thesetricks to and validate that idea
we talked about that our ownminds are parts of ecosystems
cycles, and reject the thing Iused to do that was all or
nothing.
Either I'm on track or I'mtotally broken, either I'm on
the path or I'm completely lost,one or the other.
(36:56):
Zero, zero sum game.
And now I've gotten a lot betterat being like, no, this is this
kind of day.
Success looks like this on thisday, and it's gonna look like
something else on a differentday, and that's perfectly okay
and perfectly natural.
SPEAKER_00 (37:11):
And that's awesome.
And I know you don't know it,but that's something like I
needed to hear this week.
So I appreciate that.
Because I'm I like I've beentraveling for work, and you get
back from being away at aconference or whatever for a
week, and you're six monthsbehind somehow.
Like there's some weird timevortex, and then it just like
feels like, oh my god, I haven'taccomplished anything.
(37:31):
When the fact is, it's like, no,you still accomplish a lot, and
you take the success where youcan.
SPEAKER_02 (37:36):
And the conference is important too and deserves to
have room.
Like, but you're right, like youcan there are a lot of weird
forces that are out there tryingto make you feel like a failure.
But yeah, it's hard.
I have to do this.
My my my partner and I do itconstantly of like just kind of
saying our off-the-wallanxieties out loud, like the
(37:59):
worst case scenario stuff.
Because boy, it is nice.
I mean, one of the fun thingsabout humans and language is
that we can borrow otherpeople's brains for this stuff
too, that we don't have to takeour own word for everything all
the time.
SPEAKER_00 (38:13):
That's a cool way to think about that.
I like it.
So to bring it back a littlebit, thinking about your
childhood and growing up andspending all this time in
nature, do you have a and Iasked this question for a
specific reason, sort of.
Do you have like a favoritenatural space?
Is there a place that like ifyou think of I'm gonna go be in
(38:34):
nature, that's what pops intoyour head?
SPEAKER_02 (38:37):
Yeah.
I mean, generally it's sort oflike Ohio deep woods.
And for me now, there's like aspecific trail in a specific
park that is it's like the it'slike a trail that's a trail in
name only, and most people whogo there don't use it.
I think it's called a primitivetrail on a map.
(38:57):
It's muddy, and I can tell bythe orb weaver webs that I take
in the face when I go on it thatnobody else is walking on it.
But it's just this crookedlittle footpath that leads past
a bunch of really huge shagbarkhickories.
And so, like, it's a verypopular place with red squirrels
(39:18):
and gray squirrels.
I saw a barred owl once outthere and just kind of sat on
the leaves for as long as itwould tolerate me.
And it's just it feels likehonestly, it feels like the
woods where I grew up.
And the success looks differenton different days, things apply
to that too.
Because yes, it is a specificplace, but there are days when
(39:41):
going to nature means finding abig tree and sitting.
I see more animals, I see moreof nature in general if I sit
still and I do it a long timebecause the birds that acclimate
to me, what I will see in theleaf litter, what I will hear is
(40:02):
so different than when I'mtrying to really cover ground.
But covering ground is adifferent day for different
success.
I have a kind of depression thatfeels like that, like the vapor
lock you mentioned, where likewhat I need is motion.
And on those days, it's like I'mgonna do the mile loop and maybe
I'll do it three or four times.
(40:23):
And it still matters to me thatit's in nature.
I still see things, I stillstartle white-tailed deer, I
still see a jack in the pulpitor some plant that is fleeting,
I'll see some kind of newfungus, but like I need to cover
ground.
And so those are two differentkinds of being there that both
(40:43):
are medicinal to me and bothcount as success.
SPEAKER_00 (40:53):
Like when you are someone who spends a lot of time
in nature, we paint pictures inour mind.
And I was just curious to hearyour answer because as a writer
and as someone who paints thesethings with language a lot of
times, it was just it'sinteresting for me to hear how
people talk about it and whatpeople describe about their
(41:14):
favorite places in nature.
Like, so I I do somephotography, and I have a lot of
friends that are in thisphotography community, and when
I ask them a similar question, alot of times they'll talk about
sort of the colors and the viewsand the the pictures they
brought that that nature paintsfor them, and it's cool to hear
you say that you get to sit andlisten and that you experience
(41:37):
it through sort of that quiet.
I like I like that a lot.
SPEAKER_02 (41:40):
Part of it is that part of why I feel better in
nature is that it refuses to bestagnant, that it is much more
of a verb than a noun on anygiven day.
So, like it's never one view,it's nature forces me to be
present because like theopposite of it is like
(42:02):
depression, kind of internalvoice that tells me that
everything's ruined or there'sno point in anything, or like
something's a lost cause.
These are like static states ofhopelessness or sadness, and I
always say that depression is aliar, that's kind of part of it
tricks.
Now, going out in nature, whenI'm struggling with all of these
(42:25):
sort of mean abstracts that areclaustrophobic and make me feel
trapped, like I don't have anencounter with the concept of
Eastern Cottontail Rabbit.
I have an encounter with thatone on that day, and it's doing
this, and it wasn't doing thatlast time I saw it.
And the whole vibe is differenton that day, and that encounter
(42:48):
isn't like any other encounter.
And sitting in nature or walkingthrough nature, part of the
point for me is that it isn'tstatic.
It's like, yeah, it's a place,but it's still a place on a rock
hurtling through outer space,and that place is always moving
and the soil and the plants andthe trees and the animals.
(43:09):
And so it will snap me out ofthat claustrophobic feeling in
my own life because like I can'tignore the dynamism, the motion,
the constant systems, cycles,organisms, growth, decay.
Like it is all there in such avibrant way that also feels like
(43:30):
home, even though it's and sothe fact that it's constantly
shifting and feels like homehelps me have peace with like
impermanence.
It helps me have peace with theidea that I'm always changing,
aging, growing, havingbackslides, and what I thought I
knew about mental health.
Like the fact that it is a placebut it is always changing kind
(43:52):
of helps me make friends withthat in in my own life and body
and mind.
SPEAKER_00 (43:59):
That's really cool.
That's really cool.
Well, as we kind of wrap uphere, there's a question that I
like to spring on guests,especially if they're not
expecting it's fun for me.
Because it's sort of a bigquestion I ask him, I'm asking
you to distill a lot.
But if there was something youwanted to leave with our
audience, uh, if there was apiece of advice, a piece of
wisdom or something you'vegained, and that can be like
(44:21):
about nature, it can be aboutwriting, it can be your favorite
cookie recipe, I don't care.
Like, what would you wantsomeone to take away with them
after listening to his chat fora while?
SPEAKER_02 (44:32):
Can I read a poem?
SPEAKER_00 (44:34):
Yeah, you can.
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (44:35):
I'll read a poem.
Because I have a poem that'ssort of a thesis statement that
I like.
Hold on.
It's never too far away.
Okay.
This is a poem called WoodlandYou.
It's easy to look at thecontours of a forest and feel a
(44:57):
bone deep love for nature.
It's less easy to remember thatthe contours of your own body
represent the exact same nature,the pathways of your mind, your
dreams, dark and strange assprouts curling beneath a flat
rock, your regret, bitter as thecitrus rot of old cut grass.
(45:19):
It's the same as the nature youmake time to love, that you
practice loving, the forest, themeadow, the sweeping arm of a
galaxy.
You are as natural as anypostcard landscape and deserve
the same love.
SPEAKER_00 (45:40):
That's great.
SPEAKER_02 (45:41):
Thanks.
That's a thing I constantly haveto come back to.
Um, and it's why I find natureso healing is that I oftentimes
don't have like an instinctuallove for myself, but I easily
have an instinctual love ofnature.
So remembering that I'm part ofthat same grand system that
isn't in any way actuallyseparate from myself helps me
(46:04):
get back there to to makingpeace and finding finding love
for myself that isn't based onproductivity, isn't based on
anything.
The idea that my worth is innatein the same way that the worth
of the forest is innate, in away that I don't have to argue
with myself.
SPEAKER_00 (46:21):
That's yeah, wonderful.
That's really beautiful.
I like that a lot.
Well, Jared, I I appreciate yourtime and you coming to chat.
I think that in a lot of ways, II feel like we're kindred
spirits in some ways, in a lotof the ways that we think about
the world, and I and Iappreciate hearing some of the
things I think from anotherperson.
Like that's again validating.
(46:42):
We don't have to like we get toshare this, like you said.
So, real quick, uh, run usthrough a list of of where we
can find you, what you've gotcoming up, where people can
order your book, all that.
SPEAKER_02 (46:52):
Yeah, so the main thing I'd love people to do is
pre-order the new novel, StrangeAnimals, and you can order it
any in the normal places.
I'm a big fan of ordering itfrom whoever your favorite local
bookstore is.
Yeah.
Um, the book about nature andmental health is something in
the woods loves you.
I have three collections ofnature poetry, Field Guide to
(47:14):
the Haunted Forest, Love Notesfrom the Hollow Tree, and Leaf
Litter.
Uh, and you can find informationon any of those at
jaredkanderson.com.
Or I'm the crypto naturalist onmost social media, so you can
find me there.
SPEAKER_00 (47:28):
Very cool, very cool.
Well, man, that was great.
I really enjoyed chatting withyou.
I'll have to try to do thisagain sometime.
And I can't wait to read thebook.
Cool.
SPEAKER_02 (47:37):
Yeah, I'm excited for people to see it.
SPEAKER_00 (47:40):
Y'all, I feel like I could have taken notes during
this episode.
Maybe I should have.
Maybe I'll go back and do thatbecause there was so much wisdom
and knowledge and and justinsight that Jared shared.
And I hope that you reallyenjoyed it because I certainly
really enjoyed it.
Thanks so much for listening toPlanthropology and being a part
of the show.
You know I do this because Ilove you, and because it brings
(48:02):
me so much joy just to tellstories about nature and nature
people and help really coolplant and nature people tell
their own stories.
So thanks for following.
Thanks for listening.
I hope you go follow Jared allover social media, the Crypto
Naturalist.
I hope you'll go pre-order hisbook, Strange Animals.
I already have, and I'm veryexcited to read it here in a few
months.
(48:22):
Planthropology is written,hosted, directed, produced, all
the other things by yours truly,Vikram Baliga.
Our intro music, and normallyour outro music, is by the
award-winning composer NickScout.
But today, since I didn't have amid-roll, I dropped in my buddy
Rui's song Yarrow here at theend.
You can find links to theirstuff in the show notes.
If you want to support the show,you can go find all that
(48:44):
information there too.
So thanks for being a part ofit.
Keep being kind to one another.
If you have not yet been kind tothe people around you, give that
a shot.
We really need you to do that.
Do that as a favor to your plantdaddy here.
Who I didn't I didn't like that.
That had a bad mouthfeel.
I'm gonna leave it in, but I'malso not gonna say it again.
So in a couple of weeks, I haveanother great sort of spooky
(49:07):
Halloween y episode for you.
And I I don't want to ruin thesurprise, but it's so good.
It's gonna be so good.
So thanks again for listening.
Be kind, be good, be safe, andkeep being really cool plant
people.
What is up, plant people?
It's time once more for thePlanthropology Podcast, the
story where we dive into thelives and careers of some very
cool plant people to figure outwhy they do what they do and
what keeps them coming back formore.
I'm Vicarum Beliga, your hostand your humble guide in this
journey through the sciences.
And as always, my friends, I amso excited to be with you today.
Y'all, my guest for today is sogood, and it's someone that I've
followed on social media for along time because his work is so
(00:24):
wonderful and thought-provoking,and he is the creator of several
books, of a lot of nature-based,sort of spooky, creepy poetry,
uh, I don't know if likeeco-poetry or how you want to
cut it, but my guest today,Jared K.
Anderson, goes by the CryptoNaturalist online.
And if you're in some of thesenature spaces and if you've
(00:45):
spent a lot of time on Instagramand different places, you've
probably seen his stuff.
He puts out these reallypoignant, short little poems on
social media, and they're aboutnature and they're about our
connection to it.
And I think about what embodiesthis podcast and our connection
to nature and the world aroundus.
(01:05):
A lot of the work that Jareddoes speaks so directly to me
about that that I was so excitedwhen he agreed to be on the
show.
A couple of things about thisepisode that I I'm not gonna say
I'm gonna warn you about, but alittle bit of a content warning.
We actually have fairly frankdiscussions in this episode
about mental health and ADHD andjust some other issues that
(01:26):
Jared and I both deal with inour lives.
And there's nothing too heavy uhor too dark that we talk about
except for some dark parts ofnature.
But if you're sensitivediscussions about mental health,
I would definitely just cautionyou that that's in here.
But we talk about it and Jaredtalks about it in a way that's
so approachable, and he gives ussome like practical tips that
he's learned.
(01:46):
So we talk about everything fromdealing with your mental health
and working with your brain toaccomplish things in your life
and with nature and how we canuse our sometimes challenging
minds to go and just experiencenature better.
So we talk about his socialmedia work, we talk about all of
the books that he's written andall of his poetry, including a
(02:07):
new one that's coming up calledStrange Animals, which we should
definitely go and pre-orderright away, and just so much
more stuff.
Jared's a cool guy.
I feel like I've found ankindred spirit in a lot of ways
in him, and I think you're gonnareally enjoy this episode.
Uh, one other thing, I forgot torecord a mid-roll, so I'm just
gonna throw out right now if youwant to connect with the show,
go to planthropologypodcast.comor follow along on social media,
(02:30):
either Planthropology Pod or ThePlant Prof.
That's me, and uh send me anemail at planthropologypod at
gmail.com.
But aside from that, so I'mgonna jump right into this
really insightful, poignant,funny, and sometimes even maybe
a little creepy discussion inepisode 124 of the
Planthropology Podcast,Thunderstorms, Hidden Nature,
(02:51):
and the Crypto Naturalist withJared K.
Anderson, I'm gonna be a littlebit of a lot of money.
(03:31):
Let's learn all about you.
SPEAKER_02 (03:33):
Awesome.
Thanks for having me.
Excited to talk with you.
SPEAKER_00 (03:37):
Yeah, so to kick things off, just tell us a
little bit about yourbackground.
What did you do?
How did you get into nature?
Why do you do what you do today?
SPEAKER_02 (03:45):
Yeah, so so I've had a bit of a winding trail to get
to where I am.
Um, always been a huge naturelover, grew up in sort of rural
Ohio with a mom who used to takeme on daily nature walks was
some of my earliest memories.
So we would just go to the woodsevery day and see what was
blooming and what animals werearound, and she would quiz me on
(04:09):
spring ephemerals, and we'd finda green heron that fell out of a
nest, and we would work onrehabbing it, and so that was
always such a central part of mylife.
And we were not a religiousfamily at all, but my mom always
called the woods her church.
So that was my background.
So I don't remember a timewithout the nature connection.
(04:32):
But for me, a sort of centralpart of my story was drifting
away as I kind of internalized alot of sort of our own kind of
cultural separation from nature,the sort of American capitalism
I was raised in, and then tryingto figure out what was missing.
And what was missing was a thingthat I had once understood
(04:54):
instinctually.
And the nature writing, it'sfunny, I have kind of a pinpoint
of where I got into naturewriting because I had a teacher
in fifth grade named MissWillard, who used to take us out
behind the school, and there wasjust acres of woods back there,
and they called it the land lab.
And I don't know if you could dothis anymore, but she would just
(05:14):
take a bunch of fifth gradersback there with pen and paper
and say, okay, just go find aplace to sit in the woods and
write down what you see.
She would read nature poetry tous, and I started writing nature
poetry.
I won a Ohio poetry contest whenI was 10 with some nature poems,
and um yeah, I never stopped.
(05:35):
So uh that that's when I gotinto nature writing.
Growing up, I started to kind ofget a sense that some of my
passions weren't necessarilycool.
And then in college, I uh I wasa non-traditional student.
I did sort of a lot of otherthings before I realized like
I'm a real book nerd, what am Idoing?
But I worked in construction andsurveying and all sorts of stuff
(05:58):
before I eventually went and wasan English major at Ohio State,
and then I got a master's,started teaching literature at
Ohio University, and was off toa PhD, and then I realized that
I really didn't love the job,and that wasn't a goodie to have
going into a PhD.
But I had it in mind that if Iwanted to be somebody who wrote
and read, and that was my life,that I needed to be an
(06:20):
academian.
But the job was grading hundredsof essays by students who didn't
want to write them.
And I would get home at nightand was like, okay, I hate words
now.
I didn't want to work on mywriting.
So I ended up kind of shiftingas a kind of refugees from
English programs do.
I ended up in marketing.
(06:40):
Um and I tried to mostly dononprofits because I still
wanted to do mission-drivenstuff.
So I worked for Franklin ParkConservatory, which was cool,
and I started doingscholarships, that kind of work.
And then I ended up back at OUas a director of external
relations.
And I I was really miserable.
And I also had really kind ofunacknowledged, serious major
(07:04):
depression.
And my job, I would describe myjob as being in meetings about
future meetings.
SPEAKER_00 (07:10):
And I just that feels that by the way, it feels
like way too real.
Being in academia, that feels soreal.
SPEAKER_02 (07:17):
Yeah, it was and something about the depression.
It was so hard to get out of bedthat to make myself do it, and
then and be in these meetingswhere I thought to myself, like,
well, they didn't need me hereat all.
And these are my sort of limitedlife minutes ticking past.
And eventually I had a verysupportive partner who had a
(07:40):
good job, and uh eventually shewas just kind of like, Hey,
quit, we'll figure it out.
And I did.
And then I was a little bitcrushed to find that I wasn't
instantly happy, that leavingthe job behind didn't fix
everything.
And it was like I had toacknowledge, uh-oh, maybe this
is me.
Maybe there's something moreinternal happening with my
(08:00):
mental health than gripes aboutmy job.
Um and I started going totherapy eventually, finally,
which was terrifying to bevulnerable in that way.
Um and what was monumental forme is I started getting back to
the woods and getting back tocreativity and finding that I
(08:22):
felt sort of nourished and wholein a way that it was hard for me
to articulate at first as awords guy.
And I've been kind of pullingthat thread ever since as I've
come back to nature in a varietyof ways, and sometimes it is
coming back as an enthusiast.
(08:43):
I think of myself as anaturalist.
Um it's funny, I use enthusiastbecause sometimes my
perfectionism gets caught up andlike, oh, I don't have any
business in the in in theseconversations because I'm not an
expert.
And so enthusiast means like,okay, but I can come as an
enthusiast, which gives myselfpermission to put my enthusiasm
(09:07):
first and and boost otherexperts and kind of embrace the
role of an enthusiast.
Um, and it also that carriedover to my fiction and poetry,
too.
Like sometimes my love of natureis in rooted in science, and
sometimes it's rooted incapturing the wonder I feel
through metaphor.
(09:27):
I have a six-year-old son, hecame up to me a while ago and
said, Hey, are electric eelsreal?
And I just said, like, oh man,what a reasonable question.
And what a no right?
Yeah, what a reasonablequestion, and what a bizarre
answer I have for you.
Like, yes.
And sometimes I like to do thatthrough fantasy and science
fiction, kind of to put the realmiraculous nature and fictional
(09:53):
elements side by side and umconflate them in a bit to try to
recapture that childhood senseof holy crap, our electric
heel's real.
Um so yeah, that has landed mewhere I am today.
I'm a full-time writer now,shockingly, not a thing I
thought was possible, but that'skind of that's kind of my gig
right now.
SPEAKER_00 (10:13):
That's awesome.
And I want to go back to whatyou just said, that it there's a
kind of a fantastical answer toa reasonable question.
And that for me, as someone wholoves nature and spends a lot of
time, or now I live in Lubbock,Texas, which is about the
flattest, driest place on theplanet.
It feels that way anyway.
(10:34):
And uh but nature, I think, iswhere you look for it, and the
wonder of it sometimes is whereyou look for it.
And so to have a question that'slike, are electric eels real?
What's the deal with narwhals?
And the answer to be wow, do Ihave a story for you?
Yeah, you are not gonna believethis.
That is just such a cool thingthat like you said, that's
(10:58):
sometimes we lose along the way.
We we forget to look for orsomething.
I I don't know how to articulatethat, right?
SPEAKER_02 (11:04):
But I think that's right.
And I think a lot of it is amind game that I know I played
with myself where I thought,like, okay, well, childhood
wonder is a thing forsix-year-olds.
Like it's a thing that's kind oflocked in the glass case of the
past or in childhood.
But like you think of theenormity of nature anywhere you
are.
I mean, you can be the studentof one tree species in your
(11:27):
yard, and you will never masterit.
Like, you think of the enormityof it.
Wonder and surprise at even thebare facts of nature.
Like, there is no reason forthat to live in childhood.
Like, I I'm currently writing abook about dandelions for Timber
Press.
I thought I knew.
I thought I knew a fair amountabout dandelions and very common
(11:50):
plant, and I've been shocked,just kind of again.
And it's just so fun to to kindof acknowledge my own
limitations and to think ofthose as a doorway to wonder and
not something to be frustratingor galling.
I think that's a thing that welose sometimes.
Like we're used to being in thenewcomer mindset when we're
(12:13):
kids, and then sometimes ittakes a bit of intentionality to
get back there, I think, asgrown-ups.
SPEAKER_00 (12:22):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I think there is somethingin a lot of us as adults that
that just constantly reaches forthat, like we're constantly
longing for it, even if we can'tlike point a finger at it.
You know what I mean?
I think back to when the firstuh Avatar movie came out, and
there was like this documentedphenomenon where people would go
(12:45):
and see this movie and walk outof it and be depressed because
of this fantastical world thatthey were just immersed in.
And that comes out of, I think,not spending enough time looking
at ours because yeah, there'slike weird blue aliens and glowy
things, but there is so much outthere that will just blow your
(13:05):
mind.
It's just like, how does thatwork?
Why does that work?
Like, what trick of evolutioncame up with this slug or this
snail that lives in volcanoes?
Why is that a thing?
Like, that's incredible.
SPEAKER_02 (13:17):
Or ways you can find other fantastical worlds kind of
hiding in plain sight.
Like, I went on a night frogwalk not too long ago with
somebody who'd never done onebefore.
And like, I think she lived amile or so from where we were,
but we got a little out in thecountry.
And it was like the sounds likewhat is that?
And it's like, well, there arelike six species of katy dids
(13:40):
you can hear right now.
Like, there are three differentspecies of frogs we can hear.
Like, there was somebody with uswho was a real entomology nerd,
and was like, oh, that's thiskaty did.
I'm gonna try to find it.
And we're like, You're gonna tryto find it?
That sounds impossible, but theperson I was with was just
really blown away by how strangeit was to just be a mile from
(14:02):
her house in the dark.
Um, and what a different worldit is.
And I mean, doing that is a wayto find a different world.
Sometimes I talk about justzooming in.
Like, I mean, turn over a rock.
Like, I think of myself as anature nerd, and how often am I
surprised by something that Ihave no idea what it is?
Constantly.
I have I have a mushroom nerdpal, and we go out in the woods,
(14:24):
and she's constantly showing methings that's like, nope, never
noticed that before.
This slime mold or this tinypinprick of a mushroom.
And it's funny, like mydepression can constantly um
badger me with sort of impostersyndrome.
And that's one way to look atit.
Like, I remember when I wasgetting myself back to the woods
(14:45):
thinking like I'm gonna do thiswrong somehow, which is on the
one hand tragic, and on onehand, but if you think of it as
more like a menu of differentwonders that that are just there
if you take the time to reallytry to acquaint yourself with
it.
Because it's not I don't careabout facts or names because
(15:09):
someone's gonna quiz me.
I do it because I'm trying tomake a connection, like learning
a stranger's name, so they'renot a stranger anymore.
Like these are like breadcrumbsof information that help me feel
more more connected.
Um I live next to a cemetery, solike lichens are one for me.
That I mean, lichens areamazing.
(15:31):
It's I didn't know where theywere, and then you start looking
into it and to have aphotosynthesizer and a fungi
working together, and then mypoet brain is like, okay, so
it's like uh it's like ashepherd and its flock living
together, but it's hard to saywho's the shepherd and who's the
flock in the relationship, andso it's cool in like a meta way,
(15:52):
but then you can kind of diveinto like, oh, this one's
edible.
Oh, this one is this colorbecause of this element, and I
mean, most you can find lichenon sidewalks, yeah.
It's there, it's just like it'salmost giving yourself
permission to take it seriouslyenriches your world.
Because I think that's part ofthe disconnect.
(16:13):
Like, if it isn't part ofproductivity, and if it's not
making you money, and if it'snot part of your direct career,
why are you making time for it?
SPEAKER_00 (16:22):
Yeah, oh yeah, that's so well said that I joke
a lot, and my wife and I talkabout this a lot that I have
this really nasty habit ofturning like my hobbies into
side hustles because it's in mybrain, right?
It's one of these things thatlike what you just said, if it's
not producing something, if it'snot part of this unit of
(16:44):
whatever, why are you doing it?
And I've had to really take astep back recently.
I'm in my late 30s now, and Irealized that I got to where I
wasn't doing things that werejust for me.
Yeah, you know, I wasn't doingthings that like built into my
own life.
I did it because I needed to gosell something or I needed to go
do something.
And so, like, whether that'sgoing out in nature and looking
(17:06):
for liken, or what I kind ofwant to get into next is some of
the social media stuff you do.
It can be both.
Like it can be a job, it can bea personal thing.
But I think for me at least, andand I I'd be interested to hear
your take on this.
Like, when it starts to feellike just another job, like
that's when I really have toreflect a lot.
(17:26):
I really have to look at it andbe like, okay, what are my
motivations here?
Why am I doing this?
SPEAKER_02 (17:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's gotten muddy for me lately
because it was like accidentallymy side hustle became the job.
And so sometimes I feel a littlelost in the sauce when I'm
trying to think of what I wantto do next, because it's like,
all right, a lot of the things Iattribute the success of some of
(17:52):
the books I've written and thesocial media to sort of the
human innate sense of sincerityand authenticity.
So on the one hand, I feel likewhen what I do works, it's
because people sense that Iactually care about the things
I'm talking about.
(18:13):
And I think that's true.
And yet that is also my job now.
So I'm like, okay, but what isthe smart career thing to do
next?
And then it's like, okay, butthe smart career thing to do
next is the thing I care about.
And so that starts to feel likeweird in a way of like there
used to be a firmer separationbetween these things.
SPEAKER_01 (18:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (18:34):
And sometimes it leads me to have like secret
writing projects that I don'tshow anybody to kind of like
remind myself that this is forme, or like I'll co-write
something with Leslie, is ahorror writer.
She had a horror novel come outlast year called The Unmothers.
Yeah.
So so we're both writing nerdsfrom way back.
(18:55):
Yeah.
So it is, it does get kind ofmuddled sometimes for me.
That's true of everything interms of.
I wrote a book called Somethingin the Woods Loves You about my
struggles with mental health.
Um, but one of my bigbreakthroughs in mental health
isn't that I feel like I'vefigured out depression.
(19:16):
Like I was so worried aboutwriting that book that I
desperately didn't want to writethe book that's like, go touch a
tree and you feel better.
Like the toxic positivityuniversalizing my per my
experiences, stuff that I hate.
But like the thing I felt that Igot through sort of the mental
health journey captured in thatbook was more like a rejection
(19:38):
of shame as the thing that madeeverything else harder.
And the four that I came up withwas thinking of my depression as
brain weather, as part ofnatural cycles.
And just quickly, that metaphorgoes like this: like if I
planned a picnic and it wascanceled by a thunderstorm, I
would be disappointed, but Iwouldn't be ashamed.
(20:00):
Why?
All right, well, thunderstormsare natural phenomenon, I didn't
invite it, I don't controlthunderstorms.
So why would I feel ashamed ifit canceled my picnic?
All right, well, mental illness,in my case, depression, it's a
natural phenomenon.
I didn't invite it, I don'tsteer it, it's a thunderstorm.
So, like, I can be disappointedwhen I wake up and feel a real
(20:24):
serious burden of depression.
But I can kick shame out of theequation with that trick.
And so that lets me um be kinderto myself, because it used to be
I wouldn't acknowledge itbecause I was too ashamed to
think of myself as somebody whocouldn't think my way through
depression.
(20:45):
But what we're talking abouthere, the hustle culture versus
leaving time for what youactually like.
I talk about that in the book,but it's funny, like, even
though I know that, air quotes,in kind of an intellectual
level, it doesn't matter.
Like, I have to continually, inthinking of my own internal
landscape as a naturallandscape, it's subject to
(21:07):
cycles and seasons.
And understanding that meansthat, like, all right, I'm not
crushed when I realize I've kindof fallen into the same like
ditch that I've been in before.
Um, and then sometimes at thispoint I laugh at myself, like
opening to the chapter about thething that I had figured out two
years ago that now I need toremind myself of.
(21:29):
It's like a note slipped acrosstime.
SPEAKER_00 (21:33):
I I really like that's really interesting.
And I think that so much of whatyou say resonates with me too,
because I I often, when I'mteaching, I talk about
ecosystems.
We talk about ecology in myclass, and I relate that in my
own life to my life and myinternal, external environment,
everything around me.
And like in any healthyecosystem, there's all these
(21:54):
pieces that that fit together.
And sometimes one of them gets alittle out of whack for a while,
and the ecosystem figures outhow to recover, but with enough
little pieces and enough enoughtime and enough care, like it
recovers, and it's something alittle bit different, but it's
still something that functionswell, and it's still something
that's that's good and that'snew and all that.
(22:14):
And I think that's really cool.
And okay, so that that leads meinto my next question or my next
kind of big topic is uh your uhsort of persona is not the right
word, but your outlet of thecrypto naturalist, which again I
discovered a long time agothrough some of the nature
poetry and stuff that you putout there.
And for any of the uh for anyonethat hasn't like experienced it,
(22:37):
like you go go follow the cryptonaturalist because it's this
interesting mix, at least in myopinion as a as a fan, as a
consumer of it, uh, of reallylike poignant deep stuff and
then like really funny thingsand then like almost creepy
stuff, which I reallyappreciate.
And it it melds together intothis really interesting vibe
(23:00):
that in my mind encapsulates somuch of what how nature feels
just in general.
Like I think you write thatreally well.
So I'm curious just to hear howyou decided to start that and
and where like how thatdeveloped over time.
SPEAKER_02 (23:15):
It first developed when I was still in those
meetings about meetings as justa full act of rebellion of like,
all right, I want to dosomething just for me that is
the opposite of what I amcurrently doing, trying to be
very suit and tie.
I was kind of on the I don'tknow how this happened, but I
found myself on theadministration side of academia,
(23:37):
and that was, if anything, evenmore uncomfortable.
Um but so I'm like, all right,well, what if I just do
something just for fun, justutterly for fun, that resolutely
reject is for anything.
And so it was all right, love ofnature and fantasy, science
fiction, monsters.
(23:58):
It's like, all right, perfect,easy.
Like I had I started thispodcast that was scripted, um,
short episodic fiction.
That's just this one guy who wasthe crypto naturalist, and he
was a bit of an homage.
I think of him as a characterhomage to the sort of nature
(24:18):
shows I liked in the late 80s asa kid, and in particular was
called Wild America, which wasthis dude from Tennessee.
Yeah, who just was like, Oh, I'min a swamp and now I'm picking
up an alligator snapping turtle,and oh, he's pretty angry.
Uh I was like that guy, but it'sthe X-Files, yeah.
(24:38):
Um so that was the premise.
But since it was just for me, Iwasn't really thinking of like a
brand in the sense.
So, like, yeah, I would throw inpoetry, or I would have on guest
poets, and on the social media,sometimes it would be the creepy
stuff, and sometimes I wouldjust post a nature poem I wrote,
(25:00):
or a cool thing that happenedwhen I was volunteering at a
wildlife rescue, and all of itjust kind of I would say to
people later when it started tohave more of a following that
like I understood that I hadlike an inscrutable brand and
that that was strange.
And somebody pointed out to meat one point, it's like, yeah,
but you are the connectivetissue, like this is all stuff
(25:22):
you're interested in, and so itcan feel connected because it's
all coming from your brain.
And it's like, all right, yeah,I like that because it gives me
permission to continue to dosort of whatever I want.
And that's that's how that thesocial media presence in the
podcast grew.
Um, it does now sometimes createsmall friction because, like,
(25:45):
this novel I have coming out inFebruary, it's from Ballantine
Books, big cool fantasy sci-fipublisher.
My editor was the editor for TheMartian and Ready Player One.
Really cool.
Wow.
Yeah, yeah.
Julian Pavia, awesome guy,awesome editor.
Um, but like it leads toward thecreepy.
Like it is more of a story ofhidden nature being foreboding.
(26:11):
Now it's about someone coming toterms with it and realizing that
the sort of mysterious natureand real nature are both
miraculous in their own way andkind of finding his place in in
this new landscape.
But some advanced copies havegone out, and there's a website
that sort of gets opinions fromadvanced readers.
(26:33):
Great response to the book.
But one review I saw said, like,well, I really loved his memoir
about depression, and it was sogentle, and honestly, this was
just really too scary for me.
And I was like, Yeah, fair.
Like, I I publish a lot ofgentle nature poetry and uh and
stuff about the poetic side ofnature and mental health.
(26:54):
And it's like, all right, well,now but here's horror elements
in a fantasy novel.
So yeah, so sometimes it can beconfusing to people.
SPEAKER_00 (27:03):
Yeah, I I I I can see that.
I can see that, but at the sametime, what a cool picture of how
nature is just uh at a largescale, right?
And and I'm thinking throughthis as I'm saying it, but I I
have always thought that we putuh like value judgments on
(27:26):
things that just are.
Yeah, nature is just beingnature, and so you'll watch this
documentary and you startrooting for the the penguin or
the baby seal, and then oh, herecomes the polar bear or the
orcas, and it's an emotionalroller coaster.
And there are uh quote unquoteor or what we would think of as
like dark, scary parts ofnature, but it it also just is
(27:50):
what it is, right?
And I think that one of thethings that uh at least in my
opinion, or in my experience andthe people that I've talked to
and worked with, that one of thethings that gets people off
track sometimes is that we uh ashumans, and maybe this is just
part of our nature, we try toput everything in neat little
boxes, right?
Like this is this is this, andwe're over here and nature's
(28:14):
over here, and all these, butlike it's it's all just part of
the same thing.
Absolutely.
And if as people, as our ownlike internal ecosystems, we
have the happy fun parts and thewhimsical parts and then the
dark parts too, like nature'sthe same way.
And but I I do take that thatcomment though of someone
commenting like oh is a littletoo scary based on this.
(28:35):
Like, I I've written achildren's book and then I post
like some really most of mystuff on social media is me
yelling about five-minute craftsand the which I love.
SPEAKER_02 (28:46):
I love the I love the There Are No Seeds and
Bananas trip.
SPEAKER_00 (28:50):
Oh my god.
It's just you Jared, I get somany of those in my inbox.
It's like everyone sees them andthey're like, oh, I know exactly
what some must do.
SPEAKER_02 (29:00):
Well, you're doing good work, someone needs to be
answering these.
They're shocking.
SPEAKER_00 (29:06):
And so someone made a comment.
There's actually a section in mybook talking about things that
we can actually do with bananasand and ways that like we can
use it to do everything fromlike hair products to shoe
shine, to there's all these wayswe can repurpose the peels that
actually do things.
And someone was like, Don't youspend all of your time yelling
(29:27):
about bananas?
I'm like, okay, listen.
SPEAKER_02 (29:30):
Specifically, yeah.
Specific context, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (29:35):
So, no, I I totally get that.
So you've written a lot betweenyour poetry, your fiction, your
memoir, everything else.
Like it's really a great body ofwork.
Like, how do you decide?
And you kind of answered this alittle bit already, but I I just
wondered if you have a processof like what's next.
(29:55):
How do you think through likewhat's on the horizon sort of
project plan?
SPEAKER_02 (30:00):
I try to respect my ADHD, where like my ideal career
really is like this year is anonfiction year, and this year
is a fiction year.
And if I have my way, I willsort of do that kind of
alternation into the future.
And then the poetry just kind ofalways happens.
Poetry always happens becauseit's a tool for me.
(30:24):
Geez, it's cathartic, it's anoutlet, and maybe most
importantly, I'm always saying Idon't know what I actually think
about a thing until I write itdown.
Um because my brain is a noisyplace, and sometimes it's a
tough place.
And things can remain slipperyand abstract as ideas until I
(30:48):
start tethering them to wordsand anchoring them to the page,
and then they take shape in adifferent way for me, and I can
like have a conversation, I cansit the idea down and talk to
it.
And poetry does that for me.
And so I have a fourth poetrycollection that's getting close,
but what getting close means iswhen it's long enough to be a
(31:09):
poetry collection, I'll put itout as a new poetry collection.
So like the poetry accretes, andthen the longer projects, like I
just I really do have eclecticinterests, but you've hit on it.
I don't find them to be asseparate as sometimes I think
other people do.
Like, I don't find there to bethat stark of a separation from
what it is to write fiction andwhat it is to write nonfiction.
(31:33):
Because even like this book I'mwriting about dandelions, Timber
Press published the memoir, andthey came to me and said, We're
just doing this series of shortillustrated books on specific
plants and animals.
Do you want to do one?
And I said, Yes, dandelions.
Um, which really came from mestruggling with all or nothing
(31:54):
thinking in my own life.
And dandelions are aninteresting subject in terms of
the conversation of thinking ofnon-native versus invasive, how
we categorize them, what we doabout them, what does it matter,
ecosystem services they provide.
So I picked dandelions becauseit was a thing I wanted to think
(32:15):
about.
But even though it's nonfiction,the way I think about it is
still as a storyteller, it's thesame as when I wrote about
depression.
So, no, I'm not inventing plot,and I'm not thinking about
character arcs, but I amthinking about putting myself in
the reader's shoes, and I'mthinking about human animals
(32:38):
being creatures that understandthe world through stories.
So they don't feel thatdifferent to me.
It's more like a flavor thing ofwhen I'm working on the
dandelion book, I go down rabbitholes where somebody will make a
claim on a blog, and then I'llspend the next hour looking up
peer-reviewed papers to see ifthere's anything behind it.
(33:01):
Yeah.
And often there's not.
It's interesting.
Like, dandelions are so commonthat somebody'll say a thing,
and then you'll see the game oftelephone on the internet.
Where like seeds can travel 500miles.
Okay.
Like, I see this here.
I see it repeated on a paper atCornell.
Not a paper, like a blogarticle.
(33:21):
And then, like, I'm like, basedon what?
Well, based on nothing.
Someone said it once and then itgot repeated.
Like, could that be true?
Yeah, sure.
Under ideal circumstances.
It's that repeating for thedandelion paper.
So that's part of the process.
When it's the novel, it's notthat at all.
It's I'm bored with thissection.
So I will write in all caps,write a transition later, and I
(33:45):
will move on to the next thingthat's fun.
So um they don't feel thatdifferent, but what's fun for me
is to add variety to the writingjust to kind of keep it all
interesting for me.
SPEAKER_00 (33:58):
I totally get that.
And I I identify strongly withhaving to wrangle or work
towards the strengths or thepatterns of an ADHD brain.
And like having the people arealways like, you do so many
things.
I'm like, yeah, I do, because Ihave to, yeah, or I get like in
like I'll vapor lock at somepoint if I get a it hurts to not
(34:21):
to try to lock yourself into thesame pattern for too long.
SPEAKER_02 (34:25):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:26):
Yeah.
And I'll like sit down to writea paper or work on a book or do
whatever.
And then after a while, mybrain's just like, no, you're
done with this today.
SPEAKER_02 (34:36):
And respecting that is is important.
It doesn't always play nice withlike modern work culture, right?
So it's hard, but I do try tothink of it as a feature, not a
bug sometimes.
Because it also can do hyperfocus sometimes.
I mean, did you ever get that?
Like we're just all in in a waythat that people who don't have
(34:58):
don't struggle with ADHD don'tdo.
The problem is I don't controlthat switch, right?
Like there are times I wish Icould flip on the hyper focus
mode because I really want towrite 2,000 words today.
And yeah, I don't control it.
Sometimes it happens, sometimesit doesn't.
SPEAKER_00 (35:14):
I totally get that.
And then you do what you can andthen you work around it.
And eventually, what what I tellpeople a lot is in the end, like
it gets done.
It all gets done.
The time scale may be a littlegoofy, but it all gets done.
And then sometimes it's like waymore than I intended to get
done.
SPEAKER_02 (35:31):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, my whole thing, likesometimes people be like, Well,
how do you write a whole novelor how do you write a whole
book?
And it I have this more thannothing mantra, is all it is.
I have I have the saying,consistency over intensity.
Like, stop thinking about thewhole book.
Start thinking about I'm gonnawrite at least a paragraph every
(35:51):
day.
Like, that's how you write awhole book.
Um, so it's like it's almostlike I can't think about the
book, I can only think aboutlike the pattern, like the
habit.
Like I yeah, and and for me,with the with the weird brain,
like I will loosen it sometimesso I can continue to feel
successful of like it's 500words or it's 20 minutes of
(36:14):
dedicated effort.
Yeah, because sometimes it'sjust that squirm me in the
chair, I don't wanna.
And but like if I sit with thatfor 10-15 minutes, like like
sometimes it'll break loose.
But if it doesn't, I'm stillcounting it like as a win if I
do the 20 minutes, like stilleffort, yeah.
(36:36):
It's just again, all thesetricks to and validate that idea
we talked about that our ownminds are parts of ecosystems
cycles, and reject the thing Iused to do that was all or
nothing.
Either I'm on track or I'mtotally broken, either I'm on
the path or I'm completely lost,one or the other.
(36:56):
Zero, zero sum game.
And now I've gotten a lot betterat being like, no, this is this
kind of day.
Success looks like this on thisday, and it's gonna look like
something else on a differentday, and that's perfectly okay
and perfectly natural.
SPEAKER_00 (37:11):
And that's awesome.
And I know you don't know it,but that's something like I
needed to hear this week.
So I appreciate that.
Because I'm I like I've beentraveling for work, and you get
back from being away at aconference or whatever for a
week, and you're six monthsbehind somehow.
Like there's some weird timevortex, and then it just like
feels like, oh my god, I haven'taccomplished anything.
(37:31):
When the fact is, it's like, no,you still accomplish a lot, and
you take the success where youcan.
SPEAKER_02 (37:36):
And the conference is important too and deserves to
have room.
Like, but you're right, like youcan there are a lot of weird
forces that are out there tryingto make you feel like a failure.
But yeah, it's hard.
I have to do this.
My my my partner and I do itconstantly of like just kind of
saying our off-the-wallanxieties out loud, like the
(37:59):
worst case scenario stuff.
Because boy, it is nice.
I mean, one of the fun thingsabout humans and language is
that we can borrow otherpeople's brains for this stuff
too, that we don't have to takeour own word for everything all
the time.
SPEAKER_00 (38:13):
That's a cool way to think about that.
I like it.
So to bring it back a littlebit, thinking about your
childhood and growing up andspending all this time in
nature, do you have a and Iasked this question for a
specific reason, sort of.
Do you have like a favoritenatural space?
Is there a place that like ifyou think of I'm gonna go be in
(38:34):
nature, that's what pops intoyour head?
SPEAKER_02 (38:37):
Yeah.
I mean, generally it's sort oflike Ohio deep woods.
And for me now, there's like aspecific trail in a specific
park that is it's like the it'slike a trail that's a trail in
name only, and most people whogo there don't use it.
I think it's called a primitivetrail on a map.
(38:57):
It's muddy, and I can tell bythe orb weaver webs that I take
in the face when I go on it thatnobody else is walking on it.
But it's just this crookedlittle footpath that leads past
a bunch of really huge shagbarkhickories.
And so, like, it's a verypopular place with red squirrels
(39:18):
and gray squirrels.
I saw a barred owl once outthere and just kind of sat on
the leaves for as long as itwould tolerate me.
And it's just it feels likehonestly, it feels like the
woods where I grew up.
And the success looks differenton different days, things apply
to that too.
Because yes, it is a specificplace, but there are days when
(39:41):
going to nature means finding abig tree and sitting.
I see more animals, I see moreof nature in general if I sit
still and I do it a long timebecause the birds that acclimate
to me, what I will see in theleaf litter, what I will hear is
(40:02):
so different than when I'mtrying to really cover ground.
But covering ground is adifferent day for different
success.
I have a kind of depression thatfeels like that, like the vapor
lock you mentioned, where likewhat I need is motion.
And on those days, it's like I'mgonna do the mile loop and maybe
I'll do it three or four times.
(40:23):
And it still matters to me thatit's in nature.
I still see things, I stillstartle white-tailed deer, I
still see a jack in the pulpitor some plant that is fleeting,
I'll see some kind of newfungus, but like I need to cover
ground.
And so those are two differentkinds of being there that both
(40:43):
are medicinal to me and bothcount as success.
SPEAKER_00 (40:53):
Like when you are someone who spends a lot of time
in nature, we paint pictures inour mind.
And I was just curious to hearyour answer because as a writer
and as someone who paints thesethings with language a lot of
times, it was just it'sinteresting for me to hear how
people talk about it and whatpeople describe about their
(41:14):
favorite places in nature.
Like, so I I do somephotography, and I have a lot of
friends that are in thisphotography community, and when
I ask them a similar question, alot of times they'll talk about
sort of the colors and the viewsand the the pictures they
brought that that nature paintsfor them, and it's cool to hear
you say that you get to sit andlisten and that you experience
(41:37):
it through sort of that quiet.
I like I like that a lot.
SPEAKER_02 (41:40):
Part of it is that part of why I feel better in
nature is that it refuses to bestagnant, that it is much more
of a verb than a noun on anygiven day.
So, like it's never one view,it's nature forces me to be
present because like theopposite of it is like
(42:02):
depression, kind of internalvoice that tells me that
everything's ruined or there'sno point in anything, or like
something's a lost cause.
These are like static states ofhopelessness or sadness, and I
always say that depression is aliar, that's kind of part of it
tricks.
Now, going out in nature, whenI'm struggling with all of these
(42:25):
sort of mean abstracts that areclaustrophobic and make me feel
trapped, like I don't have anencounter with the concept of
Eastern Cottontail Rabbit.
I have an encounter with thatone on that day, and it's doing
this, and it wasn't doing thatlast time I saw it.
And the whole vibe is differenton that day, and that encounter
(42:48):
isn't like any other encounter.
And sitting in nature or walkingthrough nature, part of the
point for me is that it isn'tstatic.
It's like, yeah, it's a place,but it's still a place on a rock
hurtling through outer space,and that place is always moving
and the soil and the plants andthe trees and the animals.
(43:09):
And so it will snap me out ofthat claustrophobic feeling in
my own life because like I can'tignore the dynamism, the motion,
the constant systems, cycles,organisms, growth, decay.
Like it is all there in such avibrant way that also feels like
(43:30):
home, even though it's and sothe fact that it's constantly
shifting and feels like homehelps me have peace with like
impermanence.
It helps me have peace with theidea that I'm always changing,
aging, growing, havingbackslides, and what I thought I
knew about mental health.
Like the fact that it is a placebut it is always changing kind
(43:52):
of helps me make friends withthat in in my own life and body
and mind.
SPEAKER_00 (43:59):
That's really cool.
That's really cool.
Well, as we kind of wrap uphere, there's a question that I
like to spring on guests,especially if they're not
expecting it's fun for me.
Because it's sort of a bigquestion I ask him, I'm asking
you to distill a lot.
But if there was something youwanted to leave with our
audience, uh, if there was apiece of advice, a piece of
wisdom or something you'vegained, and that can be like
(44:21):
about nature, it can be aboutwriting, it can be your favorite
cookie recipe, I don't care.
Like, what would you wantsomeone to take away with them
after listening to his chat fora while?
SPEAKER_02 (44:32):
Can I read a poem?
SPEAKER_00 (44:34):
Yeah, you can.
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02 (44:35):
I'll read a poem.
Because I have a poem that'ssort of a thesis statement that
I like.
Hold on.
It's never too far away.
Okay.
This is a poem called WoodlandYou.
It's easy to look at thecontours of a forest and feel a
(44:57):
bone deep love for nature.
It's less easy to remember thatthe contours of your own body
represent the exact same nature,the pathways of your mind, your
dreams, dark and strange assprouts curling beneath a flat
rock, your regret, bitter as thecitrus rot of old cut grass.
(45:19):
It's the same as the nature youmake time to love, that you
practice loving, the forest, themeadow, the sweeping arm of a
galaxy.
You are as natural as anypostcard landscape and deserve
the same love.
SPEAKER_00 (45:40):
That's great.
SPEAKER_02 (45:41):
Thanks.
That's a thing I constantly haveto come back to.
Um, and it's why I find natureso healing is that I oftentimes
don't have like an instinctuallove for myself, but I easily
have an instinctual love ofnature.
So remembering that I'm part ofthat same grand system that
isn't in any way actuallyseparate from myself helps me
(46:04):
get back there to to makingpeace and finding finding love
for myself that isn't based onproductivity, isn't based on
anything.
The idea that my worth is innatein the same way that the worth
of the forest is innate, in away that I don't have to argue
with myself.
SPEAKER_00 (46:21):
That's yeah, wonderful.
That's really beautiful.
I like that a lot.
Well, Jared, I I appreciate yourtime and you coming to chat.
I think that in a lot of ways, II feel like we're kindred
spirits in some ways, in a lotof the ways that we think about
the world, and I and Iappreciate hearing some of the
things I think from anotherperson.
Like that's again validating.
(46:42):
We don't have to like we get toshare this, like you said.
So, real quick, uh, run usthrough a list of of where we
can find you, what you've gotcoming up, where people can
order your book, all that.
SPEAKER_02 (46:52):
Yeah, so the main thing I'd love people to do is
pre-order the new novel, StrangeAnimals, and you can order it
any in the normal places.
I'm a big fan of ordering itfrom whoever your favorite local
bookstore is.
Yeah.
Um, the book about nature andmental health is something in
the woods loves you.
I have three collections ofnature poetry, Field Guide to
(47:14):
the Haunted Forest, Love Notesfrom the Hollow Tree, and Leaf
Litter.
Uh, and you can find informationon any of those at
jaredkanderson.com.
Or I'm the crypto naturalist onmost social media, so you can
find me there.
SPEAKER_00 (47:28):
Very cool, very cool.
Well, man, that was great.
I really enjoyed chatting withyou.
I'll have to try to do thisagain sometime.
And I can't wait to read thebook.
Cool.
SPEAKER_02 (47:37):
Yeah, I'm excited for people to see it.
SPEAKER_00 (47:40):
Y'all, I feel like I could have taken notes during
this episode.
Maybe I should have.
Maybe I'll go back and do thatbecause there was so much wisdom
and knowledge and and justinsight that Jared shared.
And I hope that you reallyenjoyed it because I certainly
really enjoyed it.
Thanks so much for listening toPlanthropology and being a part
of the show.
You know I do this because Ilove you, and because it brings
(48:02):
me so much joy just to tellstories about nature and nature
people and help really coolplant and nature people tell
their own stories.
So thanks for following.
Thanks for listening.
I hope you go follow Jared allover social media, the Crypto
Naturalist.
I hope you'll go pre-order hisbook, Strange Animals.
I already have, and I'm veryexcited to read it here in a few
months.
(48:22):
Planthropology is written,hosted, directed, produced, all
the other things by yours truly,Vikram Baliga.
Our intro music, and normallyour outro music, is by the
award-winning composer NickScout.
But today, since I didn't have amid-roll, I dropped in my buddy
Rui's song Yarrow here at theend.
You can find links to theirstuff in the show notes.
If you want to support the show,you can go find all that
(48:44):
information there too.
So thanks for being a part ofit.
Keep being kind to one another.
If you have not yet been kind tothe people around you, give that
a shot.
We really need you to do that.
Do that as a favor to your plantdaddy here.
Who I didn't I didn't like that.
That had a bad mouthfeel.
I'm gonna leave it in, but I'malso not gonna say it again.
So in a couple of weeks, I haveanother great sort of spooky
(49:07):
Halloween y episode for you.
And I I don't want to ruin thesurprise, but it's so good.
It's gonna be so good.
So thanks again for listening.
Be kind, be good, be safe, andkeep being really cool plant
people.
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