The latest issue of Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, #10: How Do We Know? has just been published. Dark Matter publishes writing and artwork created in response to an age of massive species loss and ecological collapse. The journal is a home for dreams, visions, and communications with the nonhuman world, especially those that seek to heal our broken relationship to the earth.
My essay, Aspen Ways of Knowing, is included in this issue. In it, I share the teachings and wisdom given by the quaking aspen forest in the mountains near my home in northern New Mexico — as I call them, the Aspen People.
In my ongoing apprenticeship with these amazing beings, I have come to understand that they are one of the great consciousnesses of the Earth.
There are many other beautiful writings, interviews, and poems in this issue, including work by Manulani Meyer, the late Dorothy Dinnerstein, an essay by native Canadian writer Lee Maracle, and an interview with Kate Tirion, founder of the Deep Dirt Institute and Campus in Arizona, essays by Hilary Giovale and Sara Wright and poetry by Patricia Spears Jones and Leonore Wilson.
All of the material in this issue, some of it written over twenty years ago, speaks directly and passionately to these difficult, urgent times: marked by danger and destruction—but also enormous possibility. In these challenging times, these kinds of conversations, writings, and teachings are so important…and provide both guidance and nourishment for our souls.
