The Cultivation of Inner and Outer Wanderlust

Here's a slice of what I'm up to in the year ahead.

Jan 27, 2023

Welcome to my newsletter, and maybe some communal magic.

“The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

1. I’m writing this to track my love of wandering.

I wanderlust for wild places. I wanderlust for the spaciousness of mountains, sea, desert, forest, and for cultural spaces. And I also wanderlust in my imagination, in ideas and in stories both fictional and nonfictional. This newsletter is not so much interested in the capitalistic notion of wandering to consume places. I want to know about the wanderlands of the imagination. I want to write what I discover in everyday and extraordinary walks across this spectacular land. I want to figure something out on the page, questions that I began asking in my memoir about who we really are.

The word, wanderlust comes from the German wandern—to hike or roam about. It’s the thing I like to do most, usually with some writing and feasting and philosophizing along the way. And it’s the kind of retreat I like to create when I want to invite people into their writing. I want to do a deep dive into how inner and outer wanderlust shapes us. And I’m inviting you, writers and humans, to adventure to Wanderland with me.

2. I’m writing this to be with those who love to wander.

I want to know what kind of wandering develops when we trek between beings, ideas, landscapes, stories. And I want to make a community who are less invested in the status orientation of global nomadship (the knight-errant of the popular era,) and instead are reckoning with what philosopher Gilles Deleuze pointed toward in saying, “The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities.” (Except I wouldn’t confine these to two. More on that next time.)

I’ll invite wanderers into this space with me. I’ll interview those on a pilgrimage, those thinking through the risks of hypermobility, those tripping inside their bodies, and those engaging from an ecocentric awareness.

As someone whose rare disease prevented them from going into the world for a time, and whose body was immune compromised during a pandemic, I want to share the wandering that happens within, when we can’t move, and our sensitive nature leads us to another realm, a wildly mysterious place. If the last few years taught me anything, it’s that restriction amplified my capacity to live in imaginal worlds.

The desire for this newsletter at this time is for sharing what makes us by design part of nature’s desire to knockabout, gallavant, traipse, rove, to live in a liberatory Wanderland. I hope you’ll join me.

3. And for all you misfits and rogues, this writing is free.

Some of you are from my former newsletter list. I’m grateful for these past seven years of being able to share my work and thoughts and offerings. Thank you for everything you’ve brought to my questions around identity and memory. I’ll still post updates there a few times a year.

I’ll be posting here on Substack every two weeks. I’ll post from the wilderness and from the road. I’m providing my essays, feasts, and images for free to anyone who wants them. If you subscribe, I’ll give you first priority entry to a writing retreat my brilliant friend Suzanne Morrison and I are teaching in Banff National Park (see below.) And next time, I’ll post my recipe for enchilada sauce, and the ways we preserve sauces to make suppers easy, whether at home or on the land.

I’ll offer paid subscriptions in a month or so for those who might want special invitations like:

free, all-access online writing groups, four times a year, (come write with us!)
Feast Days dinner party plans (fun, seasonal, occasionally ridiculous,)
community conversation,
writing retreat offers and priority, (see the first one below,)
exclusive writing prompts,
Q & A threads,
Wanderland playlists,
and more ideas soon.
If you have any questions about the newsletter, or want to chat about what’s ahead for Wanderland, or have an idea you want to share, please be in touch.
This newsletter is entirely reader-supported. Hope to see you here soon!