WHAT IS LATE-STAGE, MIDDLE-AGED, WHITE-MALE ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM BUT ending up in a ridiculous shouting match about native plants? That’s how it worked out for me, at least. But long before I found myself screaming, “What if this were your front yard?!” at a guy operating heavy machinery, I was just a writer forging a path into the environmental movement—by way of the popularity of a novel I wrote with the cheery title of Annihilation.
Annihilation of what? Of a certain sense of self ? So a different self can emerge? Wandering college campuses in the aftermath of that novel in 2014, flooded with invitations to speak on climate change, I realized I knew fuck all about the subject from a drilled-down, personal angle. For years, I’d contributed to causes. And yes, I’d hiked through the wilderness to report back on
