Welcome to "Mulching"

Photo by Justin Kapfer on Unsplash

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“Mulch”

/ˈməlsh/

noun

a protective covering … spread or left on the ground to reduce evaporation, maintain even soil temperature, prevent erosion, control weeds, enrich the soil, or keep fruit … clean¹

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I love to read. On the most basic level, books are just sheaves of pulped trees covered in abstract symbols that signify a meaning that we have collectively — but unconsciously — agreed upon. As a result, these seemingly arbitrary symbols transport ideas from one mind and implant them in another. This process is nothing short of magical to me.

There have been several moments throughout my life when I have personally experienced the transformative influence of ink on paper. These have been chance encounters, as when I picked up a second-hand copy of Alias Grace from my grandmother’s bookshelf because I had nothing else to read. Little did I know that this would set off an ongoing love affair with Margaret Atwood’s writing, resulting in her MaddAddam Trilogy becoming the focus of my MA thesis.

There have also been moments when I was prescribed a reading by a university lecturer at precisely the moment when it would inflame a long-smouldering, nascent spark of interest. This happened in my third year as an undergraduate when I was introduced to the concept of ecocriticism through the writings of Rob Nixon and Amitav Ghosh. This took an ignored environmental sensitivity and forced it to the front of my consciousness, challenging me to think differently about the nature crisis. As a result, I decided to focus the trajectory of my postgraduate study on the field of environmental humanities, and I have spent the past three years marinating in the revolutionary ideas of myriad thinkers, from Rebecca Solnit, Anna Tsing, and Robin Wall Kimmerer to Louise Green, Naomi Klein, and George Monbiot.

The words and ideas of these (and many other) authors have driven my growth. They have formed the trellis against which the green tendrils of my intellectual expansion have been trained. Each has confronted my perspective on ecology, environmentalism, the place of humans in the web of life, and the demands of the ongoing climate crisis. They have placed pressure on my ideas, forcing me to clarify my thoughts and come to my own conclusions about the reasons we are currently in this mess, and how we might fight our way out of it. Many of these ideas have become foundational to who I am, to the extent that I often wonder how I could ever have moved through the world taking for granted its dazzling, fragile, mesmerising, ineffable qualities.

But what does all this have to do with mulching? These three years of engaging with various writers and thinkers have involved a process of layering rich, compostable material on top of the soil of my mind. Each new idea formed a wood chip, a shred of leaf, a crumb of bark, that carried nutrients from the mind of someone significantly wiser than myself to be mulched into intellectually enriching humus for my brain. The process of meditating on and writing about these ideas took on a similar role to that of earthworms and soil aerators: digesting the nutrients from the humus and working them into the soil, creating something fertile and ready for growth.

I am no longer writing a dissertation, but I don’t want to stop absorbing the words of others and using the vehicle of writing to process their ideas. Hence this newsletter, “Mulching”, where I plan to continue layering and digesting theoretical mulch. Here, the focus of my writing will be the environmental impact of our ideas, and how we might change our thinking in a way that has ecological benefits. This will be a space for reflection on the web of life and connection with others who are figuring out how we might learn to live better with all of our companion species.

So, welcome to the humus layer! We have nematodes!

1. Definition from Merriam-Webster