Brian Slattery Photo
Skedgell: Publish or perish.
Days of smoke. Heat waves. The return of El Niño. These large-scale climate events shape our lives. But so do the people giving over their property to rewilding, the people clearing parks of invasive species, the people who take time out from their day to unplug and put their hands in a garden’s soil.
Journalist, documentary filmmaker, and musician Lindsay Skedgell wants to hear about it all. She’s starting a new journal called Heel and Hive that “explores the environmental and climate landscape of our times, our relationships to nature and ecology” — focusing on the region we live in.
“Whether ecological beings large or small, we believe all have a vital story to tell,” her call for submissions states.
“From the pollution and privatization of water to food access and organizing community fridges to sharing knowledge around foraging and native plants to the bioremediation of soil in New Haven, stories of humanity and ecology are inextricably linked. Write or make art about taking care of bees, the forest and mental health, lack of public green space, language, myth, biking, mutual aid, waterways, your relationship to your favorite bird.”
Why a new magazine now?
“It’s a combination of love and frustration,” said Skedgell (who has written for the Independent) of her motivations for starting Heel and Hive.
The idea began when she noticed that even as the headlines in recent weeks have been full of climate change-related news, from the effects of the forest fires in Canada to the heat waves rolling across the world, there was a paucity of more focused environmental reporting in news outlets. “There’s a need, and a bit of a gap, to provide a place where people can talk about climate issues,” Skedgell said. “I want that space and I don’t see it yet, so I figure I might as well make it.”
Skedgell’s interest in the environment around her began with her childhood in Branford, learning from her mother and grandmother. Her grandmother had an eye for the “attentive detail about growing things,” Skedgell recalled. “She’s still the sort of person who will talk to you and then shout out the name of a bird” — in mid-conversation, because she recognizes its call. Both Skedgell’s mother and grandmother “made a special point to point those things out to me,” the way the ecosystem around her, the plants and animals, were a part of her life, whether she was in her neighborhood of blocks of houses or in the wilder parts of the area close by.
“I spent a lot of time in the woods,” Skedgell said. She and her friends explored the Stony Creek Trolley Trail and the paths that shot off from it. “It’s really immersive and expansive,” she said. The same was true for her of the Stony Creek Quarry. They were both “places that felt a little hidden, hidden and unknown.”
Her experiences contributed to a sense, shared by many in the field of ecology, that the line people often draw between civilization and wilderness is, in the end, illusory. Ecologists point out that individual plants and animals don’t recognize the distinction; squirrels live in forests and cities, and plants grow between rocks next to a stream or out of the cracks in a sidewalk with equal ease. For Skedgell, that distinction can feel like “an excuse to conquer,” a reason to take out another swath of woods to make another housing development. And at the same time, she has noticed the ways that “other ecological beings adapt.” She has taken guided plant walks in East Rock Park, learning how “different species find a way.” She also noted that “some of them are edible.” Dandelion greens make for a good salad (in addition to being a journalist, Skedgell has been working at Star Light Gardens in Durham, which has been planting dandelions instead of pulling them). Mullein, often considered a weed, has medicinal uses for respiratory problems.
Mergoat magazine, out of Tennessee, an inspiration for Skedgell.
Her own personal connection to the issue now orients Skedgell toward writing about the climate that doesn’t just focus on the hard news of it, but the questions of how people in the region are dealing with it for themselves. “There’s so many perspectives in New Haven alone,” she said. With the theme she has picked for Heel and Hive’s first issue — “ecologies of care” — she has posed a series of questions: “How do we move forward with the perspective of care? How do we care for one another?” Applied to New Haven and southern Connecticut, these questions could touch on everything from food justice and unequal access to grocery stores, to learning how to garden and farm, to cycling, to rehabilitating raptors, to exploring the wild spaces just around the corner.
She said she has been thinking about mutualism, “how things can be beneficial to two species in their dance with one another,” she said. She hopes to draw attention to local individuals and organizations working to improve the environment around us. “There’s a long list of people doing good work,” she said. And she wants to create a place where people can express and perhaps deal with their anxieties about climate change. “The grief is real,” Skedgell said. “A few weeks ago we couldn’t walk outside without a mask. It’s important to talk about.” Perhaps doing so can “create a sense of collectively. We are dealing with this as a species. We’re in it all together and feeling the effects of it.” And in too many cases, “people don’t have the space to process it,” she said. “It’s a very extractive country we live in”; from the physical demands on natural resources to the societal demands on our time and energy, it’s “take what you can and keep moving,” she said, rather than “working with what you have.”
The deadline for submissions for Heel and Hive is Aug. 20. Submissions can span nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, collage, printmaking, and illustration. Interested writers and artists can send articles or queries to [email protected].
Lindsay Skedgell’s approach deals with “ecologies of care.” This is a very beautiful and wonderful way to elevate our inner sense of what is right, of what is needed, of what might be possible. Everybody can make changes that lower their carbon footprint, but after we’ve done that, we also need to work politically to try to make the government, and the corporations, face up to and change their ongoing role in the climate emergency. I made a YouTube video with Melinda Tuhus and Norman Clement about local people in New Haven confronting one of the banks that funds fossil fuel pipelines. The video is at: https://youtu.be/e9E9wvOeAvA