I Hate to Say Goodbye
It’s tough to pinpoint exactly when my relationship with Earth Island Journal began.
A handful of years ago, I walked into the David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley to meet with Journal editors Maureen and Zoe. I left the office with an assignment and the start of a meaningful relationship with editors — two things I was actively seeking as a novice freelancer. Later, I was overjoyed when I was asked to join the team as contributing editor.
Much earlier than that, however, I came across my first issue of the Journal, in the spring of 2014. At the time I was steeped in the environmental writing classics (Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Barry Lopez, Henry David Thoreau), but I read these books as history, unaware how to “think like a mountain” in my daily life — much less how to make a career writing about it.
That one issue of the Journal provided some clues. It contained stories on coexistence with urban mountain lions, ecosystems of abandoned suburban golf courses, a 50-year retrospective on the 1964 Wilderness Act, and Hawaiians’ fight for land sovereignty against seed-patenting biotech companies. I saw Earth Island Journal as a magazine committed to place — a platform for people striving to live rightly with nature, as part of the ecosystems we want to protect rather than separate from them, while also speaking out for biodiversity and spaces without obvious “utilitarian” value to us. From then on, Journal writers became some of my journalism role models, though I didn’t know then that these inspirations would lead me onto the magazine's masthead.
For this reason, I have mixed feelings as I say farewell to readers in this space. This is my last week as contributing editor of Earth Island Journal. While I’m embarking on an exciting new chapter, I’ll miss working closely with the community that surrounds this magazine, including my fellow editors, an impressive roster of freelance writers, the Earth Island Institute network, and readers like yourself.
I plan to continue writing for Earth Island Journal in some capacity, but this newsletter has been a particularly special place to write directly to you all. Some weeks the writing gets personal, as we try to explain why we do the work we do and contextualize it in messy current events. Other times, these letters are simple reflections — flash memoirs from us as we figure out how to think like a mountain, or a river, or our backyard gardens.
Either way, these last few years have been a wild journey. Thank you, readers, for engaging with me in this space.
Austin Price
Contributing Editor, Earth Island Journal
Photo by: Tim Lumley
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