Emily | Planned & Planted

“The myopia that lets us see only our woes falls away for a little while. Suddenly, we can breathe again.”
― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

“Birding shifts your perceptions, adding new layers of meaning and brokering connections: between sounds and seasons, across far-flung places, and between who we are as people and a wild world that both transcends and embraces us. In my life, it has been a window into the wondrous.”
― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

“The suburbs can seem anti-septic. Nature mowed and manicure to Better Homes and Gardens conformity. But wild things roam there that can't be tamed.”
― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

“I come from a tribe of women who are ravaged and joyous, loud, raging, tied to our own convoluted histories. We are a knot of branches, mud-speckled and ever-searching, and the man to make his way inside is someone who must grow from the same earth, the same brokenness. Or maybe, the men who come to us will only every be visitors. We claim squatters' rights in our tangled histories.”
― Thao Thai, Banyan Moon