Debut book… launched!
Well, it’s official! On Saturday, May the 6th at 4:00 in the afternoon I officially launched my first book.
Many friends, family, colleagues, teachers, and mentors, came from near and far to celebrate this event with me. The reality is that I could not have succeeded in the way I did, without these people. I do not believe people become successful in any endeavour without help, big and small, regardless whether that help is directly related to the success in question.
My book is “charming… [and] calls to mind the works of Han Shan and Kamo no Chomei, the wild mountain poets of China and Japan or, more recently, the radical eco-poetry of Gary Snyder and the big picture essays of Aldo Leopold” (Falardeau, The B.C. Review). It is a collection of inquiry pieces centred on Sumas Mountain in Abbotsford. As I wander through the forest and other spaces on the mountain, in the present and imagining the past, musing on what I see, hear, and feel, I bring the reader along with me. Together, we contemplate the delicate ecosystems that exist in this area, and that are in danger of being irrevocably damaged and ultimately eradicated as we continue on a path of development and destruction. Climate change, also makes an appearance as I talk about the recent flooding and heat domes that the Fraser Valley suffered in the past few years.
My hopes in completing this book was to showcase Sumas Mountain as an important ecological island, filled with wildlife and ecosystems that need us to take greater care and thought in every thing we do. I wanted to tell a story that asks questions, pokes holes in accepted thought patterns, and encourages us to slow down and embody our surroundings. In connecting with the places around us, I believe we develop empathy for those places— for streams and trees, bees and birds, dandelions and stinging nettles. And if we can develop enough empathy, in enough people, maybe we can save places like Sumas Mountain. In saving such places, maybe we can slow the onset of climate change, and slow the onset of destruction and difficulty that is sure to come our way and not only cause great suffering in ecosystems big and small, but in our own lives as well, for we depend upon everything, in order to live and thrive.