When I walked in the fields and woods of home, my language always flowed.

— Damian Le Bas

Autumn happens at night, in the faint drift of bonfire smoke and the near silent rattle of stray crispy leaves as they blow down the road. I find myself making chai from scratch in the French press and can’t seem to get enough apples. I feel like a squirrel hoarding for the coming winter, but instead of acorns it’s remnants of connection. I want to take more photographs. Down herbal infusions. Light candles and let the words my ancestors would have spoken billow across my lips. I wonder, what my accent would have been? Did it lilt like bird song? Did it putter like raindrops? Did it crash like waves on the sea? I may never know. I will never hear the sounds of Miwok and Gaelic woven together like a warm hug. But I can sit down tonight with a candle and a book, speak with halting trembling lips, and practice at least some of those words aloud.

Links:

• Nua Celtic Manifesto
• Speak Gaelic

Reads:

• Black Mountain River by Tom Hirons
• ‘The Ecology of Feminism and the Feminism of Ecology‘ by Ynestra King
• ‘Reflections on the Ecofeminism Desire for Nature’ by Chaia Heller
• ‘Between Social Ecology and Deep Ecology: Gary Snyder’s Ecological Philosophy’ by Paul Messersmith-Glavin
• Super-Colonized Irish Syndrome
• ‘Progressive Gaelic’ by Moray Watson
• Main character syndrome