"Insects, crawdads, locusts—whatever"
Recommended listens from the Southlands crew
We’re in the thick of things here at Southlands HQ—onboarding the editorial team, editing articles, picking out which shots from our excellent photographers to feature in the debut issue. So this week’s Southlander will be brief. Mostly we just want to turn the microphone to some other great storytellers who are worth your time.
First up: our friends at the great podcast Outside/In, who just released an episode featuring Mississippi writer Kiese Laymon. His new children’s book didn’t catch my eye at first—what relevance is a children’s book?—but it turns out it has everything to do with Southlands: Laymon, as a young man, had to navigate whether, as a Mississippian who grew up in the state’s capital, he was a country kid or a city kid. He was both, it turns out, and he talks about the need for more stories of Black kids in nature,1 playing with “insects, crawdads, locusts—whatever.”
Once you’re through that, check out the latest episode of The Only Thing That Lasts, a multi-part exploration of farmland. Sarah Mock examines the complex history of Providence Canyon, in Georgia—a place that is, conceivably, a landscape ruined by agriculture, but also a geological feature so beautiful it’s now a state park. What is nature? That’s a question we at Southlands always love to ask.
—Boyce
One more bonus rec: Over at The Atlantic, the whip-smart writer Emma Maris asks what might happen if, instead of protecting endangered species, we built protections for endangered ecosystems. Could this be a unifying cause in a divided nation?
Love for American landscapes is bipartisan, and protecting ecosystems would not necessarily mean outlawing all human use inside them. Ranching and recreation are compatible with many ecosystems.
Opportunities
$400k in grant funding will soon be available for restoration along the Appalachian Trail.
Ambrook is hiring a “storyteller” who will travel the country talking to farmers and ranchers.
North Carolina’s Cape Lookout has announced its summer wild horse tour dates.
The sea turtles are coming. You can go see them.
The Lowdown
USFWS proposes listing the Eastern hellbender as endangered. // Inside the Ozark caves that contain millions of pounds … of cheese? // A Trump plan could offload hundreds of smaller sites owned by the National Park Service. // Texas is moving to get more state parks open. // A lawsuit alleges federal staff cuts are hurting Florida manatees. // Georgia’s legislators seem to agree on only one thing: They want a national park. // Louisiana ponders just what is a wetland. // The feds have cleared construction of a lift-assisted mountain bike park in Arkansas’ Ouachita Mountains. // Financial woes hold up Okefenokee mining plan. // A century of Chincoteague ponies. // A luxury lakeside lodge is coming to Mississippi’s Homochitto National Forest.
While laying out this email, the dearth of such stories became clear to me: In searching for images of Black kids in nature, about all I could find were shots of African children.