In this episode, host Tamara Dean talks with Valerie Trouet, Gretel Boswijk, and Malcolm Hughes, dendrochronologists whose stories appear in a new book, In the Circle of Ancient Trees. They describe what we can learn from earth's ancient beings; share secrets that tree rings reveal about climate, culture, and history; and indicate how such information could help us plan for future climate resilience.

Music: "Liftoff," by Nature Connection.

Illustration by Blaze Cyan excerpted from In the Circle of Ancient Trees by Valerie Trouet. Used with permission from Greystone Books.

Tamara Dean hosts the relaunch of the Terrain.org Podcast with an episode titled "The Gift of Animals," after the new poetry anthology edited by Alison Hawthorne Deming and published by Storey Publishing: The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, and Connection.

In this episode, Tamara speaks with The Gift of Animals editor and contributors Nickole Brown, Jose Hernandez Diaz, and Camille T. Dungy, asking why the anthology is necessary now, what it means to the contributors to be a part of this anthology both for the poets and for the poems, how grief and love play into our responsibilities to the animal world, and why both animals and poetry are a gift to those connected to the animal world.

Music: "Liftoff," by Nature Connection.

Illustration by Daniela Gallego excerpted from The Gift of Animals, © by Alison Hawthorne Deming. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.

In this rich and reflective conversation, Renata Golden speaks with essayist Tamara Dean about her book Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless and her decades of life in Wisconsin’s Driftless region—a landscape uniquely spared by glaciers, leaving behind steep bluffs, spring-fed streams, and hidden histories. Dean explores how engaging with the land can be both a political act and a personal reckoning, weaving together environmental care, citizen science, and the ghosts of those long erased from rural memory. From foraging groundnuts to unearthing the links between reproductive rights and white supremacy, she reveals how landscape and story are inseparable. Their dialogue is a meditation on awe, resilience, and the quiet revolutions that begin at home.

In Episode 9 of Soundscapes, we listen in on a conversation between poet and essayist Ross Gay and Terrain.org poetry editor Derek Sheffield. As Ross Gay’s biography points out: “Ross Gay is interested in joy. Ross Gay wants to understand joy. Ross Gay is curious about joy.” Ross gay, it turns out, is curious and interested in just about everything, but humble about his ability to understand it. In fact, he’s in love with not knowing, which allows for change and, yes, “flabbergastment.” Along with living the questions and inciting joy, though, Ross Gay centers what he calls, “the noticing muscle.” This muscle, when strengthened, “inclines us to care for each other in systems of distrust and brutalization.” Listen to Ross Gay and Derek Sheffield take a deep dive into the workings of poetry (“the longer I study it, the more I realize I don’t know how I’m doing this”), what it’s like to witness a bee orgy (“I don’t know shit”), and why you should consider turning toward your death (“to not consider our dying and our living the same thing is in impediment to joy”).

Additional poetry in this episode:

• “At First Scent of Daylight” by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
• “On NPR This Afternoon” by Jillian Hanson
• “Duplex II” by Camille Newsom

About Ross Gay
The most recent book by Ross Gay is The Book of (More) Delights (Algonquin Books, 2023), the collection that occasioned this interview. His first Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller. He is also the author of another book of essays, Inciting Joy (Algonquin Books, 2022), and four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Read the full interview with Derek Sheffield.

What is staying power, and how can we cultivate it? This episode Terrain.org-published poetry as well as a short story set to music that explore the staying power of words and experiences. In conversation with Alan Sincic, we learn about the relationship of silence to word music and how subverting expectations can be a source of wonder that lasts for decades.

Poetry and fiction included in this episode are:

• “A Remnant” by Pattiann Rogers
• “Eva” by Alan Sincic
• “Mend” by Alanc Sincic
• “Phenology” by Jory Mickelson

• "Portal", poem by Robert Morgan
• "I Have Seen the Warrior", by Janisse Ray
• "Our Woman" poem by Kim Parko

• “Solo” by Erin Block
• Poems by Ever Jones
• Poem by Michael Wasson

In the fifth episode of Soundscapes, we present Love Across Time. In this episode, a lively collection of Terrain.org artists consider love: love for each other, love for places, and love for the hard work of creating the world as it could be. After Sandra Steingraber and Taylor Brorby delve into these questions in a conversation held atop Rachel Caron’s beloved Hawk Mountain, Pepper Trail and Katharine Whitcomb share their poetry with us. We hope you enjoy this episode of Soundscapes.