Finding one's way through the digital wilderness (with a little help from the real one).
Introducing The Firewood.
Hey, everybody. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but… here it is. I have a Substack. I will be mostly signing off Twitter for a while and instead shouting into the void here. I will be sending a pretty-much-weekly email to everyone willing to read it, and it very notably won’t be about media ethics, tech policy, advertising, or any of the other things I normally post about on Twitter (except raccoons, which I frequently tweet about, and which I will most certainly write about in this medium). At least it won’t be on the surface.
So, without further ado, here’s a “subscribe now” button:
Subscribe, and you will read about all this (and more!): rediscovering our connection to the natural world, weird rural road trips, raccoons, the importance of outdoors access to people across economic and cultural spectrums, 21st-century folklore, mulled wine recipes, oddball science, raccoons, creepy old houses, meditation and spiritual quests, black cats, tips for urbanites looking to escape the city for the woods, the art of gathering and celebration, raccoons, moon circles, the joys of wearing Birkenstocks with thick wool socks, and drunk bears. If enough of you like this, I’ll start to throw in some interviews with cool people who are smarter than I am.
But, more importantly for the present moment, in my first dispatch to you I promise you a story about Party Bear, an Ursus americanus who drinks White Claw by the case, which will turn into a reflection on the things I’ve learned about appreciating the ways that digital connectivity can enhance our lives. But let’s be honest, I think you’d rather read about the bear. You’ll also find out why I decided to call this newsletter The Firewood, but you probably still care more about the drunk bear. I told you I’d tell you about drunk bears and I keep my word.
In case we have not met, I am this person:
My name’s Caroline; you may know me as @caro on either Twitter or Instagram. I am a former journalist who still sometimes writes about narwhals or warring paleontologists, with a day job in advertising. I have given one TED talk about advertising destroying the world and one TEDx talk about voter engagement around tech policy.
I have always been someone who wanted to be an Outdoorsy Person™ but never could quite seem to get there, mostly because of lifelong struggles with anxiety and self-doubt that always manage to screw with my ambitions. Plus, 21st-century city living is so easy. Seamless. Twitter. Uber. The bar that’s 50 feet away. Tinder. Group fitness classes where they dim the lights and crank up the thermostat so you think you’re getting more active than you actually are. Quick fixes to a fast-paced life. Then I couldn’t take it any more.
I can’t say I hit a breaking point; it was more like a slow burn. The pandemic helped push that along. I am committing to spending less time in the miasma of real-time social media and instead exploring the idea of what it means to be a human — a Homo sapiens, a member of the order Primates, a mammal that shares something like 90% of its genome with the raccoon, an animal that evolved over the course of millions upon millions of years on earth — in an era where decades of digital media on top of centuries of technological advancement frequently leave us so disconnected from the natural world that we freak out if we can’t hear any cars on the road at night. But I don’t hate digital media; it’s made me who I am and brought me many of my closest friends. I think most “digital detox” types are pretentious jackasses and I would be more than happy to never again have to read about another Silicon Valley multimillionaire wringing his hands over having been complicit in the breakdown of our cultural dialogue while he sits in a house with an infinity pool and a garage big enough for three Teslas.
So here I am, and apparently, here you are. This is my 21st-century “rewilding” journey, and I hope some of it can be relevant or helpful to you in some way. Sign up now so you don’t miss the first edition and all the joys of Party Bear. And in the meantime, tell your friends! Or they’ll miss out on Party Bear too. Don’t make Party Bear sad.