Why I’m creating this anthology
I’m putting together a collection called What I Meant to Tell You: An Anthology of Apologies and Gratitudes to the Natural World.
Lately, I keep coming back to the same question: What do we owe the places and creatures we've lost, damaged, or simply failed to notice, and what do we owe the ones that still fill us with hope and beauty? And what do we do with the ache of that, besides carry it around? But the ache is only half of the story. The other half is pure gratitude—for the resilience of a weed cracking through concrete, the steady rhythm of the seasons, and the profound gift of just being alive to witness it. This project is a space for both: a Eulogy for what’s gone, and a massive, collective thank-you note for what remains.
This anthology is meant to be a place to finally put that weight down. It is a collection of letters addressed directly to the non-human world—apologies, gratitudes, confessions, or whatever else you've been holding back. It could be a letter to a specific tree you used to climb as a kid, a species you know you'll never get to see in your lifetime, or a local river that just isn't what it used to be.
I am asking for these letters to be written by hand and sent through the mail.
Sitting down with pen and paper takes a specific kind of effort and intention. It forces you to slow down in a way that typing on a screen never will. You have to actually be there for it. There is no backspace button, and no autocorrect to smooth over the parts of your thoughts that feel a little too raw or messy. What comes out onto the page is always much closer to what you actually meant to say—which is the whole point of this project.
Then there is the physical journey of the mail itself.
When a letter travels from your hands to mine, it moves through sorting facilities, trucks, carriers, and mailboxes. Each step is small and unremarkable on its own, but together they carry your words the way a river carries water. It passes through dozens of hands that will never meet, yet they are all part of the same current.
A letter that makes a physical journey across the earth to reach this book has already done something a digital file attachment never could. Nature has given us so much. A handwritten letter, mailed with a little bit of effort, feels like the absolute least we can offer in return.
I want to hear from everyone
This project cannot just be a single echo chamber. I want a massive mix of voices. I want letters from children, because a kid looking at a muddy puddle sees details that most adults stopped noticing decades ago. I want people from cultures, landscapes, and backgrounds completely different from my own. Someone else's relationship to a specific mountain, a river, or a season might open my eyes to something I’ve walked past my entire life without a second thought.
Our gratitude and our grief for the earth do not look the same everywhere, and they shouldn't. But I have a strong feeling that underneath all of our structural differences, we are going to find we are carrying the exact same weight. That is what this book is trying to prove.
What this could become
If I am being completely honest, my hope is that this grows into something massive.
I want hundreds, maybe thousands of letters from people all over the world, documenting their love, regret, and gratitude for the places and creatures that shaped them. I don't want it to just stop at a physical book; I want it to be a permanent record of how many of us feel this way.
Alongside the printed anthology, the goal is to build a massive online archive that anyone in the world can access. It will be searchable, continuously growing, and open to letters far beyond what we can fit into a single printed text.
How to Take Part
Visit submissions page for all of the details
If there's something you've meant to tell the natural world, I'd like to read it.
