Today is Earth Day, a holiday first observed on April 22, 1970 in the wake of an oil spill. Three million gallons of crude oil oozed into the ocean off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969, decimating over 10,000 seabirds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions. A 53-year-old senator and former governor of Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, was inspired to found the holiday after staring down in horror at a black stain on the Pacific Ocean from the window of a plane.
He chose April 22 in part because it’s the birthday of copywriter Julian Koenig, who came up with the name. (One of the holiday’s original names was “Ecology Day,” far less catchy. Koenig also liked that “Earth Day” rhymed with “birthday.”)
To celebrate, I revisited Christopher Brown’s story about “rewilding” his Texas yard, from the Medium archive. In it, he describes the process of letting the grasses and wildflowers grow and native fauna (coyotes and armadillos) return. “We have other friends in Austin who are doing similar projects, turning their urban lots into recreated remnants of the blackland prairie,” he writes, and building “green roofs” on which native succulents can grow. “Human habitat is better when it also provides a home for the wild nature it would otherwise displace.”
Brown’s yard journey is just one anecdote in a beautiful essay exploring the liminal spaces between human habitation and wilderness — or, in his words, “The negative space of the metropolis, where nature fills in the gaps and wild animals feel free to roam in the absence of human gazes.”
And the idea of “rewilding” applies to far more than just your lawn. Clive Thompson’s quick primer on “rewilding your attention” has forever changed how I browse the internet and consume information. He applies the same principles as Brown — intentionally wandering far afield of where you usually roam — to cultivate, in his words, “a weirder, more idiosyncratic media landscape” beyond algorithmic feeds.
— Harris Sockel
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