(I wonder what Otis is dreaming about….turn sound on for the full wonderment!)

I just started Vesper Flights for my Environmental Imagination course, and honestly — don’t you already love that title?
Environmental. Imagination.
As if the world is inviting us back into relationship.

Early on, Helen Macdonald introduces the idea of the Wunderkammer — a cabinet of wonders. A place to gather what astonishes you. Shells. Feathers. Sketches. Questions. Things that make you lean forward instead of shut down.

And I keep wondering: what’s in mine right now?

Because something strange is happening.

I am NERDING OUT in the MFA at Chatham.

I just read Staying Put and I cannot stop thinking about home — what it means, what it costs, how it changes. I keep turning over Macdonald’s questions too: what does home mean to a bird? Is a nest home? Or is it something internal — a felt sense, a knowing, a tether you carry inside your body?

And then there’s Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country by Sierra Crane Murdoch.

We were assigned the first three chapters.
I couldn’t stop reading.

When has that ever happened to me? Never. I am usually counting pages, paragraphs, sentences. Negotiating with myself. “Just get through this.”

Instead, I bought the book.
And I finished it.

What is happening?

Am I more open?
More curious?
More full of wonder?

Or did teachers finally start assigning good shit?

Maybe all of it is true.

What I know is this: my cabinet of wonders is suddenly overflowing.

Birds, for one. I am wildly, unexpectedly curious about birds. Their migrations. Their instincts. Their sense of place. How they know when to stay and when to go.

I’m curious about Indigenous women who go missing on reservations — and how often their stories are ignored, minimized, or erased.

I’m curious about nature and drawing. About slowing down enough to really see something, and then trying to capture it — not perfectly, but honestly.

I’m curious about storytelling that braids the personal and the political, the ecological and the intimate.

This curiosity feels different than productivity.
Different than ambition.
Different than “keeping up.”

It feels like wonder.

Like my nervous system is finally exhaling enough to notice what wants my attention instead of what demands it.

So maybe this is what learning looks like when it’s not driven by fear or performance or survival. Maybe this is what happens when we’re safe enough to ask real questions again.

What’s in your cabinet of wonders right now?

What are you lingering over?
What can’t you stop thinking about?
What did you read that made you want to keep going instead of counting the pages?

I’d love to make more space for those things.
The questions. The feathers. The unfinished sketches.
The wonder.