My Name is Zachary and this is my Substack.
I have been a humanitarian focused environmentalist for more than 12 years and have so many stories to share. This path has taken me to the edges of our world and reality from the jungles of the Amazon to the gutters of Vancouver, the depths of addiction and mental illness to the summits of love and spirituality, however, I feel this is only one beginning. Finding this tool is helping to facilitate and organize my literature creation, addictions recovery and new found focus and energy to start on projects I have always dreamed of.
Projects to look forward to
A kids book about Old Growth Forests. I have been involved in front line activism for years on a range of projects. In 2021 I was humbled to join the Old Growth and Land Back blockades at Ada’istx Fairy Creek on the unceded territories of the Pacheedaht and Ditidaht peoples on Vancouver Island. I lived and served there for four months from spring into summer. Days and nights with an incredible community of human and nonhuman people spent defending the lands and waters at the Caycuse protection camp opened my heart. My experience there culminated in a a 6 day tree sit in an old growth Hemlock shared with my lover at the time, Hummingbird. We and five other peaceful folks from our camp held those trees while loggers, escorted by police, began to fall the primeval forest all around us. We witnessed the eradication of this forest for days, and the sound of these trees falling will forever echo in my head. It has been two years and those crashing wails have not diminished, persisting in every moment. I have remained mostly silent about my experience, feeling in part that it was all so much bigger than me, that my words are imposters to the truth of a collective experience of great beauty and suffering. I want to create a kids book to capture some of the essence of what I feel about the time I shared at Fairy Creek, in the depths of Caycuse. A kids book because it is a good medium to capture a sense of awe and wonder, and a kids book because I still feel at a loss for words. It has been written about a character called tree ghost, but I am no artist so I will be working to find people to bring the story to life. In time it will be published and I will share it here and everywhere I can to help raise money for indigenous youth and outdoor education for underprivileged kids.
Please stay tuned. ««-My First Novel. A decade of addictions, substance abuse, and heartbreak has finally run its course, and I am left alone with the broken mind that was so intolerable all those years ago. Now it seems a welcome friend, a me that is loved by the unseen friend of Rumi’s poetry, and a me that I now can accept, as I accept the world that me happens to be in. If you take away a persons future and force them to stare at a wall until they forget what freedom is, will they recognize the blue sky and green field? I believe it’s in the blood. Free from life under the cloud, my energy is returning and with it an outpouring of thoughts and ideas that I have the privilege to harness into real creations of things I thought would stay dreams.
“Dying Green” is my first novel. It is about a beloved and legendary environmentalist whose dying wish is that her body be placed on a bed of moss, above ground, in her favourite wild place, left for the birds and wolves and slugs far away from the mechanizations of civilization. Her family is dismayed but Laurel Turners legacy is profound and her conviction binding. Turners community is left divided in the wake of her final wish, with her family planning a traditional funeral, and her closest friends planning a robbery.
Launch plan once I upload the opening chapter here (on substack), the goal is to upload a raw, first draft chapter every two to four weeks giving readers a first hand look at the process of a rookie writers first novel. You will be with me every step of the way, should you so choose, to see me stumble, fall and wobble back up. I hope to provide an uncommon insight into the creative process of literature development and a story that has come to me that in its early phases I already find exciting, goofy, and deeply moving. You will likely get to read a completely different version of events than what will ultimately be published, first versions and rough drafts being what they are. I will make the initial couple chapters free, and charge a small membership fee for the diehards who want to read more. ««-
Vlog, original images, and other content Please expect perieodical one off pieces, all original images, and linked ‘vlog’ videos of me rambling with no structure, all for free!
If you find yourself with the time and have ended up here, thank you deeply, please enjoy.
Love and gratitude,
Zachary.