every day is turkey day

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Three turkeys with tails fanned out, viewed through a garden gate

The view from my garden. Credit: Meera Subramanian

I have reluctantly returned to the country of my birth, the place that has always inspired the greatest culture shock after long travels. How quickly I’ve stopped dreaming in Spanish, as the raucous sounds of English fill my mind. Foot travel and cheap trains are replaced by big trucks riding the ass of my Prius as I drive too far to get a dozen eggs that cost six times what they did in Spain. But there are good friends, and my beloved bookshelf, and the yard is teeming with turkeys and other signs of springtime life. Together, it is the antidote to the unraveling.

Between the work of catching up—pitching stories about renewable energy in Spain, preparing for a talk (more below), handling personal crises minor and major—I watch wild turkeys loitering about Cape Cod. Or, I guess, we’re the loiterers. They bear our presence. I could watch them all day. And do.

Woman sitting on deck watching turkeys in yard

Take the time to notice the wild things around us. Credit: Stephen Prothero

Tomorrow is Earth Day, something I find myself resisting—every day is earth day, damn it!—and it comes as years of scientific gains and movement towards climate goals are being bludgeoned, as human rights from clean air to due process are eroded. I gather with my fellow citizens on the rotary who hold signs mentioning kings and oligarchs tight lest they blow away in the fierce wind. My friend and I talk with Andrew, a supporter of 47, a proud participant of January 6th, his language and message perfectly honed in response to any question. “Anything you want to ask us?” I offer, but he shakes his head and responds with a sentence that drifts away in the wind, “No, I have trouble getting my thoughts together…” We’ve all learned how to talk in this age of pontification. Listening is another skill.

We say we are in crisis. The crisis of democracy—the gun—the crisis of climate—the fire, the water, the rain—the crises of our own little lives—debt and Twitter and rage, and most of all the ordinary losses of love and loved ones that feel too vast. But that word, crisis, supposes we can act. It supposes the outcome is yet to be determined. The binary yet to be toggled, a happy ending or a sad one, victory or defeat. As it we have not already entered the aftermath.

Will we save democracy or lose it? Will the earth boil, or will we all drive electric cars? Are the dead gone, or do they live in our hearts forever?

Such imaginations we have.

My imagination wanders, as I watch eight tom turkeys back home, spectacular tail feathers fanned in full display, wings hanging low as they shimmy, faces an explosion of blue and bright red, all glorious and grotesque. The dangling wattle known as a snood draping down over their beaks in the most impractical of ways.

Tom turkey in full display

Tom turkey in full display. Credit: Meera Subramanian

You may have heard the ole story, about Benjamin Franklin and his disappointment that the aggressive eagle had been chosen as our nation’s symbol. In 1784, he wrote in a letter to his daughter:

For my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country. He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk; and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish, and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and young ones, the bald eagle pursues him, and takes it from him. . . . the turkey is in comparison a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.

I agree, even though my love of raptors is deep and slightly irrational. But even the morally bankrupt eagle only takes what she needs. Acknowledges the limits of necessity even as he steals from the osprey. But the turkeys do earn my respect as they did Benjamin’s, as they make their own way through the world. Mostly peaceful.

There’s been some fighting, too.

One male jammed his beak down the other’s throat and held it there for so long in a suffocating stalemate that I was thinking there might be a roast turkey for dinner. But one relented, and the other chased the loser away. It always seems to be the boys. The hens just want to eat in peace, and carry on with their task. I thank them for ridding our yard of ticks more than their sparring, strutting cohorts. But all play their part.

How quickly I’ve become accustomed to them. When a fox ran through the yard, they scattered, one even taking a lumbering flight to the treetops where they roost at night, (enormous black silhouettes against the skeletons of still bare oak branches and a gloaming sky draining of color). The daytime yard was empty for hours and a keening loneliness set in that only abated when I once again detected movement out of the corner of my eye.

When I went down to work in the garden to gather my thoughts, they scattered again, only to drift back up and surround me as I turned over the winter cover crop, preparing for what is to come, for another season to unfold. The work of a garden is endless. So is the work of democracy. Or for a habitable climate. I will be the first to admit it is exhausting.

Yet.

The turkeys carry on. And so do I. And so do you. Find our ways to fight and also know that we need to make time to ensure our own sustenance as well. Step away from the socials. Pick up the binoculars. Watch the natural world doing the work of living. The toms, the hens, together. They are all spectacular. These magnificently large creatures, living in our midst. Doing the work of replenishment. Eating. Courting. Creating more.

It wasn’t always like this. Native to North America, Meleagris gallopavo was domesticated by the Aztecs, who introduced them to invading Spaniards, who took them to Europe and then brought them back, while other conquerers nearly annihilated the wild ones. In the early 1800s, only about 30,000 remained, down from many millions. Today, there’s an estimated seven million in North America, in part because of the work of hunters and governments. Disappearance is one possibility. So is abundance.

No wonder I want to turn my attention to them. Especially as I prepare to share stories of disappearance and hopes of resurrection from South Asia about some other very large birds….

Talking vultures

For those in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area or who have access to a computer, I invite you to join me for a talk I’m giving this Friday evening for the Brookline Bird Club, taking place at Harvard’s Geological Lecture Hall. It’s titled South Asian Vultures: Crisis & Conservation. Here’s all the info and here’s a description:

Not too long ago, millions of vultures flew over South Asia, so abundant that no one had bothered to count them. Until the 1990s, when populations of three Gyps vultures collapsed by more than 97 per cent in a decade. It was the fastest avian decline ever recorded. Conservationists scrambled to find the cause and start captive breeding programs. What happens when South Asia’s essential clean-up crew vanishes? Cape Cod-based journalist and National Geographic Explorer Meera Subramanian has spent nearly twenty years searching for the answer to that question and discovered a story of conservation in a time of mass extinctions, a chronicle of biologists strategizing and cautiously celebrating. Join her as she shares photos and stories from covering the crisis in both India and Nepal, where the birds’ absence has had ecological, cultural and even religious implications.

Journalists & writer friends, take note…

  • The Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW) is accepting entries for the fourth Sharon Begley Science Reporting Award, a career prize for a mid-career science journalist of “unflinching dedication, skill, moral clarity, and commitment to mentoring”. Prize includes a $20,000 grant. Deadline: April 30, 2025.
  • Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop (June 15-20, 2025, The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York) Join a community of writers, improve your craft, and reimagine how you think about nature. Guided by award-winning instructors, the Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop provides an intimate space to connect with writers, artists, and editors, spark creativity, and renew, illuminate, and deepen your relationship with place. This week-long workshop is cosponsored by the Omega Center for Sustainable Living. Deadline: May 1, 2025.
  • FRONTIERS open call for application for early-career journalists Round three! This is the same fellowship I just finished up in Spain, but targeted for early-career journos. Deadline: May 6, 2025.
  • Covering Climate Now announced an updated training program, aimed at helping newsrooms grow their audiences by telling the climate story better. The program is available exclusively to journalists working for CCNow partners. For a list of the specific trainings they’re offering, free of charge and starting this spring, check out the Climate Journalism Training Catalog.

I’m reading/watching…

  • After the Deluge by Gary Greenberg in Harper’s, in which he explores some of the same possibilities I did in this piece I wrote for Orion a while ago, but from the close vantage of a small Connecticut town’s selectman responsible for trying to unite a divided populace in the aftermath of a tornado…and a flood. What climate change?
  • This consideration of life and death on a Washington farm, from my friend Christopher Solomon, in Orion.
  • I’ll keep reading Brendan Boyle’s Substack, La Comunidad, on life in Spain. On his post, What does Spain think of Donald Trump?, he captured what I experienced during my travels and conversations across the Iberian Peninsula.
  • I finished Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind, which descended into darkness that feels like it’s getting closer to today’s America. But I’m holding onto this line, as I turn to new writing projects that still elude me: “Julián had once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.”
  • I love this visual portrayal of land use made by National Geographic Explorer Dan Raven-Ellison, who traveled the length of Great Britain and captured drone footage of suburbia and bogs, fields and forests, seaside and soccer field, with each second representing a percentage of land use.
  • This morning’s post by Bill McKibben, on the death of Pope Francis, a religious leader who recognized that the real roots of the climate crisis reside in the power imbalance created by a “technocratic paradigm” and viewing the world through a reductionist lens.

Coda…

Years ago, I attended an event in Chennai, India, with Jane Goodall as part of her ceaseless work with Roots & Shoots. I went with my mom and dad, my mom’s hair long and grey and pulled back in a long ponytail that made her look like Jane. Last week, my musician friend Casey Neill saw Jane in Oregon, still ceaseless at 91 years old, and there she was as musician Dana Lyons sang this song for her. Dana’s new record is ‘Cracks in the Heartland,’ which Casey produced. Enjoy, friends.

Don’t stop, ever.

On the Move: Bilbao to Tarifa, in pursuit of good energy

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Out of Order

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Step by Step

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reflections of buildings and a staircase that descends into the River Nervión in Bilbao, Spain
stairs descend into the Río Nervión, Bilbao, Spain

{latest Substack…}

I’ve crossed a border into Spain, and we’re all crossing tipping-point thresholds, too many to count. We’ve passed into 2025, already a quarter into this no-longer-new century of this still-quite-young millennium, and it took mere weeks before wildfires were consuming entire communities in southern California and floods making people flee their homes in Malaysia. Tomorrow, we pass into a new American administration that will make these stories even more frequent as we catapult into a future that feels all too tenuous. Still, still, I repeat like a mantra, it’s not too late, it’s not too late. See Katharine Hayhoe’s great recap of 2024 with lots of good actionable information to carry with you into the new year. She also offered a reminder that although we did indeed pass an entire year having crossed the threshold into a world 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than pre-industrial times, we’re still not there in terms of the ten-year average that will mark our true failure to reach the goals set at the Paris Climate Accords. If thinking about the future feels daunting, I get it. Britt Wray has changed her Substack’s name from Gen Dread to Unthinkable, also the name of a new climate-mental health platform that has a host of resources for taking care of yourself. Check them out and repeat after me, it’s not too late, it’s not late…

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eARTh & España

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watercolor by meera subramanian

{Latest Substack}

Art has been my solace and fuel since the election. There was the antiquarian book show, where we witnessed the longevity of the written word. And a Georgia O’Keefe – Charles Moore exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. O’Keefe, whose work I’ve loved since I was a child, was “most interested in the holes in the bones—what I saw through them—particularly the blue from holding them up against the sky…they were most wonderful against the Blue—that Blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.” A perfect thought for this particular moment of beauty and terror.

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a measure of gratitude

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Barczyk
illustration by Hanna Barczyk for VQR

Not all stories need to be told. I held on to one closely since 2018 and then, last year, something shifted. Maybe it was hitting a five-year mark. Maybe it was being immersed in the writerly world of Sewanee School of Letters, where most summers I teach creative nonfiction atop the verdant Southern Cumberland Plateau in eastern Tennessee, drowned in cicada song. In the classroom, I was asking my students to take risks, to be brave, to put blood on the page. Could I?

And so I began to pull from journals and letters, audio recordings and pictures. All to track the arc of a friendship that began, well, here’s how the piece that emerged begins:

We were two women on either side of thirty throwing punches at one another’s faces in a concrete stairwell abuzz with florescent light. Our instructor showed us how to make a fist (thumbs on the outside), take aim, and put our weight into the shot. I threw punches at her first. She was younger than I was by a handful of years and just as racially ambiguous. Then it was her turn, and I jerked my head to the side to dodge impact, heard the whoosh of fist through air. Fight Club for girls. New York University. Coles Rec Center, 2004. Fourteen years before the surgery.

“A Measure of Gratitude,” just published in the fall issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, is about the power of female friendships and the burden of gratitude. It’s about sickness and health. The prospect of dying and the act of living. It’s about seeking and hoping and letting go and finding. There is cancer, the swapping of body parts, Peter Singer, the Bhagavad Gita, and bluefish, cooked up with cracker crumbs as new love blooms.

What would you sacrifice for a friendship? This Peregrinations post is public so feel free to share it.

And in some strange way, it’s about how to respond to events like what happened last week at the American ballot box and what will happen in the years to come. How unraveling on the outside can sometimes lead to clarity within. Another snippet from the piece:

Michael waited for my answer. I considered my deepening cynicism, my daily grief. We had a madman scheming in the White House. People were scaling up their assaults—on fellow humans, other species, entire ecosystems, the planet. The world I loved was aflame and the fire spreading. I looked at Michael. “I want to see more good in the world,” I heard myself telling him, “so why not do something…good?” It suddenly seemed achingly simple.

I hope you’ll make a nice cup of tea or pour a glass of wine, put your phone into silent mode, and take the time to read “A Measure of Gratitude.” Maybe afterwards, you’ll decide to dance, or kiss someone, or call up an old friend.

Thanks for reading Peregrinations! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

It was a pleasure and honor to once again work with the brilliant editor Paul Reyes at VQR, an ad-free, just-shy-of-a-century-old, award-winning literary magazine that I hope you’ll consider subscribing to so it may exist for another ninety-nine years. And the commissioned illustration by artist Hanna Barczyk is just perfect.

Not all stories need to be told. But, taking a deep breath, I’m glad this one is finally out there.

thanks for reading,

~meera

{Subscribe to my Substack for more of this}

the art of being present

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panorama of Colorado River with two rafts in view

by Meera Subramanian

Three rounds in the laundry and there’s still sand in my socks. I like the grit that remains. It’s been over a week since we took out from a bucket list rafting trip down the Colorado River. I adventured there with my husband and his eldest, 226 miles of the river’s reach, from Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek, traveling into the depths of what this great earth holds, a truly Grand Canyon.

New layers of rock revealed themselves to us each day as our seven boats moved downstream. Six oar boats and one paddle boat. Some of us slipped into kayaks at times. Us twenty guests in a continual rotation between boats, sometimes paddling, deep strokes into deep green cold water, or relaxing through some stretches, or holding on for dear life as we crashed through the rapids of Granite, Horn, Lava Falls. We pulled onto beaches for hikes into slot canyons, or to go swimming in the Little Colorado River, a tributary with otherworldly pastel blue waters. We passed through sacred lands. All of it felt sacred. I kept feeling like I needed to ask permission. I did, and felt (hope) it was granted. Navajo, Havasupai, Hualapai. And something deeper and more eternal, before even those people arrived, when this place was sea, inhabited by sponges, crinoids, brachiopods, lava flowing and transforming, land masses moving.

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Enter…Substack.

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Hello, friends and future friends.

Welcome to Peregrinations

I write with an invitation. I hope you’ll subscribe and join me for my new Substack, Peregrinations, a place for those who love the natural world. Whose hearts crack a little at its beauty and wonders, and also at its destruction. Those who want to understand how this glorious and broken planet works, and how we might help make it work better, for everyone. I’ve been covering the environment as a journalist for nearly twenty years, writing for magazines and newspapers around the world, as well as a book about how ordinary Indians are facing environmental crises. Check out my About page for more. But Peregrinations is something else….

The world gets bigger, and smaller, all at the same time.

But our hunger for connection continues unabated. I used to amass stacks of letters, pen on paper. Then there was a zine (rrrrl girlz!). Then a blog. Then Twitter, which felt in the early days like the temporary autonomous zone that it could have been, but is now a dark hole of misery run by a man who might actually be a machine. So let’s try coming together here, on Substack. You. And me. An itty bitty way to stay connected. For now, it’ll be occasional and free.

What to expect:

  • latest pieces and unpublished oldies
  • advance notice of classes and events
  • recommended readings
  • craft tips on creative nonfiction and publishing
  • photos
  • outtakes from reporting trips that don’t quite fit the final piece, but carry a story of their own
  • and birds, likely raptors, cutting through the sky, leaving a slipstream all their own

 

From the shelf of inspiration in my office. Art by Danica Novgorodoff.

Writing this Warming World

From climate change to climate catastrophe to existential crisis, the vocabulary of our changing planet is quickly escalating in urgency. Writers are responding. Join me this November as I lead an Off Assignment Master Series class. Each week we’ll have a guest author join us, including the incredibly talented writers Emily Raboteau, Elizabeth Rush, J. Drew Lanham & Helen Macdonald. Registration is open now. Join us live or asynchronously. Scholarships are available, and just reach out to me if you want a discount code. I have a few left to give out. Register for Writing this Warming World here! And please spread the word to anyone else who might be interested.

Summer of Great Books

The summer of 2024 was a summer of superb reading experiences. Just a few of my favorites:

Vote!

When Joe Biden withdrew from the US presidential race this summer, it seemed like the biggest story in the world, but something else happened that Sunday. It was the hottest day in recorded history, followed by another record-breaker. Expect more. Now the race is between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and the difference between the two candidates couldn’t be more stark. Read this piece from Yale Climate Connections, then read science journalist Michelle Nijhuis’s Substack piece on reading through Project 2025. Register. Vote. Act.

Socials:

I’m done with Twitter. Please come find me at Bluesky: @meerasub.bsky.social and Instagram: @meerasub.   But more than anything, I hope you’ll SUBSCRIBE!

Hope to see you back here, soon!

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Covering Climate Now Award

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Super honored to join so many other amazing journalists honored with Covering Climate Now Awards yesterdayy! Solutions! Thanks to the great editors at The New Yorker, photographer Supranav Dash & local journalist Elizabeth Mani, the team behind the story—India’s Quest to Build the largest Solar Farms—about the world’s third largest solar farm, located in Karnataka, India.

Here’s what the judges said:

Through deep interviews with peanut farmers, school teachers, government officials, and vulnerable Dalit women — who’ve lost access to farmland they cultivated for generations — Subramanian creates a textured examination of the tradeoffs and power imbalances that the green transition might portend. “Fascinating,” judges said, Subramanian’s work quickly hooks audiences, and her “lovely writing” keeps them reading.

Thanks also to the judges for their time and Covering Climate Now for amplifying these stories that span our warming planet. Check out all the wonderful winning work HERE.

#journalism #climatechange #climatecrisis #awards #amplify

Writing this Warming World

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**Join me and four brilliant writers this fall! Registration open now! **

From climate change to climate catastrophe to existential crisis, the vocabulary of our changing planet is quickly escalating in urgency. Writers are responding. Whether you are just finding your way into this space or have been writing about the natural world for years, this class is designed to help you find the right words to meet this moment of metamorphosis. How do we bring the personal and planetary together? How do we render beauty in a world aflame? In what ways is the state of the planet changing the shape of our lives? As chroniclers of the natural world under transformation, how does our ink find the fine line between hope and despair, or should it?

Led by author and journalist Meera Subramanian, this four-week course explores writing the twinned experience of climate grief and fierce love for the planet. Conversations with guest authors Emily Raboteau, Elizabeth Rush, J. Drew Lanham, and Helen Macdonald will shed light on the unique challenges that nature writers and climate journalists face. Learn how these five exemplary writers who cross genres in the climate space today are navigating common conundrums.

We’ll look closely at the work of our guest authors to deepen our understanding of best practices in portraying the physical world as it changes. We’ll analyze craft but also make space for thornier issues such as political realities and flagging morale. We’ll discuss the use of braided essays and other structural devices that are especially useful to storytellers and journalists in this niche, and get practical about how to deepen narratives with research and reporting.

Students will get weekly writing prompts and assignments to catalyze their climate writing, giving you the tools you need to work towards a solid draft essay by the end of the course. Although we will not be workshopping, there will be ample opportunities to ask questions and share struggles and insights. Participants will also receive a suggested reading list to serve as inspiration beyond the last class, as well as a list of outlets that publish climate-related writing or that are especially interested in stories with a strong element of place or nature.

REGISTER HERE

*

This course will take place on Zoom on Sundays, November 3-24 from 12 to 2 p.m. EST. Participants will receive a Zoom link prior to the course as well as a recording of the course afterwards. We cannot offer refunds once the course has begun. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

A limited number of scholarships may be available for this course; please send a brief statement outlining how and why a scholarship would impact your ability to attend to [email protected] by October 14 and we’ll get back to you by October 21.

*

Off Assignment’s Masters’ Series courses are unique four-session courses on in-depth writing topics that harness the perspectives and craft tactics of a lead instructor plus celebrated guest lecturers, such that participating writers gain a wealth of input while benefiting from the cohesive leadership of one renowned writer in a particular niche of nonfiction.

Related show

  • Author: Meera Subramanian
  • Tour: Teaching/Workshops
  • Date: November 3, 2024 - November 24, 2024
  • Time: 12:00pm
  • Venue: Online
  • City: Everywhere
  • Country: United States
  • Admission: $400 USD
  • More information
  • Notes: WRITING THIS WARMING WORLD. From climate change to climate catastrophe to existential crisis, the vocabulary of our changing planet is quickly escalating in urgency. Writers are responding. Join journalist Meera Subramanian for this four-week course that explores writing the twinned experience of climate grief and fierce love for the planet. Conversations with guest authors Emily Raboteau, Elizabeth Rush, J. Drew Lanham, and Helen Macdonald will shed light on the unique challenges that nature writers and climate journalists face. This course will take place on Zoom on Sundays, November 3-24 from 12 to 2 p.m. EST.