Connection, Understanding, and Ancient Stardust
The Body, Brain, and Books: Eleven Questions with author and naturalist Vanessa Chakour
Welcome to another edition of The Body, Brain, & Books. If you enjoy reading these quick, insightful interviews brimming with wisdom and hope, please subscribe to Beyond.
Vanessa Chakour is an author, naturalist, visual artist, former pro-boxer, herbalist and nature advocate. A dynamic blend of her vast personal experiences over 20+ years, she facilitates courses and retreats, helping students access their inner wild while learning from the plants, fungi and animals that share their ecosystems. Vanessa lives with her partner in Western Massachusetts where they steward Mount Owen Forest Sanctuary, promoting ecosystem diversity and resilience through forest stewardship and propagation of native and endangered plants and fungi. She is the author of Awakening Artemis (Penguin 2021) a memoir told through the lens of 24 medicinal plants, and the forthcoming Earthly Bodies: Embracing Animal Nature (Penguin 2024). Weeds, Wolves & Wild Women is her Substack newsletter.
What are you reading now?
It's rare not to have a number of books going at once. I've almost finished Splinters, a gorgeous memoir by Leslie Jamison. My current stack also includes The Land in Our Bones by Layla K. Feghali, an important book about land-based medicine in the SWANA region, and Settling Nature by Irus Braverman who writes about “settler ecologies” and “dispossession through protection”. I'm also reading Feasting Wild, by Gina Rae La Cerva. Her exploration of wild food, particularly the reality that “eating remains the closest, most consistent relationship we have to nature,” resonates with me as a student of land who shares ethical foraging and wildcrafting.
What are your most beloved books from your youth? Did you ever hide any from your parents?
Books like Charlotte’s Web, The Velveteen Rabbit, Dr Suess's Horton Hatches the Egg, and others where more-than-human-animals possessed rich lives are what I loved most as a child. Those stories instilled in me a deep empathy for other creatures. As I grew, I escaped into fantasies like A Wrinkle in Time, The Secret Garden and consumed all Choose Your Own Adventure books. Remember those? They were so fun. I don't remember feeling the need to hide any books, though there were parts of Judy Blume books like Tiger Eyes that made me feel exposed. Her books spoke to so much of what I was feeling and going through.
What’s your favorite book to reread? Any that helped you through a dark time?
At sixteen, a car accident left me immobile for months and books became an absolute lifeline. Beyond the physical challenges of a fractured back and neck, I had been struggling with an eating disorder. Healing was all I could focus on, so I turned to all sorts of self-help books to help me navigate and begin repairing a very fraught relationship with my body. But the book I’ve reread most is one I received after that experience: Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Tattered and torn, dogeared and underlined, that book has traveled with me everywhere. I've read, reread, and quoted the chapter about the body countless times. This is one of my favorite parts:
“The body is like an earth. It is a land unto itself. It is as vulnerable to overbuilding, being carved into parcels, cut off, overmined, and shorn of its power as any landscape. The wilder woman will not be easily swayed by redevelopment schemes. For her, the questions are not how to form, but how to feel. The breast in all its shapes and sizes has the function of feeding and feeling. Does it feed? Does it feel? It is a good breast….
There is no “supposed to be” in bodies. The question is not size of shape or years of age, or even having two of everything, for some do not. But the wild issue is, does this body feel, does it have a right to connection to pleasure, to heart, to soul, to the wild? Does it have happiness, joy? Can it in its own way move, dance, jiggle, sway, thrust? Nothing else matters.”
What’s an article of clothing that makes you feel most like you?
It has to be my orange t-shirt from the Wolf Conservation Center. The t-shirt is a limited edition design from Lobo Week, celebrating the reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf (or lobo) to their ancestral homes in the Southwest. Everything about the shirt feels like me. I wear it all the time.
What’s the best piece of wisdom you've encountered recently?
Land protection thrives on connection and understanding, not distance. For many, the concept of land protection conjures images of pristine wilderness, untouched by human hand. But this view ignores a fundamental truth: Indigenous communities have not only lived in deep relationship with their local ecosystems for centuries, but actively nurtured and shaped those ecosystems. This relational stewardship is evident in the fact that Indigenous people, who today, live on less than 5% of land, and still deal with unconscionable injustices, protect a staggering 80% of the world's biodiversity. I've been having many conversations about this lately, and given the current state of our environment and myths of human exceptionalism, the complexities are undeniable.
I believe that areas historically untouched by humans should remain that way as long as they’re healthy. But in spaces we inhabit, the bottom line is this: How can we protect plants, fungi and other animals we don't know or understand, and how will we know if and when they're missing? Understanding the more-than-human relatives in our local environment can inspire us to become stewards, not just observers of land and cultural traditions woven into the land's history. We need stewards who know, love and understand their local ecosystems. We need to foster emotional connection to land. When we distance ourselves, we lose sight of who and what we're protecting.
Tell me about any special relationship you’ve had with an animal, domestic or wild?
Growing up, dogs were beloved family members. A Newfoundland named Daphne even taught me how to walk! I would grab onto her thick black fur, slowly stand and stumble as she led me around. But one of my most profound animal connections has been with wolves, her misunderstood wild ancestors.
When wolves lost their endangered species protections in 2011, I felt compelled to get involved. I worked on their behalf from my Brooklyn apartment and would soon learn that the Wolf Conservation Center (WCC) was just an hour's train ride away. I couldn’t believe there was a wolf center near NYC! Meeting Maggie Howell, the Director of the WCC, felt like a chance to be involved in something real, and I couldn’t wait to be in the presence of wolves (who had been persecuted by European settlers and eradicated from the Northeast). Before we met, Maggie instructed me to greet the wolves with a howl upon entering their space. Howling was cathartic, freeing. And when the fifty or so wolves replied, their songs stirred something deep inside of me, bringing me to tears. It was beautiful, but also deeply sad. Those wolves should have been running free.
Over the next eight years, I ran educational programs and retreats in partnership with the WCC. But it was the quiet moments before and after events, simply being with the wolves, that forged a special bond with Ambassador wolves Zephyr, Atka, and Alawa. Some wild, wanting part of me came alive in their presence, sparking a lifelong advocacy for wolves' return to their rightful place in the Northeastern US and throughout their wild habitats.
What's one thing you are happy to work out differently than you expected?
More and more, I try to let go of expectations. But one experience that comes to mind is my extended stay in the Scottish Highlands during Covid. When I arrived at Alladale Wilderness Reserve (a massive rewilding project with a vision to reintroduce wolves) to work on my first book in late February 2020, I had planned on being there for one month while they were closed for the season. After running a retreat there the previous year, the manager had become a close friend and living in New York City at the time, I was grateful to have an affordable getaway on ancestral land. Then, the world went into lockdown and what was supposed to be a one-month writing retreat turned into a nearly 7-month stay in the Highlands. While unexpected, it was a deeply healing experience. The solitude and immersion in nature rebooted my nervous system, informed much of the book, and inspired me to finally leave New York City for good.
Singing in the shower or dancing in the kitchen? Or another favorite way your body expresses itself?
Singing to Lizzie the sweetest cat, dancing in the kitchen, and boxing. Lizzie essentially came with the house we’re renting so my partner Enrique and I adopted her. And for some reason, she inspires me to sing cheesy things to her all the time. She and I are in a sort of one-way musical. She probably thinks I’m nuts.
Enrique and I started taking online salsa and bachata lessons and sometimes we practice while we cook. Cooking is incredibly sensual to me and lately, we’ve been dancing together in the kitchen. I love it.
I’ve also been getting back into boxing again. I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with boxing since my early twenties. I've trained as both an amateur and professional fighter, and coached boxers in New York City for over a decade. Now, after a long break, I found a local YMCA with heavy bags and speed bags and decided to run a summer training camp for women in Western MA. It feels good to be jumping rope and hitting the bags again. Boxing provides a good balance for me; helping me cultivate the strength needed to support my sensitivity.
What are your hopes for yourself?
I hope to find a healthy rhythm of living sensually and slowly and contributing to the conversation of ecological healing. Ultimately, I want to fall more deeply in love with life and to experience wonder on a regular basis. I also hope to improve as a writer, speaker and facilitator; ensuring my creative efforts offer something of value to the living Earth and my wild relatives.
What’s a kindness that changed your life?
In fifth grade, we had a class assignment to write a letter to a corporation to address a wrong. The example my teacher gave was a complaint letter about a missing toy in a cereal box. But I couldn't shake the image of a Greenpeace ad I'd seen about the cruel treatment of animals for fur. So, page after page, I poured my heart out to President Reagan. It was cathartic. When we handed in our letters, my teacher, who helped us find addresses and mail them, thought my envelope was adorable - it simply said "The White House."
Then, a few weeks later, the same teacher held up a large envelope addressed from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Someone in the White House actually read my letter and forwarded it on. I was heard. Not only was I heard, but I was encouraged. And that mattered a lot to a quiet, introverted kid like me. It planted a seed: the idea that I might be able alleviate suffering and make a difference. Whoever opened that letter, read it, and decided to send it on might be the reason I'm writing on behalf of the more-than-human animals now. It ignited a fire within me to continue advocating for creatures who can't speak for themselves.
What’s a guiding force in your life?
Interdependence and impermanence. Knowing that I am related to every living being from the dandelion to the pine tree to the coyote keeps me in a state of awe. I often think about the fact that every breath I take, and every cell in my body, carries echoes of ancient stardust and the legacy of countless generations. I also know that everything has a season, and no being can last forever. It’s a truth that inspires me to be intensely present and to cherish loved ones before they slip away. I try not to cling, although sometimes it’s hard. I love deeply. I’m constantly learning and unlearning, and peeling back layers of conditioning to rewild myself and my relationship with the living earth. Autumn is my favorite season and it also breaks my heart.
If you enjoyed Vanessa’s questionnaire, you might also enjoy this one with Dennard Dayle:
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So much of this reminded me of my childhood and my obsession with wolves. I read the book about the girl who lived with them and I remember wanting that, to be far away from my home and out in the wild.
"I’m constantly learning and unlearning, and peeling back layers of conditioning to rewild myself" - this really struck a chord with me 🖤🖤
I don’t subscribe to many Substacks, but I just subscribed to yours to support your work- interdependence and connection. Doing a small part here.💚