Moonshine Ink columnist Eve Quesnel loves words. It’s evident, as frequent a contributor as she has been to this newspaper for 20-plus years. Starting with book reviews in 2005 and moving on to “Nature’s Corner” in 2012, she’s shown a commitment to writing and the outside world.
In her nature column, Eve entreats us all to pause and appreciate the subtle wonders of the natural world right outside our doors, from ants to mammals, weather patterns to spiderwebs, and glacial erratics to water bears. (Curious about one of these? Check out the Nature’s Corner archive.)
Now, these explorations have been inked into a new form, a hardcover gem of a book, Snow Fleas and Chickadees: Everyday Observations in the Sierra, which was officially released on May 20 at an event in downtown Truckee. The delightful volume, artfully put together with captivating illustrations by Anne Chadwick, showcases a selection of “Nature’s Corner” essays that have been re-researched and expanded. To read it is to know and embrace Tahoe/Truckee’s wild world.
It is fair to say that Snow Fleas would not have happened without Moonshine readers, so we sat down with the author for this month’s membership update.
How has writing the column shaped your relationship with the natural world and with readers?
I think the best part about the relationship with readers is … how many people come up to me and say, “Oh, I look at nature in a different way now.”
Looking at it differently is something I just read about with John Muir who says he looks at the foreground, the middle ground, and the beyond. It’s sort of dimensional, but he will look very closely. He’ll get just down on the ground and look at ants or whatever and write forever about them … So, when I read John Muir talking about that, I was like, I do that too (laughs).
It’s just stopping, it’s observing, and it’s taking a little bit of time. That’s the big thing. Readers come up to me and say, ‘I look at things and go, wow, that’s great,’ but then move on. Whereas I’ll stay with it for a while and just really see what’s happening … I think what most people will find very strange is I don’t journal. I don’t journal at all. So, when I see something, I photograph the heck out of it and then spend time with it. And then I will just go home and research and write it. But I don’t journal while in nature.
How has your perspective on the natural world evolved over the years of writing the column and what continues to inspire you?
That is a wonderful question. The complexity of nature is what I’ve learned. It is so, so complicated, but at the same time, so simple in means of what flora and fauna need to do to survive. The systems are really complicated, but if you kind of break it down, it all makes sense.
What do you hope people will take away from both your column and the book? Especially in a time when our relationships with nature feels more important than ever?
I start my preface of the book talking about my coffee walk in the morning down the street, which I’ve been doing forever. I brew my coffee, I grab the dogs, and it’s just one block and I walk down and back, and then I do a more intense walk later. But in both of those walks, even that very short 15-minute walk, it’s a way to sort of wake up in the morning without attacking your phone or the computer, [instead] just breathing some fresh air. And again, the things I’ve seen down my block and back have been amazing. I’ve seen a bobcat; I’ve seen black bears and cubs. I’ve seen the white-headed woodpecker, ravens all the time, the Douglas squirrel — there is so much in this one little block. So, part of this book is about we don’t need to climb Everest, we don’t need to do the 20-mile hike. We can simply walk in our neighborhood and just look around and just take a little bit of time.
Since this is a membership update, what are your thoughts as to why people should support Moonshine Ink as a member?
They should support Moonshine Ink more than ever because journalism is struggling to survive. And it’s another entity that connects us to our community … what I say in the column and book is, the more you get out and see what’s around us, the more you connect to Truckee and Tahoe. This is your place. This is now your roots. Whether you’re from here, you just moved here, this is your place now. And I think Moonshine Ink is just as much a part of that, that connects us to the people, the landscape, the organizations. I think it’s more important now than ever because journalism is being challenged in a big way. And it’s being erased.
