Sleuth Wood Show

LIVE STREAMING FRIDAYS on YouTube

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

How do you connect to nature? In the Sleuth Wood Show, we’ll meet a wide diversity of people who have a deep, yet perhaps less conventional, connection to nature. We’ll meet game designers and gamers, writers and authors, tattoo artists, furries, musicians, artists, folklorists, naturalists and all kinds of nature nerds who have followed a non science path. The weirder the better. We’ll discover how nature plays a role in their work and hobbies and what their nature interests and obsessions are.

There is no one right way to connect to nature and there are a million ways to do so, which the guests will share with us. Nature should be accessible to everyone with no barriers.

Sleuth Wood comes from a line in W.B. Yeats poem, ‘The Stolen Child’, about a child being whisked away by fairies to a new world filled with nature. Sleuth in Irish means sloping, so in addition to what we usually think of with the word ‘sleuth’ the title has a secondary meaning invoking mystery and intrigue in the sloping woods, which we’ll investigate through the guests on the show.

UPCOMING GUESTS

Friday December 1, 2023, 4pm PST

Rachel Quinlan, Artist, Illustrator

Sleuth Wood will be taking a brief hiatus through the end of 2023 and will return for new episodes starting in 2024

The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

-W.B. Yeats

PAST GUESTS

GEORGIA SILVERA SEAMANS

Georgia is a writer, urban forester and the founder of Local Nature Lab in NYC. We talked about all the many programs Georgia has been involved in, specifically Local Nature Lab. We also talked about the importance of, and challenges of preserving urban trees.

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SARAH SWANSON

Sarah is a birder and author of ‘Best Little Book of Birds The Cascade Range and Columbia River Gorge’, ‘Best Little Book of Birds the Oregon Coast’ and ‘Must-See Birds of the Pacific Northwest: 85 Unforgettable Species, Their Fascinating Lives, and How to Find Them’. We talked about birding by ear and Sarah told great bird encounter stories.

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JEN STRONGIN

Jen is a beach naturalist for the Seattle Aquarium and a photographer. We talked about the role of the aquarium’s beach naturalist program and all the incredible marine life Jen encounters on Seattle area beaches as well as those around Puget Sound.

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WENDY WAGNER

Wendy is the author of several books, many short stories and other writing and is also the Editor-in-chief at Nightmare Magazine and the Senior/Managing Editor at Lightspeed. We talked about the influence of nature and growing up in a small, coastal town in Oregon on Wendy’s writing and the presence of nature in the horror genre.

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NICK MARTENS

Nick is spending 2023 doing a spider big year by searching for as many spiders as he can find in the state of Oregon. We talked about his project, what he’s learned and the challenges of identifying spiders without being an expert in the field. You can see what spider’s Nick’s seen on his iNaturalist project page.

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JULIE LAURIN

Julie Laurin is an artistic photographer, writer, the creator of A Tiny World, and the host of the Planet B612 Podcast. We talked about her projects, the role of nature growing up in Canada and her recent move to Prince Edward Island and newfound connection to working with wood and learning about the trees around her new house.

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REBECCA HEISMAN

Rebecca is the author of Flight Paths: How a Passionate and Quirky Group of Pioneering Scientists Solved the Mystery of Bird Migration. We talked about her new book, which features the fascinating methods people have used to document bird migration, as well as the differences in the landscape between Eastern and Western Washington.

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LUAN ROBERTS

Luan is a dockfouler and spends a lot of time hanging off the sides of floating docks looking at and photographing marine life, particularly nudibranchs. We talked about her experiences dockfouling, how she became interested in marine life and all about nudibranchs. Luan also gave tips on how to go dockfouling.

Visit Luan’s Instagram page to see her dockfouling observations.

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CARRIE NIBLETT

Carrie is the author of The Curious Observer’s Guide to Slime Molds of Santa Cruz and Beyond and we talked about slime molds and how Carrie got interested in them through fungus. We covered topics from interesting species of slime molds to speculation about why some are found in certain locations but not others.

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ZOE BROOKES

Zoe is a tattoo artist and the owner of Firestarter Ink in Seattle, Washington. We talked about the influence of nature in Zoe’s tattoo work while she gave me new tentacle tattoos to cover up and old tattoo of mine. She also talked about her fascination with animal bones and gave us a tour of her studio space including a bone cabinet and other curiosities.

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GWEN KATZ

Gwen is the author of Among the Red Stars and numerous short stories as well as the creator of a new video game called The Wolf of Derevnya. We talked about the influence of nature in Gwen’s writing and games and how living in Los Angeles differs from the Pacific Northwest where she used to live.

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FRANZ ANTHONY

Franz is an illustrator and designer from Indonesia and we talked about his artwork, rewildling of his yard and what invertebrates he’s found in his garden, the origins of InverteFest, and our shared interest in nature in video games, notably The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

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