ERIS Wild Things: A Geography of Grief

“These trees, these plants I have written to you about have taught me all I needed to know about your death.”B loves M, her favorite sister.Then M is gone—taken too young, too suddenly, under the strange and quiet shroud of the pandemic. In the absence that follows, B sets out each day into the vast wilds of Griffith Park with her dog, walking uphill and down in search of understanding, of peace, of reconciliation.She talks to her sister in the language of the landscape, sports with her in the shape-shifting form of the wild animals and plants of the park—rabbits, coyotes, snakes, owls, oleander, dodder, nettle, walnut. She leaves gifts—shells, stones, tokens of memory—and finds them answered in unexpected ways.B now finds herself open to the mystery of change—willing to release old habits, weary truths, impossible expectations, and the comforting fictions of family. She revisits her life as an anxious and dutiful daughter, sister, wife, mother, and artist, pausing to linger, to glance sideways, to laugh. She walks onward, guiding us gently toward a place we all must reach—where much can be left behind and a new wisdom awaits. And then she writes.Wild Things is the result: 59 letters to her sister, one for each year of her life, alive with grief, wonder, and transformation. A book about loss and about the radical clarity that comes when everything falls away––a luminous, unforgettable work. Wild Things is a book about loss and about the radical clarity that comes when everything falls away Autorid: Barbara Wansbrough