How stepping into unfamiliar territory inspired a passion for the environment (and writing)
by Nikki Kallio
Let’s just say I wasn’t among those intrepid young undergraduate students who have it all figured out.
Even by the time I was approaching graduation in 1993—with a cobbled-together degree in social science—I still had unclear ideas about my future. I’d always had notions about writing “someday,” but had vague ideas about how to make a living at it. I figured maybe I’d go on to grad school to become a therapist, and maybe one day I’d publish the children’s book I was noodling around with. At the time it seemed foolhardy to go to school just for creative writing and I was trying to develop a “practical” way to earn an income.
So, I’d meandered through the past five years of my undergraduate program—slowed down in equal parts by indecision, by taking a part-time year to earn money, and getting distracted by things like, oh, getting married. I still had a general degree requirement to fill, so I settled on a natural resources class, because, why not.
Imagine my surprise when my future suddenly appeared, vibrant and sharply focused.
This natural resources course, taught by a team of three professors in the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s College of Natural Resources, was designed as an overview of ecological concepts and concerns for the general student population. The course began with the history of North America and the impact of westward expansion and resource exploitation by white settlers. It covered the philosophies of preservation, conservation and environmentalism. It discussed the impacts of pollution on ecosystems and on human health.
I remember the professors issuing warnings about potentially devastating climate change—drought, powerful hurricanes, shifts in the weather—all happening within a few decades. (Like, everything we’re seeing happen now.) For my impressionable younger self, this new knowledge and concern took hold in ways that left me re-evaluating my education and taking a sudden plunge into my creative side.
In a letter to a friend I wrote about three years after the course, I said:
The instructor started talking about what things would be like in the future if we didn’t change things now — and it must have been the right time in my life that the things I learned sank in — and my imagination took off. A week into the course I had my book started.
I imagined a dystopian story centered on a found family in northern Minnesota trying to protect a patch of land in the midst of climactic chaos and conflict, each with their own ideas about the best way to do it. At the time I didn’t have the literary vocabulary or the experience to describe what I was writing; the term ‘cli-fi’ came later. I was engrossed in the manuscript for years, improving it as my skills developed, but as rejections gathered I ultimately moved on to other projects. But it was the novel that taught me to write novels, the manuscript that showed me that a world of creativity exists in parallel to the physical world.
I’m grateful for that class—which was far outside my major, and my comfort zone—for helping to send me down a trajectory I barely could imagine at the time, giving my natural inclination for writing and creativity something to grab onto. It offered me not just one but two professional pathways to follow.
*
I’d like to think I would’ve eventually developed a concern for the environment anyway. Maybe at the time I chose the class, my Boomer parents’ influence had finally started to register, despite my having been a fairly indifferent Gen-X teen in the glitzy, conspicuous-consumerist 1980s.
Once, when I was still in high school, my mother signed us up for a Saturday recycling pickup, pre-municipal recycling days. It was a way some students fulfilled a community service requirement; my mom just thought it was a good thing to do. I was at a loss to explain to the other kids why I had given up a Saturday morning of sleep for this when I didn’t have to. Later, my mother volunteered at a wildlife rescue, and our basement was often occupied by ravenous baby squirrels or chittering raccoons. My father always had a green thumb (a trait which still sadly eludes me) and is a waste-conscious do-it-yourselfer, building more than one of our homes himself and keeping them in good repair.
Consciously or not, maybe all of these factors led me to choose the natural resources class instead of something else.
I didn’t quite realize, until that moment, that college could be like this. But then, what to do? It was late to start another major, and I was no scientist, even though my first declared major had been geology. I liked earth science, but for the history and the clues in rocks and landscapes; when we got to carbon dating and half-lives my eyes glazed over. But there was writing—I didn’t have to be a scientist; I could be a journalist.
*
I graduated with the social science degree. Then I turned around and went back for some courses in journalism and began writing for the school newspaper, at the same time continuing to work on my novel. I joined the student chapter of the Wildlife Society and wrote for its newsletter. I took a very-low-paid internship at a wildlife rehabilitation center. I signed up for a three-week ‘winterim’ course in Costa Rica on tropical ecology.
That time away in one of the most biodiverse locations on the planet was another pivotal step out of my comfort zone, literally—I was unable to sleep, probably charged up with the excitement and anxiety of my inaugural trip overseas, not to mention camping for the first time in my life at a park where they’d just captured a 16-foot boa constrictor.
I also was experiencing, on some level, a lot of complex emotions I wasn’t ready to manage about my early marriage; the time away from home undoubtedly gave me the space to start recognizing that its future had been built on shifting ground. That time in a wonderland of rainforests, fog-draped volcanoes, mangroves, dry tropical forests and roiling oceans undoubtedly altered my perspective once again; the ecological diversity of plants, birds and landscapes likely began to fill some blank spaces and crack apart notions that my life was confined inside the walls of a plain apartment near campus.
Upon returning home, I contacted the local paper and said, hey, could I write something for you about Costa Rica? It was the catalyst for an internship and jobs in journalism, including an eventual role as an environmental reporter. But fiction continued to call me, and eventually I returned to school for an MFA.
*
During my program at Goddard College, from which I graduated in 2010, I had another experience with stepping outside familiar ground that has proved to be incredibly helpful in my creative work.
Instructor Erin Fristad, now the owner of Wild Cove Farm, built one of her workshops around the 2003 film The Five Obstructions, a documentary in which filmmaker Lars Von Trier challenges his mentor Jorgen Leth to remake his 13-minute short film The Perfect Human five different ways, with ‘obstructions’ provided by Von Trier, such as that it must be remade in a particular location or made as a cartoon.
Fristad asked us to bring to the workshops segments of our work that were giving us trouble. Her obstruction was that we had to trade our work to a person of her choice and write something that focused on the particular problem the other was having. She deliberately chose writers who were working in as different genres as possible. For my MFA thesis, I was working on a new post-apocalyptic young adult manuscript. My sticking point was how much to focus on my protagonist’s deceased mother within the story.
Fristad paired me with my good friend Ellen Welcker, a poet, who was working on a long-form poem on how human rights are impacted by genetic modification of the food supply.
We only had twenty minutes to complete the exercise. I ended up writing a short sci-fi story for Ellen from the perspective of a genetically modified grain of rice. Ellen wrote a poem for my protagonist from the voice of the girl’s dead mother.
It was flipping brilliant. Because of the exercise, I was able to recognize that I could weave in the mother’s voice or presence guiding my young protagonist in the story. Ellen said the exercise helped her to let the poem naturally evolve. We both got so much out of it that we attempted a collaboration later.
The exercise also later helped me to recognize the potential in combining two half-finished stories into what became my novella, The Fledgling, about two characters living in a future world where the sun makes people insane.
*
These instances of stepping away from familiar territory—with experiencing a class in a new academic area, traveling, witnessing my work through another genre—allowed me to envision both the greater world and my own world through new perspectives, essentially seeing through someone else’s eyes.
Isn’t that what we want when it comes to climate change? When it comes to anything? How amazing an opportunity that is—however we find it. We can gain perspective anytime we connect with people who have different experiences than our own. What do we lose by limiting our curiosity, by closing ourselves off—or by removing a book from the library?
Exploration builds creativity and shapes our narratives, adding nuance and compassion. We begin to recognize how we are connected to others, how our actions impact someone a world away. We begin to build greater understanding for others, and for ourselves, which allow us to work better and to discover pathways we might not have recognized before—whether we’re solving a problem in our own lives, within our creative work, or for the planet.
Find out more about Nikki’s book Finding the Bones.
Nikki Kallio is the author of the short fiction collection Finding the Bones (Cornerstone Press, 2023), a finalist for a Best Book Award from American Book Fest and shortlisted for a Cygnus Sci-Fi Award from Chanticleer International Book Awards. The collection contains her dystopian novella, The Fledgling. She was a journalist on both coasts before returning home to Wisconsin, where she is a freelance writer and editor.
Imagine 2200 Competition Stories Released
The third Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors winners have been released. These 12 brand-new climate fiction stories feature vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of our future, inviting readers to envision the world that could be and empowering them to work toward it.
The stories in this year’s Imagine 2200 collection are not afraid to explore the challenges ahead, but ultimately offer hope that we can work together to build a more sustainable and just world. Through rich characters, lovingly sketched settings, and gripping plots, these stories welcome you into futures that celebrate who we are and what we can become.
Suzanne Taylor writes Evolution Revolution, on Substack. She has just announced an essay competition to get people thinking about how we can work together to transform the world. As she explains in the guidelines: "Write as if it’s 2050 and Earth is a cooperative place. How did that come to pass? The only requirement is to start with what you did. Be as concise as you can so as not to lose readers, while giving details that demonstrate the workability of your ideas."
There are significant cash prizes for the winning entries. Essays are due by Valentine’s Day, on the 14th of February. Click here for her announcement to find more about what to write and how to submit:
Hi Nikki, just read your story with interest, finding points of overlap. I wrote shorts stories and a heck of a lot of notes and outlines for more. I used a lot of it for song writing and spoken word gigs. Never bothered to publish much, but as I became concerned over climate issues, I started thinking about writing on the subject. Last May I discovered Substack.... WOW..... then last month I read of Suzanne's concept, which I have become totally involved in, finding her new writers every day. I'd suggest that it dovetails with your league, seeing strong possibilities in enhancing the readership of both our groups via collaborations. More importantly tho' is that such a melding could bring about a planet wide conscious drive for practical solutions. I would be grateful for your thoughts, and hope that you would see fit to copy this to the rest of the League. The essay is but the initial step of a broader and devloping programme.... Peace, Maurice
https://suzannetaylor.substack.com/p/an-essay-contest-its-january-1-2050
Thanks for telling your story. Love that exercise, switching with another writer. Brilliant!