The headlines started appearing in late summer. “Earth had its hottest August in 175-year record,” wrote the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Now, in November, there’s a regular pile of them: “NASA finds summer 2024 hottest to date” (NASA), “2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record” (the World Meteorological Organization), “This year set to be first to breach 1.5C global warming limit” (the BBC).
It’s wearying, and scary. Which is why I sometimes hesitate to mention climate statistics. But sometimes, too, it’s important to pause and acknowledge where we are. As the United Nations notes, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
Every fraction of a degree of warming matters. . . . For example, every additional 0.1 degree Celcius of global warming causes clearly discernible increases in the intensity and frequency of temperature and precipitation extremes.
In 2019, I wrote in these pages about the impact Hurricane Florence had on this magazine, our campus, and our community. Parts of eastern North Carolina are still suffering from that storm’s effects. This fall, the even-more-devastating Hurricane Helene swept through the southeastern United States, reaching shockingly far from where it made landfall to cause a five-hundred-mile-long swath of damage. This was no usual hurricane; a study by World Weather Attribution reports that climate change was a “key driver” of the storm’s “catastrophic impacts.” Many of our friends, family members, and alumni were affected—their power out for weeks; potable water just now, or not yet, restored. Entire towns were washed away. Recovery efforts thus far have been admirable—and they will need to be ongoing for years. If you’ve been wanting to help out, there are a lot of good options, easy to find online.
After we look at the hard facts, and as we’re giving and receiving the aid we can, art can offer some solace—whether it brings a distraction from what’s difficult or a new take on hard times that makes them more possible to bear. The work in this issue offers both kinds of succor. Chloe Garcia Roberts, in an essay that will leave you feeling breathless and yet also rich in time, recounts her trip to a conference on the subject. In a story from Miriam Ho Nga Wai, a father and mother tend the rooftop garden their traveling child left behind, their anxieties and joys for her reflected in their dedication to growing tomatoes. In a new comic, Lena Moses-Schmitt explores the damage cars can do, both directly to our bodies and through the slower violence of carbon emissions. And in a story from Adam Leeds Latham, a writer wrestles with the decision between loyalty to his art and to his chosen family—and also goes fishing.
We’re pleased to feature artwork in this issue by Jessica C. White, whom some readers will know as the featured printer for our 2021 Bradford-Niedermann Broadside Series, and who here shares excerpts from one of her crankies—a twenty-foot linoleum-cut story of the ocean’s depths. And this issue’s passel of poems has in it a lemon tree from Aman Rahman, a bear from Al Baldwin, children looking at the world in poems by Katie Hartsock and Debra Bruce, a funeral procession of ants from John Kneisley, a self-eulogy from Michael Torres, and, from Laurel Anderson, a ransom note with instructions for getting the planet back.
You may notice that this, our spring /summer issue, is reaching your doorstep later than usual. But what are seasons when we’re closing out the hottest year yet on record? This is an easy joke to make, but the truer thing is that any less hot will be better. Any progress we can make will make the climate crisis a little easier to bear.
This is not to say that doing the minimum is plenty. It is to say don’t give up. Keep going, even if you’re running behind. Rest when you need to. But then keep on. The work in this issue, I hope, offers strength and respite for the journey in equal measure.
This fall, we were pleased to welcome back to our team Caitlin Rae Taylor, who served as fiction editor during her time in UNCW’s MFA program, and who is now part of our faculty and serves as assistant art director for the magazine. Caitlin has already provided invaluable aid as we’ve laid out the interior of this issue. We’re so glad she’s here.
Finally, a note of logistics and thanks. The aforementioned timing of this issue is mainly on account of the arrival, last fall, of a baby. This is burying the lede a little: the baby’s presence in the world has occupied more of my attention than anything. The baby eclipses magazine issues, the climate crisis, poetry. (Eclipses poetry!) I have felt in these past months how powerful it is to have support in caring for a little one. In my absence, our team worked to keep the magazine running, for which I am ever thankful. Thanks to everyone, and special thanks to Michelle Donahue, who managed the editorial side of things with grace as well as handling production for issue 35; to Michael Ramos, who continued art-directing beautiful spreads for that issue and designed its cover; to former managing editor Meghann Blackman, for managing promotion for the issue as well as a host of other tasks; to Megan Hubbard, who, as previously noted in this space, takes care of uncountable details with effortless style; to Siobahn Daugherty, who ensured that our contributors were paid and that orders were sent; to former managing editor Ryan Bloom, who designed and built a much-needed new subscriber database for the magazine; and to our MFA editorial team, who acquired and edited work for this issue and more. I’m so glad to have this fine group of folks dedicated to every aspect of the work that makes Ecotone go. In the new year, we look forward to sharing our Moon Issue with you, and, after that, an issue in celebration of our twentieth anniversary. More to come!
In the meantime, for fortitude and delight, I’m sharing on the next page a seaside, truth-seeking poem by Coventry Patmore (1823–1896), shared recently by the poet Catherine Tufariello. While some of Patmore’s other work has stood the test of time less steadily, this poem endures. Happy solstice: may everyone have all the rest they require, may it be cold enough that every living system gets what it needs to keep on, and then, when it ought to, may spring come again
