Reprint: Brushfire

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So the first essay from my ms. focusing on Winnipeg's urban forest has made its way into the world, specifically in ALECC's critical/creative journal The Goose.

My abstract for the piece is as follows: "“Brushfire” concerns itself with how people use urban forests, from indecent exposure to poaching to teenage drinking party-bonfires that get out of control. Though it could be construed as a manifesto on walking-in-the-woods, it also touches on some of the conflicts inherent in urban/nature experiences."

In their Editor's Notebook, Lisa Szabo-Jones and Paul Huebener had this to say about my piece:

"Ariel Gordon’s darkly humorous creative nonfiction piece “Brushfire” illuminates the uneasy  existence of how we use natural spaces, and the transgressive behaviours that urban wild spaces evoke in local residents. Gordon reminds us that we enter these shared spaces each for different reasons, some less salubrious than others."

Also of interest is Deer in Their Own Coats by Daniel Coleman, about how "urban deer are requiring a renegotiation of settler-Six Nations relations in Hamilton, Ontario." There's also an entire section of Audioecopoetics.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also note that there's a review of Merle Massie's Forest Prairie Edge: Place History in Saskatchewan by Matthew Zantingh.

It's been great to get feedback from friends and colleagues about "Brushfire." It feels like I'm in dialogue with people around ideas of human/nature interactions, about public green spaces, and that's exactly what I've always wanted for my writing.