Control is the Illusion

We’re in the depths of summer. The days are hotter, longer, and my energy drains much faster during these days. During our time in Colorado and now Wyoming, we have tried to be outside as much as possible, exploring local state parks and of course the National Parks in these states, including Rocky Mountain National Park and Yellowstone. While the National Parks are incredible, I also delight in enjoying state parks or smaller local parks and trails that we surprise us on our drives. Those smaller natural areas where there are fewer crowds of families are often quieter, more peaceful, and make for surprising moments and scenic beauty, such as when we drove along the Peak to Peak Highway outside of Boulder, viewing Estes Peak and walking along the trail in Nederland surrounding Boulder Creek.

As we entered Wyoming and it’s wide open expanses and cattle and horse ranches, I returned to this album by The Chicks that I used to listen to repeatedly on road trips.

We made it to Wyoming on July 4th and the 250 year celebrations for this settler-colonial project called “America.” I am left thinking again, as I have many times during our travels, about what we value in this country, what we choose to memorialize, preserve, and what the land remembers better than we ever could. Driving from Colorado through Wyoming, we witnessed several signs marking the highway as part of the Sand Creek Massacre Trail memorializing the massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people’s in 1864 at the hands of Colonel Chivington in which 230 villagers were killed. I am currently reading Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth, a paranormal horror novel about grief and generational trauma and violence which centers the ancestral aftermath of this massacre and the affects it has on Olivia, a Native paranormal researcher and her loved ones.

Wild fires rage uncontained across Colorado, Arizona, Utah and Wyoming while folks decry strictures on shooting off fireworks as limitations on their “freedoms.” The Super El Nino this year is creating a heat dome and unprecedented heatwaves that are are killing people across the globe, especially the Global South like India, Pakistan and Nepal. Climate anxiety creeps in. Last month we re-watched The Neverending Story, and seeing the destruction wrought by The Nothing reflects so much of the ecological changes and destruction of the Anthropocene.

For our current car audiobook, we have been enjoying Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton. Part travel memoir, part historical deep dive into the United States’ National Parks by region, Knighton’s storytelling is engaging, funny (and punny), informative and a thoughtful look at why we visit and love our national and state parks. At one point he compares looking for a new relationship after his engagement ends by describing his search for love as a search for a “National Park kind of love-special and worth protecting.”

Last week, we visited Yellowstone, the country’s first National Park. In the first ten minutes in the park, we witnessed majestic bison grazing in the plains and meadows of the park, and a black bear foraging in the brush! We utilized the free park ranger led hike along the South Rim of the Upper Falls trail, equipped with water, hiking poles and bear spray.

The last time I visited Yellowstone, I was eleven or twelve on an family adventure tour with my mom and best friend for a week. Along with several other families, we biked, hiked, kayaked and camped in and around the park, experiencing several misadventures and basking in the beauty of our surroundings. Those memories live strong in my minds eye, and I have a lot of gratitude towards my mom for providing me these kinds of experiences.

One thing that happened during that trip that shaped my thinking about interacting with wildlife is that throughout that week, one of the dads in the group decided it would be fun to read a chapter or two of a book out loud around the campfire each night. The book was Night of the Grizzlies by Jack Olsen, detailing true account of events leading up to a tragic night in August of 1967 when two separate campers, miles apart, were fatally attacked by grizzly bears in Glacier National Park. On one of the final nights of the trip, I vividly remember him reading the final chapter that described the horrific maulings of the campers in extremely graphic detail. At 39 years old, I still remember some of the details of that chapter. Before going to bed, we were responsible for helping the tour guides clean up dinner and lock up all of the food in a trailer to “bear-proof” our supplies. By accident, one of the teens in the group accidentally spilled Cool-Aid all over my mom, and throughout the night she was convinced that a bear was going to drag her off in the night. The next day at the airport in Jackson Hole, we saw a report on the news that a camper had wandered near the park’s volcanic geysers at night and fell in, dying what I imagine to be a horrific death.

Going back into Yellowstone after so many years, I was nervous about confrontations with wild animals. There are a number of videos online of folks getting gored by bison when approaching too close or being chased down by brown and black bears. Looking at so much through the lens of a camera, it sometimes seems as though phones have altered our relationship to reality. After our hike in Yellowstone last week, we watched Grizzly Man, the documentary about Timothy Treadwell created by Werner Herzog. I had never actually watched it when it originally came out, but it was a very telling portrait of a man dealing with depression and feels of disconnection with human beings causing him to want to live closely and interact with wild bears in Alaska. For all of my thoughts about Treadwell and his actions leading to his and his girlfriend Amy’s deaths, I was also reminded of other media that explores the psychology of people who attempt to interact with and form relationships with wild animals, such as Fatal Attractions on Animal Planet and even the Tiger King documentary. I’ve written stories about this phenomenon before, and probably will again. Many of these people are living with mental illness, neurodiversity, addiction, grief, and social isolation. There is a racial and gendered component there to be sure. They are also often creating personas for themselves wrapped up in their own egos about somehow being special, and therefore immune to the threat of wild animals. Inevitably, they are proven wrong time and again. Sometimes one time is all it takes.

What is equally tragic about many of these instances in which humans are harmed or killed by animals is that those animals, acting in their defensive or predatory nature, are often killed as well. While many people who try to interact with animals like this in the wild believe they are doing so out of care and respect, it is important for us to remember that respect is shown when we remember that animals around us have been here much longer than human beings, and that real respect is to acknowledge their autonomy, rather than treating them merely as points of interest or props for our photos. At a time when the Trump Administration is stripping protections from public lands and for protected species to open up more land to drilling, logging and mining, and tech companies are threatening communities and ecosystems with new AI data centers, we must all resist even harder the ecocide and capitalist land grabs that threaten all beings. Author and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s words about interdependence (see video below) always feel like a good reminder, especially when visiting new natural places that we are unfamiliar with, to move with respect and understanding.

On our hikes, when we reach a point in the trail or overlook where the cool wind caresses my face and I can look around, down into a valley, across a sunny meadow full of native wildflowers, I am filled with such gratitude for the Earth’s resilience, and my luck to be able to experience these landscapes. Beyond photos, I try to preserve the moments in my mind by noting five things I can see, hear, touch or perceive in some small way. I stop and listen, look, smell and feel: crows cawing overhead, water rushing down a river, the smell of wild lavender, green green everywhere around me. Sometimes I record bird calls in the Merlin ID app to study later or take photos of little things I notice around me. Ramiro captures these moments in his own unique ways. His photos and videos capture perspectives I would never have thought of, and I love comparing our photos at the end of a day. He is now sharing them through a new photography venture he is starting (check out his website, Luminous Vista, here!).

Our most repeated declarations lately: “There’s still ice on that mountain!” (Ramiro) or “Crowwwwww!” (me)

These moments are beyond incredible, as well as bittersweet. I am often standing still in time, my legs tired from a long hike, heat baring down on me, and yet to leave this moment is to allow this time to pass into memory, only accessible again through photos and videos and the sense memories that may still live in my skin. Will I ever be able to come back to this particular place to visit again? I hope so, but there are not guarantees, and the moment will never be the same twice. As much as I love our our videos and photos, my journals and scrapbooks, I accept the beauty in these ephemeral moments too.

This passage from Joy Harjo from her collaborative book, Secrets from the Center of the World with photographs from Stephen Strom of Navajo country in the Southwest, sticks with me:

“Anything that matters is here. Anything that will continue to matter in the next several thousand years will continue to be here. Approaching in the distance is the child you were some years ago. See her laughing as she chases a white butterfly.”

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2026 Projects, Workshops and Events

I am currently planning the rest of my readings, workshops and events for 2026 and will announce more details in soon! Here’s where you can find me next:

I will be part of a virtual reading with Strong Women, Strange Worlds tomorrow, July 16th. You can register here to save your spot!

On the days that we are not hiking and exploring, I am trying my best to focus on promoting my work and pegging away at my many creative projects. Some days sharing my books feels like yeeting them at unsuspecting people through an open car window. Other times it feels like planting seeds at reader’s feet and hoping something grows (and they are!). The best is tenderly placing them into the hands of those who receive them as sincerely as they are given. I am trying my best to move with my authenticity and care even when “promoting” and “networking” is often at odds with those values.

I’m also trying to focus on finishing three books by the end of this year for submission and future publication opportunities. I feel poised to finally be ready to finish a novel, if not three, and yet am also hampered some days by my own anxiety about these being able to sustain longer, newer work. Even having three books in the world, I still finding myself questioning whether I will be able to do that again. And then I sit down and bang out 400 words in a manuscript, save the file and call it a day. Persistence requires a fundamental belief creative work will happen, is happening, even in the face of our fears.

My horror collection, The Remedy is the Disease, is out now from Undertaker Books! You can order your copy now using the link above!

I’m incredibly heartened to that the book has been received so well by several reviewers. Here are some reviews and podcasts I’ve appeared on lately so you can get a sense of the book:

• You can read a review of the book here in Sinister Scoop!
• Review by H.V. Patterson
• Review by Alex Brown
• Susto Podcast Interview
• The Basement Girls Podcast: The Wolf Man
• The Scares That Shaped Us: The Thing

If you missed the virtual book launch I did last week with two of my favorite writers and supporters, Rios de la Luz and Ryan C. Bradley, you can watch the recorded reading here!

My poetry chapbook, Offerings to the Tumbled Temple, is also out now from Purple Ink Press! You can purchase a copy here. Chapbooks like these make great gifts for your poetry loving friends! You can also order a copy from your local indie bookstore or, if you love your local library, you can request that they stock a copy.

Indie bookstores currently stocking my books:

• BookWoman in Austin, TX
• Red Salmon Arts/Resistencia Bookstore in Austin, TX
• Lark and Owl Bookstore in Georgetown, TX
• Haunt Happy Books in Lockhart, TX
• Curio Mrvosa in Taylor, TX
• Nowhere Bookshop in San Antonio, TX
• Boerne Bookshop in Boerne, TX
• Interabang Books in Dallas, TX
• Palabras Bilingual Bookshop in Phoenix, AZ
• Word Horde Emporium of The Weird and Fantastic in Petaluma, CA
• Secret Garden Books in Seattle, WA

Here are some ways that you can help me to promote my book (and other indie poets and writers):

• Buy a copy if you can.
• Share the book with your loved ones.
• If you love your local library or independent bookstore, you can request that they stock a copy.
• Nominate my book(s) for your next book club read!
• If you or anyone you know reviews books, you can request an copy from me to review!
• I am now booking for 2026 events, so if you have a bookstore, community organization or space you would like for me to provide a workshop, reading, author talk, etc, comment or reach out via my contact page on my website to plan further!

I’ve also been doing quite a bit of freelance writing in the last couple of months. Here are some recent pieces I wrote that I am proud of:

• ‘Recession Meals’ Destigmatize Home Cooking on a Budget published in Civil Eats
• Imaging a More Caring Apocalypse in Dimension 20: Gladlands published in Reactor Magazine.

What I’m Reading and Watching: Eco-speculative work and horror

It’s now Summerween time! Last summer I posted about Summerween and my recommendations, and am frankly still reading some of those books because I am a mood reader and read some books quickly and others slowly. Summer is when I like to read scary camping books and re-watch favorite creature features like Jaws, Arachnophobia and Jurassic Park (arguably one of the first eco-horror books/films I ever watched) and others. It is also Disability Pride Month! You can get some book recommendations from this article I wrote for Electric Lit last year.

We recently we-watched the first three Jurassic Park films. Then, we learned of Sam Neill’s passing. Thinking of all the acting roles he had that meant so much to me (Event Horizon, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Merlin and more!), Jurassic Park was the first film I ever saw him in. More recently, I loved watching his videos about his farm in New Zealand, living a peaceful life with his animals, delighting in spending time with them, and his conversation work with Maori activists to preserve natural landscapes. Just to say, he was an incredible human, and will be sorely missed.

When I was at Stoker Con last month, I had the opportunity to watch the Botanical Horror panel. Each author talked about why they write eco-horror books, from climate anxiety to their own nerdy interests and what-ifs about how evolution could cause plants and other organisms, both early and otherworldly, to interact with their environments, and invariably our own. One of them quoted Ellie Satler’s immortal words in Jurassic Park: “You never had the control, that’s the illusion!”

As I’ve been very slowly working on a new story collection of eco-horror and eco-speculative stories, I’ve enjoyed reading more work across this genre for inspiration, especially after attending the Botanical Horror panel at Stoker Con in June. My list of Sporror recommendations, and I also offered readings with an ecological and environmental bent in my Into the Woods and Bodies of Water recommendations. I want to emphasize that these stories, though sometimes frightening, are not only centered on fear. They are often explorations of how humans treat the natural world around us as though we are separate from it, rather than inextricably tied to the world around us. As I venture more into this subgenre, here is a list of other books I have read, am reading or plan to read this year about the frightening, mesmerizing and incredible aspects of the natural world that has never been within our control:

• Daughter of Rot by Rios de la Luz
  • I had the opportunity to read an ARC of Rio’s forthcoming novella and can’t recommend it enough! You can pre-order your copy now!
• Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher
• Ink Honey Blossom by Liza Losada
• Sordidez by E.G. Condé
  • On Hoopla from Stelliform Press
• What Feeds Below by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
  • This is one of my most anticipated books!
• Reef Mind by Hazel Zorn
• Wife-Shaped Bodies by Laura Cranehill
  • Thank you Netgalley for this ARC!
• Moonflow by Bitter Karella
  • Thank you Netgalley for this ARC!
• Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
• Overgrowth by Mira Grant
• Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
• Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah
• Her Wicked Roots by Tanya Pell
  • Tanya was on the Stoker Con Botanical Horror panel, and her books look very interesting!

Bonus: Listen to No Sleep Podcast Season 23, Episode 20, with a story from H.V. Patterson entitled “Tickborne.”

Writing Prompts

What happens when we shift our relationship to the natural world from control or dominance to kinship? What new relationships are possible?

Have you greeted a tree today? Have you learned to recognize the birdsong you hear each morning? What native plants have crossed your path? Journal about these observations using the senses available to you, and consider what these connections mean to you.

Call to Action: Community Care Spotlight

This space is meant to spotlight communities, creators and activists who are taking action to resist and do caring things for others. This month, I am highlighting:

In the wake of the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela, there are several grassroots organizations helping recovery on the ground, as well as international ones like Project Hope, specifically working on providing medical care for those affected.

Recently, the Prairieland Defendants who were protesting at an ICE facility last year were unjustly tried and sentenced to decades in prison. One defendant, Des, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for moving leftist and socialist zines! You can follow the story of these activists and donate, support and fight for their rights here! This case is just one example of how fascist state control is escalating in the US, and should concern everyone.

Leticia