The Overview: Meditations on Nature for a World in Transition arrives in less than a week (you can still pre-order here). Over the last few weeks, I’ve explored the first two chapters: Reverence and Balance. This week, we’re looking at the theme of chapter three—one you have witnessed me wax on many times over the years, and is in many ways the heart of this book: Evolution.

The four years in which I have been writing to you have been the most transformative of my life. In navigating the massive changes that come with transitioning, this newsletter has served as a lifeline for me. Each week, I have turned to nature for teachings I could tether myself to. From frogs, I learned to stay porous even while navigating newfound vulnerability. From butterflies, I learned that I would need to liquify in order to live as I knew I was truly meant to. And so, I did.

Across all of these lessons, I came to understand nature as a continuum of constant change—matter in unending metamorphosis, organisms adapting to their environments, life producing new iterations across eons. That’s what evolution is: gradual change over time. And I began to see that I was not separate from that. That in reality, none of us are. For as stagnant as we can often feel, Octavia Butler was right: change is the only true guarantee in this life.

I was terrified when I started my evolution. There were days when it took everything I had. But I kept going. Now, as I feel myself emerging from that chrysalis, as I feel my wings unfolding, I wake up most mornings with a lightness in my chest I had never known previously. And I carry that knowledge with me each day: how much waits on the other side of fear. I think about that in the context of the climate movement; it can be overwhelming how much our relationship with the planet needs to change. But if I believe anything, it’s that transformation is possible.

The essays in this chapter delve into the murky mires of transmutation, including: the beauty and brutality of insect metamorphosis, the evolution of our species, the long view of volcanoes and change over geologic time, and the many extraordinary adaptations the tree of life has produced. Interspersed are reflections on my own transition, as well as one of my favorite subjects: queer ecology, or the many ways that nature can affirm LGBTQIA+ identities.

Evolution is a revolution both fast and slow. We grow and adapt across what can feel like ages or moments that pass us by in the blink of an eye. If we want to be part of the transformation our planet so desperately needs, we can start with sowing our own seeds. We are but individual iterations of the song nature has been singing from the very beginning: everything changes.