The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves

In this eye-opening reflection, Gillespie (The Cow with Ear Tag #1389), associate director for the Center for Food Systems Transformation at the University of San Diego, posits that paying more attention to nature is key to building a compassionate world. There are “so many details of life and death unfolding in block after block of urban sidewalk,” Gillespie asserts, from the chirp of a hummingbird to the smell of decomposing leaves. Practicing attentiveness can help people intuit how their environments work and what these environments need to survive—an understanding that she says has been damaged by capitalism and colonialism. She draws on personal anecdotes to unpack humanity’s tendency to treat the natural world as a site of consumption and domination, chronicling, for example, a commercial whale-watching expedition that left her feeling uneasy as a crowd of boats tossed fish into the water to allow eager viewers to get what they paid for. Her anxiety deepens when she visits a biomedical research facility at the University of Washington where “dogs barked and howled from behind closed doors.” These moving, often heartbreaking accounts make for a convincing call to cultivate respect for and live in harmony with other species. It’s a bitter but potent pill to swallow. (Feb.)