Collisions of Earth and Sky: Connecting with Nature for Nourishment, Reflection, and Transformation

by Heidi Barr

Overview

Finalist for the Foreword INDIES 2023 Book of the Year Awards in Body, Mind & Spirit

Research indicates that spending time in a natural setting provides a plethora of benefits, from lower blood pressure to increased immunity to an enhanced sense of well-being and happiness. People who appreciate nature tend to experience more moments of joy and are more innovative. Being connected to nature helps us be more fully human and better planetary citizens. But the pace of our lives often leaves little room for connecting with nature, and our history of colonization complicates our relationship to the landscapes we inhabit.

Collisions of Earth and Sky is an invitation to live in a way that is attuned to nature, paying attention to what's going on inside ourselves and in the larger collective. Guided by wellness coach and poet Heidi Barr, it is a journey of self-inquiry for digging into our origins and roots, figuring out what it means to be a good community member--both to other humans and to our nonhuman neighbors--and integrating those truths and lessons so we can add to the healing of the world. Barr shows us a way to let nature be an ally in living well, offering hopeful inspiration to continue our own path of self-discovery.

A collection of reflections, poetry, and invitations to discovery, Collisions of Earth and Sky calls you to celebrate what it is to embrace wildness as an integral part of being fully alive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506482545
Publisher:	1517 Media
Publication date:	01/31/2023
Pages:	222
Sales rank:	1,090,541
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Heidi Barr is a writer and wellness coach with over fifteen years of experience in health promotion. Her work is founded on a commitment to cultivating ways of being that are life-giving and sustainable for people, communities, and the planet. She is the author of two works of creative nonfiction: Woodland Manitou and What Comes Next; two poetry collections: Slouching toward Radiance and Cold Spring Hallelujah; and one cookbook: Prairie Grown: Stories and Recipes from a South Dakota Hillside. She is also the coauthor of 12 Tiny Things and is editor of "The Mindful Kitchen," a wellness column in The Wayfarer Magazine. She lives with her family in Minnesota, where they tend a large vegetable garden, explore nature, and do their best to live simply.

Table of Contents

A Land Acknowledgment

Preface

Introduction

The Invitation to Dance with Mountains

Part One: Origin

Part Two: Journey

Part Three: Returning

Parting Words

Appendix

Acknowledgments

Notes

Editorial Reviews

11/28/2022

Health and wellness coach Barr (What Comes Next) offers strategies for reconnecting with nature in this gorgeously written outing. Nature helps humans connect to greater forces, writes Barr, as well as lets them tap into their inner “humanness” and become “better planetary citizens.” Barr, who acknowledges that she writes from Minnesota on Dakota nation land, notes “the land holds stories I will never know”; connecting with nature involves examining the self and the land’s deep history. In three sections, readers are guided on this quest. In “Origin,” Barr talks about examining one’s cultural and familial histories, along with the history of the land one inhabits, and especially its Indigenous roots. “Journey” suggests using nature as inspiration to unlearn harmful thought patterns and inspire personal change; while “Returning” emphasizes remembrance—drawing strength from the earth’s stories and one’s own. The author weaves her memories throughout—a childhood spent amid the prairies of South Dakota; adulthood in the iced-over winter landscapes of the Midwest—imbuing the account with a sense of awe. Barr’s sensitively written book combines practical guidance with ample opportunity for personal reflection, while taking care to foreground readers’ social and environmental responsibilities. This will be a welcome offering for anyone looking to commune with the natural world. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Collisions of Earth and Sky is an existential exploration of the human relationship with nature and what it really means to develop a sense of place." --Linda Åkeson McGurk, author of There's No Such Thing as Bad Weather and The Open-Air Life

"If you have ever had your ears stolen by a wild longing, if you have ever sought a grander healing, let the caress of Heidi Barr's words and rhapsodies sway you toward the magic of the world wild and alive." --Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home and host of the course and festival series We Will Dance with Mountains

"Heidi Barr's Collisions of Earth and Sky is indeed that—a collision. A confluence of ideas and feelings, excavations of the past and hope for the future. As a good writer, a good healer, a good excavator, she digs it all up and offers us a pathway to healing in the future—one that doesn't neglect our place in the historical and ecological web of relationships." --Theodore Richards, founder of The Chicago Wisdom Project and author of The Great Re-Imagining: Spirituality in an Age of Apocalypse and Reimagining the Classroom

"Heidi Barr's writing feels like a gentle but persistent invitation to slow my body, mind, and breath, to look up, to feel deeply, and to live fully present in what is. In Collisions of Earth and Sky I feel the truth of our interconnectedness deep in my bones and in the steadiness of my heartbeat." --Krista O'Reilly-Davi-Digui, holistic embodiment coach and joyful living educator

"While reading this wellspring of wisdom, it was like sitting at my mother's kitchen table drinking in her dichos de mi madre. These 'impossibly beautiful' contemplative insights are what is needed to heal the universe." --Aimée Medina Carr, author of River of Love

"Heidi Barr has done it again! Reading Collisions of Earth and Sky feels like taking a refreshing meander through the woods with a time-tested friend, swapping stories and remembering our true selves. This book is a gift in its gentle and profound path to a mindful pace and intentionality, allowing the wildness of life to unfold in and around us." --Ellie Roscher, author of The Embodied Path

"Using her prairie poet's sentience and acuity, Heidi Barr offers us an invitation to deeper and more authentic self-knowing. Step into this journey!" --Lisa Colón DeLay, host of the Spark My Muse podcast and author of The Wild Land Within

From the Publisher