Ep #8 | Roseanna Almaee-Nejadi | Fog People

The Wild Spectacle Podcast

Welcome to The Wild Spectacle Podcast, a flash-cast series with host Janisse Ray about ongoing and meaningful participation in a world that matters.

Bio of Guest

Roseanna is an activist who lives in the Olympic Peninsula, in Port Townsend, Washington. She is a full-time volunteer. Born in Texas, she spent 30 years as an educator, teaching English and reading, most of that time spent at Darton College and Albany State University. There she was editor of the Flint River Review. She and her husband retired to the Pacific Northwest, where she serves on many boards and committees aimed at making the world a better place. She is a poet and a keen observer of nature.

Roseanna’s hyphenated surname is pronounced All my ee-Neigh jaw dee.

Note

Roseanna and I had trouble with a bit of distortion during the recording. Although she moved closer to her modem, we were not able to eliminate all of it. I apologize for any flaws you hear in the sound.

Highlights

2:00—How Roseanna’s wildness comes out.

2:43—We think of fog as a blanket.

3:13—Fog was not just a blanket in fairy tales and mythology.

3:38—She is sitting in Snoqualmie Pass next to a dropoff thousands of feet deep. Here is a short video captured by Seth Yates of fog rolling like a waterfall in Snoqualmie.

4:17—“I sense something or someone over my left shoulder.”

6:45—You can’t see the end of your car.

7:30—Something is very different about the fog in the Pacific Northwest.

8:00—Microclimates change the way fog acts in a place.

9:08—La Push, in the rainforest of the Olympic Peninsula, is home to the Quileute Nation.

9:23—Everything is alive, everything is sentient.

9:37—Roseanna lives among the fog people.

10:15—Three hundred deer people live in the city limits of Port Townsend. Here is a Facebook page for the deer, filled with interesting photos.

11:30—How to get out in nature, even if you’re not athletic.

12:33—A plea that you not cut your lawn so often.

“Think about epiphany. Think about change. Think about the moments that make your face burn, your fingers tingle. Wild Spectacle is about those shocks, encounters that shift the way we see the world and ourselves in it…If the water we drink is maybe older than the sun, then ancient magic pounds inside our skins, too. So speak it. Tell it forth. Cry aloud and call it back home.”

-Joni Tevis, author of The Wet Collection and The World is On Fire

Thank You for Listening

If you like what we’re doing here, give this show a thumbs-up, post it on your socials, and/or forward it to your friends.

Janisse Ray’s book Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humansinspired the podcast. If you’d like a copy of the book, visit your favorite bookstore or library. You may order a signed copy here.

Find Janisse on Facebook at “Janisse Ray, Author” and on Instagram @janisseray_writer.

Thanks to Axletree for their beautiful music, “Clothe the Fields with Plenty,” an orchestral piece inspired by a traditional Hampshire folk song, “The Painful Plough,” from Axletree’s project “Music from a Hampshire Farm.” Thanks to the Free Music Archive.

We’re eager for new voices on the show, so if you’d like to come on and tell a story, be in touch.

Enjoy Nature

If we’re going to make a dent in changing our world, we have to understand what kind of amazements it contains. So many people begin to work on behalf of the planet because they see a natural phenomenon, large or small, that infuses them with admiration and wonder. So get out in nature. Take a friend with you. Especially a child. Go see a wild phenomenon. Amaze yourself. Connect yourself. Let’s get wild!