2046



Date: 10 June 2046
Distance: 2984 nm
Lat: 14°35'58.9"N
Long: 17°25'31.1"W
Weather etc.: Moderate SW-ly winds, slight swell, clear skies. I can see a shore cloaked by clusters of mangroves and groynes made from the rubble of buildings felled by the sea. Salty rivers curl through the land like half-committed tentacles. Sometimes they’re more direct, like tree roots seeking the path of least resistance through spongey soil. We’ve stopped for supplies. Passage: 12 days at sea. 49 days to go.

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Sometimes I imagine eating the Sun, taking a big bite out of that yellow disc in the sky to lessen the heat. But we do eat the Sun. I can place thin discs of herbs on my tongue and let the Sun’s gifts melt into the bumpy crevices. I’ll wait an entire five minutes before chewing and swallowing and looking for my next petal or slice of earth apple flesh. But the Sun is not the reason for the heat or the haze or the dehydration or submergence. The Sun is just doing the same old but different thing She’s always done — gifting life to Earth. It is us. The before us.

In our kin is Johanna, Lili, Raafat, me, and our extended kommune community. I was raised by carpets of Bärlauch (wild garlic) and oaks that stretch high and wide, gifting shade and kernels that can be ground into flour to make bread. Geerta, our Nubian goat, is our kin too. While her European roots mean she would no doubt prefer to be traipsing up and down alpine mountains, her Sudanese ancestors mean she coped is coping pretty well with the heat. On cooler days, we all take turns took turns playing and running with her, and guiding her to new pasture and fallen fruit. We make sure she’s cared for and loved and well-fed and she generously gifts us milk each day. It’s a reciprocal exchange. Just like the peppery young leaves of Gundermann (ground ivy). When we care for their surroundings and don’t take too much, they keep growing and gifting us medicine and herbaceous salad leaves. I love to eat ivy with a little of Geerta’s cheese atop acorn bread.
We have place cells in our brain. When I am 11,760 nautical miles from here, my memories will latch tightly to place rather than time. When I think of Berlin, I’ll remember water trickling, plum buds unfurling, the beech’s clothes falling, wood ears drying. I’ll remember that that’s where Johanna found Raafat and me, and then we found Lili.

When the world’s borders were dismantled, some people left, chasing freedoms and connectivity they’d never felt were possible before. But many stayed. Stayed where there was community, where they understood the land, where to find water, the direction the wind blows. Johanna wanted us all to stay. But Lili was searching for her place in the world, searching for her place in her own identity. She had this fire to piece it all together, through the land. So she went back to the land, to Country.


The three of us found a new squat among the now-quiet bones of the city. We live lived in what was once called Ökohaus, a plant-clad web of houses at the southern edge of Tiergarten. When the refugees arrived — from sunken islands, deserts that boil the blood, cities where it does not rain — some were drawn to the shelter of Tiergarten. Ökohaus became an Ökokommune. Food was our shared language.

We were ready to listen. Lili had been listening to the Elders, and I had been listening to Lili. The human is not greater than the more-than-human. We exist within Nature. I could see the weeds sprouting through the pavement as animate. The water in the Landwehr Canal was asking for respect. If I stood still and let my mind slow, I noticed the pollinators dancing over flowers and the strobili of Achterschachtel (field horsetail) poking up through the soil with agency and purpose.

I know I often keep record of Earth’s tiny pleasures — elderflower that blossoms in the season of awakening, followed by tiny baubles of cherries and hazelnuts after the summer solstice. But new scars continue to be torn afresh care of before us. This orchestra of expiring experiences deserve to be marvelled.

The restraint of not dipping into the repositories of future generations is so newly acquired, it’s not yet habit. I’m lucky to have known early that the bear doesn’t cross the road but the road crosses the land of the bear. But for some, thinking of the birch people, bear people, and rock people — as Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer shared of her Elders’ teachings — is still a difficult concept. If you don’t grow up with eucalyptus as kin, or at minimum, a being deserving of good manners and respect, how many generations do we need to unlearn perceived dominion?

Like the colonial concept of wild. When the British arrived in so-called Australia (which still hasn’t been renamed, unlike Turtle Island and Aotearoa), they wrote in their journals that it was a wild, inhospitable environment in need of taming. This idea of a dangerous land perpetuated for 230 years. A mere handful of power-hungry white men out to brandish their names against the flesh of a captured beast influenced the identities and perceptions of millions of people. Perhaps someone will one day pick up this journal too and find the faults in my ways of living and knowing. I can only assume they will, as everything is always changing.

I’ve started thinking about my impermanence here. That’s why I had to decide where to be. That’s why I’m writing this down. The precipice that Johanna and Lili’s generation have felt looming all their lives, is arriving.

I feel fear. But I needn’t. I already know from the Elders that there will be warran in place of potatoes and fire-loving mamadyang ngalluk in place of acorns. The hot air can be thick with dust. Or it can be heavy with the forewarning of a deluge. But imagine, towering red rock people looming up out of the sand to reach the black night sky glittering with spirits and stories. This is a grand adventure. Perhaps my only one. I will be a stranger there. Amid a Country whose weather patterns I can’t recognise. But then, there will be many ‘strangers’ coming in to learn with and from. Each bringing their identity, currency, lore, and language to the boundless plains that are finally open to share.

We are visitors here. I am a visitor no matter what soil or surface my soles touch.