Unearths Joy in the Queer Community
In the desert of southeastern Utah, Riley Black, a contributor to Atmos, found more than just rocks during a day of hiking, bouldering, and clambering. With a keen eye for the hidden, Black discovered a fossil of a 220 million-year-old fish, an encounter that elicited a post-orgasmic joy.
This exhilarating experience, however, is not typically how one describes finding a fossil. The stock answer often emphasizes the intellectual wonder of being the first to see something from another time. But for Riley Black, the emotional depth of the discovery goes beyond the traditional focus on intellectual curiosity.
The world of paleontology is often presented as an intellectual pursuit that focuses on piecing together lost worlds. Reputations in this field are built on the "bring 'em back petrified" mindset, with names of researchers honored in binomials. Yet, Black challenges this norm, expressing the raw emotion and connection that can be felt when uncovering a piece of history.
The connection between nature and emotions is a theme that Black often explores, particularly in their article titled "Queer Ecology." In this piece, Black suggests that queer writers often focus on nature's pain rather than joy due to cultural and societal factors. The article discusses the feeling of finding a fossil, but it also delves into the connection between queer identity and experiencing nature in the context of queer ecology.
Queer ecology is a field that centers on challenging traditional, normative views of nature and human relationships to it. It emphasizes the rejection of essentialist binaries, symbiotic and relational perspectives, and political and cultural resistance. By critiquing the rigid categories of sexuality and gender as socially constructed, queer ecology creates space for multiple forms of identity and ways of relating to the natural world outside heteronormative frameworks.
For Riley Black, the wild can reconnect us to something beyond our rote behaviors, making us vulnerable and receptive to the resonance of our unique emotional galaxies. The desert, with its ever-changing rock formations, serves as a reminder of the Earth's ability to change and transition over time. It is a place where Black learned that even stone changes given enough time.
Sharing elated experiences with others can feel invasive, given the public scrutiny and debate surrounding bodies like Riley Black's. But for Black, the emotional connection to nature, whether through pain or joy, is a crucial part of understanding and recontextualizing our place in the world. By embracing the full spectrum of human emotion, we can better appreciate the beauty and complexity of both nature and ourselves.
[1] Braun, B., & Connell, R. (2013). Queer ecologies: Sex, nature, politics, desire. Routledge.
[2] Plumwood, V. (2002). Environmental culture: The ecological crisis of reason. Routledge.
[4] Seymour, S. (2013). Queer ecology: Sexuality, nature, politics, and culture. Routledge.
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