Show Notes
Welcome to The Wild Spectacle Podcast, a flash-cast limited series about ongoing and meaningful participation in a world that matters.
Episode #4 | Peter Peteet | Not Walking Away
18 minutes long
Bio
In this podcast my friend Peter Peteet does something that few people will do. He took the bold and frightening step of reporting to authorities a major environmental crime taking place. Here he talks about his moment of reckoning and how he arrived at it, and he encourages all of us to not walk away.
Peter Peteet is a published poet, photographer, and environmentalist. His poems are deeply felt and beautifully rendered moments in time. He lives in Atlanta, where he takes long walks through stream-beds and old forests, in the middle of the city, and then posts really stunning photos of his walks. He is one of the most soulful and kind people I know.
Highlights of the Story
2:55 Peter places himself on the wild chart.
3:19 He stands at the edge of the South River, under a railroad trestle.
4:00 He holds a smoking gun.
6:30 Peter reports an environmental travesty.
7:42 How he first noticed.
8:00 On power.
8:45 Thoreau: “Wildness is in our brains & bowels.”
9:40 On thinking and feeling.
10:00 What it’s like to call the law on someone for a major crime.
10:35 Where the wild spectacle was actually taking place.
10:53 How Peter connects with nature.
13:27 His encouragement to be responsible to the earth.
14:20 “Once you begin to walk away, you go away forever.”
14:50 Why we should speak out.
16:00 Peter offers a cure for alienation.
“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
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.
My book Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans inspired the podcast. If you’d like a copy of the book, visit your favorite bookstore or library. Or you may order at www.janisseray.com/bookshop.
Find me 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.
Thanks to John Picciuto for sound design. This was one of the first episodes I recorded, and any glitches in sound quality are patently my own mistakes.
We’re eager for new voices on the show, so if you’d like to come on and tell a story, be in touch here or at my website, janisseray.com/contact.
Go See Some 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!
Ep #4 | Peter Peteet | Not Walking Away