Top Reads on Trackless Wild

These are my favorites.

This week I decided to pull my Top 5 favorite posts out of a total 216 that I’ve written since I began Trackless Wild on July 11, 2021.

Thank you for being here. All the hearts and comments and clicks that I talk about below are you—without you Trackless Wild is inert, lifeless, a vacuum. You’re the reason I’m here. You’re the reason I get to be here.

Janisse

My #1—The Question I’ve Wrestled With

I love this essay a lot because I talk about an epiphany that made a stunning—unbelievable—difference in my life. I became a different person. I think differently, act differently, show up differently, think differently.

Although it’s from the early Substack days, February 2022, it’s my favorite.

This post had a 71% open rate, the most so far, with 3.14k readers clicking. Whether they read it or not we can’t say. It gathered 34 hearts and 21 comments, and it resulted in 45 new subscribers.

My #2—Why I Live at the Archives

More folks subscribed because of this post than any other—119 new subscribers. It received a 63% open rate, 134 hearts, and 80 comments. Part of the reason for that is Substack highlighted it in their Weekly Digest. Even so, it’s one of my favorite essays because people know me as a writer and an environmentalist, and few people know about this secret passion.

My #3—Claim Your Place

The most engaging post was the first Exploration in our correspondence course, Journey in Place, which 600 people participated in during 2024. This post had a whopping 432 comments and 107 hearts. I sent it only to paying subscribers, per course requirements, and among that group this post enjoyed the highest open rate—87%, with 4.67k views. It gathered 31 new subscribers.

I’ve taken this out from behind a paywall so that anyone can look at it.

The course is over and I’m at work on the book Journey in Place: Explorations for a Year of Peacekeeping. You can preorder a copy here.

My #4—How Little Fawn Came To Be

I had to paywall posts about my new adopted baby, Little Fawn. This was not to make money off an incredibly cute mystical being, but for our family’s safety. The story of how she arrived to us was incredibly popular, and if you look at the photo, you’ll see why. This baby flies on angel wings.

“How Little Fawn Came to Be” earned 64 new subscribers and had a 53% open rate, and it comes in 2nd place with total views, 8.22k. The number of views is higher because this is a more-recent post, January 2025, and Trackless Wild now has more total subscribers.

The post has 193 hearts—increase that number, would you?—and 70 comments.

Weirdly, “Avoid Ticks But Not the Wild” had more views, 8.96k. Why would more people want to read about ticks than babies?

My #5—14 Flashes From the Hurricane

Choosing a 5th favorite is unnerving, because it’s the last one I get.

I’m going to repost one about Helene, because it was such a hormonal event—the hormones being adrenaline and cortisol—that nearly wiped us off the map, and because this was one of my first forays into the flash essay.

This edition of Trackless Wild garnered 89 hearts, 37 comments, 8 restacks (that is possibly a record). It had a 54% open rate, with 6.15k views, and brought in 34 subscribers.

Two Runners-Up

I had to pull in two more stories, which add up to one big story—a white dog shows up at our farm in Part I, “The Saga of the White Dog” and I find out his owner in Part II, “The White Dog’s Story Is a Circle Now.”

Who doesn’t love a dog story? And a white dog at that.

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One More Thing—Poetry Comix

The cartoonist Madeleine Jubilee Saito is joining me for a Poetry Comix Workshop on Sunday afternoon, March 30. I’d love for you to join us, if this kind of thing interests you. The workshop lasts an hour and sets you back $11.