CARRIE SAXIFRAGE
 
PRAISE FOR THE BIG SWIM
"A stunningly beautiful memoir about a world that I love. Carrie Saxifrage is a poet not just of the natural world but also of the heart, and reading her book is like walking through these landscapes with a wise and knowledgeable guide; with every chapter you turn a corner onto another unexpected and breathtaking vista. She has a keen, compassionate eye for human foibles, and I found myself laughing out loud on one page and brushing away tears on the next. I read straight through. I did not want this journey to end."
2013 Finalist for the Man Booker Prize for
A Tale for the Time Being, author of All Over Creation and My Year of Meats
"In a flash of inspiration, Carrie Saxifrage has invented the climate change memoir. Beautifully crafted, often touching and unexpectedly funny, here is your handbook to living deeply in perilous times."
author of The 100-Mile Diet and The Once and Future World
"The Big Swim is a beautiful collection of stories about the biggest challenge of our time: How to live with ourselves in a world we are destroying. Carrie Saxifrage writes eloquently about the natural environment and humanity’s disruptive place within it. Her insightful blend of science and personal epiphanies will change the way you think."
author of The Wind Is Not a River and Shadow of the Bear
"The Big Swim is a riveting read. Carrie Saxifrage takes us with her to some of the west's most precious wild gems while reflecting on parenting, life, love, the beauty around us and it's fragility. It's Eat, Pray, Love for the climate era. I couldn't put it down."
author of This Crazy Time
“Wow. This moving book invites us to reconnect with own wildness, to submerge ourselves in creation and come out doused with the sweet nectar of being alive. Carrie Saxifrage speaks a beautiful language – precise, transformative, unafraid. Read this book. It will give you hope.”
author of Oh, My Darling and Radiance
"Serious adventure on a serious planet. This is the kind of thinking and living we need to engage in."
author of Oil and Honey, Eaarth, The End of Nature and other books.
"Carrie Saxifrage has accomplished a feat here: she's written a story about our pressing environmental concerns that you'll find hard to put down. Funny, intriguing, eloquent, her emotional-intellectual acuity inspires a refreshing sense of volition."
author of Breathing the Page - Reading the Act of Writing
"Trying to understand what we are doing to the planet based solely upon facts and statistics fails to engage the heart, where all true commitment forms. Carrie Saxifrage knows that real change comes from the head and the heart working together and gently pulls us along on her journey to a deeper place of understanding."
National Chairperson, Council of Canadians and the author of Blue Future, Protecting Water for People and the Planet Forever
"Carrie Saxifrage looks unflinchingly at the world around us and reports back the joy, the pain, and the adventure that is there, within reach of all those bold individuals who care enough to grasp for it. The Big Swim is a must read for all those who think they don't want to read another environmental book. It takes you to a place of hope while step by step you laugh or cry because of the humanity of the parent struggling with a teenager, the spouse working on creating partnership, or the adventurer grasping for the next push forward."
author of Green Mama, www.thegreenmama.com
"Stunningly beautiful"
Man Booker Prize finalist, for
A Tale for the Time Being
"A fine balance between the ecstatic and
the level-headed"
"Three New Small Press Books
Worth a Read"
"Unexpectedly funny"
The Once and Future World
"A soulful and sobering memoir of climate change and personal responsibilities"
"It's Eat, Pray, Love for
the climate era"
This Crazy Time
"Serious adventure"
Oil and Honey
"precise, transformative, unafraid"
Oh, My Darling
"it will change the way you think"
The Wind is Not a River

How do we build our capacity to stay awake and responsive to climate destabilization? It has been several years since I wrote The Big Swim and my best answer is still the one found in Chapter Twelve, The Scallop and the Chickadee. (If you want a physical copy of the book, email chickadee@saxifrages.org. The ebook and audio versions are available through New Society Publishers.)

The scallop signifies awareness of how climate change tears at the fabric of the world. The chickadee signifies uplift from seeing wild nature's continuing beauty in specific ways. To be a good ally to the natural world I need them both, knowledge and inspiration, heart and mind.

To reflect this balance, @TheScallop presents news and research related to climate destabilization, especially animals. @TheChickadee presents the uplift of nature, specific and amazing.

I also post @CarrieSaxifrages, mostly about politics, solutions, and the need for access to reproductive health care for women as essential adaptation.

Join me!