People who have been involved in the climate movement for decades tend to have a certain expression on their faces. It can be seen at conferences, at readings in small bookstores, and at the edge of panel stages where the lighting is too bright. It’s not quite exhaustion. It’s not as loud as that. On a Thursday night in mid-May, Katharine Wilkinson didn’t quite have that expression as she stood inside the Boulder Bookstore. However, it was evident that she had worn it in the past, and she had vivid memories of it.
She was there to discuss Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home, her most recent book, which had just been published a few days prior. The warmth of the room came from too many people wearing unnecessary coats. She took questions, signed copies, and read a few passages. Observing from the side, I was struck by how deliberately she spoke. Like someone who has discovered, gradually, that panicked words seldom make it.
Wilkinson has over 27 years of experience in this field. She runs The All We Can Save Project, co-hosts the podcast A Matter of Degrees, has a Ph.D. from Oxford, and co-edited the best-selling anthology All We Can Save. On paper, the resume conveys momentum. However, if you take the time to read what she’s recently written, you’ll notice a different narrative beneath the surface—one about someone who encountered a roadblock and had to figure out how to continue without pretending she hadn’t.
She talks about standing on a sandstone bluff in Tennessee and watching the sky over the Cumberland Plateau turn gold and then red in a recent essay that was published in The Ink. There, her mother resides. The age of the rock is approximately 300 million years. She discusses feeling small and how it might be the point, despite the movement’s tendency to view it as a problem. It’s the type of paragraph that doesn’t seem to be an attempt to motivate anyone. It sounds like someone who is trying to be honest instead of trying to inspire.
That change appears to be at the core of Wilkinson’s current work, moving from broadcasting urgency to creating containers for people to feel things in. A manifesto is not what Climate Wayfinding is. Poems, meditations, journaling prompts, artwork, and exercises are all included. It was described as “invaluable” by Bill McKibben, a compliment that typically indicates a book is too serious to dispute. This one feels different, though. She keeps saying that it’s a walk. Not a command.
In a recent guest post for Katharine Hayhoe’s newsletter, she mentions Jennifer Robinson, an old friend from her time as a Rhodes Scholar who used to insist that she was a human rights lawyer rather than an environmental one. In an Oxford pub, they would quarrel over it. Robinson eventually joined the legal team behind the historic climate decision made by the International Court of Justice years later. Without much fanfare, Wilkinson narrates the tale. She puts it this way: none of us know what we’ll be useful for.
It’s difficult to ignore how this register differs from the typical volume of the climate movement. No one is being reprimanded, there is no countdown clock, and nobody is being asked to do more. Just a gentle suggestion that if the work continues to break the people doing it, we may be doing it incorrectly.
Of course, it’s still unclear if that strategy actually affects emissions or policy. The climate catastrophe doesn’t wait for people to feel better. However, it seemed as though Wilkinson had given up trying to win arguments when you watched her at the bookstore that evening, discussing tiny spaces, inner compasses, and the peculiar grace of feeling small on a cliff in Tennessee. All she was doing was attempting to continue working. It may be the most radical thing left to do after 27 years.
