The Puma Years

by Laura Coleman

she’s in a cage and I am not. It feels as if it should be the other way around. The jungle out here with her, us in there.

She tells me her theory that, for her, rescued animals are like onions. You work so hard to peel off one layer of anxiety, only to expose another, and then another that you had absolutely no idea was hiding underneath. And because all of us really are no different from any of the animals here, because we’re all messed up and broken in our own individual ways, we’re like onions too.

When the last tree is cut, when the last animal is hunted, when the last river is polluted, it will be then that man will realise that money cannot be eaten . . .

Leaving isn’t a failure. Not if I choose to do something I’m proud of every day. And I’m so lucky to be able to choose. This

Normal is not getting into my car and getting stuck in a traffic jam at eight every morning. Normal is not going to a club bursting at the seams, wearing high heels and too little clothing, and drinking my body weight in tequila. Normal is not sitting in my bedroom with no one but my anxious spiralling thoughts and Saturday-night TV for company. Normal is not having a force field around yourself so strong that you don’t let anyone in, ever.

Environmental justice cannot be separated from social justice. The two are deeply intertwined.

Ursula K. Le Guin. In her visionary essay from 1986, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” she talks about how it might be possible to change the way stories are told—moving away, perhaps, from the violent power of singular heroes. Towards collaboration and compost, cooperation and connection.