What is a GeoPunk?

Are you tired, overstimulated, and bored all at the same time?

Do you feel an omnipresent sense of dread because of the climate crisis, mass extinction, and the destruction of the planet?

You might be a GeoPunk.

Maybe you've tried living the life of hedonic pleasure to mask your dissatisfaction.

Maybe you've been an activist, and tried going to marches and writing policy makers.

Maybe you've done both and found that neither of them seemed to make you happier or make a difference in the world.

The crushing weight of circumstances beyond your control makes you numb. So now, most nights you just scroll...

and scroll...

and scroll...

You have been robbed.

The birthright of every human being is to be in communion with the people and places around you. Systematically you've been isolated from people and you've been alienated from your environment.

You've been sold the idea that science and technology are the only tools we can use to solve the problems of modern life.

That they're the only tools that explain reality.

That any other way of thinking is regressive, primitive, or unscientific.

Despite the comforts and triumphs that scientific materialism has delivered, it has engendered industrial-powered racism, sexism, bigotry, and the destruction of our natural environments. It has estranged us from each other and the world around us.

But it's not too late to see things differently.

It's not too late to know things differently.

Knowledge isn't just what we glean from books, classrooms, and ivory towers. It isn't limited to data that men in lab coats scrawl in journals.

It's also the way that your grandma knows that mullein tea will cure your cough.

The way your favorite uncle has memorized a trail by walking it with his father.

The way that wolves know to bark sparingly in the wild, lest they become prey.

Your body is hardwired to engage with this way of knowing — this embodied knowing.

It's knowledge won through experience.

It's what happens when you step away from the screen and into the tangible world. It's the counterpart that gives ground to scientific knowledge. It's what allows us to use scientific discovery for good instead of ill.

It's the type of knowledge that can help us devise ways of moving through our current environmental crises.

The type of knowledge that tells us why, not just how. And it isn't confined to a single set of axioms. It accommodates diverse modes of being in the world and embraces the fact that there isn't "one best way" to solve the problems we are up against.

If you have felt this deep inside and haven't had words to express it, you might be a GeoPunk.

This newsletter exists to find the others and give them space to share their stories.

We want to talk to the bikepacker working through her colonial trauma on the trail.

We want to talk to the Gwich'in hunters fighting to protect the sacred lands they have been stewards of.

We want to talk to the people at non-profits and outdoor companies that are trying to make the outdoors more accessible to those who have been historically marginalized.

And most of all we want to invite you to subscribe to this newsletter so that you can hear those stories, be inspired to acknowledge the real problems we face, and work, often very humbly, towards finding ways to dismantle the colonial thinking that has brought us here.

Doing that, actively, always seeking to understand is what makes you a GeoPunk.