We need new calendars. Lectio Terra (Latin for “earth reading”) is a series of species studies. Each week for a year, I am choosing one seasonally relevant plant, animal, landform, or other feature of the natural world. I collect a handful of readings and images drawn from disciplines such as botany, poetry, philosophy, geology, and the visual arts; and introduce them with a brief headnote combining cultural history, scientific information, and personal anecdotes.
The cycle provides an experimental phenology of the seasons: approximately 12 species for each of the four seasons are selected as portals into the weird confluences of nature and culture; the readings, whether related to their subject directly or obliquely, are intended to facilitate a mix of contemplation, curiosity, and puzzlement.
The project emerges from my own practices of attention and curation, which riff on the devotional practice of lectio divina (“divine reading”), in which selected scriptures are slowly read and contemplated. By collecting a wide range of visual and textual materials, the posts evoke the mediated abundance of our relationship to nature while also drawing our cultural record into the moment of observing and encountering the living, material world.