Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future

A different kind of nature writing, for a different kind of landscape. I went and sat alone where Jimmy has been lying. It is way down in the bush. The light is soft, the air and the earth are cool, and the smell is of leaves and the river. I cannot presume to know what he is doing when he lies here, but it seems that he is taking himself back to an ecology not wrought by the terror of the fires, not fuelled by our violence on the earth. He is letting another earth heal him. Philosopher Danielle Celermajer’ s story of Jimmy the pig caught the world’ s attention during the Black Summer of 2019­ ­ -20. Gathered here is that story and others written in the shadow of the bushfires that ravaged Australia. In the midst of the death and grief of animals, humans, trees and ecologies Celermajer asks us to look around – really look around – to become present to all beings who are living and dying through the loss of our shared home. At once a howl in the forest and an elegy for a country’ s soul, these meditations are lyrical, tender and profound.

An academic at the University of Sydney, Danielle Celermajer has written two previous books for Cambridge, the top publisher in her field (The Prevention of Torture, and The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apologies). She has contributed to other books with Bloomsbury, Stanford and Routledge. She is a regular on RN’ s ‘ The Minefield’ with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens and ‘ The Philosopher’ s Zone’ . She has also written for the SMH, the Guardian and the Conversation.