I have an essay in The New York Times

Getting this 8-year-old monkey off my back felt good

**Click here for a free version of my NYT article**

Isle of Ulva

I successfully pitched a story to NYT Opinion way back in 2017. I’d heard about a fascinating, revolutionary, and radical-sounding model of landownership: community-owned land, popular in the Highlands and islands of Scotland.

With NYT’s stamp of approval, I visited Scotland’s flagship community owned site — the Isle of Eigg — which was celebrating its 20-year anniversary of a community buyout.

My trip was terrific. I stayed in a hostel for a week, hiked hills, explored caves, and found myself being uncharacteristically gregarious. I was invited to speak to the local primary school (four kids total) about my summer spent living among Alaska’s grizzly bears. One of the girls asked, “Can you live here forever?”

Isle of Eigg, 2017

An Sgùrr, Isle of Eigg

My visit with Isle of Eigg primary, to talk about grizzly bears

Yet, after returning home, I never did anything with my reporting or research. Part of the problem was that 60 Minutes beat me to the Eigg story. But part of it was also that I just… lacked motivation. For years, I wondered if I was engaging in some inexplicable career self-sabotage. At the peak of my writing career—working on my third book, successfully pitching stories to the NYT—I still had opportunities to grow. Perhaps some destructive part of me wanted to bring myself down a peg.

And that’s when I felt a monkey crawl onto my back. It wouldn’t stop yanking my hair for years. It wasn’t until this past summer that I decided to reimagine my old story—this time, not about Eigg, but about another community purchase. This was even bolder and weirder than Eigg. A community on the Isle of Mull chose to buy up an almost-empty island — Ulva (pop. 5) — with the goal of repopulating it. I started to wonder: Had the problem been me, or did I actually need 8 years for this story—so that I could visit multiple community owned sites?

The article I published is 1,200 words or so. But the article could have comfortably been 5,000 words. In that larger article, I could have gotten into the backstories of the 16 residents who’ve decided to give life on Ulva a go. I could have talked about the fascinating power dynamics, in which the Ulvan islanders are a bit at odds with the board that runs the island (all of whom live on the neighboring isle of Mull).

As for those power dynamics… My sense is that there are some severe communication issues between the two islands. And I believe there needs to be a complete restructuring of how Ulva is governed. And I believe those changes with eventually and naturally come to pass.

I also think — when we look at the situation from the highest possible altitude and with the deep past and deep future in mind — the purchase of Ulva is an amazing, inspiring thing. It is an effort to address the legacy of the Scottish Clearances and it is a visionary way of imagining how human beings can play a much more profound role in their communities—with strong ties to each other and the land, with voices and votes that matter, and with meaningful influence over the future of their lands and communities.

And now that this monkey is off my back, I will try to use whatever momentum a largish NYT essay gives me, whether that’s more commissioned articles or a boost toward publishing one of my books-in-progress. And I shall endeavor to never let any monkey climb onto me again…

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