Possibility Without Conclusion

A Q&A with Ellen Welcker, a Traverse City-based poet living amongst chestnut trees and other creatures.

“Lake effect — all winter you have been trying to understand it. Coy lake effect, mysterious lake effect — as snow blows horizontally, as it swirls up like frozen yogurt, as it fills your nose like gold dust and puts you on hold like customer service — as it chooses its words carefully, as it senses ignorance in the room. Lake effect! Made of tiny insect meat and teratomas. Made of football cleats, the odd grocery receipt, neat encounters in which mating might-should-could occur; made of sloughed tattoos & people whispering who am I into the vast midwestern airspace — made of facts, feelings, & bitter pills. Lake effect! Apocalyptic hydraulics! You believe in it.”

(A selection from Welcker’s “Nest Pas”)

Hi Ellen, could you tell readers a bit about who you are? Like where you’re from, and what you do?

I grew up in Bend, Oregon, and have lived in the NW US most of my life. We came to Traverse City in 2020 for work reasons, and had been living in Spokane, Washington for the past decade. I am a poet, and work for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry, a nonprofit whose mission is to support contemporary poets as they explore their own thinking on poetry and poetics, and give a series of free, public lectures resulting from these investigations. In Spokane I did a lot of community arts stuff as well — I hosted a monthly reading series in my living room, and worked with the novelist Sharma Shields to create a bunch of local literary events as “Scablands Lit,” under the umbrella of a local nonprofit.

When my husband and I moved here, we wound up on a chestnut orchard that had fallen into neglect. We’d spent about two seconds thinking about chestnuts prior to this landing. That first fall, the nuts fell, and we collected as many as we could, and it got its hooks in us. So we decided to try to learn as much as we could — about chestnuts, the local ecology, climate crisis concerns and proactive adaptations and responses — and do our best by the trees and ecosystem we find ourselves a part of here. I also wrote a lot of poems about ticks. I’m obsessed with their ability to move into and thrive in areas of ecological instability and I am also irrationally freaked out by them. Ew!!! Two long related, ticky pieces are at DIAGRAM and The Destroyer. (These poems are both called “NEST PAS” because of a No Trespassing sign I found and repurposed.)

That’s how I met you, roundaboutly, because I signed on to be a part of the first season of Crosshatch’s Carbon Conservation Farming Cohort program. It was amazing to learn alongside and from people at various stages and focuses of farming through the lens of carbon conservation. It has really helped us make time for visionary thinking alongside the endless day to day work of the chestnut orchard.

I also have two kids, ages 14 and 11, some goats and chickens and rabbits and a dog. I’m a lover of the outdoors, especially nordic skiing. I’m a good cryer, good laugher, an avid reader. I published a chapbook of poems this year through the wonderful indie press Sixth Finch called “Keep Talking,” which Horizon Books, Farm Club, and The Shop at Cedar North have been kind enough to carry.

What kind of chestnuts do you guys have at your place? I know there’s been a bit of drama amongst competing visions of work in efforts to restore American chestnuts — those who see disease resistance coming from hybridization efforts with Chinese chestnuts, and those who see resistance as a product of introducing disease-resistant genes from wheat to American chestnuts.

We have Chinese Chestnuts here. We’re actively and interestedly following the efforts for american chestnut revival, but honestly we see ourselves more as caretakers for the orchard and surrounding ecosystem we found here, rather than chestnut farmers. I mean we are chestnut farmers by accident. I mean we are delighted by, scared by, ignorant of, and humbly being schooled by the challenge of accidentally becoming chestnut farmers. When we moved here, as I mentioned before, it was kinda sight unseen. There wasn’t an orchard noted in the listing. It had definitely gone a little feral, but the trees were doing alright. And, I mean, who wouldn’t want to take care of a whole bunch of trees, if given the opportunity? It seemed like a no-brainer. We spent most of that first summer and fall limning up the trees and whacking long grass and seedlings and getting obsessed with the aforementioned ticks, just trying to see if we could hang.

What has your learning looked like? Have any local or regional resources been helpful (besides the Carbon Cohort program)?

So our initial and still best (?) education has just been spending a lot of time in the orchard, falling in love with it, feeling our middle-aged bodies respond (ache) from the work it entails. Other chestnut farmers in the area and to the south of us have been incredibly generous with their time and knowledge — people came out to walk the orchard with us and talk to us about our trees and give us advice. MSU extension has been a great resource, as has the Natural Resource Conservation Service. And yeah, the Carbon Cohort program has been essential.

Could you paint a sort of word picture of the spot that you’re at?

We live on 20 acres, about 8 of which are chestnut (roughly 370 trees). We think the trees are about 30 years old. They have a mature canopy and actually may need some thinning as they are competing for light in spots. The orchard sits on the southern property line and drapes east and west over a crest that runs north and south, and our house sits on that crest, just north of the orchard. We are bordered on the east by the Leelanau Trail. Most of what grows that isn’t orchard is unfortunately knapweed and autumn olive. We have designs for the goats to assist us in some of this invasive removal. The goats live down on the northeast corner — they like to peoplewatch on the trail. We started a garden down there last summer. Walk back up the hill toward the crest and our house and you reach the chickens, then down the other side of the crest you follow the driveway all the way out to Lake Leelanau Dr.

We’re on a smaller bit of land, with fewer trees, but similar patterns. The nut trees here are hazelnuts, however. I love working with them, although I don’t do too much with the nuts once they’ve been harvested, dried, and dehusked. Like the chipmunks around here, I’ve been building a cache. We’ve done some hazelnut roasting, and are interested in pressing them for oil. I’m also curious about doing some experiments integrating them with coffee and have been intending to grow starts from seed for a couple years now. How do you use chestnuts?

We most often just throw some chestnuts into whatever casserole or oatmeal or salad we’re making. They’re so versatile. I like chestnut soup quite a lot, and I am experimenting with making some chestnut liqueur to gift this winter. I’ll let you know how that goes.

I’m curious to hear about proactive adaptations and responses — what that means and looks like for you guys, or could look like, or simply what sorts of things you have in mind.

In terms of proactive adaptations and responses — we’re learning as we go, and we definitely have beginner’s mind about all this. Joy Harjo says in her poem, “Deer Dancer,” “in this language there are no words for how the real world collapses.” I feel like I keep reiterating how I don’t know what I’m doing, and in part that is just because there are so many people I am learning from and so much I still don’t know, that I would hate to come off sounding like anything but a newb…but I also mean, dominant American culture wants answers, and I have none. I refuse to pretend I have them. I can only acknowledge my deep, deep not-knowing. In the face of the very real world collapsing, my language, the language of colonization and domination and manifest destiny, fails me — fails us — and of course it does. How could it not?

I think this is also tied to my poetics. I am interested in bewilderment, not as something shameful or tied to ignorance, but as a way of being alive to the world — attuned to its joys, beauties, and horrors. (Also, just the idea of “being wilderness.” Of course I want to.) Bewilderment it is anti-hierarchical, open, unbridled, gaseous. My poetics is concerned with the mutability of borders and boundaries real and imagined, imposed and inherent. I’m striving to grapple with what we are, what forms our self-conceptions, and how we move through the world within and often outside of our containers (built by language and culture and influenced by racism, sexism, economics and other power hierarchies, and often excluding — and to the detriment of — ecology and non-human beings). Poetry can help us rearticulate ourselves on a cellular level. It makes changes to our brains and nervous systems so that we meet the world more able to fully be in it. Poetry, with its affinity for mystery and multiple readings, to create and engender possibility without conclusion — allows both poet and reader to move through a state of bewilderment, to plumb the depths of not-knowing, to grow deeply, truly bewildered.

Standing down from my soapbox now…to try to more directly answer your question: seeing how others are stewarding and thinking and gesturing toward the future in the face of climate emergencies gives me hope and releases me from the occasional paralysis of not-knowing (a danger!). It allows for a way of being that is actively communal, future-centric, and against the hoarding of resources, the drawing of lines around having and not-having. Carbon-farming is one aspect of this ever-evolving practice. One small thing will be getting rid of the autumn olive, with the help of our goats (who love to eat them), which will create an opportunity to plant trees in anticipation of a warmer climate, like what the Assisted Tree Range Expansion Project does. I know there will be so much more, so much still veiled by my current not-knowing!

Earlier, you mentioned that Crosshatch’s Carbon Cohort program helped you make time for visionary thinking about the orchard. Do you have any other strategies for making time? In life? For work outdoors? For writing?

My work schedule is pretty flexible. So if I want to write a poem, I do. I participate in a private blog with some friends where we share work regularly. I also meet with a group of writers here in TC, and that monthly accountability is so important for me. Probably my favorite strategy is one very specific to this phase of my life–and that’s reading with goats. I just bring a folding chair and my book and find a sunny spot to plop down in while the goats do their munching. It checks all my boxes. Farm work is trickier because you can’t just squeeze it in–there’s too much of it! We are constantly trying to be more organized, plan out projects. Our families are a huge help. We somehow lured the entire soccer team to come out and pick nuts with us one time. Lots of singing. Lots of audio books. We are just trying to keep it fun.

I’m curious about the animals on the farm. Are your goats dairy goats? Are the rabbits pets, or for soil-building and/or food?

We adopted three middle-aged Alpine goats from our neighbor’s granddaughter, who was leaving for vet school. We have since added two Nigerian Dwarf goats to the herd, one of whom we’ll try to breed and milk soon — but mainly because we’re following our daughter’s interest, not because we are looking to do anything productive with them. The rabbits are also adoptees from a farm sanctuary we used to volunteer with in Spokane. We definitely are making use of all of their prolific black gold in the garden.

Love it. Thank you, Ellen, for your time and your thoughts.