For this workshop, Tanis and Ariel will alternate prompts while leading participants on a walk around the Wellington Library. Ariel will use forest-bathing techniques for her prompts, which rely on deep focus on the trees and meditation while breathing in volatile substances from the trees, called phytoncides (or wood essential oils). Tanis will ask participants to bring a personal/family artifact of their choice, so that they may consider the contrast between made object and plant life.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 territory-based writer, editor, and enthusiast. In 2019 Wolsak & Wynn published Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests, a collection of essays that combines science writing and the personal essay. Her most recent book is TreeTalk (At Bay Press, fall 2020), a public poetry project where Ariel hangs poems in trees and asks passersby to add their thoughts, ideas, and secrets.

Tanis MacDonald is the author of seven books, including the essay collection Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female (Wolsak and Wynn, 2022), and Mobile: poems (Book*hug 2019). She has won the Open Seasons Awards for Nonfiction and the Bliss Carman Prize for Poetry. She lives in Waterloo, Ontario, on traditional Haudenosaunee territory, and is originally from the prairies.

Tanis and Ariel are currently Writers-in-Residence at The Al Purdy A-frame.