Articulate, passionate, urgent and joyful, Natural Connection is a book that chronicles emotions (with chapters on rage, joy, grief and care), laying out a pathway for individuals, families, small communities, businesses, governments and nations to think again about our reciprocal and integrated relationship with each other and the world around us. “Every year that I go to Ghana I visit the slave castles as a kind of pilgrimage, to pay respects to my ancestors who were stripped from their land, stripped from the forests that I work in today. Our communities continue to make music. They continue to make art. They continue to love. They continue to make us, whilst facing the most unimaginable pain and grief and rage and abuse and oppression.”
“The indigenous scholar Carl White talks about the exceptionalism of the climate crisis,” Joycelyn continues. “That for indigenous communities, for marginalised communities, they have seen the ends of worlds before, and yet they still held joy. The earth presents us with abundance of beauty and joy every day. And if we are the earth, then we should also channel that, right? Our joy doesn't negate our commitment. Our rage doesn't negate our joy. As someone said to me at a book signing recently, we're all just trying to figure out how to live well within terrible systems.”
Particularly inspiring is Joycelyn’s evocation of ancient wisdom. Her net casts back into history, as well as forward into the technology of the future. She tells the story of the living root bridges in the Meghalaya region of north east India, crafted by the local Khasi people since 100BC. To make these bridges, the aerial roots of rubber trees are trained on bamboo poles across rivers and canyons, and can take 30 years to grow. The kind of long-term infrastructure planning that present governments can only dream of. What’s more, these root bridges are beautiful structures, embodying the art of craft and technology.