Because I write the first iterations of this chapter in early March, I feel compelled to acknowledge that the novel coronavirus is just beginning to take hold in northern California and areas of the Pacific Northwest. And while even outdoor exercise would eventually become stressful at times during the pandemic, here in central California in early March, we are still relatively sheltered from it--at least for now. But I will admit that I''ve been reading all the news and setting boundaries for myself around just how much I can take in before my anxiety becomes too much to tamp down with exercise like this. Instead, I try to reset my focus to the beauty of this moment and the gifts that it provides: the shuffle of the spotted towhee, the noisy curiosity of crows, the intoxicating scent of orange blossom and white jasmine. These are "good distractions" from my anxiety, and they provide a grounding effect in this moment. This walk is one of my favorite things about residing in this place, and I am grateful for it now more than ever. Doing this walk at this moment provides clarity and important reminders about the gifts that are all around us, that is, if we are present enough to recognize and respect them. This book is, in part, an effort at such respect and recognition.

Throughout it, I explore some of the places that I know and love, from varied, informed perspectives, in order to help reveal new ideas about our roles and responsibilities as humans residing on a troubled planet. Simply put, I suggest that how we communicate about such places can help shape our understandings of and relationships with them. More specifically, I maintain that to be mindful of the multiplicity of languages of our "more-than-human" animal kin--and to become mindful of the places that are hardly just our own--can help shape our accounts and perspectives of the ecosystems that we share, and may inform how we approach projects of human development in an age of climate crisis. Following the work of biologist, botanist, and Indigenous studies scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer, when we are attentive to the languages of our more-than-human kin--when we engage in these conversations between humans and other forms of life--we receive a gift from the world. I build upon Kimmerer''s work to further consider how, when we see the world as full of gifts, and when we become mindful of the lively languages spoken by a place and all its kin, we may "truly be at home." Moreover, by listening to our kin and by "bestowing our own gifts in kind," we also "celebrate our kinship with the world." This book seeks to celebrate our kinship with the world, and in doing so, asserts that to engage with a multiplicity of more-than-human lives and languages means that we must think critically about what such engagement and communication requires. I suggest that such engagement requires, in part, what philosopher Lori Gruen refers to as "entangled empathy," and in this book, I show how entangled empathy can help us acknowledge the challenges and tensions that accompany our struggle to share an ecosystem in peril for reasons often due to our own making.

I maintain that to grapple with these communicative challenges is a necessary part of understanding the places that we love and call home in an age of climate crisis. To engage with entangled empathy and to understand our world as full of gifts to be received and reciprocated may also provide one productive path forward in reconciling the ongoing projects of human development with the need to account for the lives of our more-than-human kin. I also believe that, and endeavor to illustrate how, sharing stories from the more-than-human world can provide one productive path forward as we grapple with and further explore these communicative challenges. In this moment, however, I am most interested in the communicative practices of the songbirds whose melodies I always look forward to on this walk.