My name is Sydney Kale. I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Wisdom Studies at Ubiquity University, focusing on phenomenology, co-authorship with plants, and how we give data voice. In 2021, I completed an M.S. in Environmental Studies and Sustainability from Unity College. In 2023, I completed an M.A. in Movement, Mind, and Ecology from Schumacher College. Through my academic studies and creative explorations, I have slowly been learning what it means to inhabit research and inhabit more-than-human relationship.

I grew up spending time outdoors, hiking and camping with my family, and building fairy gardens in our backyard. ‘Outdoors’ is a place I’ve always felt drawn to, even after some time apart. After my undergraduate years in Upstate South Carolina at Wofford College, I bounced between my car, my tent, and hotels and hostels, visiting national parks and natural spaces across the US and Canada. I spent a handful of months living in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, working in a plant nursery while I decided what to do next. I then bounced around Costa Rica, making friends and visiting farms. I decided I wanted to get into non-profit work, which led me to my first master’s degree and a year working as a full-time activist in Austin, Texas.

I wanted to protect the people and places I cared about, but I was being pushed to move faster and work more efficiently. I wanted to connect with people over all the beautiful things in our home that deserve our care and respect. I realized I wasn’t a part of the story I was telling, so I went off looking for a new one. When I don’t know what to do or where to go, I always find myself back at school. I decided to quit my job and study at Schumacher College, where I had the opportunity to explore the systems of exchange that make up our ecology: soil, soul, and society. During this master’s journey, I heard the call of the plants, and I listened.

Through practices of co-authorship with the more-than-human world, guided by collaborative becoming, connection, and attunement, I have relearned what it means to exist in the world and to be a part of an entangled ecology of communion. Plants have taught me what it means to be plant, and what it means to be human. Through their unique vegetal expressions, I have learned about what it means to live and what it means to die. I have come into contact with the permeability of reality, the multiplicities of umwelt, and the implications of attentiveness to the intimate, communicative, and enchanted nature of the world we are and are a part of. My academic writing and creative explorations express the relationships I share with plants and my experience as a sensuous, embodied human being.