Living as if the future is already here
A reflection on grief, ecological devotion and the increasingly heavy burden of loving the Earth
This essay reflects on the life and loss of a friend, as well as on wider questions around ecological responsibility and the individual vs. society. Names have been changed for privacy. A big thank you to Sael for creating this song as a tribute to Rowan, with lyrics adapted from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, Seal Lullaby.
Rowan was a strange, strong little creature with a childlike laugh that turned her eyes silver. She did everything at her own pace – slow, considered – except when she disappeared. That, she did suddenly, on January 7, 2025, a few weeks before her 36th birthday.
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I'd met her a few years earlier when she moved into the crumbling house I shared with friends in a bohemian market town in Devon. She'd been living in her van in Portugal but wanted to be near the land she was surveying for her PhD in ecology. Although she explained its subject many times, I'm ashamed to say I can't remember. Mostly, we spoke about her love for nature and the formative time we both spent on the West African island of São Vicente.
In 2022, Rowan hitched rides on sailing boats from Portugal to South America, then eventually across the Pacific to Tahiti. Not bad for someone with no sailing experience who often got carsick. Hers was a spirit not easily contained by the structures that hold the rest of us.
In 2024, when I was travelling through Mexico, she asked me to pick up her Bakhti flute, which she’d left on a boat called The Albatross in Cape Verde. Through a series of unlikely coincidences I managed to do so, bringing it to Devon where she hugged it like a baby. In Rowan’s world, everything was interconnected: people, forests, dragonflies, microbes, stars and souls. It seemed the most natural thing to her that a Bakhti flute from India should travel to Cape Verde, then on to Mexico and Devon, through a chain of strangers working together to bring it home.
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A quiet rebel with a core of steel, she was the only person I know who could drink the River Dart’s water without getting sick. She thought nothing of walking 25 miles a day and sleeping outside – to be with nature longer and to witness the sunrise.
When she dropped out of her PhD, she explained she could not go back to the lucrative ecological consultancy she'd been doing previously because even that felt like participating in the extractive capitalist system that is decimating the Earth. When asked what she wanted to do instead, she said intensely: “To share. To protect the Earth. To create spaces where people can come together and love one another.”
There was a particular patch of carpet in her room where she felt especially good. Sometimes we sat there and wrote poetry together. Words flowed from her in a steady, chanting rhythm like the seasons or the tides or the waxing and waning of the moon. She drew inspiration from the 13th-century Sufi poet, Rumi, and loved the lines: 'You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.’
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We knew she was missing because of a horrible news article. It shows Rowan in a ferry terminal on the remote Scottish island of Mull. Her face is haggard, her hair unwashed, eyes swollen currant buns. She’s staring into the CCTV camera like a caged animal.
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After she moved back into her van, she would occasionally drop by our house, always at the last minute, and always after she visited her more-than-human friends first: the ancient trees on the Dartington estate. Sometimes she brought ailing plants, asking to rehome them in our garden.
Her love for the Earth propelled her to volunteer at rewilding and reforestation projects in India, Africa and Asia. But the last time I saw her, in November 2024, it seemed to be burning her up rather than powering her on. She turned up unexpectedly as usual and parked her van in our drive for a few weeks. She had no phone, no heating to avoid carbon emissions and had reached the point where she didn't want to use money at all.
Her usual gentleness had been replaced by anger. She was wearing a nose stud the shape of a sword. “I wish it were real,” she'd said bitterly in our damp kitchen, “so I could take it to all the people hurting the Earth and make them listen.”
Although she told us she was heading to the Isle of Mull, she seemed unsure why. But she had a deep knowing that was where she needed to go.
A few weeks after she disappeared, an inspector from the island called. Alongside the skeleton leaves and samples of wood in the van she left behind, they'd found a collection of notes I'd left on her windscreen. Scraps of paper scrawled with things like, ‘Come up to the house, dinner's at eight’. We never knew whether she'd show or whether she'd be out rambling through the woods and stone circles on Dartmoor.
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For all her fierce independence, Rowan loved people. And once they'd adjusted their speed to her considered rhythm, they loved her too. Alongside her intellect and courage, there was a purity about her. Something that allowed one’s armour to soften, then melt away completely. She was a frequent visitor to eco-spiritual communities, from Findhorn in Scotland to Dorset’s Osho Centre. She truly believed that a more beautiful way of life is possible. In some ways, she lived as if it were already here.
The policeman who called reassured me she'd been looked after on Mull, where the wind blows in cruel sheets off the Atlantic Ocean. “She was well liked by the islanders,” the voice on the phone said. “They brought her hot food, let her sleep in the pub when it was extra cold.”
Concerned by her nomadic lifestyle, her family offered to help her buy land in Cornwall. But Rowan didn't believe in owning land, she believed in loving it.
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They combed the island with dogs, with mountain rescue teams and by sea. Finally, nearly a year later, her Wellington boot and jacket were found 200 metres from where she had plunged into the ocean in the Strait of Erraid. She loved open water swimming, even alone at night and in freezing conditions.
‘Presumed dead’ was the official pronouncement. ‘Her body will not be found’, her family said on the JustGiving page they have set up to support the environmental charities she admired, as well as the local organisations that spent months searching for her.
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Personally, I like to remember her as she was before the anger set in, two summers ago. I was recovering from post-viral fatigue following COVID. She brought malt loaf and pears from her favourite shop in Chagford, a stolid stone town in the middle of Dartmoor, where she often parked her van because she loved swimming in the lido there. We ate them beside a flower patch which she described as ‘the perfect cottage garden’: straw flowers, calendula, love-in-the-mist, sweet peas so heavy the bamboo frame had collapsed under them.
She ate daintily and slowly, as she did everything, breaking off small bites and throwing them over the fence into the woods for the tiny creatures. She said she was spending her time either on guerrilla conservation efforts, or just being still and watching. “Still like a stone or a tree stump. We have so much to learn from them,” she said.
The Strait of Erraid is tidal. When the water's low, it's possible to walk to the islet where a small eco-community tends the land and teaches travellers how to live in harmony with nature. For someone who believed that something better was just within reach, it seems an appropriate place for her to become one with the waves.
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As I write this, my body is once again slowed by post-viral fatigue, and I feel soft and liminal. Being open and unarmoured is a state I think Rowan understood well. I wonder how many people are now struggling under the increasingly heavy love she carried for the natural world. How many are choosing to live as if something better is possible, even as the ground beneath them seems to shrivel?
I'll end by sharing some words written by Rowan that were read at her memorial service, alongside others from her LinkedIn profile:
“I am working towards Earth's balance and restoration through hope, faith, happiness and love.
Healing the Earth and healing each other is a shared responsibility. We must reconnect with ways of living that honor community, nature, generosity and exchange. You are a thread in the fabric of life, and your thoughts, words and actions all leave an imprint.
My mission is the restoration of all that is beautiful and natural, reconnecting with the land and community and discovering ways of life that are balanced, resilient and respectful of all living beings.”
I don’t know what kind of faith she is referring to, exactly. But to me, these words sound like a prayer.
Amen, whatever that means.
Softly,
Imogen
February wayfinding: provisions for the month to come
Travelling The Isle of Erraid, the eco-community referenced in this piece, offers both month-long volunteering opportunities and the option to book a room in an old light-keeper’s cottage for a week to join in with island life, from organic growing to nature meditations. If you’re looking for a total break from the prevailing capitalist paradigm, this is it.
Reading Two sparing, beautifully crafted novellas by Irish writers. The first, Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These tells the story of one man’s courage against the insidious power of the Catholic church. A Long Winter by Colm Tóibín follows the story of a young farmer whose mother disappears during a particularly brutal freeze in the Catalan Pyrenees.
Listening The beautiful, original piece of music that accompanies this piece is by Sael, who sailed with Rowen to Cape Verde and I have been listening on repeat. Also, Dylan Thomas’ sharp masterpiece Under Milk Wood, read by Richard Burton, in the many hours I’m spending looking out of my window through a crevice in the medieval roofs to the green hills beyond.
Learning I have just started a 10-session somatic coaching container with a Hebe Dickins, who is currently completing training at the Strozzi Institute in Rome. The first session we worked together to clarify my goal, which is to feel an embodied state of balance between success, safety and soul.
Homemaking This month I spent more time than I thought possible looking at curtain poles, eventually settling on this one from House of Brass, which I have ordered in the antique finish. Next on my list is runners and I have samples on the way from Fleetwood Fox, an ethical company that designs and makes all their carpets in their small workshop in Somerset.
Wearing I recently purchased this comfy quilted sweater from Antwerp-based womenswear label Girls of Dust, which specialises in understated pieces inspired by men's workwear and made in Portugal. Their men’s label, Eat Dust, is equally cool. Both have an excellent sale currently.
My stories elsewhere
From magazine articles to social media
From tarot to astrocartography: how travel is getting spiritual – SUITCASE
Where chefs eat in Mexico City - Souvenir
From poacher to protector - An image story by photographer Mark Rammers from a story we made about jaguar conservation in Brazil’s Pantanal
Of course, you can always buy my book
The Ethical Traveller: 100 Ways To Roam The World Without Ruining It
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