The Last Beekeeper with Julie Carrick Dalton

Annmarie Kelly:

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[Music Playing]

What do you do with your nightmares? As I've gotten older, I'm prone to the middle of the night anxiety wake up. If you've experienced this, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

It might be 2:00, 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and I'll wake up. I'm just rolling over. “Don't check your phone,” I'll tell myself. “You're still asleep.” But I'm not, I'm awake. And that's when the worries set in.

I'll think about that doctor's appointment I need to make. About those non-specific symptoms that may or may not be life-threatening, and that will probably leave my children without a mother. Or I'll worry about those work responsibilities I need to tackle first thing or that meeting I've been dreading with my boss.

And don't forget about the note I forgot to write to my daughter's teacher about the field trip. And what about the profound disappointments of my life and how I haven't amounted to what I thought I might. And, and, and …

On a logical note, I know there's almost nothing I can do about any of this, especially in the middle of the night. Everything on my anxiety to-do list is going to seem more manageable and less calamitous in the light of the early morning. And yet, some nights, many nights, I toss and turn and catastrophize.

What intrigues me so much about this week's guest is that she's found a way to turn her nightmares into action. Julie Carrick Dalton writes her climate change worries into stories and turns existential dread into books for the rest of us.

She has me thinking about how we can be better stewards of this planet and how all of us might better turn our own worries into action. Julie Carrick Dalton is the Boston based author of The Last Beekeeper and Waiting for the Night Song.

A Bread Loaf, Tin House, and GrubStreet Novel Incubator alum. Julie is a frequent speaker on the topic of fiction in the age of climate crisis. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Review of Books, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Electric Literature, and other publications.

When she is in writing, you can usually find Julie digging in her garden, skiing, kayaking, or walking her dogs.

Julie Carrick Dalton, welcome to Wild Precious Life.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Annmarie Kelly:

I'm really excited you're here too because there's this funny thing that happens in writing circles. I imagine this probably happens in most circles, in nursing circles, in welding circles. But what happens is that you keep bumping into someone. They're writing their work long before you actually meet them.

So, I won Michael Zapata's book in a raffle at a party in Chicago, and then I saw he'd blurbed your novel. I interviewed Kirstin Chen about her most recent book and attended a talk she did about counterfeit, and then I'm double checking something on her social media handle. And there she is in conversation with you in Cambridge.

I read Nancy Johnson's book The Kindest Lie, her debut novel. And there you were again. So, on and on and on. At some point I just figured that the pinball game of the universe just kind of keeps bumping me up against the name Julie Carrick Dalton. So, I thought, “I'm going to go meet her.”

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Well, I am happy to be here and I've also, been hearing your voice a lot listening to your podcast. So, this just feels like a natural meeting.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, yeah. And since we are finally meeting, I suppose maybe we should start with some sort of introduction and we should get to know each other.

So, beyond all the things I already know about you from the socials and from folks who maybe haven't had the pleasure of reading your debut novel or this latest one, why don't you just go ahead and will you please tell us your story?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Thanks for asking. So, I was a journalist for a long time, so I've always been writing and I turned to fiction later in life. My debut is called Waiting for the Night Song. It came out in 2021, and it was published when I was 50 years old. So, I was very excited. That was a big milestone for me.

And all of my fiction, I like to think of it as a manifestation of my climate anxieties. So, the things that keep me up at night are the things I like to write about because it's kind of my way of processing them.

So, with The Last Beekeeper, which is a 2023 release, it all started because I keep bees. And several years ago, I had this hive that was just doing great. It was thriving. There was lots of little larva growing in there. The honey cells were filling up.

And then one day all 40,000 of them died in one day, in a pile. And it was really devastating for me because I've been caring for these creatures and there's something really intimate about caring for a hive of bees. Like watching them come in and out of the hive and observing patterns. And then they all died in one day.

And so, I restocked my hive. I was like, “I can do this again.” And they did the same thing the next year, at the same time of year.

So, it was not a disease. It wasn't a colony collapse disorder or a virus or a parasite. It had to have been a poison, something in like some toxic chemical that a neighbor was using on their lawn because otherwise it wouldn't happen so fast.

So, that created this big what if in my mind. Like what if all of them died? And if my bees were dying in mass numbers, what were happening to our local pollinators and what would that happen to my ecosystem if the pollinators died?

So, it just started this avalanche of questions in my mind. And that's where the book The Last Beekeeper came from.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. So, in this newest novel as folks are learning, we encounter this world where honeybees have gone extinct. And then as you're alluding to like without these master pollinators, at least in your book, the crops have failed.

People are starving, unemployment is through the roof, and life on our planet becomes both so eerily familiar and then also, quite strange. I felt like the book was part apocalypse and part like Little House on the Prairie.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I love that. I love that combination. That's a really good analogy.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, it's like the Apocalypse meets Laura Ingalls Wilder. So, like similar to The Great Depression, the American government is handing out food rations and embarking upon like a kind of new deal program. They're trying to put people back to work.

And the job to me was so fascinating. The people they put to work are hand pollinating plants. Workers are trying to grow vegetables in these giant greenhouses so that people can eat again.

And amid all that, we meet Sasha. She's the daughter of a man who's been known as The Last Beekeeper. And yeah, so, this apocalyptic Laura Ingalls Wilder world is born.

How much of your brainstorming for this novel was based in scientific research and how much of it was based in just like imaginations and what if scenarios?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

It's really a marriage of both. I did do a lot of research. I had a beekeeping consultant because although I've kept bees, I'm not an expert on bees. So, I brought in a consultant to talk about the science.

And I did a lot of research on our agricultural systems and our food security and what crops are at risk, what foods will we still have? And trying to just imagine all of these things colliding at one time of us losing … when we lose a lot of our foods, we lose food security, which disrupts economic systems, which disrupts politics. It just cascades.

So, I kind of let my mind go wild and thinking of all the ways it could play out. But like you said, there is that Little House on the Prairie vibe that they're squatting in an abandoned farmhouse, which is the farmhouse where Sasha and her father, The Last Beekeeper, where Sasha grew up.

And so, she's back in a comfortable space, a familiar space, her home, but there's no electricity. They don't have running water. It's a Little House on the Prairie vibe. And so, it's kind of the future and the past colliding on this farm.

And so, it also, was a lot of my childhood in some ways. And my grandparents had a farm in the mountains in western Maryland. We had running water, but only cold running water. We didn't even have a bathtub or a shower. We had to heat water in a tub and take baths in this big galvanized steel tub.

We cooked on a stove that you had to put logs in the fire and there was no television, no telephone, and it was heated by wood. And so, I kind of dug into some of those past feelings.

And there's a cabin, if you've read the book, that she's always remembering this cabin that her parents had taken her to, and that was my grandparents' farm for me. Going back into those memories.

Annmarie Kelly:

I thought there was this great dual narrative going on. So, at the one time we have Sasha who, as you said is returning home. She's been away in her case in a foster care sort of state situation. Her father's gone to jail, she's being raised a ward of the state and she grows out of it and she's free and she tries to go home.

So, at the same time we get this narrative about Sasha finding her way home. We also, start to get these murmurings about the bees. Yes, yes, they've been declared extinct. And yet, every once in a while there's a buzzing and it's a bee trying to find its own way home.

And you talked about like the celestial compasses, that bees always know where they are. They always have this celestial compass guiding them home. And I just love that we had two things returning home.

We've got Sasha and all these folks trying to find their way back, and at the same time we have the bees trying to be reborn in this world that has declared them gone. And yet there are these murmurings. There was something really beautiful about the way you set that up.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Thank you. I actually toyed with the idea of naming it celestial compass, but I thought it didn't really reflect what the story was about, but I just loved that phrase, celestial compass.

But yeah, bees know where they are and they can always find their way back to their hive, which I thought was really kind of beautiful.

And that Sasha, her father kind of gives her this idea when she's a child, that she's connected to the bees and that she understands the bees and they understand her. And it's some sort of in her mind is a child a magical connection, that even when she outgrows this belief, she still kind of believes it.

Like she still sort of thinks she's a bee in some ways. And with no mistake that her job is, that she's a pollinator, she's pollinating food that the bees can no longer pollinate.

So, this connection from the bees and Sasha, it was very intentional that they both, like you said, were trying to find their way home.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. There are so many beautiful memories because this is a, I call it not a dual point of view, but dual time period I guess I would call it where we've got … similar actually to Waiting for the Night Song, I suppose.

We've got Sasha when she's a 20 something year old in this new world where bees have become extinct. But we also, get these recollections back to when she's a child and she's being raised by her father and he's imparting all of these beautiful little notes of wisdom.

So, there's one about the pitch, the way the bees buzz. He says it's like they hum at a G note like on mom's piano. Is that true?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I don't even … yeah, yeah.

Annmarie Kelly:

Is it really?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah, yeah.

Annmarie Kelly:

I think I've run from too many bees in my life.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah. Just stand still next time and listen.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. So, Sasha herself is a musician, she plays the violin. And we've got these beautiful rememberings where her father is talking about how much the bees will come to know and trust her.

And that as a musician, she's playing the violin near her bees and she wants to know like how do they know? How do they know? And he's just like, “They just know. They communicate with signals that only the bees understand.”

And Sasha herself feels like she communicates with the bees. And even though she outgrows being a child, I feel like she holds on to that, that she is someone who can follow the messages that the bees are trying to tell us. As an adult, she still believes that.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah. And I love that she still believes in a little bit of magic, that she might not articulate that to someone else, but deep down inside, she still believes a little bit in this magic of her special connection to the bees.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. Are you someone who's afraid of bees?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

No, not at all. I'm not at all. But there’s like this great … like the sound of meditation. But it's all around you. It's like this surround sound of this vibration. And when you're there, sometimes it feels like it's inside of you.

So, that's where that came from, that she felt like she had like internalized the hum of the bees and she could feel it in her fingertips even when she wasn't with the bees. And that's where that came from, is from when I would be with the bees and I could sometimes almost feel like the sound was coming from inside my head because they were all around me.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's beautiful, that's beautiful. And quite the opposite of the experience I think that most of us grew up with, with bees. I saw the movie Killer Bees. I was probably five, or … all I know is I was at my grandparents' house and one of my aunts was watching that old Michael Caine movie, and I became convinced that all bees had like a taste for mammal blood and were out to kill us.

And so, I remember being very late to kindergarten the next day because it was like dandelion season in the spring and I was tiptoeing just trying not to be killed by bees.

So, I think that it's really, really important for those of us who are concerned about the earth to outgrow these childish ideas about what is and is not harmful, that we grow up as children believing that bees are bad, that they could sting you and it can hurt.

But I mean, you had two hives that you lost. And this is not an outlier. And I read just a little bit. There's like the word expert and then there's the word amateur, and then whatever's below that is about my understanding.

But I read just a little, and we don't entirely know why the bees are dying. Some of them get the mites, some of the colonies don't overwinter. But we have some suspicions about why the bees are dying, don't we? That a lot of it is things we do to beautify our own areas. Is at least what I read. Is that your understanding about why the bees are dying?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah, there's a lot of reasons. Colony collapse disorder is this mysterious syndrome where you'll have a thriving colony and then they just don't return home to the hive. And we talked about the celestial compass and bees know how to get home.

So, maybe something's disrupting the compass, they just don't return home. It's not that you're finding them dead, you never find them. It's really mysterious.

There have been all sorts of theories dealing with things from cell phone signals to chemicals disrupting their nervous systems. Lawn chemicals, big agriculture pesticides and herbicides.

Also, drought, rising temperatures disrupting an entire ecosystem that sets things off, that may be a habitat that was hospitable to the pollinators isn't so hospitable now. So, they're moving to other locations, maybe not settling in as well drought situations.

But another really big one is big agriculture, mono agriculture, those farms that grow soybeans for miles and miles and miles and there's nothing else there. So, they'll have these industrial beekeepers bring in millions of bees, just boxes and boxes at these hives of bees just for the season to pollinate a certain crop.

And then they pack them up on an 18-wheeler and they drive off to the almonds in California or to the blueberries in Maine and they cart them around the country. And that's not a natural life cycle for bees.

And so, if you lose one crop in an area and it's the only crop, like if there were a blight on soybeans or whatever the thing is, and you lose it, you've destroyed all the other sources of pollen and nectar in the area because you've only planted the one thing.

So, it's a combination of lack of diversity in their food sources, chemicals, maybe cell signals. I don't know how real that is. I mean, I've read about this, but all these things are converging in conjunction with climate change. So, I think it's hard to pin down one cause. I think it's all of them.

Annmarie Kelly:

I often think about what an individual can do in the face of a systemic problem. I'm one person and yet there are things that we can do. I remember years ago, the first house we bought, we lived in Connecticut and the yard was terrible. And so, we paid for a lawn service and it made the grass look prettier.

And then when my daughter was born, I got to reading about kids don't need to be tumbling around in yards that have chemicals on them. And so, we stopped that.

And then the more I learned about how much the bees need the dandelions and the wild flowers and those johnny jump ups or whatever you call them. The little flowers that come up in your yard and the crocuses, all of that. That that was going to be sustaining for the ecosystem.

And I remember we had a frog one year and I was like, “Ah.” And my husband was like, “No, no, no, this is a great sign.”

A frog is a great sign that there are bugs to feed the frog. And if the frogs can be eating the bugs, that probably, there are worms in the grass and that those are doing the important work of composting your soil. And that there are little signs that you can look for that you've got a healthy ecosystem even in your yard.

And if you've killed off all of that stuff, then you are definitely contributing to these little tiny things. The flap of the butterflies wings that you don't entirely know what it's hurting, but it's hurting something.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah, I'm a big advocate of pollinator gardens and that is a small thing that anybody can do if they have a space to do it. Obviously, it could be a window box if you're in an apartment. I live in a apartment on a sixth floor. You can put things on your window boxes if you have a balcony, a roof deck.

And we have a family place in New Hampshire that I have a pollinator garden there. And we have Echinacea and daisies and lavender and all sorts of different coneflowers. And it's amazing how many insects it attracts. Like when I sit there … the biggest bulk of my writing is done in New Hampshire.

And looking out the window, I can see sometimes like six monarch butterflies. I don't see them anywhere else. In my daily life, just on my normal routine, I don't see butterflies very often. But in my yard, I see a ton of them. There's so many bees in the yard and a lot of variety of bees too, not just a single type of bee.

And I think that shows me that the effort of planting those plants is doing something. It's giving a place of refuge and a place of consistent food sources for … and it's just my yard as I'm not talking about acres and acres of flowers. But if everybody did that, it would diversify the food sources for the pollinators in their area.

And I do talk a lot about flowers and not just the bees use of the flower, but the humans use in terms of medicinal properties of different plants that because, like you had said, it's kind of got that Little House on the Prairie vibe, they're kind of going back to some more natural sources of medicine because they don't have access to healthcare.

And it's all linked, all of it's like the cycle of if we protect the plants, the plants protect us, the bees feed the fertilizer plants. So, it's all a big cycle that we need to participate in.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, no, I was thinking a lot about that as I was reading The Last Beekeeper. Is it true that you started your farm because you were concerned about a homeless moose?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah, yeah, this is true. I mean, it's like a very paired down version of the story. But so, this family home that we have in New Hampshire, I've spent time up there forever and there was a hundred-acre track of woods right near my home.

And we would sometimes — we've had moose walk into our yard, like literally into our yard. And bear, we've had so many … I can't count how many bears we've had that walk into our yard. We also, have like skunks and things I don't love as much, but we have these amazing creatures, tons of deer and foxes.

And this track of woods was on the market to be timbered and developed. So, they started clear cutting it while I was on the market and it just like hurt me just to think about all those animals that lived in that forest and that they would no longer be coming to my house because that's where they came from.

And so, in a way that some people like panic shop clothes or makeup or outfits online, I panicked shopped a forest and I did it very quickly. It wasn't a long drawn-out thing. I got together with a friend who we created a business model that she needed a place to board her horses in a winter friendly barn.

So, I bought the land, she leased it from me. We built a barn. We put all these trails in the woods. There's about two miles of trails in the woods that we put into conservation and open to the public so anybody could come enjoy these woods, but nobody could cut them down.

And so, I started farming it. This is I think about 15 years ago, and I didn't know anything about farming at all, nothing. It was an education by fire. And I messed up a lot. I went to school, went back to Tufts and got a certificate in sustainable agriculture.

And I learned from that piece of land. It taught me everything. Just trying things and messing up and Waiting for the Night Song, my debut novel, is set where my farm is.

Annmarie Kelly:

I like this idea that for those folks who are trying to become, we've got some aspiring writers who listen to the show, you too can become a farmer and then it will lead to bookish success.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yes. It's a logical path. Yes, I recommend it to everyone.

Annmarie Kelly:

What did you like to plant and grow? Did you have some favorite crops or what did you not like to plant and grow?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Peas. Oh my gosh, I love eating peas, but they're just so tedious picking them. And green beans, just the picking of them is so … like picking each one. So, what I did is I never went to market. I was not a commercial grower, but we grow food.

I'm a little bit of a food nerd that I dehydrate food, I can food, I cook a lot, I give away food. But we also, donate food to a food pantry in the area. So, we would always plant more than we needed.

And it gave me an excuse to invite people in to help me plant, to help me manage things. A couple times a year, not very often, but then they would know a lot of the food was being donated. So, it made for a nice … especially with my kids, they would invite their friends over.

That was basically my labor, was my kids' friends. I would entice them with like desserts and movie nights. And they all thought it was great.

But it was a real education for me and it was really fun to learn something, a way of living and growing food that I had never experienced.

But potatoes are always my favorite thing in the world to grow. I can't even tell you. You plant a potato, you cut it in pieces and so, they all have like an eye on them. And you plant them, you stick them deep in the dirt and you cover them up and you just sit there and you wait.

And then the little leaves come up, but you can't see what's under there. Are there really potatoes growing under there? Is there really anything going on? And then when the leaves start turning yellow, it's time to pull them up.

And then you yank up the whole bunch. And every time, by some miracle, there's a gigantic clump of huge potatoes. I swear every single time it's a miracle. Like I never believe each one would pull up. It's like it's a miracle. So, that's my favorite all time, potatoes.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's right. We've only done potatoes once or twice and I am kind of guilty of, I get really excited about planting and then watering early and then I just lose steam and my harvest is intermittent. But you're right, potatoes are, so magical.

Unlike a carrot where you're like, “Is it done yet?” And you pull it up and it's about the size of your thumbnail, you're like, “Why isn't it done yet?” You're right, the potato, because it'll tell you. The tops will droop and then it's time to pick them. I forgot about that.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I love showing kids the potatoes because to the kids, all this green stuff, it just looks like a weed. And then you get them to yank it up further back into it a little bit and pull it out and they'll be like six to eight huge potatoes. And the kids think that's amazing because it's like magic. They just came right out of the ground.

And I actually have a scene in the book where they do that, when Sasha is out foraging for vegetables and this abandoned garden with her roommate, Gino. And she yanks up a potato plant and it's a miracle because they’re there.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. I loved her foraging because as we mentioned, Sasha has gone back to her childhood home. So, she has a couple very contrived scenes where she's like, “I'm just going to go see if I can find anything for us to eat.”

And she forages in their old garden. And so, in fact, some things have gone to seed and have come back every year. And that should have been another hint for us that the bees weren't entirely extinct.

That yes, the wind can pollinate some things, but the idea being that she was able to find some greens here or a potato or something that was growing underground and also, their old pantry that was behind kind of, “Oh look, I found lentils.”

Julie Carrick Dalton:

My parents kept a larder in our basement when I was growing up. My mom was a big canner. My dad grew tons of stuff. He called it a garden, but it was 10 acres that he gardened. So, my mom canned. My mom and dad would have these like week long, like intense canning things where they would can tomatoes and everything.

And we kept a larder in our basement and it was a magical place. You open it up and there was just all this food in there. So, there's a lot of little snippets in my life that I handed over to Sasha in this book.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, I wondered about that. I don't usually ask folks about their dedication pages because I often breeze right by that knowing that those words are intended for one or two specific individuals and not for me.

But I kind of hovered on your dedication page because you dedicated it to your parents. And I even wrote some of this down.

You said, quote, “I've had the privilege of watching my mother and father excel in numerous endeavors, including puppeteering, belly dancing, driving an ambulance, selling real estate, cleaning houses, writing genealogy books, farming, and that super secret thing we can't talk about. You are the world's best storytellers and even better secret keepers.” And you go on to thank them.

Puppeteering, belly dancing? It sounds like you're fortunate to be raised by some fascinating, talented, loving and eccentric parents. What was it like growing up in your house?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I mean, to me, it was perfectly normal and wonderful. So, my mom ran a puppet theater for a long time and she wrote all of her own scripts. My very first publishing credit … I don't know if it was publishing. But performance credit was when I was 10, I wrote a script for her puppet theater and performed it. It was very exciting.

All I remember about it was there was a wolf with a stomach ache. I cannot remember what the rest of the show was about.

But my mom was very creative. She was a wonderful storyteller. And to my children, she has the gift of story that she can just off the cuff, come up with a bedtime story. Like she would read books to me and my sister, but she usually just made them up. And her puppet shows were fantastic.

And so, I'm not going to answer any follow up questions to what I'm going to say about this part. But so, I grew up in Europe for part of my childhood, and my parents were involved in intelligence. We'll just leave that there and without a lot of details, but they were involved in intelligence during the Cold War in Europe.

And so, they were always doing these other things as well. And so, I had a really fun, eclectic, weird childhood that seemed just completely normal and rich and full of great memories.

[Music Playing]

Annmarie Kelly:

I've read both of your books and in both, The Last Beekeeper and in Waiting for the Night Song, you introduce us to an important character, a main character and beekeeper. It's Sasha who is raised at least in part in a state-run system.

But also, in Waiting for the Night Song, we meet the summer boy, Garrett, who also grows up in and out of foster care. And we learn about the egregiousness of the conditions that kids too often receive.

It's in both of your books. So, I'm wondering about the importance of this to you. I don't know, why is that so much a thread in both of your novels?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah, I think maybe it's kind of a reverse of my own life. I had an incredibly stable childhood. I have just phenomenal parents. I mean, they're both alive and healthy. And I talk to them constantly. I seek advice from them, and always had been really strong role models for me.

And so, the idea of not having that is very foreign to me. And it's something that that absence, what would that mean for these characters? I would like to kind of think deep into that because it's not my experience.

And I wonder what would I have been like if I didn't have the stability that I have? And that's a very common thing. It's not like it's rare to have you instability in your family. But it was not an experience I had.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, no, I was thinking about that, just having read the two of them, thinking about how the books are in conversation with one another, not just with the kids in foster care, but also, these characters who are so in line with the harmony of the world.

There's something really beautiful about the way your characters know the natural world. It's not just that Sasha is in touch with the bees or that she can pretend to forage on land that she and her family have. But there's just this gorgeousness. I'm trying to think.

I wrote something down. Like when Sasha's wandering through kind of the natural world, this kinship, it's not just the memory of the perfect G, but she falls into sync with the rhythms of the forest.

She notices a cluster of fiery tiger lilies craning their necks towards patches of sun, sifting through the swung hemlock and the bony shadow of a slippery elm. That she notices the earthy stew of mulch and decay. And that smell loosens the tightness in her chest.

And then she thinks about the millions of molecules that make up the forest and a doe walks into the clearing.

That the way that the natural world envelops the characters in your book is really beautiful. It's really lovely.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Oh, thank you. That means a lot to me. I write my characters seeing the world the way I see them. My main characters, both Sasha and Cadie from Waiting for the Night Song, both have a similar worldview as I do, I think.

Especially the child versions of both of those characters. I was that half feral child running around and jumping in the crick, and splashing around, and building dams with rocks, and climbing trees, and building forts. That was who I was as a kid. And I think that comes out a lot in my characters.

I like the texture of nature. I like to feel tree bark and the texture of rocks and the grit of dirt between your fingers or sometimes when you eat something, you get dirt in your teeth the way that — or like a grain of sand the way the grit feels in your mouth.

That's how I feel like I experienced the world. And I think that's kind of the only way I could write a character. I don't know that I could write a character without that because I feel like that's the way my intake of information comes through the senses.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. They seem very tethered to the natural world. And because of that, I think that when you layer onto it and Waiting for the Night Song, there's a crime that's committed in that beautiful lake community. But in this book, the crime is more diffused. It's just not a murder, it's this great collapse of the pollinators.

And then we get layered on top of that is like the criminal behavior of how the government responds. So, yes, on the one hand, the government is helping people with jobs and food, but there are other more nefarious ways that the government acts incorrectly in your book.

And I won't give it all away, but that when we get this gorgeousness of the natural world with your main characters and then they come up against something else, which in this case might be congress, criminalizing reported bees sightings without evidence or deterring people from saying that the bees survive.

That we get the way the natural world and I'll say, artificial world collide, creates a real kinship, at least for me, between Sasha and Gino, and Ian, and Millie even. And the characters who are squatting and trying to make the best they can, pulling up potatoes and cutting Echinacea to cure, to help wounds and putting bicycles back together.

That the way that they're trying to survive on the land really makes the problems seem very manmade that exist in this book, the way we've turned against nature.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah, and I mean, it's true. I mean, it's the world we live in now too. Like most of the problems ecological, environmental, climate changes, we can look in the mirror and see where they came from. We did this.

And there are people who profit from the destruction of nature. Not just from things like a piece of land being deforested, that's an obvious profit right there, but just the overall destruction of like an ecosystem and the implications it has on communities.

Annmarie Kelly:

So, I'm wondering, in Waiting for the Night Song or The Last Beekeeper, was there ever a scene that you wrote and you just had to like write an X through it? It's gone.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah, yeah, there is. It was excruciating for me. It was Waiting for the Night Song. So, I was able to partially repurpose and use this scene later in the book in a completely different way. But if you remember, there's a scene involving a bear on the highway.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yes.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

There's a very personal story behind that scene about why I wrote that scene in the book, that had a lot of personal meaning to me and still does, but it didn't need to be in my book.

Annmarie Kelly:

What's the thing that happened in your real life with the bear?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

So, I was driving down 93 in New Hampshire and I saw someone hit a bear cub and they stopped and they got out of the car.

And I was driving by, my mental response time wasn't fast enough to think, get back in the car, there's a mother bear. Like it had to be there. Like I couldn't see the mother bear because it was flanked by a forest. But I knew it had to be there.

And there was this teenage boy, and I was a mile down the road before it clicked in my mind and I couldn't turn around. And the next exit was like seven miles up the road, and there was nothing I could do.

And I had spent the whole rest of this two hour drive hating myself for not having had a quick enough response. And then I start playing in my head, “But what could I have done? Like what would I have done? How could I have helped someone if they were being attacked by a bear? When do you risk your life for a stranger? And is the guilt of not trying worse than the risk you're taking?”

So, that guilt versus the risk and balancing. Is carrying the guilt of inaction worth taking the risk, or worth not taking the risk?

So, I went through this, I had this whole emotional process the whole way home. And I was like checking like the police stations. I was like, “Anybody attacked by a bear today?” And I never heard anything happen to this young man.

But that same day when I got home … I live on a lake and I was with my five-year-old son out in the backyard, and five little girls went out on a canoe and in the middle of the lake, they flipped the boat and they were screaming and they were hysterical and nobody was coming.

And I'm alone with a five-year-old on a shore of a lake, and I can't possibly pull five little girls out of the water with my one-person kayak and lead my son alone by the water. And I just had this moment of like, “Yes, you can. Like you can do this because you know that the guilt of inaction isn't worth it.”

And so, I had one extra life jacket beside mine. I got in the kayak and I went out and I pulled all five girls out of the lake and they're all okay. And it was a really scary day, and one of them got hurt a little bit.

And it was really awful for me because the whole time I kept imagining like, “What if something happens and one of them doesn't make it? Am I responsible? And if I didn't try, was I responsible?” And I was just processing a lot.

So, that story about the bear was really about me processing. I wrote that scene that night. The one about the bear on the side of the … it was really my way of processing the idea of when do you help a stranger and when is it worth risking your life to help a stranger? That's a really long answer to that question. Sorry.

Annmarie Kelly:

No, that's beautiful. I love the idea that one, sometimes the — I wouldn't even call it a mistake, but the inaction that we take in life might turn into action in the course of a book. I love that.

That as writers, that sometimes we do get the chance to rewrite a story. That it might turn out differently than it did in real life.

And then I also, just like the idea that we're always just doing the best we can and I'm driving and thinking, and I can barely do two things at once. And I too would've driven right by and thought later, “Oh wait, I wonder if he …”

That we're always just doing the best that we can. Then you can just think about what's the next best thing that you can do. In that case, it was to help those little girls on that lake.

My goodness. And you've got all kinds of gorgeous mantras in this book. I wrote some of them down. “That it's okay to grieve for the things we've lost, but it's more important to protect what we still have. Our stories belong to us, not to anyone else, but sometimes they're heavy.” I like this one. “Second chances only come along once.”

Julie Carrick Dalton:

That's also, could apply to that story with the canoe and the bears. Like I feel like I wasn't able to stop and try to intervene in that one circumstance, but the weight I was carrying because I didn't stop, prompted me to act the second time. So, it gave me a second chance to try to help somebody.

So, I really do believe those things, especially the idea of not letting the grief over what we've lost paralyze us. Because I think we're losing so much every day between insects, birds, like everything. We're losing so much every day.

And it'd be really easy to sink into grief instead of looking up at the things that are still here and loving them. Like if you don't love the things that are left, you're not going to fight for them. So, like look up, look at them, see them.

And I've shared this analogy before, but I think about it sometimes. If you have a bird feeder and you have 20 hummingbirds every day and you love those hummingbirds and they're stunning and beautiful.

And then things start changing and you only have two hummingbirds left. And what happened to those other 18, it's really sad. You could spend your time mourning the 18 or you could cherish the two that are left and try to protect them and try to save them.

And that's kind of how I feel about nature in general. Like I hate the losses that we're suffering and I want to stop them, but I also, don't want to fall into only grief. There's like so much beauty that grief can blind you to the beauty that's still here.

Annmarie Kelly:

I'm definitely looking at bees differently because of the last beekeeper. I'm not sure I'm too adorable yet, but I've moved way past horrible into like, “Yeah, we need them. We need them.” Because I got a glimpse of what the world might be like without them in your book and it ain't great.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

It's not.

Annmarie Kelly:

No. So, be nice to bees, everyone.

Well, we always close with some playful this or that questions just to get another view of the girl behind the books. The first few are just multiple choice. You ready? You pick one.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Alright. Okay.

Annmarie Kelly:

Alright. Coffee or tea?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Coffee.

Annmarie Kelly:

Dogs or cats?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Oh, absolutely dogs, no question.

Annmarie Kelly:

Mountains or beach?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Mountains.

Annmarie Kelly:

I'm going to ask that another way. Skiing or kayaking.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Oh, that's mean.

Annmarie Kelly:

I know.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

That's really mean. Okay. Wow. I don't know. I mean, I guess I'd say kayaking, but I say it very reluctantly. But I love skiing so that I … mmm, I don't know. That's a tough one.

Annmarie Kelly:

Did you grow up skiing and kayaking? Were these things that came to you young?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

No, I didn't start skiing till I was in my 30s, but I became a very quick addict. Three of my four kids either were or still are downhill ski racers. My husband is an absolute junkie. I'm the least accomplished skier in my family, but I ski a lot. Like I'm a fine skier.

But I just love it. I love being in the woods, in the snow, and it's so beautiful.

And the kayaking is a different rush. It's a rush of quiet, not a rush of speed. It's just the silence in the water and the lily pads. And the scene in Waiting for the Night Song, that area, the cove, that's very much the area where my farm is, or my former farm.

Annmarie Kelly:

I wondered that. That area felt so real that I thought it must have been based on something real.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah.

Annmarie Kelly:

If I serve you pancakes, would you like them with maple syrup or with honey?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Oh gosh, this is cruel. You're taking my favorite things and it’s like pitting my children against each other.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's the next question.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Alright. I don't know, I'm going to have to go even on that. Honey and maple syrup are very dear to me in equal measure.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. I don't think I've ever had honey on pancakes, so I'm going to have to think about it and give it a try.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah, try it.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. Okay. This one we've covered half of but not the other. So, these are some desert island books. So, if you have to pick one, would you pick Little House in the Big Woods or the Persian Pickle Club?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Oh wow. Well, you are really mean. Oh my goodness. Okay. I don’t know. I think I'd have to go with the Persian Pickle Club because the characters in that story are just so unexpected in so many ways.

And it's a book that I don't know that everybody's read, but they should. The characters and the unreliable narration that you get in that book just stuck with me. I love that book.

Annmarie Kelly:

It's good times. Okay. Another desert island pick. If you had to choose Jhumpa Lahiri’s the Interpreter of Maladies or Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler's Wife.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I have to go to the Interpreter of Maladies, but I like them both so much, but for really different reasons. But I think the Interpreter of Maladies, there's so many more characters. Well, if I was going to be on a desert island, I'd want more characters with me. So, I think yeah, I would go with Interpreter of Maladies.

Annmarie Kelly:

I got to read that book on a train, traveling with my sister and I read that first story, A Temporary Matter, and it just stopped me in my tracks that anyone could do that much that beautifully. I have never forgotten that story.

It was like Shoba and Shukumar and they're in these periodic blackouts and the intimacy and truth telling in the dark. That story just, I was gob smacked. Just so beautiful.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

And I also, love the way she uses food in her stories. The preparation of the food, the care food, the yearning for food just really moved me.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, I think you do some of that too. I was hungry for some of the beef jerky rice stew.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

It's really funny because I'm a vegetarian. Writing some of that's hard.

Annmarie Kelly:

I don't think I've ever had beef jerky in anything except camping. But I was like, “That actually might be good.”

Julie Carrick Dalton:

If you're starving, I think it sounds pretty awesome.

Annmarie Kelly:

It does. A little protein. Okay, a few more. Are you an early birder and night owl?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I am both, but not in the same week. I am not a very regular sleeper. There are days I get up at 5:00 in the morning and I cannot go back to sleep. Yeah, so, I'm a full-time writer now, and my kids are a little older, so I'm not beholden to driving people to school or showing up in an office.

So, there are days I sleep in till 8:30 and there's days I'm up at 5:00. And I think you're just as likely to find me writing at night as morning. Although I'd say probably more productive in the morning. But yeah, I don't think I fit into a neat box in the early bird or a night owl.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's okay. Are you a risk taker or the person who always knows where the band-aids are?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I am a risk taker with band-aids in my pocket at all times. I'm definitely a risk taker but maybe I hedge myself with a pocket full of band-aids.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. I think it was Rebecca Mackay who said, “I think the person who takes the risks should at least know where the band-aids are.”

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yeah. They're in my pocket. That's where they are.

Annmarie Kelly:

These are a few fill in the blanks. If I wasn't working as a writer, I would be a …

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Oh, I know exactly the answer to this. I would design tiny homes with … you know the tiny houses? You know like the trendy little-

Annmarie Kelly:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Or RVs, the like recreational vehicles. I love the economy of space in tiny homes and RVs. Like the pop stairs, things that pop up under the doors, a dining room table that turns into a bed. I am absolutely fascinated with transformer furniture and economy of space. So, I think I would be fabulous at designing very small spaces.

Annmarie Kelly:

I like that. There are whole TikTok channels. I’m sure you’ve found them.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I’ve seen them.

Annmarie Kelly:

Things that fold into one another, that fold up and lay flat and slide under. Yeah.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

My dream is to someday, somewhere, for some reason own a Murphy bed. I don't know why I need one, but I just want one. Because I just think they're amazing.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, yeah, they're fun. I remember sleeping in like an efficiency motel with my parents on what we were calling a vacation, but was also, a funeral. We did that in my family. We're going on vacation to a funeral. And there was a Murphy bed that my sister got. Just, how could you sleep on something so fun? It was just-

Julie Carrick Dalton:

How cool is that?

Annmarie Kelly:

… so much fun. So fun. Let's see. I feel like we've covered a lot of quirky, but what's something quirky that folks don't always know about you? It could be a like, a love, a pet peeve.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I'm a crier, like a big ugly crier. And I cry at the evening news, I cry at bad commercials, I cry on airplane reading books. I cry when I see someone else crying, even if I don't know what they're crying about. If I'm in a stoplight and I see a kid score a goal in the soccer field, across the road and he looks emotional, I'll … I can't help it.

And it's embarrassing a lot of times and I've developed an incredible talent that I can cry out of one eye. I can't make myself not cry, but I can cry only out of my left eye.

And so, if I'm sitting with someone watching news, watching a movie, and I'm like completely mortified that I'm crying, I can make myself cry only out of my left eye so I can put my hair over my face. And I think it's a real talent if you're a crier to be able to channel it.

Annmarie Kelly:

Julie Carrick Dalton has invented the one-eyed cry.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Yep.

Annmarie Kelly:

It might be the next book. Yeah. As I get older, I'm a crier as well. I just cried with a new friend the other day and I'm not sure she's going to call me again. So, yeah, I'm in the feelings. We're in the feelings. I think that's actually healthy. What's a favorite book or movie, or both?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Wow. Okay. My favorite books I've read lately, I do read a lot of books in the climate genre, but Charlotte McConaghy who wrote Migrations and she wrote Once There Were Wolves. Those two books have stuck in my head more than anything I've read in a long time.

They're both about species extinctions and hope. They're both bleak and hopeful and very nature focused. I draw a lot of inspiration from Charlotte's writing.

And then on a completely different channel, have you read The Change? I can't remember, I'm blanking on the author's name, but it came out I think this summer and it's about a group of women of a certain age who are becoming invisible to society, who they're basically, become a little crime investigating team.

And their menopausal symptoms sort of develop into superpowers. Like literal superpowers, not metaphorical superpowers. I was so there for it. I was like, “Yes, bring me the hot flashes that manifest into fireballs in their hands.”

It was such a joy to read this book about women who aren't always centered in stories. It's called The Change. And I highly recommend this book. Absolutely loved it.

Annmarie Kelly:

I am going to check that out. I've not read Once There Were Wolves, but I've been captivated by that title. I think it's really evocative. And you mentioning that it's both difficult subject matter, but also, hope.

It's hard to put dread and hope in the same book but you need them book if I’m going to be there for it. And that I could find some menopausal crime fighters. This is the content I'm here for.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

They are incredible and unforgettable. If you read it, hit me up, I want to talk about it-

Annmarie Kelly:

I will report back.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

… because it is so good. Absolutely.

Annmarie Kelly:

And I'll make sure to link to that for other folks too. That's most excellent. Alright, last two here. What's your favorite ice cream?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

I like maple walnut ice cream. That is absolute favorite. Well, I also, love salted caramel, but given the choice, I go for maple walnut.

Annmarie Kelly:

Well, you guys, if you're there in New Hampshire, I would imagine there's some maple around.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

There is. Absolutely.

Annmarie Kelly:

Alright, last one. If we were to take a picture of you really happy and doing something you love, what would we see you doing?

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Probably kayaking, which might answer that question you asked me before about whether I like kayaking or skiing. Kayaking is my happy place. It's the calmest, most serene thinking place in the world.

Annmarie Kelly:

That’s excellent. Well, Julie Carrick Dalton, thank you so much for coming by.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Well, this was so much fun. I'm so glad we got the chance to talk.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah, I'm grateful for you. You wrote, quote, “The world's fragility makes it beautiful. We need to see the beauty, not just look at it, but look around you.” And I've been trying to do that more. Thank you for reminding us to open our eyes to all that is difficult, but also, all that is beautiful.

Julie Carrick Dalton:

Aw, thank you. I really appreciate your words.

Annmarie Kelly:

And folks, if you haven't read them, Julie Carrick Dalton has a lot of writing out there, but there are two novels. So, the first is called Waiting for the Night Song. And her most recent one, which is when you're hearing this out right now, called The Last Beekeeper.

They are hauntingly beautiful. You can find them at an indie store near you.

And to everyone listening, we're wishing you love and light wherever the day takes you. Be good to yourself, be good to one another, and we'll see you again soon on this wild and precious journey.

Wild Precious Life is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Special thanks to executive producers Gerardo Orlando and Michael DeAloia; producer, Sarah Willgrube; and audio engineer, Ian Douglas.

Be sure to subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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