Mar 24, 2023
Sponsored by Nola Simon Advisory: Learn More From This Bonus Podcast Episode
I met Amanda Lewis in a meditation class with my coach and podcast
guest Kerri Twigg. Amanda edited Kerri's book as well as
Leslie Ehm's book. I'm fascinated with network science and
how people come to know one another. When I found out Amanda
was publishing her own book, Tracking Giants, I knew I wanted to
talk to her about the process of writing a book as an editor, the
practices that support her creative process and her West Coast
remote working lifestyle.
This conversation was a lot of fun - if you've never heard my loud laugh you will:) I realized right at the end that Amanda's publishing date is personally relevant to me as well - I get to sprinkle my mom's magic and send beautiful success vibes Amanda's way.
About Tracking Giants - available for pre-order now
A funny, deeply relatable book about one woman’s quest to track some of the world’s biggest trees.
When she first moved back west after nearly a decade away, Amanda Lewis was an overachieving, burned-out book editor most familiar with trees as dead blocks of paper. A dedicated “indoorswoman,” she could barely tell a birch from a beech. But that didn’t stop her from pledging to visit all of the biggest trees in British Columbia, a Canadian province known for its rugged terrain and gigantic trees.
The “Champion” trees on Lewis’s ambitious list ranged from mighty Western red-cedars to towering arbutus (madrone). They lived on remote islands and at the center of dense forests. The only problem? Well, there were many…
Climate change and a pandemic aside, Lewis’s lack of wilderness experience, the upsetting reality of old-growth logging, the ever-changing nature of trees, and the pressures of her one-year timeframe complicated her quest. Burned out again—and realizing that her “checklist” approach to life might be the problem—Lewis reframed her search for trees to something humbler and more meaningful: getting to know forests in an interconnected way.
Weaving in insights from writers and artists, Lewis uncovers what we’re really after when we pursue the big things—revealing that sometimes it’s the smaller joys, the mindsets we have, and the companions we’re with that make us feel more connected to the natural world.