Ghosts of Distant Trees

In Ghosts of Distant Trees, Erica Watson traces the layered ecologies of Denali National Park, Alaska—its vast, shifting landscape, seasonal labor rhythms, and the subtle politics of inhabitation. Through lyric and narrative essays, she explores how built environments like Denali’s single road shape encounters with land, gender, weather, and community. Turning from iconic vistas to gravel, orange peels, and garden beds, Watson asks what it might be like “to get to know a place without immediately thinking of what threatens it.” Haunted by fire and thaw, these essays resist elegy, offering instead a complex meditation on belonging, vulnerability, and the fragile intimacies that persist in a warming world. This is writing attuned to detail, disruption, and the ethics of attention.