Jacqueline Raposo has written over three-hundred interview-focused features articles for major food publications. Her stories center around the culture of food – how eating connects and disconnects us – as well as the challenges facing those in the hospitality industry today. She also pens essays on functioning in a busy world as an adult with lifelong chronic illness. Her first book – The Me, Without: A Year Exploring Habit, Healing, and Happiness – publishes in January.
Jacqueline finds humans fascinating, and believes everyone has a story to share. She walked barefoot in the New England woods often as a child of the early nineties, got Lyme disease, and lives with complications to this day. Jacqueline still goes camping, identifies trees and birds, and takes her dog (who’s had Lyme, too) out in the grass any chance she gets. She can’t go far, but she goes deep.
3 words to describe Nature?
Detoxifying. Fortifying. Unanswerable.
3 things Nature taught you?
Talk less, listen more.
Pay attention – a hawk can kill a junco in two seconds flat – don’t miss the moment.
Nothing I create will ever be as beautiful as a walk with my dog during a snowstorm.
3 most treasured Nature spots?
Overlooking the Atlantic from Sao Miguel in the Azores, where my father is from.
The honey locust, tree of heaven, and plants deskside on my windowsill in New York.
Any forest in New England I can go into with my best friend, Lyndsey.
When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel…?
Small and powerless and insignificant and humble. In the best possible way.
When you see a forest, it makes you feel…?
Ready for a very slow walk to make up stories, identify things, and whisper quietly so to not wake sleeping trolls.
When you see a volcano, it makes you feel…?
Like an upward adventure is about to happen.
When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel…?
Like I can almost see the ghosts of all those who have stood in that same spot before me, equally in awe.
When you hear thunder, it makes you feel…?
Like I should stop what I’m doing and observe the sky, so I’ll know how it’s changed later.
When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel…?
Like it’s time to get out a notebook and fountain pen.
Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?
Forest. I’m never more at home then when with the trees, nestled alongside water. If I can be in water surrounded by trees, even better. Hot springs? Never leaving.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?
10. I live in a city, yet surround myself with Nature. I find it everywhere. I cannot live without it.
Share with us a childhood nature memory?
My favorite books in childhood were those about running away to live in the woods: The Boxcar Children, My Side of the Mountain, etc. I succeeded only in decorating an empty shed with plates made from broken floor tiles, building a fire pit in the woods behind our property and, eventually, trying to heal my dad’s poison ivy with a soak made from ferns. It was something.