101 Ways to Make Guerrilla Beauty - Paperback

by Trebbe Johnson (Author)

For most people, places that have become damaged through human or natural events are nothing but eyesores, best avoided if no official agency has some kind of plan to clean them up. It's rare to set out with a sense of adventure to visit a clear-cut forest, a mountaintop flattened by coal mining, a gas fracking site, or a polluted river. Trebbe Johnson not only celebrates these "wounded places" but invites us to discover meaning, vitality, and delight in them and, in the process, in ourselves. We do this by visiting these places and making "guerrilla beauty" for them-anonymous, bold, spontaneous tokens of gratitude or consolation. Each of the "101 Ways to Make Guerrilla Beauty" offered here is easy to do, whether you're alone, with a friend, or with a group. They don't require advance planning, expert advice, or special tools. Some of the 101 Ways pertain to specific kinds of damaged places, ranging from a favorite tree that's been cut down in your own back yard to a Superfund site too toxic to enter. Others can be applied to many different kinds of hurt places. Trebbe Johnson's simple practices reflect a profound and innovative approach to surviving the environmental problems every one of us is facing, but to thriving in the midst of them.

Author Biography

Trebbe Johnson is the author of "The World Is a Waiting Lover: Desire and the Quest for the Beloved", and of many articles that explore the relationship between people, nature, and myth. She is the founder of Radical Joy for Hard Times, a global community of people dedicated to finding and making beauty in wounded places. A lifelong adventurer in inner and outer worlds, Trebbe speaks four languages; has camped alone in the Arctic; studied classical Indian dance; and worked as an artist's model, a street sweeper in an English village, and an award-winning multimedia producer. She has led contemplative journeys in a variety of places, including clear-cut forests, Ground Zero in New York, and the Sahara Desert. She lives with her husband in rural northeastern Pennsylvania.