Sophia (“So”) is a queer Greek-American who grew up in the northern hardwood forests of central Vermont. So started consciously becoming nature’s partner-in-crime when they worked as a seasonal shepherd throughout college and sheep began to teach them new things about belonging, awareness, and community. Hoping to one day be as cool as sheep are, So went on to do immersive studies in wilderness survival skills and naturalism at Roots School and Wilderness Awareness School, and also completed an MA that focused on relationships between religion and ecology in the Eastern Mediterranean, some of their ancestral lands. Much of So’s work is animated by a keen study of how human spirituality is interwoven with geography and can be further informed by intimate knowledge of place through naturalist study. When So married Pinar almost three years ago, their stewardship of both the queer soul and the non-human world began to flow together more visibly, and from this confluence Queer Nature was born. Current areas of geekery are tracking, scout-craft, marksmanship, remote medicine, and so-called nature writing. So has had their writing published in Written River and The Wayfarer.

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