Welcome to the November issue of Wild Greens.

The new volume of Wild Greens brings some exiciting changes, and some goodbyes as well. Notably: we've relocated our social media presence (goodbye Instagram, hello Substack). We're saying goodbye to two of our less popular submission categories: music and cultural commentary. We've slightly shortened the max word count for short stories and essays to 1800 words, to better fit the material constraints of a continuous scroll magazine. Lastly, with the new volume, our submission cap resets, so if you've been waiting for a sign to submit to Wild Greens, this is your year!

We've put together a Wild Greens yearbook for you, filled with "senior superlatives," class portraits, and yearbook quotes.

Maggie Topel designed the WG logo celebrating the longevity of Wild Greens with plants known for their hardiness and a stack of old yearbooks. It's this metaphorical yearbook stack that forms the basis of the rest of our issue. 

To make our yearbook, I pulled a variety of memorable submissions through the years from our editorial staff. There were too many wonderful things to choose from so I decided on this criteria: colorful submissions where possible (or we would only have black-text-on-white-background), and older submissions over newer ones. Those of you who are newer readers of Wild Greens can experience work from our archive, and those of you who have been with us through the years can take a walk down memory lane. Isn't that what yearbooks are for? 

Jacqueline Ruvalcaba wins the title "Most Adventurous" for her short story "Falling," a story about breaking through writer's block originally published with us in 2023. 

Jessica Doble is "Most Van Gogh" with her watercolor sunflowers series, published with us in 2022, where she shares her process of learning how to paint sunflowers after finishing graduate school.

"Most Inspiring" goes to Myra Chappius for her personal essay "Song of Myself," on traveling and finding home, originally published in 2024. 

Hayley J. Boyle's collage series, "Unearthly" wins "Most Surreal." Published in 2022, Hayley's collages depict a possible world. 

Rebecca Lipperini's (my!) poem "Onfim" wins "Most Historical." Based on the birchbark school doodles of a seven-year-old boy in 13th-century Novgorad, the poem finds continuity across historical experiences. Originally published in 2021.

We close with Hayley's iconic original watercolor for Wild Greens, first published in 2020. 

We've replaced our usual headshots and bios with yearbook photos: relics from high school or posed photos today. We each chose a "senior quote" that captures our spirit, and tried to have some fun with the genre. 

I'll share another senior quote here now just for fun. In the words of Smash Mouth, "The years start coming and they don't stop coming." 

-Rebecca

Most Adventurous! Falling

by Jacqueline Ruvalcaba

I am about to descend over the edge, into the sky, where glimmering white fades into cloudless blue. Here, down is up. If you can avoid thinking too critically, you can pretend you’re riding a mountainous cloud. Until you hit the hidden patches of ice, hear the distant and near calls, yips, and hollers of other skiers, the steady hum of the chair lift—then the illusion breaks, and down is down again. The fear of losing control and falling rather than flying is too real of a possibility.

My mom pushes herself toward this edge first, but I grab the sleeve of her red jacket before she can go over. I don’t want her to leave me yet. I’m not ready. I feel scared of the unknown, of the hurt that will come if I panic, make a wrong decision, and fall.

I shuffle away from the edge. “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can,” my mom says, and I can hear her reassuring smile. Using her ski poles, she pushes forward again, until she is at the edge of the mountain, where snow meets the sky. I watch her red jacket disappear as she goes over the edge, into the sky, a paintbrush on canvas. She glides down the steep trail on a cloud of soft, freshly fallen snow, etching lines into the mountain, keeping balance even as she hits patches of ice.

I stare over the edge of the hill, afraid to begin. I try shuffling forward, watching as my skis brush and flatten out the snow beneath me. The snow is like the white acrylic paint beneath my mom’s palette knives, flattening and mixing before she begins.

I push myself to the edge of the hill, an end-stop. I consider years before, of cascading over mountain edges much like this one, flying down the hill with no fear—before putting words down on a blank page became as scary as going over the edge of a cliff, before words and stories locked up and bolted down deep inside, seemingly without reason. My mom knows this fear as well. Her sketchbooks are filled with ghosts, traces of trashed ideas, lines, and eraser shavings. But she keeps working, moving forward. My own journals and Word documents are filled with unfinished sentences and disjointed narratives, trials and errors, and sometimes left as white as the snow beneath me.

I’m holding myself back. Skiers are speeding past me, diving over the edge, catching air, flying. I remember that feeling. I want to feel that again. To let go, stop thinking of what could happen if I were to make a mistake and fall. I don’t want to hold back anymore.

With a shaky exhale, I let myself go over the edge, down the hill, maybe not as fearless, but as fast as I once could go. I don’t know if the snow I’m rushing up to is powder or ice.

And then I feel it. The feeling of having no traction, no grip. I’m nearly flying, skis barely touching the ground, but it’s not a good feeling. I feel the familiar wobble in my right leg, my strongest leg. I feel the insecurity there when I press harder into the snow to maintain control. But like a stone skipping on water, my right ski stutters, crosses inward, onto my other ski, creating an X.

My skis are no longer beneath me. I’m flying. I’m tumbling with no end in sight. When it’s over, I’m left wide-eyed, staring up at the sky.

I tremble as I lift myself onto my elbows and survey everything I lost. One pole is further up the hill, and the other is beside me. My right ski popped off and is to my far left. My ski boot is like a ten-pound weight, but it’s a bit lighter now without the ski. It’s easier to move and position myself to pop off my other ski and work on standing again.

I hear my name and look over. I see my mom’s red jacket. She reaches me, cutting into a sharp turn and spraying me with snow. She’s laughing, asking if I’m okay. I tell her nothing is broken. Surprisingly, I’m laughing with her despite how shaky I still feel. My mom grabs my hands and helps me stand back up.

From here, I get to work. I pick up all of the things I lost in the fall. And when I make it to the bottom of the mountain, the end of the page, I’m ready to begin again.

Most Van Gogh! Learning Sunflowers

by Jessica Doble

watercolor

Inspiration: These four paintings are my first attempts to learn how to watercolor a bouquet of sunflowers. I saw a version of this painting on Pinterest and thought I could do my own. However, from the first painting, I realized I didn't know how to paint sunflowers. So I watched some tutorials and tried them. This series demonstrates trying to find a groove for painting. I also picked up watercolors because after graduating from my PhD program, I felt that I was missing a goal outside of my work identity. After striving for something for so long with all parts of my life, I felt depressed and lost without this all-encompassing goal. Watercolor helped me create a new goal and a new groove.

Most Inspiring! Song of Myself

by Myra Chappius

I’ve sailed through quite a few seas—the North, the Mediterranean, the Norwegian. I’ve had my feet planted on the chilly shores of Alaska, the historic streets of Amsterdam, the dusty remains of Rome’s Colosseum. I’ve traversed the skies of the Northern Hemisphere. None of these places have been home, and yet they all have been.  

All of these places—they live in me now. They’re not what I say when someone asks me, “Where are you from?”, but as I stood on them, and in them, breathing their air and seeing their stars, I took in something from them. Something that never leaves. Something I can call upon when I return. 

“I've learned that home is not a place, it's a feeling.” ― Cecelia Ahern, Love, Rosie

The first time I stood on Icelandic soil, I felt at home. I had never been to Iceland. Hadn’t dreamt of going there all my life. I don’t have any relatives there, no history. In fact, I’d be surprised if anyone in all of my African and Hispanic lineage has ever set foot there. There is no reason why it should set my soul at ease. And yet, it does. Each time I return there, the pieces lock into place and I feel myself again. I understand something new about myself each time. It is clear to me that at some point, in some life, this was home. 

The physical concept of home is difficult for me. I can feel content in so many places. I can find peace in the French countryside of Lourmarin, or wholeness in Getxo on the Spanish coast, or spirituality under cover of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Nevertheless, I can feel unmoored lying in bed beneath the roof I’ve lived under for two decades. The place is not what creates the comfort…not really. 

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” — James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

We absorb—through experience, through time spent—the particles of each land we exist upon, however temporarily. We take with us—when we leave it—more than just souvenirs and memories. We are more. We are changed. And even though we go back to the square-shaped building we call “home”, we go back different. Those particles take root. They accompany us wherever we go after—to the next land, and the next—moving over, making room. Home always is, and ever becomes, the collection of it all inside us.

Most Surreal! Unearthly

by Hayley J. Boyle

Old postcards, paper scraps, photos, glue

Methods: Figurative collage

Inspiration: The last few years have made me feel like the world is literally being torn at its seams–shattered, scattered, broken, and bruised. Too often, I’ve said the now familiar-to-me cliche, “We’re living through unprecedented times.” But it now feels like “unprecedented times” are the new normal, and that they are, in fact, becoming the precedent by which we live our lives. As landscapes across the world are bombed, as people lose their homes, schools, and places of work because of economic and political decisions, as hospitals are filled with the sick and dying, I keep trying to imagine a world that is structured differently than the one we live in–where cities can come together under pink skies, cabins can sit peacefully in the woods, and our terrain can remain unscathed.

Most Historical! Onfim

by Rebecca Lipperini