“You have no idea how healing of a space you created with Sharing Tree Space! It was truly amazing to see that queer people have a space to exist and grow old in this world. Being in nature and meeting Melon, Madi, Samm, Emeryn, Geo, and witnessing the queer friendships and joy between them has been a life-changing experience! My life is more magical knowing people like you. Thank YOU so much!”
—Finneas, 18, grade 12. Fall 2024 cohort
Growing up, I was scared of nature, scared of the unknowns that lurked in the forest, scared of the creepy crawlies and wild things. Nature and I were distant acquaintances, certainly not friends, and not the soulmates we are now. Born in Bangkok and raised in Houston, concrete jungles urban-sprawled the green spaces around me. The shrill sounds of traffic and capitalism’s hustle and bustle sang loudly over birdsong. I was just trying to survive my youth and its Swiss army knife of traumas, knowing from a young age that I was not like the other girls. I had not yet owned the language of being queer, being gay, loving other girls, being brown, being poor, being … just being. My teenage years were fight/flight/write. Poetry saved my life.
In high school, my crush kissed me on my eighteenth birthday, and her lips settled my cells into the language of my identity. In college, I was hazed by and kicked out of the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University for fraternizing with a female cadet and violating the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. I was punished, forced to march in my winter dress uniform in summer heat, around and around the quadrangle in front of two thousand cadets. They made an example out of me. I had no safe spaces. I was isolated and scared, devastated and alone. I knew nothing of the trees. When I put the pieces of my young self back together and finally graduated with a degree in creative writing and poetry, I moved naturally toward teaching and shaping the rest of my life into not just holding but being a safe space, especially for LBGTQ+ youth.
In my early thirties, nature suddenly became a friend, my new home. My wife and I moved with our two little fu dogs from downtown Houston to a seventeen-acre wild slice of beauty in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. Nature became a part of my everyday existence, and doors inside me that were once closed suddenly opened and were flooded with trees, with songbirds and chipmunks, with dark skies of bright stars away from city life. I became a country mouse—tender and healing the child inside me that never had a chance to stop and pick wildflowers or stare lovingly at a bullfrog. My wife and I spent years shaping the land, carving paths through the forest, building garden beds, and planting an orchard of fruit trees. Nature moved so gently into my poems, planted itself, took root. My language as a poet was turning green.
Three years ago, following in my wife’s footsteps, I became a certified master naturalist, and during our field work, we would go on hikes through our national park to learn the names of the trees and flowers, along with the hundreds of different wild species that populate this area. Another shift in my language unfolded—a tree was no longer just a tree, but a flowering dogwood, a serviceberry, white oak, Eastern red cedar, Ozark chinquapin. A flower was no longer just a flower. A bird was no longer a bird. The specificity of language in learning the names of all these species opened my heart up to another previously untouched level of my attentiveness, and again, there was healing. I began to see the world in a microcosmic view, zooming in on the tiniest creatures while on my knees in reverence to that smallness—a wild species myself in the vast understory of our Ouachita National Forest. My language, again, greening deep and wide inside me, blooming.
To lean on the heartwood of my lesbian-naturalist-poet-ancestor Mary Oliver: “I was a bride married to amazement. / I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” This world, the natural world, was never something that I had access to, was never a place where I felt I belonged. I never felt like nature was open to me. When I did see nature, I saw only the white archetypes of hikers and birders and conservationists. I never saw a reflection of myself in nature.
Now, as a woman starting to silver in my wisdom, nature is my sustaining lifeline. The mountains, and bubbling geothermal hot springs from which I drink, are my connection and grounding—my elemental force. The hundreds of thousands of trees are my guardians, my gentle and giant friends. Their understory is my story. This land and all its more-than-human beings have held me and healed me. As former U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón says, “We are not separate from nature. We are nature.”
When I became the inaugural poet laureate of Hot Springs in 2023, I wanted to reach the community in a deeper way than I already had been as the host of Wednesday Night Poetry, the longest running weekly open-mic series in the country. I wanted to merge my love for the natural world with my lifelong advocacy for marginalized youth. According to the Trevor Project, if an LGBTQ+ teenager has one affirming adult in their life, it reduces the risk of suicide by forty percent. I wanted to be that adult to the LGBTQ+ teens in my community. I wanted to be the gay-mama-bear-naturalist-poet to affirm them, to offer my hand, and open up nature to them, too. This is where Sharing Tree Space was born.
Sharing Tree Space involves partnering with Hot Springs National Park Rangers, interpreters, and scientists to lead BIPOC and LGBTQ+ high school students on educational wonder hikes, focusing on natural world elements and writing poetry in the wild with them. The mission of this project is to engage them with the natural world, to facilitate community, and for marginalized youth to be seen, respected, held, and heard in their own personal authentic voices and through their valid experiences, thus combating societal and legislative erasures.
I knew this vision was a lofty idea, but when I was chosen as one of twenty-two laureates to receive an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, it meant this idea was a seed that others believed in, too, and I was determined to water that seed to bloom. I remember describing Sharing Tree Space to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) when the fellows were all invited to speak during a round table discussion at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. A member of the NEA staff came up to me in tears and said, “I wish my trans daughter could go on wonder hikes with you.” We hugged and I cried, too. I knew then the impact this project would have.
There were so many moving parts, but everyone I approached was absolutely on board, including Hot Springs National Park and three of its brilliant rangers as well as the park’s archeologist. I gathered my ROOTS, young adult mentor poets in their twenties from Wednesday Night Poetry, who are also queer, trans, Black, and brown. They would show their enthusiasm for poetry, so the teens could see an adult representation of themselves. I reached out to a high school where I already had a relationship with the teachers, and after speaking to several classes, the fall 2024 cohort of fifteen young people filled up!
Our first hike was in early October, and when the teens approached the Hot Springs National Park sign, I had a colorful assortment of hiking bags lined up for them, each filled with binoculars, a journal, pens, stickers, a magnifying glass, and compass, as well as resources from agencies across the state. So many organizations wanted to show support for this project and filled the hiking bags with swag. The Arkansas Department of Transportation sent in Wildflowers of Arkansas booklets and ecoregion maps. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission sent in field guides for Birds and Reptiles. The Arkansas Department of Natural Heritage sent in branded carabiners. The Arkansas State Library sent in Joy Harjo’s latest collection, a hardback book of poems for each student. I couldn’t wait to surprise the teens.
I’ll never forget the moment I told them, “Go ahead and grab a hiking bag. Those are for you!” They shyly ran to the bags and their excitement filled the trees. “This is better than Christmas morning,” a teen shouted as they dug into their bright purple bag. “All these agencies know that you are here and they support you,” I said, listing off the organizations with pride.
We all got in a circle and introduced ourselves with chosen names, pronouns, and backgrounds—all accepted in this shared tree space. It was a spectrum of beautiful and excited young people. Then we ventured into the woods for our first hike centered on geology and the ancient geothermal waters of Hot Springs. We found chipped novaculite stones from the native peoples of this land, and I taught the teens how to use their new binoculars on a high ridge of Hot Springs Mountain. All along the way, the ranger shared scientific facts and history, and I pointed out the beauty of the forest and modeled the practice of wonder and awe, stopping for them to notice a snail, a mushroom, and to listen for the woodpecker in the pine. We ventured back down the trail to the gurgling hot springs below, and sat together for poems. For each hike, I have curated a packet of poems based on the elemental themes—poems written by contemporary poets who reflect the beautiful diversity of the teens. The young people could see themselves in these poets, and in their poems about water, mountains, and stone. Together, we read. We shared space under the trees and poems were born in the wild. It all came together, just as I had envisioned it, and the bubbling hot springs behind us sang a 4,400 year old song of healing.
There were three more hikes over the next three months—the green world (trees, flowers, plants, moss, fungi, lichen); the more-than-human world (mammals, birds, insects); and archeology (digging up our personal stories). With each hike, the teens got closer to each other, and their eyes opened to the natural world in the same way my eyes had opened. The tenderness and healing and acceptance took on a natural form in the shadows of trees. My walking stick became “the wonder stick,” and we all passed it around. Whenever the holder saw something they wanted to share, or were curious about, or some wild blooming, we would all stop and gather around in awe; we would listen, then the stick was passed to another. It gave the teens, and even the ROOTS, agency in their own sense of wonder and the confidence to share it with others. We were bending over to touch moss, hugging trees, swooning together at the fiery beauty of autumn changing the landscape.
The fall 2024 cohort ended joyfully with a feature for the teens at Wednesday Night Poetry, where they read some of the poems that they had written over the course of our hikes. The poems were collected for an anthology that will be released by Gnashing Teeth Publishing, an Arkansas-based imprint. The ROOTS, rangers, and teens all became a tightly knit family of poets, existing in the margins of society, but finding solace in the safe space of trees, knowing that the natural world is theirs now, always. In all their spectrums of identity, they are nature.
With the seachange and violent erasure of so much of American society that has taken place since January, my Spring 2025 cohort felt even more necessary, even more life-saving for marginalized youth. Though incredibly difficult for my heart, I had to change my outward-facing project language during recruitment in order to still partner with the rangers of Hot Springs National Park. For their protection and the protection of the young people waiting to be involved, I bent like a willow, but the power of the project did not break.
Where in all this chaos is there room for poems? For touching moss, and young hearts blooming alongside tender spring wildflowers? For hikes with national park rangers, when thousands of them have been indiscriminately fired? Where is the space for a transgender teenager to hug an old growth pine tree and finally feel connected to the earth? There is still space in the trees for us.
My beautiful diverse cohort for Spring 2025 was built and over capacity, with teens coming from as far as Little Rock to join. My mentor poet ROOTS grew from six to nine, ready to stand by the teens as examples of growing up and surviving. Rangers, scientists, naturalists, U.S. Forest Service Biologists, and an archeologist waited in the wings to walk in the woods with us. The trees still held us. The spring breeze and smell of wildflowers touched our faces. The healing waters of our hot springs bubbled up from the mountain into our hands. Young poets blossomed under trees as their hearts opened to beauty, as nature became their friend, too. There was curiosity. There was community. There was joy. There was wonder. There was awe. And there were so many poems.
BIPOC and LGBTQ+ kids need to see BIPOC and LGBTQ+ adults that are happy, and silly, and curious, nerding out about a hawk feather or a mushroom. I’m not indoctrinating them, I am existing in nature alongside them saying, “Hey, look at this lichen growing on this rock—look at that resilience! We can grow, too, in this hard world. We can grow together.”
“Being a part of Sharing Tree Space healed a part of me I thought would take longer to mend. I had felt disconnected from the Earth for months but just as the trees have an underground root system, I have found my connections, outstretched branches, my roots - me, a ROOT. Learning about the natural world helps us to better understand ourselves and those around us.”
—Melon, Young Adult Mentor Poet ROOT
“While I only spent a few hours with Kai, the ROOTS, and the students, it was abundantly clear to me the strength and the value this program was adding to all of their lives. It was an honor to be a part of a program like Sharing Tree Space and I hope we are able to see more programs like this emerge in the future especially with uncertain times for queer people in the United States on the horizon.”
—Heather Adams, Park Ranger
Kai Coggin is the author of five collections of poetry, including Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). Coggin has been an educator, teaching artist, and queer youth advocate for the last twenty years. In 2023, she was appointed the inaugural poet laureate of the city by Mayoral Proclamation. In 2024, Coggin received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Coggin’s project, Sharing Tree Space, creates a seasonal generative writing environment for four cohorts of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ teens, with a focus on accessing the natural world. Coggin partnered with rangers and scientists of Hot Springs National Park, enlisting their expertise on “wonder hikes” that Coggin took with the teens. The cohorts read and wrote poems within natural elements and spaces, enriching connection to the outdoors.