Episode Details

Ayana Young and Laura Cunningham return to A State of Change: California’s Forgotten Landscapes, newly revised and expanded by Heyday Books. Laura shares how decades of research became a story-driven exploration of ecological memory, resilience, and recovery, offering a glimpse into what California has held and what may still return.

California has always been a landscape in motion. Water shifts across floodplains, rivers change course, fire renews forests and grasslands, and species like Chinook salmon have shaped the land through generations of abundance. In this conversation, they consider what it means to work with these living processes and make room for their continued movement.

They talk through the state’s once-vast wetlands and floodplains, the dramatic decline and gradual recovery of tule elk, and the astonishing abundance of salmon that once filled California’s rivers. Laura recounts a hard-won effort to remove part of a fence at Point Reyes, allowing tule elk greater freedom of movement. For Laura, this small victory became an example of what she calls an “honest kind of hope,” grounded in close attention to what is possible and the patience to keep working toward it. 

The conversation also turns toward rivers, fire, and the knowledge carried through generations of stewardship. Laura reflects on Karuk and Yurok cultural burning practices along the Klamath River and what they have taught her about patience, observation, and respect for Indigenous knowledge.

This episode asks: what might conservation become when we care for a place by tending to its capacity for change?

Credits
Thank you to our series partner, Heyday Books.

🎵 The music featured in this episode is “Junglessa (w/ Dylan Golden Ayock)” by Lake Mary and “River Holy” by Høly River.

Artwork © 2026 Laura Cunningham.

Audio and Visual Media Production and Publishing by For The Wild: Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, and Caitlin Brehm.

Get the newly revised book →
A State of Change: California’s Forgotten Landscapes (Heyday Books, 2026)

Our Series Partner
Heyday Books is an independent, nonprofit publisher founded in 1974 in Berkeley, California. We are a diverse community of writers and readers, activists and thinkers. Heyday promotes civic engagement and social justice, celebrates nature’s beauty, supports California Indian cultural renewal, and explores the state’s rich history, culture, and influence. Heyday works to realize the California dream of equity and enfranchisement.

Guest Biography
Laura Cunningham is an artist-naturalist who studied paleontology and biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked field biology jobs for the California Department of Fish and Game, the United States Geological Survey, and various universities, gaining experience with such species as Owens Valley pupfish, salmon and steelhead trout, Yosemite toads, Panamint alligator lizards, and tule elk. Simultaneously, she taught herself the arts of sketching and oil painting and pursue