Erica Watson

Ghosts of Distant Trees

​​Combining narrative and lyric essays, this collection reckons with coming of age in a warming world, invoking humor, ecological grief, and social commentary. When Erica Watson arrives at Denali National Park, Alaska as a college student, she encounters an expansive, dynamic landscape, and a community shaped by seasonal fluctuations of a tourism economy and subarctic latitude. Erica interrogates the social and logistical roles of the lone road transecting the park and other aspects of the built and natural environments.

The road stages troubling interactions with men and dramatic weather events, and catalyzes conversations about civic values and heavy industry in national parks. Travels away from Alaska offer an opportunity to reflect on family, the privileges afforded by mobility, and the sometimes uneasy legacies of American conservation.

Erica often turns her attention from the iconic landscape to the small and easily overlooked: individual pieces of road gravel, an orange peel tossed from a car window, homegrown tomatoes, a flower gone to seed. As years pass and the Denali community becomes home, her examinations of the natural world, labor, politics, gender, sexuality, and belonging gain nuance and complexity. Threaded with unsettling observations as forests burn and permafrost thaws, Ghosts of Distant Trees arrives at a place of acceptance and unease, eyes open to rapid change.

Forthcoming November 11, 2025. Subscribe and follow for updates, and preorder here.