Asha in her North Valley Garden
Cyanoprint and Watercolour on Hand Dyed Fabric, 36’’x 54’’
Asha Canalos is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, community organizer and
climate justice advocate.
Q: What is your relationship to the environment/nature going back to childhood,
and moving forward to now?
“Some of my earliest memories are from Florida. We didn’t have a lot of money. My mom
used to push me in a shopping cart down through the alleys in Broward County and we would
just take pineapples, bananas, and limes and things off trees that were overhanging the alleys.
And I remember just sitting in the shopping cart and smelling the crushed lime leaves and
having these intense experiences with the plants in our yard...I would just climb the trees and
hang out in the trees and it was really a refuge for me. We moved around a lot and a lot of my
ways of understanding a new place was to try and spend time with the plants in that place.
My connection to plants has grounded me, I think more than any other activity or interest that
I’ve had. It really calms me down. It gives me a sense of the cycles of things. I gives me a
sense of the ups and downs and sort of the time it takes for things to come to fruition. It gives
me that patience. I honestly don’t know if I’d be here today if I hadn’t been so involved with
plants. I had depression issues. I had a lot of PTSD stuff.
Q: Can you speak to what your relationship is to illness?
...I was a gardener, I was 22 years old, and something was very wrong. I got tested and I had
Lyme disease. I was really ill for a while. I was on antibiotics for over a year. I didn’t realize at
the time but that basically destroyed my gut health. I wanted a deeper connection with the
land; I wanted to start an organic farm and an artist residency. It took a long time, but we even-
tually found an 11 acre farm in upstate New York about an hour north of the city. It was really
beautiful- rolling hills, The Black Dirt Region, and there were all kinds of amazing animals li-
ving in the woods. A magical place. And not very long into that, we were notified by the
neighbors that there was a natural gas project that was slated for our town. Less than a quarter
of a mile from us they were bringing over a dozen pipelines from the frack fields of
Pennsylvania to the east coast, where it’s going to the cities, but it’s also going to these LNG
ports, shipping it to sell on the global market. They wanted to put in a giant compressor sta-
tion. Every so often along the pipeline, they put a compressor station and it keeps the gas mo-
ving down the line. It releases an incredible amount of toxins just directly into the air, no real
filter. Basically everything that is bad in fracking comes out into the air. We got together with
our neighbors to fight it. a lot of them were 9/11 first responders who were dealing with PTSD,
and a lot of respiratory illness and they had moved out there for the fresh air. To heal. It was
very awkward to be working with Republicans, and Tea Party Republicans. But we grew to
realize we all shared this thing of wanting to not be harmed, wanting to protect our farms, wan-
ting to live safely. Also- these compressors blow up and kill people pretty regularly. The more
we found out, the more horrifying it was. It was a 4 year legal battle, about year 3, I started to
get really ill. It wasn’t like Lyme disease, it was a lot of muscle pain...and then the company
was allowed to build the compressor station before we went to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Q: How far was the compressor from where you lived?
It was less than a quarter of a mile. Basically over a hill. So then, they started venting. And it
smelled like someone had opened a can of paint in the air...our friends across the street from
the compressor, with four kids, closed all the windows in their house and had the kids sleeping
in the basement and the kids were still getting nosebleeds and headaches. People started get-
ting really ill. The 9/11 first responders started getting really really ill and they started moving
away.
In 2015, I woke up one day and I was unable to move my head in one direction and I could ba-
rely walk....the judges ruled that some places are designated national sacrifice zones. I was
diagnosed with fibromyalgia. The doctor told me it was going to get worse. It was probably the
darkest time in my life. I was incredibly depressed and incredibly ill. Finally we decided to
leave....I have a kind of survivor’s guilt because we were able to leave, and many were not
able to....so my connection with plants has only intensified, and at the same time I feel this
tremendous sadness for the plants and for the land. As global warming progresses, there’s only
going to be more ticks, mosquitoes...and more situations that cause chronic illness.
[I’m so sensitive to plants] and it’s wonderful to be around them, but I also feel fear and pain
for them...I’m terribly afraid for all of us. I’ve seen it get really really bad and I don’t think a
lot of people have seen how bad it can be when a community is really hit and when people
start getting sick all around you. That’s something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life I
guess. I’m just walking this balance line where I’m trying to take care of myself, trying not be
so overwhelmed by what’s happening that I can’t take care of myself. Because I’m of no use to
anyone if I don’t take care of myself.
For us there’s a huge difference between living in an impact zone and living near one...I was
one of those people that didn’t know what was happening not that long ago. New York has
banned hydro-fracking, but is the 4th largest consumer of fracked gas. People in Albuquerque
and Santa Fe have no idea that they are benefitting from this system which is putting rural and
indigenous communities in a terrible situation. They are just turning on the gas. Everywhere is
filled with fracked gas in NM.
In a lot of ways cities are parasitically living off of rural areas. New York City- a lot of my
family and my best friends live there- when we told them what was happening, they found it
hard to believe. How can that be? And meanwhile, all of their energy, food, water is being pro-
tected, largely by the more rural people, who don’t have the same resources, but bear the brunt
of the risks and impacts. I was a person living in NYC at one time. I didn’t realize how much
of our energy was based on this fucked up system.”