26 March 2025

Six months in, slow as can be

I used to think that a writer’s retreat was for divas, or wannabes with more money than sense.

Until I tried one.

Time. The privilege of time for slow, deep thinking. And silence. Our brains need these to advance an idea and craft a story, in the way that a parched throat needs water. Story Ark is like one long writer’s retreat.

It’s also a return to slow journalism.

I recently heard this called ‘artisanal’ journalism. Much like the idea of the writer’s retreat, this phrasing sounds a bit like overly-precious craft beer or hand-rolled facial hair that’s b’n sculpted with the tallow of a moss-fed yak from somewhere in the melting tundra, or what-what.

Slow journalism is really just a return to real journalism — cue: Paul Salopek’s extraordinary Out of Eden mega-walk. [Unashamed name-drop: Salopek and I shared the same National Geographic magazine editor, Oliver Payne.]

Slow journalism is how we should be doing the craft — taking time to dig deep, think hard, and do a fuller sweep of sources and experts. It’s the antidote to churnalism, where profit-driven commodified ‘produce’ has replaced news’s real function. Journalism should be a load bearing wall of a healthy democracy, where the job is to inform the public discourse, stoke active citizenry, and hold the powerful to account in the interests of the common good.

Slow journalism should also allow us to step away from our desks and get our boots back on the ground, out there in the communities where democratic participation unfolds in real time.

Story Ark is a pursuit of this old-school approach to the craft, albeit in a somewhat quirky form.

Cue disembodied narrator’s voice: Story Ark is a year-long journalist project where our intrepid writer is living out of a van and travelling under the guidance of chief navigator, the cat called Mouse. The mission is to find the invisible stories that show how the climate crisis is unfolding on our doorstep, in our lifetime.

Chapter 1 Dust Bowl is a wrap

We’ve been on the road for six months. The time and freedom have allowed such deep immersive research that I’ve only covered two geographies — the Namaqualand desert, and the grasslands of the Eastern Cape Highlands, Lesotho and the Free State. I’ve only now wrapped up Chapter 1 Dust Bowl, which includes eight stories from those first epic months.

What started out as a vague plan for a year-long project is fast growing into a three-year mission. If I hope to visit a wide range of ecosystems and places, and sink into the cultures and local economies embedded in them, the mission will need much more time on the road.

I’m about to disappear into a hermitage of sorts so that I can write the first stories for Chapter 2 Golden Threads and Chapter 3 Oil Spill.

Pimp my ride

As of this week, the good ship Story Ark will no longer sail incognito. The van will soon have some funky decal announcing our mission to the world. The virtual Story Ark is also getting a bit of a spit-’n’-polish: full social media clean up, and a website overhaul. Watch this space!

(Mis)adventures on the high seas

The (mis)adventures from the first six months on the road include, but are not limited to: one necrotic spider bite, two dune-drownings for the van, three slow punctures, and four sutures in a hand after a tumble off a medieval-style spiked fence the day before Christmas Eve. It’s b’n wild.

One final lesson from the road: If the spare tyre for your plumber’s van is stowed underneath the car, have some strapping lads move it into the van itself. You don’t want to discover that you’re not strong enough to brute-force the nuts loose with an ill-fitting tyre iron while lying on your back, in a frock, on the side of a secluded Lesotho road as the left rear wheel sighs quietly and deflates like it has a touch of the vapours and needs smelling salts.

If you’d like to get occasional Captain’s Log updates, please sign up to the newsletter. Otherwise you can follow us on whichever of the socials grooves with you.

Thank you for joining us on this Odyssean voyage.

Fondly, from afar,

Leonie Joubert

Itinerant science writer-slash-journalist, and captain of the good ship Story Ark.