The idea of The Mad Habitatter came to me in 2021. It’s a play on the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland with the hope of creating habitat instead of hats. Interestingly, the Mad Hatter is just called the Hatter in the books, and it’s the Cheshire Cat — whom I love — who calls the March Hare and the Hatter “mad.”

The Mad Hatter just wants to have his tea, but the world keeps interrupting him with rude English girls and court cases about stolen tarts. He talks a lot about knowing Time, which I find intriguing in a Saturnian sense, but what I find most interesting is the origin of the phrase “mad as a hatter.” Obviously, it predates Alice in Wonderland as Lewis Carroll had to get it from somewhere.

Hatters in the 19th century used mercury in felt hats. This wasn’t the best thing to do as it sadly made people sick. Nevertheless, I’m a big fan of Mercury / Hermes, so it’s fun to have an association with him in the name even if he drove people literally crazy.

This also led me down the rabbit hole of the etymology of the word “mad.” Turns out, it’s perfect. Its origins come from the word gemædde in Old English, which meant “out of one’s mind.” That is exactly what I’m hoping to accomplish going forward. Honestly, it couldn’t be a better fit to include in my new screen name.

I’m a very logical person, and I’ve been very cerebral — if not outright colonized by the Western way of thinking — for most of my life. Getting out of my mind and into different types of habitat through hiking and gardening is where I’ve found the most happiness and meaning lately. I think this is what’s needed for us to heal collectively in the West, too: we are awful at being embodied, and we’ve severed ourselves from the world around us mentally, physically, and spiritually. Of course, none of this is to say that the mind or the intellect is bad; we’re just way out of balance.

Thus, the main idea behind The Mad Habitatter is to create fertile habitat for the more-than-human world both in the physical, land-based sense of the word and in the idea of the mind as habitat for less colonized ideas. So off I will go, marveling at the habitats I encounter, opening up my heart up to the songs of the pines and the roses on my merry way, hopefully completely out of my mind.