Book interview: Soundings is inspired by nature while reckoning with climate crisis

After securing a £10,000 loan, Doreen Cunningham and her son Max headed off to follow the whales up the west coast of the US. Their journey became the foundation of her award-winning book

Doreen Cunningham was at one of her lowest points when she decided to embark on what would become a life-changing trip.

• Soundings: Journeys in the Company of Whales by Doreen Cunningham
• Virago, £10.99

Doreen Cunningham was at one of her lowest points when she decided to embark on what would become a life-changing trip. She was a single mother living in a hostel with her toddler son, doing freelance writing work at night as he slept, when she began to read about the extraordinary journey of female grey whales and their offspring all the way from their birthing grounds in the lagoons of Baja California in Mexico to Alaska and the Arctic.

Cunningham, who trained in engineering and previously worked in climate research before forging a career with the BBC World Service, had found herself unmoored after a difficult break-up with her partner and father of her son. She returned to her childhood home of Jersey, where the high cost of living meant she ended up living in a hostel. The grey whales reminded her of her own situation as a mother bonding with her son in challenging circumstances.

“I have always been fascinated by whales but I didn’t really know anything about grey whales. They’re not seen as charismatic, they sort of swim under the radar — the name says it all. When I started reading about their endurance and the incredible migration that the mothers and calves do all on their own, that was quite a parallel for me.”

Cunningham had previously spent a period living in Alaska on a climate change-related assignment, where she lived among the indigenous Iñupiat whaling community. As she struggled to find community and connection in Jersey, she felt a longing to return to a place where she had felt so much at home and where she had also fallen in love.

“I had found an incredible sense of belonging there. I didn’t realise I was craving that and as soon as I learned that the whales ended up there, it was set in stone.”

After securing a £10,000 loan, Cunningham and her son Max headed off to follow the whales up the west coast of the US. Their journey became the foundation of her award-winning book Soundings, which has now been released in paperback. I tell Cunningham I admire her for undertaking such an epic trip with a toddler in tow, although I wonder if people thought she was mad.

“Yes,” she laughs. “It wasn’t until I was writing the book that I started to agree with them. I suppose the fact that I was so on my own in the hostel, I didn’t have people policing me so I was left to my own devices. And in a way that was freeing, I got to make my own lunatic decisions.

“I didn’t think it through, I’m quite an impulsive person anyway. And having a background in journalism, working for the BBC for all those years, I was very used to planning trips, to being on the move, that was second nature.”

Soundings: Journeys in the Company of Whales Author: Doreen Cunningham

As she recounts in the book, Cunningham and her son Max encountered fellow travellers who were less than enamoured by his presence, but ultimately, it was the kindness of strangers that she remembers most.

“It was a bit sad to see some of the hostility but for everyone who was awful, there were 10 people who were just so generous. We had a great time and we made a lot of friends,” she says.

Cunningham’s book is much more than a travelogue, as she explores her formative years in Wales and Jersey, where her love of the sea was formed, as well as her strained relationship with her Irish mother. Cunningham says her Irish roots were reinforced when she spent time among the indigenous community in Alaska.

“That post-colonial element was a really important part of the book for me to talk about… I was overcoming the trauma in the matrilineal line in my Irish family, that was the bedrock of the book. I was told by the people in the Iñupiaq community that I had an unusual understanding of the colonial violence [they had experienced] for a white person and that was because I’m Irish. It gave me more of a reason to write about a culture that wasn’t my own that had been colonised.”

Excavating her past and present relationships with such raw honesty took an emotional toll but Cunningham, who is now a mother of three, says she felt compelled to write the book, especially in terms of raising awareness of the climate crisis.

“The book was almost an activist act. When I found myself with three young children understanding that things are unravelling in my lifetime, I knew that the time to gain people’s attention is now. I felt tremendous grief and helplessness.

“Looking at my life through a certain lens, it’s all about climate — the opportunities I had, that close relationship with the natural world that was developed as a child, then my scientific background, the climate-related research, working in climate journalism and that opportunity to go to the Arctic to research attitudes towards climate change among the indigenous communities living there.

“I thought if I give this book my all, I could use it to carry the story of what has happened with climate during my lifetime.”

Facing up to the reality of climate change is a scary prospect for many people — how can we be hopeful rather than despairing?

“I think it is important that people realise they are not on their own and that they are accompanied through those very difficult emotions of realisation,” says Cunningham. “Another really important thing to remember is that this was done without our consent. The book deals with the narrative of climate denial which was born in oil company boardrooms when I was a child and was very deliberately propagated.

“Even reputable journalists were misled and people are still being misled. Even if you don’t feel like you can do much, you can talk about it. The answer for me lies in community somehow. I still struggle with it.”

Author Doreen Cunningham 

Ultimately, Cunningham finds inspiration in the resilience of the grey whales, who in the face of diminishing food sources due to climate change, are forced to find new ways to survive.

“In the waters of Northern Puget Sound, there are some grey whales, a group called the Sounders, which I write about in the book. One of their founders is a female grey whale which has been nicknamed Earhart by the researchers there, after Amelia Earhart.

“The world-renowned whale biologist John Calambokidis has observed Earhart leading other whales to a new food source, ghost shrimp in the inter-tidal zone. It is very risky for the whales to access, because if they misjudge timing or direction, they could become stranded.

“The innovation and community, the adaptation being shown by these whales is very inspiring to me... if I’m having a bad day or an existential crisis, I tend to think about those grey whale mothers moving breath by breath through the ocean with their calves. And I think about Earhart, she is just one whale.

“You have the oil companies, and capitalism and this one whale that is making a difference to her community. I hang on to that. I don’t have the answers but I think the non-human world will provide the answers for us if we are able to listen.”