Meet Seneca Kristjonsdottir | Founding Editor of The Thalweg

We had the good fortune of connecting with Seneca Kristjonsdottir and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Seneca, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
To be honest, we have never thought of The Thalweg as starting a business. Dory had just left a career job in book publishing, and I wanted to make a collaborative zine to share the creative work of people who work and live in wild landscapes. We entered this project knowing how slim the margins can be in print media​​ at this scale (especially since one of our earliest commitments was to pay contributors for their creative work) and we knew we’d have to find creative ways to fund the project. Dory and I decided right away that if the project was going to be successful, we had to be sure it was a project we were personally invested in despite the finances of it. We have often referred back to this founding value when making decisions like how many issues we make each year, how to interact with social media, choosing which administrative tools to employ, how to balance access and financial stability, and how to build the financial structure of The Thalweg. We’ve learned a lot and have run into many situations that challenge our values. It is difficult to balance the finances of this kind of project and value our time and energy while staying true to the core goals of The Thalweg. We move slow and are still working as volunteers to keep the project running. But, we are proud to collect enough money using a sliding-scale donation model to produce something we love once a year and pay all of the artists and writers that contribute to each issue. We are finding new ways to support and collaborate with our contributors all the time, and are excited to see how the project may grow.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Team Thalweg is a trio of queer weirdos who respectively love dogs, science fiction, “pit toilet harmonics,” fluid dynamics, deserts, Jim Henson puppet characters, a good pair of overalls, and telescopes. We know each other through backcountry river guiding, which is sometimes viewed more as an eccentric lifestyle than a profession. We’ve each worked to keep guiding part of our professional identities because it’s given us so much: this project, each other, our community, and the opportunity to live in wilderness areas which make us feel full and connected to the ecosystems we’re a part of.

The seasonality of our jobs also means we have time and flexibility to pursue other parts of ourselves. Other than the work we do to make The Thalweg and on the river, we all work and live in many places.

Sabs is a life-long student to water, working as an advocate for houseless youth, seasonally in outdoor education, and as a prep cook. Sabs harnesses these experiences to navigate the turbulence of climate change and to center environmental justice in communities. They also write some of the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read.

Dory is a communications and publishing consultant and a substitute librarian curious about the intersections of social work, mentorship, storytelling, and community health.

And I, (Seneca) work as a science lab consultant, a beekeeper, photographer, and as a seamstress, forever seeking to understand the balance between human and natural systems.

These diverse identities are what have allowed The Thalweg to grow into what it is today. We are each able to contribute in ways that make us excited—sometimes it’s stuff we’re good at and sometimes it’s stuff we just love even if we’re not an expert.

I can speak for myself, to say the professional and personal challenges have been a winding road. If I ever thought I could make a plan to end up where I am today—I was wrong. When I was 22, I was living in the back of my truck somewhere in the woods of Arkansas. I was mentoring under the state’s apiculturist through a college program, learning to raise queen bees. After studying and working with bees for 10 years, my vision of becoming a queen breeder had grown into a much broader relationship with agricultural, urban, and wild landscapes and a fascination with the social construct of land management. Alongside my career as a guide, I began to pursue jobs and experiences that spoke to me in this way. I ended up in academia with a computer science lab that creates models and algorithms based on honey bees social behavior, I spent months in Baja trying to surf, I took strange photos with my friends in the giant boulders outside Bishop, CA, and as the wind blew me, I found myself pursuing a career as a swiftwater rescue instructor in Grand Canyon… for now. All of this, in its own way, leads me back to this seat in front of a computer, selecting poems and strange multimedia art pieces that reflect on landscape.

I often struggle with my identity within professional success in comparison to other people my age. I fight to balance the economic demands of our modern world, and the pursuit of work that makes me feel alive and connected to an ecological and social community. I often contemplate what “growing up” should look like. But when I am honest with myself, the largest lesson I have learned is that “sucess” and “professional’ ‘ experience can look like many things, and don’t have to be defined by economic gain. Who knew beekeeping and rafting would lead me here?! I have learned to pivot when things are not clicking—this does not mean running away when things are hard, but to notice when it is time to move. Most things are not easy, but I am lucky to enjoy the challenge when I care about the work I am doing.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
haha! I love this question! I love it when my friends visit and I get to take them out. I don’t usually live in a city, and when I take my favorite people out we go for a bike ride in the desert, canyoneer down a slot canyon, soak in some hot springs, sleep in the back of my truck, ski in the back country on some low angle powder, or run some whitewater. We usually eat some home made breakfast burritos and spend a lot of time sitting in a good spot, drinking too much coffee.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
As a collaborative publication celebrating the creative writing and visual work of people within rural, agricultural, and outdoor communities, there are many people to recognize in our success. The idea was originally inspired by the Boatman’s Quarterly Review, a publication that shares the work of river guides working in Grand Canyon. We also look up to other publications and creative groups like Fisherpoets, Smoke + Mold, Inverness Almanac, Badlands Zine, and so many others.

But the foundation of our project is really our friends—river guides, hiking guides, farmers, park rangers, outdoorspeople, folks living in small communities who write poetry and stories, or create visual work that stirs our hearts. These folks are guides, farmers, or fishermen but they are also creatives, telling beautiful stories about landscapes and experiences that are so dear to us. Being away from urban centers and major cultural institutions is part of what makes these contributions so special—it is a privilege to be a creative home for each contributor who chooses to share their work with us. Since Issue one, our community has expanded far beyond folks we know personally. It has been incredible to work with all kinds of creatives from all over the world.

We also need to recognize our readers. I can get all mushy and teared up when I talk about how our small project has been received in the world. I am constantly overwhelmed by the generosity of our readers; their donations allow us to support our contributing artists and writers. In Issue Two’s editor’s note my fellow founding editor, Dory writes, “And then you showed up. Our readers, our community, our people, our people’s people. The sweetness of it swarmed me like bees. We paid our contributors. We paid our logo designer. We paid our printer. It wasn’t a perfect art thing. But it worked. Enough.”

Website: https://www.thethalweg.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_thalweg/