Writing Wild::Nature Writing

We are Not Weeds

2011-08-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

New York Times book review reminds us that weeds are necessary. Some offer excellent nutrition -- elderberry, dandelion, young polk leaves.

Snowmageddon Maryland February 2010

2010-03-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

Environmental Movement in China

2009-03-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

Photos from China--

Gulangyu Island

where cars are not permitted ......

and Shanghai, where cars rule.

China's Emerging Environmental Movement - Environment 360

Nature Writing Exercise

2009-03-28T10:55:00.001-07:00

A few thoughts to start your thoughts about your relationship with nature and the natural world:

What is your first memory of nature or the outdoors?

What is the role of the writer in observing and reporting about the natural world?

Do you think a nature or outdoors writer has a role as a spiritual caretaker for the earth and the universe?

Does the writer or artist have a responsibility for nature beyond that of the scientist?

Describe the intersection of creativity and responsibility.

Does a nature writer need to maintain the same exacting standards of truth as a scientist?

To Read :: Nature Writing

2009-01-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

The Literature of Nature -- Reading List

This list is a highly personal selection of some of the books about nature and related subjects that I use for inspiration, information and development. Not a comprehensive list!

Add to it through the comments function.

Many of the authors listed here have written other works with an environmental focus.

And dozens of superb nature writers who write in languages other than English are not on this list.

The Serpents of Paradise, Edward Abbey, Henry Holt and Co. 1995

A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman, Vintage Books, 1991

The Beauty of the Beastly, Natalie Angier, Houghton Mifflin, 1995

The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press, 1976

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard, Harper & Row Perennial Library, 1985, originally published 1974

A Match to the Heart, Gretel Ehrlich, Penguin Books, 1995

Woman and Nature, Susan Griffin, Harper, 1978

Spring in Washington, Louis J. Halle, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988

The Experience of Place, Tony Hiss, Vintage Books, 1991

Women on Hunting, edited by Pam Houston, Ecco Press, 1995

Broadsides from the Other Orders, A Books of Bugs, Sue Hubbell, Random House, 1993

The Mind of the Dolphin, John Cunningham Lilly, Avon Books, 1969

Indian Country, Peter Matthiessen, Penguin Books, 1992

The Way of the Earth, T. C. McLuhan, Simon & Schuster, 1994

Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971

One Man’s Garden, Henry Mitchell, Houghton Mifflin, 1992

The Cuiise of the Corwin, John Muir, Sierra Club Books 1993, originally published 1917

Soungbirds, Truffles, and Wolves, Gary Paul Nabhan, Penguin, 1993

Spiritual Ecology, A Guide to Reconnecting with Nature, Jim Nollman, Bantam Books, 1990

Why We Garden, Jim Nollman, Henry Hold and Co. 1994

Who Speaks for Earth, edited by Maurice F. Strong, W. W. Norton & Co. 1973

Earthly Pleasures, Roger B. Swain, Charles Scribners, 1981

Life and Death of the Salt Marsh, John and Mildred Teal, Ballantine Books, 1971

Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas,

Walden and Other Writings, Henry David Thoreau, Bantam, 1961, originally self-published, 1853

Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)Fawcett, 1962, originally published 1938

Beautiful Swimmers, William W. Warner, Penguin, 1976

Onward and Upward in the Garden, Katharine S. White, Farar, Straus, Giroux, 1979, originally pub. 1958

Naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, Island Press, 1994

What is Nature Writing?

2009-01-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

Web resources on Nature Writing from ENG 385, a course offered at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Books About Nature Writing

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Productive mountaintop dialogue between conservationist Theodore Roosevelt (left) and progressive preservationist
John Muir (right). photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

Keeping a Nature Journal

Clare Walker Leslie and Charles E. Roth, forward by Edward O. Wilson

Storey Books, Pownal, Vt.

2000, $16.95, 181 pages including subject index

Large format , 14 pt font.

Wonderfully illustrated with sketches from nature. Mostly aimed at the person who will sketch the observations, though writing is incorporated. Free form, to include newspaper clippings, feathers leaves and other materials found in the wild. Includes drawing exercises, breaking down parts of an insect or household pets, acorns, birds, flowers and trees, landscapes. Section on teaching nature journal writing to groups of all ages and in particular, children. Resources include bibliography, national wildlife and nature organizations, brief survey of early nature journalists. Suggested assessments for teachers using the book in class.

Being in the World:An Environmental Reader for Writers

Scott H. Slovic, Terrell F. Dixon

Macmillan, NY

1993, 725 pages, including author and title index

"Most people are 'on' the world, not in it--have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them--undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate."
John Muir, Journal entry, July 16, 1890

A comprehensive anthology for use in the environmental education setting. Natural history literature.

Intended, the authors writer "for students on beginning composition courses and advanced workshops in literary nonfiction, offering opportunities to experiment with a wide range of rhetorical modes. For English, Environmental studies students. Chapters broken into topics such as: Encounters with the Otherness, Fedcundity and Mortality, Nearby Nature, Walking: On the Trail and Off, Climbing: Mountain Narratives

Index of rhetorical contents: analysis and interpretation; argument and persuasion;cause and effect;

comparison and contrast; definition;description; division and classification; humor; narration;process analysis

Geographic coverage offers: two narratives in the far North, a handful in the Great Plains, and surprisingly few from the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and about a dozen from the South, most examples are set in American Southwest and California. The international section has 11 pieces. The authors describe it as a "medium sized reader with 83 selections and general introduction to environmental writing, chapter introductions, biographical and critical head notes, points for analyzing and discussing the text, writing assignments drawing on the readings." Target audience is clearly in a classroom setting. Style is pedantic and format physically cumbersome which would not appeal to the individual writer-reader. A glossary of critical terms is included.

Beyond Ecophobia, Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education

David Sobel

Nature Literacy Series, publication of the Orion Society, 1996

Great Barrington, MA

A monograph of 45 pages including a reading list for children and references.

Text explains how to introduce children to nature and the environment at various ages, building on foundation of empathy, exploration and social action. Audience, K-6 teachers and parents

The Art of Science Writing

Dale Worsley and Bernadette Mayer

Teachers & Writers Collaborative, NY

1989, 206 pgs, no index, includes annotated science writing bibliography

A selection of excerpts from literature with exercises and a script for a workshop leader, writing exercises, idea selection, topic evaluation, research, drafts, peer critique, revision and publication. Useful for science teachers who want to develop student facility with composition and nature writing. Middle and secondary school teachers interested in developing student writing in science and math can use this text.

Writing Natural History: Dialogues with Authors

Introduction: Thomas J. Lyon
Edited by Edward Lueders

Univ of Utah Press, 1989, no index
124 pages including bibliography of the participants

Edited record of four public dialogues held with nature writers and activists at the University of Utah in 1988.

The writers interviewed:
Barry Lopez and Edward O. Wilson
Robert Finch and Terry Tempest Williams

Gary Paul Nabhan and Ann Zwinger

Paul Brooks and Edward Lueders

Quotes from the book: On Method --

"My field notes begin as random observations not consciously linked by a preconceived theme. At that moment, I don't try to write essay fragments for later polishing. When I am spending a lot of time in the field, it limits my imagination if I record only material related to one theme or intent. But some things intrigue me more than others, and they gather momentum. So most of my field notes aren't done explicitly for essay writing later on; they're just general habit." Gary Paul Nabhan, p. 84

"Taking field notes is a very Beta activity. You're concentrating, you're up front, you're exceedingly aware of the world around you. But there is an Alpha state that you can shift into, a kind of super-sentience. And after you've done enough of the discipline of field notes, it often happens that you kind of sit back and let all that peripheral stuff filter in. You've been seeing the details, the plants, the animals, the one-two-threes. But you always know there are other things in the air, and when you tune in to them you have moments of tremendous receptivity when time expands. But when these times come about, you need to write them right then and there. In my field notes there will be very terse entries, bing, bing, bing, bing, and then there will be paragraphs. I mean real sentences, with periods, beginnings, and ends. Almost ninety per cent of the time these paragraphs translate directly into text with just a little cleaning up of syntax-neatening it up and cutting one-third, because I blather a lot. ... you treasure those times. You are so thankful for those times." Ann Swinger, p. 87

Nature Writing Before Thoreau

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Before Henry David Thoreau, American environmental nonfiction is represented in the works of writers such as

John Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles -1632
William Wood, New England’s Prospect - 1639
John Josselyn, Account of Two Voyages to New England - 1673

Using records of Thoreau's selections from Harvard Library, we know those books are among the texts Thoreau himself consulted. For a more complete discussion of Thoreau's vast reading, consult the bibliography by Robert Sattelmeyer. Thoreau’s Reading: A Study in Intellectual History with Bibliographical Catalogue, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1988. The Walden Institute maintains a library and bibliography of Thoreau's work.

Other authors read and studied by Thoreau:

Mark Catesby
Jonathan Carver
Thomas Jefferson
William Bartram
Alexander Wilson – orthinology
John J. Audubon - orthinology
Thomas Nuttall – orthinology

A couple of decades after Thoreau was writing, later in the 19^th century, readers forgot or ignored the writers who preceded him. Thoreau becomes a near-mythic American character, an actor in the environment he writes about, rather than a theorist or sermonizer like Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Writers of the generation after Thoreau (John Burroughs, for example) described Thoreau as the founder of the natural history essay, citing his fluidity with language or his passionate social conscience. Perhaps Thoreau’s wildness, his physical closeness to nature was an obvious credential. But some question whether he should be named the inventor of the natural history essay when there were so many earlier nature writers.

Environmental writing flourished in the U.S. during the second third of 19^th c. because specialization in branches of natural science created an opportunity to communicate aspects of natural science to non-scientists who were eager to learn about the world around them. Urbanization produced readers who missed nature. At the time, there was an array of literary media – books, periodicals, journals, newsletters and people regularly attended lectures and symposia offered in community meeting halls, libraries, athenea, and other public buildings.

It's generally acknowledged that the first American to produce a nonspecialized book of environmental essays was John D. Godman, whose Rambles of a Naturalist was published by Ash in Philadelphia in 1833 as a serial, then published in a collection, without financial success.

Thoreau was influenced by:

*Literary almanacs such as The Book of the Seasons, by William Howitt, Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1831. A book of wit, wisdom and sketches about nature, tips for rural residents, seasonal changes, poems.

*Secular sermons and religious homilies such as R.W. Emerson’s Nature, now a literary classic and a source of inspiration for many contemporary nature writers. During Thoreau's time, and now, middle-brow writers mix quasi-religious lessons with natural history observation, Emerson excepted.

*Picturesque writing – prose writing designed to evoke certain vistas using vocabulary culled from the arts. Often illustrated, much like today’s coffee-table books.

*Regional writing was most significant in Thoreau's background reading, especially early major work of American literary bioregionalism such as:

Timothy Dwight, Greenfield Hill, 1794
Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, 1817
Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village, 1824-1832 (British)
Sara Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs, 1896
Susan Fenimore Cooper (JFC’s daughter & literary executor). Rural Hours, New York: Putnam, 1850 (abridged 1887) which Thoreau consulted to learn about Otsego county.

To learn more, consult: Made from This Earth: American Women and Nature, Vera Norwood, Chapel Hill: Univ N. Carolina Press, 1993.

*Natural History Writing – a cross between science writing and literary natural science writing drenched with facts and written with a sober, pedantic tone.
To learn more, consult: Back to Nature:The Arcadian Myth in Urban America. Peter Schmidt, NY:Oxford Univ. Pr., 1969.

Thoreau’s favorite travel book was Charles Darwin’s Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle etc. published in 1839. Was Thoreau aware that narratives of travels by natural history writers might incorporate imperial motives and obligations because the voyages and expeditions were sponsored by government?

More information related to this blog entry:

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination. Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1995.

Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986.

Pratt, Mary Louise Pratt. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge, 1992.

Chronology of Science in the United States, 1830-1839

H. D. Thoreau's Surveys of Land