020 - Be A Nature Writer

fuse the inside and outside lines

In Mary Oliver’s poem, “Sometimes,”¹ she shares:

Instructions for living a life:/Pay attention./Be astonished./Tell about it.

Oliver mused on the natural world and her words are accessible for all readers.

Julie Gabrielli’s Substack, Homecoming, offered a Reciprocity: the interview series which asked six questions to various writers. The interviews feel wholesome and informative. She begins each entry with a nod to Oliver.

Nature writer, n. A person who delights in paying attention, being astonished, and telling about it.

Before the series began, Julie asked her community followers about the term nature, a conversation about what it means to be a nature writer. My takeaway, a nature writer is a squiggly line with various roots extending from a single trunk. Understanding that definitions have consequences, and depending on my mood, I might be an environmental writer, a storyteller of wilderness, or a nature writer.

I am not too much of a purist to any term …

Over the past couple of months, though, I have been mulling this over in the stories and essays I write while looking, walking, or simply thinking about nature when outside. Then, I began to look over past work to find a solid theme that pushes me to one side or the other of a definition. I found no definitive outcome. J. Drew Lanham’s, most recent book, Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves² has been within reach most of this month. After reading, “Be Wild!” I thought it might be a good practice to use that as a template to explore a bit more the idea of Nature Writer.

What did I come up with? Read on 020 - Be A Nature Writer.

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The interplay of shadows and the creative result.

Be A Nature Writer

Depend on paper. Lined sheets. Grid pages. Scraps, leftovers, the backside of receipts, or the blank space of a bank statement that shows a near zero balance. Pen cursive words pulled from the land. Stories spilled from breezes, brushes with tree branches, songs from passing or resting birds, and the scent of fox and bear. Detect wilderness in her pockets—her momentary stillness and her angst of immediate gales. Feel her isolation and her claustrophobia. Compose with a color box of eight hues. Merge two crayon colors to make new pigments and meld brush strokes into muted lusters, polychrome flecks, brilliance that comes from the study of nature and her philanthropy. Smudge the colors. Fuse the inside and outside lines with soft blends or drag with heavy pulls. Weave and swirl. Regard with a fixed eye the shaded and shadowed views. Peer between the sparkles, the spears of light, the ovals of darkness. Grasp what cannot be seen or maybe what is being avoided. Climb trees, excavate dirt, gaze into meadows by first waiting at the woodlot edges. Imagine what it might feel like to soar like an osprey, to bend with the sun, to rest for ages in a single place gradually eroding granules which only serve to cover yourself. Chase what is not known and compare with what is understood. Be a monarch and understand metamorphosis as a process to reproduce a next generation—migrate and overwinter and migrate again. Roll in, wallow in, wake and be changed. Accept being swallowed by the found. Be found. Find. Envision more finds. Seek finding. Question authority. Betray boundaries. Probe do not cross signs, barbed wire—real or as metaphor—barge through what is marked as no trespassing. Stand on principle, on grit, on the high ground of truth, integrity, and greater good. Write. Revise. Double check facts, then confirm each again. Employ and stand upon sound reasoning. Discriminate only contradictions. Rewrite, again. Revise, again. Meet the detractors, distractors, subtracters, and separate your own bias. Ask questions. Build relationships. Develop partnerships and rapport to avoid hostility because you are building community. Bond. Maintain curiosity to spur change. Agree to disagree. Find space for improvement of your unconvinced perspective, your point of view, and the entanglements. Appreciate and value that the views of others is also meshed in background and to disregard that truth will upend all connection. Test the edges. Repair tears so the wounds do not fester. Be steady in search. Gather steam to find hope, then persuade with the emotion that supports and guides others to a new perspective, a new way to see nature as more than scenery, to value nature as essential. As wild. Let it be known is she not barren. She is productive and teems with blooms for human continuance. Avoid the denial of possibility. Propagate an interconnecting kinship. Share the wildness—the nest of a sparrow, the pink-purple flowers of wild rosemary, the changes of clouds, the stages of the moon.  Write others towards a new experience and be willfully patient. Remember, a nature writer comprehends what is at stake.

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Homework

What is one thing you look for when you read a story/essay/book with an outdoor theme? Share that thing in the comments.

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References

¹ Read Mary Oliver’s, “Sometimes” - sometimes :: mary oliver – poetry

² Lanham, J. Drew. Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves. Hub City Press, 2024. Lanham shares “Be Wild!” on page 73.

Reciprocity: the interview