The Two Trances of the Nature Writer

Contemporary natural history writers speak for the Earth. They articulate our neglected connections with the rest of the living world in language, both passionate and thoughtful. Landscape threads through their words and their lives, while their ideas resonate far beyond their immediate subjects. They live. They write. And they forge a voice by doing both.

These writers make journeys into the landscape; they enter “the naturalist’s trance.” They weigh their journals against their research, spend long hours in libraries, and talk to the experts. Then they place themselves in a second trance. They sit and stare out windows or browse in the bookshelves that line their offices, waiting for that unpredictable something that moves a writer to begin. “Where it comes from, I don’t know,” says Edward Abbey.

Sooner or later, in John Madson’s words, something “ignites recollection,” and a writer begins. Within and between the resulting lines of lovely prose lies a wealth of natural history, basics and esoterica, that the reader absorbs painlessly, carried on the buoyant leading edge of the writer’s curiosity, skill, and enthusiasm.

“I know you could call me a nature writer,” says John McPhee. “But it’s not the nature that got me into it. It’s the writing that got me into it.” Whatever else they may be--biologists, teachers, cowboys, beekeepers, farmers, artists--these people see themselves as writers first. Even naturalist is an outsider’s term, a critic’s term, like artist . Barry Lopez says, “The writer works on the inside and the critic works on the outside. I don’t know what it looks like on the outside, sometimes. It’s not that I’m not interested--it’s not where I live. I live inside the story.”

Gary Nabhan emphasizes the contradictions in the group of people called natural history writers. “We don’t all wear L. L. Bean apparel. Some of us live in cities, are addicted to drugs--coffee, computers--can’t name all the creatures within reach, are allergic to what we write about, are absent-minded campers, don’t grow our own food, and like electronic music.”

Annie Dillard also stands afield from the stereotype of a nature writer. She says, “I distrust the forest, or any wilderness, as a place to live. Without the stimulus of other thinkers, you handle your own thoughts on their worn paths in your own skull till you’ve worn them smooth.”

Dillard speaks as a writer, who goes to the wilderness not primarily for visions or solitude, but for ideas--for the seeds of what John McPhee calls “pieces of writing.” Gretel Ehrlich believes that “it isn’t the landscape that matters so much as the way you live in it. You are not ever really going to know anything or anyone or any place unless you go there unsheltered, in some naked state emotionally and physically.” Ann Zwinger writes “about home, not place.” John Hay goes out “to get acquainted with the rest of life. It’s not escapism on my part, it’s a matter of reality.”

These people are at home out there. The love and intimate knowledge inherent in their attitudes make whatever such writers may say worth listening to.

Listening is a key word. Barry Lopez says, “People who talk to whales assume that whales are interested in talking to them, which is an enormously arrogant frame of mind. You’re far better off to approach it from the point of view of wanting to listen, in case whales have anything to say.”

Listening leads these writers into wide digressions from descriptive life histories of animals. Robert Finch points out that it requires a “risking of the self,” a readiness for sudden changes “right in the middle of things--from what you expected to find to what you do find.” When Finch defines the naturalist writer, he uses words like subjective, personal , and holistic .

Natural history writers take pains to avoid sounding didactic. They do not see themselves primarily as environmentalists. But they have no problems with sounding moral. Listen to John Hay: “If I can write well enough so that people can pick up their ears and their senses . . . if I can do it in some sort of ethical, moral fashion so that people will listen--I realize they won’t listen very much--it’s about all you can do.” David Quammen describes himself, with a twinkle in his eye, as a “comedy entomology essayist” who harbors a secret desire to be a “moral philosopher.” Zwinger wants her writing to say, “Look, this is the best of all possible natural worlds. If we don’t pay attention to it, we won’t have it, and if we don’t have it, we won’t have us either.”

I repeatedly heard such moral concern from these writers. I would ask a question about the mechanics of writing, and the answer would quickly lead from writing to the world at large to the things in that world that each writer cares about. Writers of natural history step beyond themselves to address specific issues that they have decided are more important than their own mundane concerns. This balances egos, and that is a rare thing. It distinguishes these writers from journalists who write about anything, and from those novelists who are purely inward-directed.

Lopez says that when writing a piece of nonfiction, he makes “a bow of respect toward the material and . . . a bow of respect toward the reader.”

He sums up his respect toward the material in the following way: “Listen. Pay attention. Do your research. Try to learn. Don’t presume. And always imagine that there’s more there than you could possibly understand or sense.”

In paying respects to the reader, Lopez says, with a bow: “I have assembled this material. I have tried to bring order to these disparate elements. I have tried to use the language elegantly. I have sought, everywhere I could, illumination, clarity. I have tried to organize things with a proper sense of the drama of human life. I have tried to think hard about all these things. I have tried to get rid of all that is unnecessary for you to understand the story.”

As readers, let us return his courtesy. On behalf of other readers, let me make a bow of respect to the writers of natural history. We thank you for your work and your passion. Keep writing. We will keep reading.

Based on the introduction to “ Words From the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing, “ edited by Stephen Trimble, published by Gibbs M. Smith Inc., 1988.