Saving the Earth
Best of Nature Writing
In a website such as SavingTheEarth.net, which is devoted to providing accurate and useful information about our planet’s plight and pointing the way towards strategic interventions to restore the health and functioning of our ecosystem – why include writing about Nature?
Nature writing aims - as does the nature photography contained in Planet Earth, and the books and DVDs on animal life in Animals in the Wild - to reconnect us experientially to the Earth as a whole. Sections on Global Warming, Renewable Energy, Water Resources, and Population Growth, for example, are focused upon systemic vulnerabilities within the biosphere and identify problems and propose solutions. Nature writing and photography engage us emotionally, aesthetically and cognitively and enlist us in the great cause of caring for the Earth. While every section contains passionate and heartfelt expressions of the challenges facing the Earth, it is the art of nature writing and photography that are the heart and soul of SavingTheEarth.net.
The charts, numbers and formulas of science are vital, but often not particularly compelling to the woman or man on the street. On the other hand, a picture or description of a drowned sea turtle or dolphin in a fishing net begins to engage us emotionally in the larger questions about conservation and fishing policies. Thoreau’s lyrical Walden takes us somewhere emotionally that offers an alternate universe to daily life, with rush hour traffic, pollution and a crowded urban environment. Nature writing contains important information, but also has aesthetic, emotional and philosophical components which touch the heart and soul as well as the mind.
Thomas J. Lyon, in his This Incomparable Land: A Guide to American Nature Writing, proposes a taxonomy of nature writing (naturalists would certainly be interested in taxonomy . . . ). He notes that “the literature of nature has three main dimensions to it: natural history information, personal responses to nature, and philosophical interpretation of nature.”
The relative admixture of these dimensions differentiates different sub-genres, as, for example, a primary focus on natural history information yields a scientific research paper, or a field guide (example: Peterson’s Field Guide to Western Birds). These works seldom aspire to literature, nor does the author communicate very much that is personal about his emotional experience of what is being observed and described.
When natural history information is joined with a literary approach that communicates some meaning or a particular interpretation, the natural history essay is the result, in which facts may be artfully arranged to engage the reader and point to an overarching and holistic view of nature (example: Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us).
When more of a personal perspective is added to the “facts” of nature being described, the reader is accompanying the naturalist-author on a ramble, learning along the way as the author shares a sense of pleasure in the observation of nature, or a sense of revelation. Examples are Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Richard Nelson’s The Island Within.
As the balance between the facts of nature and the writer’s experience shifts in the direction of experience, the natural history essay becomes an essay of experience, where the author’s firsthand contact with nature is the frame for the writing. Thoreau’s Walden, and Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams exemplify this type of nature writing. In Walden, solitude and escape from the city form the prism through which Thoreau’s experience of nature is seen. In Arctic Dreams Lopez describes his travel and adventure in the wild, with movement, solitude and wildness giving a mythic pattern of departure, initiation, and return.
When philosophical interpretation is primary, the writing is an analytic and comprehensive work that addresses the relationship of humans with nature. Natural history and personal experience are secondary, providing the backdrop for the author’s preoccupation with grasping a larger picture. Examples of this form are Joseph Wood Krutch’s The Great Chain of Life, and Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature.
These subtypes weave the vibrant tapestry of American nature writing, and all are represented on SavingTheEarth.net. The chronological division we have chosen represents natural eras in American nature writing.
The publication, in 1854, of Thoreau’s Walden is a hinging point between the works of natural history that preceded him, and the more modern, increasingly introspective and philosophical works that were to follow. Thoreau is the father of modern American nature writing; his genius and passion shine brightly over the years, inspiring successive generations of nature writers and nature lovers.
David Yarian, Ph.D.
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There are four main divisions within the Best of Nature Writing section:
• Classics and award-winning books. These are works that have stood (and will stand) the test of time. Many of these books have won major literary prizes, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, the Orion Society John Hay Award, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Best Book Award, the Bollingen Prize for Poetry, and others.
Titles in this section are arranged alphabetically by author, rather than by title as in the other sections of SavingTheEarth.net. This makes it possible to see at a glance the focal interests of an author and the breadth of his or her published work.
These nature classics are divided into four chronological eras:
° Before Walden includes works by early explorers, naturalists and settlers in North America, published before the epochal Walden appeared in 1854.
° Thoreau Henry David Thoreau changed nature writing forever. This section is devoted to books by and about him.
° 19th Century Nature Writing contains books published in the latter half of the nineteenth century - the work of explorers, geographers, naturalists, and conservationists who shaped America’s developing understanding of Nature in general, and of our diverse natural environment. John Wesley Powell, Charles Darwin, John Burroughs, John Muir, George Marsh, Theodore Roosevelt and others are represented here.
° Nature Writing since 1900 has some 350 classic and award-winning books on nature, natural history and the environment. All the 20th-century (and 21st-century) classics are here: works by Ed Abbey, David Abram, Diane Ackerman, Mary Austin, Rick Bass, Thomas Berry, Wendell Berry, Henry Beston, Marcia Bonta, Charles Bowden, Rachel Carson, Douglas Chadwick, Craig Childs, Frank Craighead, Annie Dillard, J. Frank Dobie, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Gretel Ehrlich, Loren Eiseley, Robert Finch, Colin Fletcher, Jane Goodall, Stephen Jay Gould, John Hay, Bernd Heinrich, Edward Hoagland, Sue Hubbell, Rockwell Kent, Joseph Wood Krutch, Aldo Leopold, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Bill McKibben, John McPhee, Ellen Meloy, W.S. Merwin, Bernard Moitessier, Adolph Murie, Gary Paul Nabhan, Roderick Nash, Richard Nelson, Mary Oliver, Sigurd Olson, Doug Peacock, Donald Peattie, Michael Pollon, Robert Michael Pyle, David Quammen, Everett Ruess, Carl Safina, George B. Schaller, David Rains Wallace, William W. Warner, Jonathan Weiner, T. H. White, Terry Tempest Williams, Edward O. Wilson, Ann Zwinger – and many, many more! The first page of this section contains a directory of all authors to make your search easier. |
• Anthologies. These collections of nature writing bring together selections from a number of authors, and may be organized around a particular theme, region or period of time.
• Ecocriticism. These works focus on the relationship between literature and the natural environment and explore how nature writing can be more self-critically conscious of its values; its class, race and gender presuppositions; its fundamental assumptions about landscape, nature and time; and its responsibility to further ecological goals and concerns.
• How to Write About Nature. Books in this section address “how to” questions in two general areas: keeping a nature journal of the writer’s experiences in nature, and how to do “nature writing” – where one writes in a creative way about the interaction between nature and self. |
Two books have been of great value in understanding the field of nature writing, and in developing SavingTheEarth.net. They are Thomas J. Lyon’s This Incomparable Land: A Guide to American Nature Writing and Frank Stewart’s A Natural History of Nature Writing.
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