Study nature to find your voice

Study nature to find your voice. One reason the natural history genre thrives today is the tremendous variety of voices it makes possible: the wild exactness of Annie Dillard, the calm thankfulness of Terry Tempest Williams, the scientific precision of Bernd Heinrich. But again, this is not just the province of professional writers or exceptional talents. No matter how dry or literal an amateur naturalist’s field notebook might be, sooner or later it begins to fill up with descriptions of her experience; also her theories and suppositions, her value judgments, her wild flights of fancy. She can push this further, if she wants to. Like describing nature itself, attempts to capture our own experience, interpret what we are seeing scientifically, clarify our value judgments or create new imaginative worlds, are endlessly fascinating. One gets better at them as one goes along.

Philip Cafaro, The Naturalist’s Virtues

• natural history
• naturalism
• nature
• writing