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Nature writing
Last updated on Wednesday, January 01, 2003
People often ask me why I am a nature writer. After much thought, I know what to say: The stories of our wild relatives - the plants, the animals, the desert itself - are the most important stories that I know.
Like any landscape, the Chihuahuan Desert abounds with lives, with wild neighbors that we often don't notice or don't know. Take the spadefoot toad, a tiny amphibian that appears as if by magic after summer thunderstorms, filling the night with its mating calls, and then vanishing just as quickly when the ephemeral rainwater is gone. Or the shabby-looking creosote bush that by coating itself with a sophisticated protective armor comprised of dozens of smelly and bad-tasting compounds, also produces the desert's signature fragrance.
These stories fascinate me; they are full of wisdom, inventiveness, and the magic that comes of evolution. They tell how even the smallest, most insignificant piece of an ecosystem weaves itself uniquely into the overall pattern. The subjects of my stories are like tiny, bright strands of yarn in a giant tapestry, each a bit of color that you might not notice until it is gone, leaving a void, an empty spot not big, but somehow very wrong, a worrying place like the gap left by a missing tooth.
What can these stories possibly mean in today's world of virtual reality and violence; a world where every day, people not so different from you and I drag their belongings about in shopping carts, muttering to themselves, or kill each other for their gang affiliation, a world where most of us no longer remember nature as our home? What relevance do the stories of spadefoot toads and creosote bush have for us?
They show us where we fit, weaving us back into the immense tapestry that is life on this earth. They remind us that we are not the center of the universe, that our troubles and pains are small in the scheme of things. They teach us that each life, no matter how great or small, how flashy or obscure, has a crucial part in the larger whole. They reassure us that we are not alone, that no matter where we live, we belong to an intricate and diverse community of wild lives, from the tiny algae in the pores of the soil to the regal grizzly bears.
There is great wisdom in the stories of these wild relatives, in the elegance of their adaptations to the harsh realities of life. From them we can learn tolerance and humility, respect and even awe, qualities that we sorely need in order to live well with each other and on this earth. I believe that the stories of spadefoot toads and creosote bush are among the most important tales for our times.
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