Sir John Lister Kaye on his definition of nature writing
Naturalist and conservationist Sir John Lister Kaye on what it means to him to be a nature writer.
My definition of nature writing is a writer striving to connect on a personal level with the natural world. Yes, It has to be about nature, but essentially it has to be about the individual writer’s experience of nature. I quote the celebrated British nature writer Richard Mabey:
‘What was this nature that I used as a happenstance habitat? As I grew up and started to write, it seemed nothing like the orderly managed, man-made environment that the English tradition insisted on. It felt more like a second skin, companionable, connected, yet full of a life of its own, and of individuals, like the orchids that had survived for centuries in the same valley, and the shoals of flint that surface in fields after the rain. I began, without really understanding it, to believe in that special, irreducible quality of wildness. It was something we seemed to have lost in ourselves.’
I agree with Richard, my writing does assume a life of its own and the perpetual contact with wild nature moulds and reconfigures the writer almost as if it is invading one’s veins. Needing to write about nature has, undoubtedly, adjusted the direction of my life – entirely for the better.
So, good nature writing is for me any text that engages the reader with wild nature and with the experience of the writer in a meaningful way. I like to think that good nature writing is much more than an entertaining read. I believe it should be informative, thought provoking, challenging of damaging Western values that are destructive of nature, philosophical and, at the same time, uplifting. In my opinion elegiac texts are fine; prophesies of doom do not score highly with me. We need to inspire people to understand and respect wild nature, not to make them think it’s all hopeless.
Sir John Lister Kaye is one of Scotland’s best-known naturalists and conservationists. He has lectured on wildlife and the environment on three continents and served prominently in the RSPB, the Nature Conservancy Council, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. His Aigas Field Centre, founded in 1977, has won international recognition for its environmental education programmes; it continues to welcome study groups from all over the world. In 2003 Sir John was awarded an OBE for services to the Scottish environment. He is a columnist for The Times and the author of six previous books.
