Lean in to Nature
By Victoria Fortune
When I was a child, my mother was constantly shooing us outside to play. She considered it a sacrilege for children to spend too much time indoors, which was sure to lead to moral, intellectual, and physical rot. Although I was often annoyed at the time, it was one of her greatest gifts to me. All that time playing outside gave me a deep appreciation and respect for nature, which drives much of my writing.
In my critical thesis for my MFA, I was inspired by Jane Alison’s craft book Meander, Spiral and Explode, to analyze the use of nature in some of my favorite works of literature. Alison explores how the most common patterns found in nature (spiral, fractal/branching, radial, meander, cellular) can be used to create connection and movement, reinforce themes, and even create structure. Known as “nature’s darlings”, these patterns are all around us—branching rivers, cellular hives, spiral seashells--and even inside our bodies. They “have inspired visual artists and architects for centuries. Why wouldn’t they form our narratives too?” she asks. They provide order out of chaos and speak to humans on a deep, subconscious level, making them a goldmine for writers.
Nature used to be a touchstone that cut across cultures, ethnicities and religions. Shakespeare wrote, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” Everyone can—or could—relate to images, metaphors and analogies drawn from nature that enable us to better understand ourselves. The earliest stories most of us hear, fairy tales rely on nature motifs--dark forests, magical bodies of water, plants like roses and beanstalks—to drive the plots and serves as symbols. For centuries these stories have been passed down in cultures around the world to help young people cope with universal fears and desires. Nearly every culture has some version of the Cinderella story. The specific creatures and plants that are featured change depending on the region they come from, but in all of them the heroine’s connection to nature is a source of magic and power.
But people are losing touch with nature. This is evident in the dramatic decline in the use of nature words in books. According to an article in Grist, “In 2017, Pelin Kesebir, a social psychologist who’s a fellow at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her sister identified a steady drop in references to nature in song lyrics, fiction books, and movie storylines since the 1950s.” University of Derby psychologist Miles Richardson pulled a ton of data from Google Books Ngram Viewer to check the frequency of everyday nature-related words in books from 1850 to 2019 and found a clear 60% decline. “These words reflect what people noticed, valued, and wrote about,” he pointed out. Another 2019 study revealed that 83 percent of British children can’t identify a bumblebee.” (Considering that bumblebees are critical pollinators for many of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts that we eat, the fact that young people do not even know what they are is deeply concerning.)
As a writer who focuses heavily on nature, this is deeply disconcerting. But I am heartened by the success of books like Braiding Sweetgrass, The Serviceberry, and World of Wonders, as well as novels like The Overstory, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Remarkably Bright Creatures. Clearly, there is a strong interest in books that feature nature. I suspect this interest may grow as the natural world becomes more exotic, and more people realize how vital our connection to it is for physical, mental and social well-being. As we continue to lose wild spaces, the best access for many may be through books. So, whether you’re inspired to write about the natural world or use it to help tell your story, lean in to it. We are going to need all the nature we can get.
