Act of Faith: A Top 10 of Recent Nature Writing
“Storytelling is … among the biggest and most beguiling industries of this shoreline,” says David Gange of the Orkney Islands in The Frayed Atlantic Edge. The same can be said of nature, with a bounty of its narratives captured in this collection of recently published nature writing.
Gange also says humans have “constructed a separation of people from nature from which our current eco-crises emanate.” This is an echo from oh-so-many years ago when the environmental seer Rachel Carson observed that “man is part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”
The interconnectedness of nature, and humanity’s dependence on it for its own survival, is a theme of this Top 10. Arguably, perhaps, it is the single-most important element in all nature writing. Do not fear, however, this onerous prospect encumbers our Top 10 with an academic drudgery. Far from it! John Blay might blanch when he asks, “How can you encompass the natural world?” And fair enough, but this collection’s titan team of writers sure give it one hell of a shake.
The stories here are like Helen Macdonald’s deep-sea submersibles, “transporting us to realms we cannot otherwise explore.” They are all adventures. Sometimes this manifests itself through physical journeying. Sometimes through scientific discovery. Sometimes