Writers Discuss Nature Lit.

Writers and nature-lovers gathered to discuss “Nature and the Written Word” yesterday evening at the Barker Center during a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Museum of Natural History and the New England branch of PEN, an organization of writing professionals.

Moderated by Tufts English professor Dale Peterson, the conversation featured authors John Elder, Sy Montgomery, and Katy Payne, who talked about the connection to nature portrayed in writing.

“Nature writing encompasses robust narrative and well-grounded observations from the science of the natural world,” Elder said.

He said that 20th century nature writing—as well as the 19th-Century Transcendentalist movement’s emphasis on the connection between people and the environment—had greatly inspired him.

“Most people are not interested in nature. We’re more interested in other people,” Peterson, the moderator, said. “The trick is to draw people away from the human experience to another foreign experience.”

Montgomery stressed the connection between people and the rest of creation in her writing.

“My goal is to make people care about the green sweet world,” she said.

Harvard Museum of Natural History Executive Director Elisabeth A. Werby ’72 used the words of conservationist Wendell Berry—“the only thing we have to protect nature with is culture”—to underline the importance of nature writing, especially in light the grave modern climate change situation.

Payne said that as a nature writer, she finds that humans’ separation from nature is a more severe crisis than either global warming or the decimation of forests.

“Most of the world now lives in urban areas. Children watch more T.V. than they play outside,” Payne said. “It’s an attitude change that needs to be reversed.”

Audience member and Harvard environmental research librarian George E. Clark said after the talk that people need to change their perspective.

“There needs to be a shift from the human perspective to the natural one,” he said. “Think about how many environmental problems are at the root of social problems.”

—Staff writer Carola A. Cintron-Arroyo can be reached at ccintron@fas.harvard.edu.