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A       Ido Leopold spoke about
         a lady in Madison
         banded by Phi Beta
         Kappa who was unaware
of migrating geese flying overhead.
A Boston wit is reported to have
remarked to an acquaintance leav-
ing for a walk in the woods, "Well,
kick a tree for me." In contrast to
the uncommon antipathy of the
Bostonian and in contrast to the
more common apathy of the Mad-
isonian stands the interest of mil-
lions of human beings who respond
to nature at one level or another.
Some write about nature. Many
more of us read those books and
essays. Although nature writing is
a term used and understood by
readers, critics, and writers alike,
little attention has been given to
clarifying just what nature writing
is. What are the distinguishing
characteristics of nature writing? Is
it a separate genre? Wisconsin in
particular has produced a large
number of nature writers, some of
them unusually fine. But how are
we to understand them and their
work without a definition of nature
writing, without a theoretical base
against which the wide variety of
nature books can be measured and
discussed? This essay is an attempt
to uncover the shared characteris-
tics of nature writing and to give
particular attention to the distin-
guishing features of those nature
books which are commonly ac-
cepted as the best. This essay grows
out of a wide reading of nature writ-
ers, especially of those from
Wisconsin.
  Exactly when a book ceases to be
nature writing and becomes instead
essay, autobiography, scientific
treatise, field guide, poetry, fiction,
or something else may not always
be easy to determine. But once that
happens, one will know; nature
writing is identifiably different from
them all. What distinguishes nature
writing seems to be a matter of sub-
stance more than of style, though
certain stylistic patterns do emerge
as well. At heart nature books por-
tray nature experienced. Nature
writing depends first of all on what
is written about, on how the author
sees it, and on what the author
thinks about it. In nature writing
the object of attention is always
nonhuman nature. The responses
are those of the individual writer/
observer. Typically, even norma-
tively, nature writing grows out of
an experiential knowledge of na-
ture, narratively reported. Good
nature writing is organized around
the natural events portrayed, not
around the ideas of the human ob-
server. Most typically the solar day
or year, or possibly the life cycle of
a Canada goose, snowshoe hare, or
nitrogen atom-such matters con-
trol structure and form in nature
books. Both structure and events
tend to be cyclical not linear. Na-
ture writers always face the prob-
lem of where to begin and where to
end. But in any case the focus on
nature experienced as it influences
both the substance and the struc-
ture of nature writing, though most
September 1984/Wisconsin Academy Review/9
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