experiences are predominantly of an indoor
world, can our thinking be honed to a sharp
enough edge to take on the challenges posed
by climate change? Looking at how our
understanding of nature has been influ-
enced by the likes of William Wordsworth,
John Muir, and Wendell Berry, Carruthers
suggests that whether or not we agree with
their outlooks, “we should take note of their
methodology”—namely, “the way in which
their thought is deeply rooted in experien-
tial reality and authentic encounter.”
These are precisely the sorts of reality
and encounter that Cecil and his ilk avoid.
Yet without them, it’s hard to see how
environmental codes of behavior can be
properly grounded. Carruthers urges the
creation of “opportunities for people (espe-
cially young people and city dwellers) to
encounter land, nature, and farming.” If our
thinking, and the action that it sanctions,
is to be focused with the necessary acuity,
such encounter is essential.
A nice example of the transformative
power of encounter is provided by David
Orr in his passionately argued book Down
to the Wire: Confronting the Climate Col-
lapse. Considering the Mount St. Helens
eruption in 1980, Orr suggests that its
impact on the weather offers “a very small
preview of a world we should avoid.” He
looks at one particular outcome of the erup-
tion: “the hottest, driest summer recorded
up to that point in Arkansas.” But Orr
doesn’t use the generalized, objective style
of academic prose. Instead, he explains how
he and his brother were personally affected
as operators of a small farm and sawmill:
After the summer of 1980, climate
change was important to me, not
because I’d thought a great deal about
it in an air-conditioned office but
because I had first felt it viscerally
and somatically. My interest did not
begin with any abstract intellectual
process or deep thinking but rather
with the felt experience of the thing.Those occupying drawing rooms with no
view are clearly insulated from this kind of
experience. However much the Cecils of the
world may inform themselves about events
like Mount St. Helens, their perspectives
won’t have the urgency of what’s felt. Read-
ing about the destruction of an ecosystem
or watching a TV documentary about an
endangered species is useful, yes, but such
mediated experience lacks something: the
persuasive force—the gravity, if you will—of
our physically being in a place and savoring
its nature, feeling the sun and rain upon our
skin, seeing the landscape up close, hearing
its sounds, being immersed in the flavors
of what passes moment by moment, and
becoming attuned to what threatens to poi-
son and derail.B
READING PETER CARRUTHERS’s
cogent pleas for more experiential contact
with the natural world brought back memo-
ries of when I worked as warden on a nature
reserve. The reserve was an area of marsh
and woodland that ran along the shores of
Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British
Isles and Northern Ireland’s enigmatic geo-
graphical heart. Acting as guide to school
parties was an important part of the job, and
they poured into the reserve at the rate of
three or four coach-loads every weekday at
the height of the season. Many of the schools
were in inner-city Belfast. The indoor sensi-
bilities of their pupils became obvious as
soon as they set off to walk the nature trail.
They made a great deal of noise yet weredisappointed not to see any of the animals
mentioned in the trail guide. They had no
concept of the caution and elusiveness of
wild creatures, expecting them to appear
on demand, in easy-to-see TV-like tableaus.
They left prodigious amounts of litter, often
dropped into one of the reserve’s rivers or in
the lough itself. Some were reluctant to leave
the buses or go beyond the snack bar in the
car park. Wildflowers were at risk of being
picked or trampled, birds’ nests of being
robbed or wrecked. They had no patience
for sitting in the hides erected on stilts in
the shallow water at the lough-side. If the
birds on the posters weren’t there, up close
and on view immediately, they lost interest.
None of them knew the names of any of the
species pictured.
It would be foolish to make an envi-
ronmental mountain out of the molehill of
disaffection displayed by city kids on a day’s
outing to a destination they hadn’t cho-
sen. But I was left with the strong impres-
sion that however much they might excel
in math, English, chemistry, history and
their other school subjects, these children
were profoundly ignorant about the natural
world. No doubt their schools had the requi-
site teachers, classrooms, computers, books,
sports facilities, a library, a cafeteria, etc.—
all the things thought necessary to educate.
But I often wondered—still wonder—why
it is that a garden or small wooded area, a
field, a stream, or patch of marshland are
not also thought essential adjuncts for the
business of learning. Is it any wonder chil-
dren are ill-attuned to nature if their educa-
tion happens at arm’s length from it?
No serious experiential exposure to the
outside, natural world was built into their
curriculum. Their learning had somehow
slipped its moorings and drifted away from
any connection with the environment. With
the focus always on indoor abstracts, it’s
easy to see how the children I shepherd-
ed around the reserve would grow up to
become, and to vote for, the kind of pur-
blind politicians Jonathon Porritt warned
of thirty-five years ago in his classic study
of ecological politics, Seeing Green. His
book includes two sentences that should beI often wondered – still
wonder – why it is
that a garden or small
wooded area, a field,
a stream, or patch of
marshland are not
also thought essential
adjuncts for the business
of learning.WORLDLIT.ORG 61