LOVE OF PLACE

Recently I went to New York City to accept the 2016 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing for Diary of a Citizen Scientist. That involved a short speech and I began with the truth: the award had rendered me speechless. I am such a longtime writing teacher, and when my students say something like that—when they use words like “indescribable” or phrases like “words fail me”—I always say kindly, while secretly rolling my eyes, “Find the words. Try to describe it. That’s why you are a writer.” But the Burroughs Award has been given out since 1926 and its recipients include Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and many other legendary nature writers and to be part of that cultural conversation, that continuous line…well, words failed me. I felt my students’ pain! I felt speechless.

To be honest, speeches—even short ones—are always nerve wracking. As usual, I dreaded those ten minutes, felt just fine in the middle of them, and was relieved when they were over. Unlike a reading, good speeches involve some live theater, the potential for disaster and serendipity. At the end of my speech, I spontaneously spoke about an exchange I had had recently with a friend, Mike Fugagli, a good nature writer himself:

“Once,” my friend said, “I believed the Earth was my mother.”

Yes, I thought, I remember that. We are shaped in our mother’s womb. We drink from her. We eat from her. Every day she nurtures us with so many gifts. She loves us. She loves me.

Then, later in his life, my friend replaced the image of the mother with that of the lover—what he called “matedness.” Yes, I nodded. We have covered the Earth. It would be too easy now to joke about infidelity, estrangement, divorce. Instead I give the metaphor its due: we are the bride of the world, and we are the groom. Our human consciousness, interpenetrated, mated with the Earth.

Next my friend said, “And now I think of the future as our child.”

And this caught at my heart. This made me feel something new. The future is our child.