On Writing from Nature: Why the Wild Teaches What the Page Cannot

Every writer is shaped by the landscapes they inhabit. For me, the classroom was always outdoors — in forests, along coastlines, in the patient company of plants.

There is a kind of attention that nature demands which is different from the attention a book demands. A book is patient. It waits for you. It will be exactly as you left it when you return. Nature is not patient. A bird moves, a cloud shifts, a tide comes in. If you are not watching at the precise moment, the precise thing is gone.

This has shaped how I write. I write quickly, in the sense that I try to catch the image before it disappears. But I sit with the image for a long time before I begin.

The wildflower does not explain itself. It does not provide context or backstory. It simply is — fully, completely, without apology. And then it is gone. This is the model I try to take into my writing: be fully what you are on the page. Do not explain. Do not justify. Let the image carry the weight.

I think we over-explain in literature. We are afraid the reader will not understand, so we say things twice — once in image and once in exposition. But the image is enough. The image is more than enough. It contains multitudes, precisely because it does not define itself.

The writer's work is to choose the right image. Everything else follows from that.