Luci Romero is an institution in Valencia. not so long ago, we still saw her behind the counter at the Bartleby bookstore. From that privileged space, recommended titles and sponsored book presentation events until it became, with his partner David Brieva, a small bookstore in a fundamental cultural center of the city. Then, He left everything and went to Cabra, his hometown, in Córdoba, to write. And what has come out is called The art of telling nature. An approach to nature writing (barlin books, Landscape Collection), a guide, dice, about a genre of growing expansion in our country. G.LEON
How did the idea for this book come about??
It was a proposal from me to the publisher.. To me Alberto [Haller, barlin books] he told me about the collection (bueno, was still in germ or about to emerge) and how I liked the genre so much, I proposed it to him. I have been reading nature writing since, I don't know, twenty years ago, and I proposed to make a kind of guide or approach, a kind of initiation to the genre, especially thinking about those people who, either I wasn't a regular or I didn't know him or I wanted to discover some titles. Alberto thought it was a good idea., and accepted.
What motivated you to start writing this text??
The publication is based on two motivations. A, my interest in bringing the genre closer to people who were unaware of it or for whom it was not common to encounter this type of reading. And the next thing is that, as booksellers, We are prescribers and we recommend all types of books. I discovered it without knowing what I was reading nature writing o liter nature, How can we meet him in Spain, which seems to me to be a beautiful and very accurate term because it is a way, not just translating it for us, but to rename with our own language a genre that is having more and more importance. Was, with the passage of time, when important names of the genre began to be translated in Spain. Of course, you had the Walden de Thoreau, but there were not as many publications as have been translated in Spain in the last ten or fifteen years.
What would you say is the current boom in this type of publications??
I think it responds to a need, I don't know whether to reconnect, but it does respond to a lack of nature. I think that, after the pandemic, many people have realized that they were missing that presence in their life or, at least, that if we were more aware of that link that exists with the environment, We wouldn't have many of the problems we currently have.. In Spain there were already publishers that had been doing this work, The thing is that they were more specific books on biodiversity, about fauna, flora, more technical things. More recently, Nature's mistakes, Book Attic, Capital Swing or Tundra publishing house began to translate works by nature writing. I think it was very well accepted because it is a way of reaching nature that, through other readings, you still wouldn't arrive. I do not have scientific knowledge and read a more specific book about any ecosystem, maybe it will cost me more. But, through these readings, I managed to learn many things about nature that I didn't know.
How would you define, briefly, the concept of nature writting?
Barry Lopez (1945-2020) He said that nature writing or literature is a response to nature through the written word.. I think there is no more beautiful expression than that.. It is a genre that is not reduced to the ecological or the scientific., but, here, the literary dimension is very important, either through newspapers, autobiographies, chronicles, even fiction. It is its own space where you can bring together various authors and writings that, otherwise, they would be very different. Here you can put anything from a novel to a collection of poems., a chronicle, something autobiographical linked to nature, writings where the environmental or conservation issue may predominate... It is like a box that, in fact, it is not closed. You can add more boxes and introduce writings that, otherwise, you wouldn't know where to fit. For example, the story of this man who left everything because he was fed up and, although he is having a very difficult life in the countryside, he is comfortable and does what he wants, where would you put it? Pues en la escritura de naturaleza. That is to say, It is not a botanical treatise, It is not a guide to the wolf in Spain, It is not a book about the lynx or about the flora of the Canary Islands ecosystems. It's not natural history, scientific, or botany, this is something else.
You were talking about guide before, but, at the same time, the book collects your own reflections on nature and nature writing itself. I see you reflecting at the same time you expound. How have you structured the book??
I don't know if the word is a guide, but it is presented as a kind of manual. What interested me was that, who would approach the genre, I could do it from the origins to see what its evolution has been, the topics he usually deals with... Then, I wanted to differentiate the different spaces that, from that perspective, can be addressed. What I wanted to do was a kind of cartography in which, who would approach the text, could relate certain books to certain spaces. And then there is a final part in which I wanted to highlight women's writing in the genre because, like everywhere, more names of authors always appear. I wanted to highlight the impact they have had. In fact, uno de los primeros libros editados sobre el género es de una autora que se llama Susan Fenimore Cooper. In the book there are my reflections, Of course, but I think that, above all, I have tried to focus it so that it is understood what the genre was and how far it is reaching.. Evidently, I lack breadth, but I wanted to start from that consideration.
The genre confronts an idea of nature with the conditions in which we live in today's technological world.. This appears almost from the beginning of the text. What does the book encourage us to do in that sense??
Well, first it encourages us to read, I mean, to enter the genre. And if, with that, It comes together with a reflection on our situation as individuals who are part of a social reality about which, in a way, we are experiencing an increasingly pressing fatigue, I'm already satisfied. That is to say, that we are aware of certain environmental issues, that a certain environmental awareness develops. We don't realize, but, almost since childhood or since we are teenagers, our relationship with the natural world is, in general, increasingly degraded. How has that link with the natural world degraded?? since I was little, I was lucky that my parents always took me to the countryside. On the weekends, we walked, we were looking for fossils, here you have this plant… I have not studied science, but my concern for the natural world was always there. I think that, since childhood, we generate this idea that we have nothing to do with the earth. Y, on the contrary, we have everything to do. So, yes with this type of readings, it is possible to change that idea that we have, I am already satisfied. We have forgotten the advantages that our relationship with the natural world offers us and it is important to recover them.
In the book many authors refer you to the idea of putting nature above the subject. Explain it to us.
Bueno, I don't think it's about putting her above the subject., is to give the place that corresponds to each one of us. Scientists remind us every day: we are destroying the planet. And I believe that the work of many of these writers is to put these types of problems on the table.. From the beginning [of the genre] An attempt has been made to establish priorities regarding the preservation of natural spaces. And [the writer] John Muir would not have created the figure of national parks in the United States, What would have happened? How would these spaces be now if they were not protected? That's the question. It is not putting it above. It's already over. O, said another way, no es que esté por encima de nosotros, is that we need it. We live in a society that is quite crazy, that is increasingly fueled by individualistic consumerism. In the end, we are gregarious, but there is also a need to leave all that on the margins to settle in the space, in the environment, on the land itself. What these writers intend is to bequeath us their own transformative testimony, What has this process of integration with nature been like for them?. Seeing it that way, The work that these texts do is very necessary.
There is a term that appears in the book and that is very important., is the concept of amazement. Why is it so relevant?
I think it is essential. When you go to see an exhibition in a museum about a painter you like, How do you stay in front of a painting that you haven't seen or that moves you?? That's grim. Rachel Carson (USA, 1907-1964), wrote The sense of wonder for his grandson. In this little book, she wonders, What is the value of preserving and strengthening this sense of wonder, that way of recognizing something that goes beyond human existence itself? Is it just exploring nature? Is it simply a pleasant way to spend the hours of childhood? Or is it something deeper? It's something deeper. in this book, Carson considered, What would happen if you never saw a natural space again?? How do you react when you see it for the first time?? I think that, as children of progress that we are, of technology, we have lost the ability to be amazed as a source of emotion. That source, that amazement, takes us back to something very primitive: It is that ability to leave us impressed, stunned, wordless. That's very important in these types of books.. When many of the authors who write talk about encountering some animal, A landscape, discovering the traditions of the native culture of the place where they are located, all that is amazement. It is something that is innate in children, but that Carson considered that it tends to disappear if it is not cultivated. and I think that, in part, It's true. If you can recover that, we will have a lot of ground gained.
Another important concept is healing.. Some authors talk to us about humanizing our passage through the world. In what sense does one speak of healing??
It has always been said that nature is not going to cure you of cancer, but, in many cases, yes it has palliative effects. I like to put the case of Amy Liptrot. Liptrot was a drug addict, alcoholic, He lived in London where he had a very difficult life and returned to his birthplace in the Orkney Islands., in Scotland, y, by swimming in cold waters, to merge with that environment that he had hated when he was young, managed to recover. Your text On extreme islands it's beautiful. In that sense, Many writers of this genre start from this question when developing their writings.: what do we need? I see healing as an answer, an escape route, an attempt to humanize his passage through the world a little, in this case, linking it with nature. There are those who have done it through the cultivation of the land, nature walks, etc. Olivia Laing for example, He has a beautiful book called To the river. After a personal crisis, Laing decides to walk for a week along the River Ouse, which is the river in which Virginia Woolf is supposed to have committed suicide and which flows into a place that was called the city of the dead. In that need to heal, she lets herself flow with the river. Another British author is Richard Mabey, author of Nature cure, one of the most beautiful books about nature. Mabey also has a mental illness and goes to the English countryside, where he writes this book about nature's ability to heal. I'm not going to tell you to cure, but it does alleviate, improve our state. I understand it as a kind of therapeutic journey. It is about recovering that link with natural spaces that we do not have time to look for in cities..
There is one thing that I always miss or that raises a question in this type of texts.. It happened to me when I read Walden y, for what you count, I think it can be applied to all this literature.. Thought, “bueno, as individual experience, this is all good, but, how to the collective?”
The collective should always be present. Aldo Leopold is one of the most important references because he established very necessary concepts within the genre.. He wrote a beautiful book called A year in Sand County in which he talks about being rooted in the land and an ethic based on a sense of community, que a veces funciona, but what, if you don't, you have to try again. I think it is important, both the personal experience of the person narrating, like collective action, what, although sometimes it is destructured, must be put back together. We start from our own experiences to see how our actions adapt to the rhythm of nature, and not the other way around. individually, preserving nature, things are achieved, but that sense of community must not be lost. The more community you make, more preventive actions you will carry out, awareness, education, disclosure, training, etc. That idea of creating a community, must be present.
These texts also tell us about the need to create a new language around nature.. What does that mean in this context??
Bueno, We are not going to invent a new language. But, For example, To what extent is it important that in Spain we have our own term to name this type of writing?? For me that is very important. We have to rename something again to bring it closer to who we have as an interlocutor, to those who read this type of texts. In a way, Nature is also teaching us different ways to communicate. Among them, there is renaming things that for many do not even exist or do not know what they are. When I talk about those forms of language, What I'm referring to is that way of re-mapping, to rename the spaces to bring them closer. En lengua española, liter nature It didn't exist until not long ago., which opens you to the possibility of this type of writing and that approach to nature. Es, again, a path of consciousness that leads us to that symbiosis with nature.
As you said, The book dedicates a prominent space to the authors of the genre. Apart from rescuing certain names that may have been forgotten, What does that female voice contribute?, if it is distinguished in any way?
No, in that sense, I don't distinguish them. Another thing would be to talk about issues like eco-feminism, but my idea with the manual is different. It is not that they contribute more or stop contributing., is that they contributed many things. The first text of this type is by an author, as I told you. You have figures like Florence Merriam (1863-1948), what, apart from being one of the first female members of the American Ornithological Society in 1885, helped create the Wildlife Protection Law, fruit of his work to raise awareness towards society to veto the sale of animals. Each of these writings has contributed what it had to contribute., but I did want to give them that visibility that, normally, women have not had in history. Many of them date back to the 18th or early 19th century., where numerous writers who mixed science and a certain poetic prose already appeared. In his writings there is a very important epic about nature that was already becoming a new environmental epic.. I thought it was interesting to highlight it. Luckily, That presence has continued and today the number of female authors in the genre is impressive..
You comment in the book that in Spain the genre is not yet widespread. What would you say it is due to??
I think that, In Spain, Some of the literature that had more to do with the land was more focused on rural areas., and always within a vision that, in a way, was sifted by the civil war, for the postwar... Let's say that, in the link with the earth, there was always a look a little sadder. In the process of rural exodus, these spaces have always been seen, I don't eat poorer, but there was another concept of the rural that, luckily, is changing. In Spain, We had many nature communicators and very good ones.. I'm not telling you that we go to Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. We have Joaquín Araujo on television. Along with Araujo you have David Sandoval, to Carlos De Hita, and Juan Goñi, Gabi Martínez… Beatriz Montañez has a beautiful book called Niadela. Me, Land of Women, that kind of diary of María Sánchez, I think it's wonderful. In many cases, A symbiosis is already being built between that more literary part and the more scientific part. En otros, literature continues to predominate. I hope that it continues to grow and that it helps to make the name that has been assigned to it, liter nature, can reach a greater number of readers.
I'm glad you mentioned Delibes to me..
Delibes, evidently. And Unamuno. Unamuno had to go into exile to Fuerteventura. At first, that seemed like a barren land, fea, rocky, stony, but, then, I was very delighted. His writings about Fuerteventura are beautiful. For me Delibes is one of the fundamental figures in the defense of nature. Him and his son, Miguel Delibes de Castro. The wounded earth, It is a book that everyone should read.. Apart from being director of the Doñana Biological Station, He is one of the greatest experts on the Iberian lynx in Spain. In the entry text of Miguel Delibes in the RAE, makes a great defense of nature. But, as i say, It is a very different description from the one we are encountering in recent decades., And there are other authors who have done important work..
There are two authors who are confronted in the text. On the one hand, is Robert MacFarlane, in whose book Bajotierra he wonders: “what will we leave?”?” And it is answered: “nothing”. On the other hand, There's Callum Roberts who, in oceans of life, dice que todavía no es tarde y que aún es posible retomar el equilibrio. To conclude like this, epically, What would be your position between that nothingness and “there is still time?”?
Bueno, I am not a nature writer., I have made a manual. In that sense, I'm a little more pessimistic. I would like to think that there is time to change things, but it is true that, just the way we are going, looks a little bad. Regarding this genre, yes it is true that, the fact that it is reaching more people, It gives me hope that we can do something for nature. I want to think that, somehow, it will make us all click in the head, something in our relationship with natural spaces that is not just a specific link, sporadic. I think the good thing about this type of writing is that it is not so technical., so scientific, is that they are creating that awareness, that environmental ethic, what we needed. I don't know if we're already late for all this., but I want to think that we have a little time left. For not being so negative (laughter).
