Biographies of Nature Writers

(From Susan's December 4, 2006 Nature Journaling presentation to our Master Naturalist Class.)

Wendell Berry was born in 1934. He is the author of novels, poems and essays. A native of Kentucky , Wendell and his wife live and farm near the Kentucky River . He received his B.A. in English and M.A. from the University of Kentucky at Lexington . He has taught English at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and at Stanford University and New York University . Awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations and a Lannan Foundation Award. The Bennington , Vermont Banner has dubbed him “a modern Emerson.” Much admired works of Wendell Berry’s include: The Unsettling of America Culture and Agriculture c. 1977

Rachel Carson was a pioneering ecologist who was born in 1907 and died in 1964. Rachel always wanted to be a writer. She was a scholar, who was very intrigued by a required biology course in college. She was so inspired by the subject matter and her professor that she switched her major to Zoology from English in the middle of her junior year. She pursued a Masters degree in Marine Biology at Johns Hopkins University . Her first encounter with the sea had been through a summer-study fellowship to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole in Massachusetts .

Rachel’s writing lives on for future generations. Among her many awards received were the John Burroughs Medal and the National Book Award for non-fiction. Her most enjoyable projects were the books she published based on her years of field work on the sea, estuaries and sea edges. The most difficult book for her to research and write brought her the most fame and honors. Silent Spring chronicled the poisoning of the environment by chemicals and pesticides. The book affected major changes in American environmental policy. Works of Rachel Carson include:

Aldo Leopold will always be associated with both the Southwest United States, where he began his career in forestry and game management, and Central Wisconsin, the scene of his classic A Sand County Almanac. Born in Burlington , Iowa in 1886, Leopold became known for his rare talents as a writer and philosopher of wilderness—the voice for a “land ethic”. He taught at the University of Wisconsin , where a chair of “game management” was created for him. Aldo Leopold re-defined the conservation movement. Shortly before his death in 1948, he had become an advisor on conservation to the United Nations. Writings of Aldo Leopold include:

John Muir lived from 1838 to 1914. He was born in Dunbar , Scotland . Later, when he was 11 years old, his family moved to America and settled on a farm in Wisconsin . Despite a limited education and a difficult childhood, John Muir was a budding inventor by his mid-teens. In his mid-twenties that interest was rivaled by his love of natural sciences—geology, ornithology and botany.

Muir studied for over two years at the University of Wisconsin , then worked for a sawmill and factory in Ontario , Canada . From there he moved to Indianapolis . It was while working for a carriage manufacturing company there that Muir suffered an eye injury due to an accident. The injury left him blind in both eyes for a period of time. Eventually with time and healing, he regained his vision, with limited permanent damage to his right eye. The incident resulted in a major change of direction for Muir. He chose to pursue his interest in the world of nature over the world of inventions with machinery. After his complete recovery from the injury, Muir began his famous “thousand-mile walk” from Jeffersonville , Indiana to Cedar Keys, Florida . This journey was one of many long walks he would take through wilderness areas in North and South America .

John Muir has an established place among the great naturalists of

America

. He founded the Sierra Club. He is credited for influencing the creation of Yosemite, Sequoia, Mount Rainer , Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon National Parks .

Unpublished letters and notes are kept at the Holt-Atherton Library of the University of the Pacific

Sigurd F. Olson wrote about the North Country . For more than 30 years he served as a wilderness guide in the Quetico-Superior. He taught Biology at Ely Junior college ( Minnesota ), where he later served as dean. He was recognized nationally with many awards and honorary degrees.

Sigurd Olson served as a consultant to the

U.S.A.

federal government on wilderness preservation and ecological problems. Until his death in 1982, he made his home in Ely , MN . This is the gateway to Quetico-Superior wilderness, the place Olson knew and loved. Among Sigurd Olson’s writings are:

Edwin Way Teale was born in Joliet , IL , in 1899. As a child, he lived in Illinois , but spent summers at his grandparents’ farm near the Indiana Dunes ( Lake Michigan shoreline). Teale graduated from Columbia University and began his writing career as a magazine assignment writer and editor in New York . Teale and his wife, Nellie, made plans to become nature writers and in 1941, Edwin left his job to pursue nature photography and writing.

Together Edwin and Nellie planned a series of 4 books about the seasons across the

U.S.A.

After their only son, David, died in WWII, they pursued the journeys across the country to research and write their books. The series is dedicated to their son.

In 1959 the Teales bought an old farm in Connecticut . They lived the rest of their lives there—Edwin died in 1980 and Nellie died in 1993. Their farm, Trail Wood, is still open to the public as an Audubon Natural History museum. Teale received the Pulitzer Prize for his 1965 work, Wandering Through Winter. He also received the John Burroughs Award for nature writing in 1943. Other writings of Teale are:

Edward O. Wilson was born in 1929 in Birmingham , Alabama . Many of his younger years were spent on the shores of Mobile Bay . A childhood injury claimed the sight of one of his eyes. In adolescence, he lost part of his hearing. Edward struggled with math and a mild form of dyslexia. But his curiosity about nature never waned. He decided to study insects since he was able to focus on their small details.

He studied at The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa for his B.S. and M.A. degrees in Biology. From there he went to Harvard University , earning a Ph.D. He later became a professor and curator of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.

Dr. Wilson is only one of two persons to have received both the National Medal of Science and the Pulitzer Prize in Literature (the latter being won twice). For his work in Ecology, Wilson received the Royal Swedish Academy of Science Crafoord Prize, an award designed to cover those areas not covered by the Nobel Prizes.

UCTV has a fascinating program featuring E. O. Wilson that you can watch on your computer. I highly recommend it. RRG.

E. O. Wilson - The Coming Synergism Between Science and the Humanities
(#6434; 58 min.)

"Scientist and author Edward O. Wilson draws on studies from a broad spectrum of disciplines to show how various fields of inquiry, and especially the humanities and sciences, intersect with each other. According to Wilson, "the greatest enterprise of the mind has always been and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and the humanities."

Watch it now using RealPlayer.

Our Land, Our Literature is a website about Indiana ’s environmental literature created by student scholars at the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry in Muncie , Indiana