🍃 Reciprocity: the interview

6 questions for David B. Williams

Nature writer, n. A person who delights in paying attention, being astonished, and telling about it.¹

“I hope I encourage people to get outside and that my writing will be evocative enough that readers will want to make their own discoveries and find their own joy. I hope my writing will further their connections to the place they call home or to places they find special. I hope my writing will excite their curiosity and perhaps give them hope that each of us can make a difference in creating a better world around us for humans and more than humans.” ~ David B. Williams

Illustration by Elizabeth Person, from David B. Williams, Wild in Seattle

Welcome to Season 2 of the Reciprocity interviews. My inbox is full of treasure in the form of lovingly observed writing about place, encounters both wild and gentle, imaginative kinship and renewed reciprocity. These thoughtful, talented writers kindled in me the desire to learn more about them.

Today’s guest,

David B. Williams

is an author, naturalist, and tour guide based in Seattle. His books include Homewaters: A Human and Natural History of Puget Sound, Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography, and Seattle Walks. His most recent is Wild in Seattle: Stories at the Crossroads of People and Nature, which is a collection of essays from his Street Smart Naturalist Newsletter.

David finds wonder in even the most mundane urban settings. His essays regularly show that life is everywhere, if only we pay attention. Whether he’s talking about the ways that birds are depicted in TV and film, observing the geology of historic buildings, or musing about the power of place, David brings humility and a naturalist’s eye to lean, personal writing that often makes me smile or even laugh. His, post, We All Live in a Watershed, is just what I teach my architecture students. If more of us understood our larger ecological contexts, we might make different choices.

Street Smart Naturalist is focused on the natural and cultural history of Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Pacific Northwest. David’s newsletter allows him to share ideas, stories, and observations based on his research and ramblings. The writing is serious, silly, and somewhere in between.

Why are you drawn to nature writing?

I don’t actually consider myself to be a nature writer. I don’t mean to be pedantic but I think of myself as a natural history writer, as one interested in the nature and history of the world around me. This might be my backyard, an urban business district, or out in some place much wilder, such as a national park. Nature is all around, whether it’s a decomposing squirrel (albeit dead nature) in my front yard, 3.5 billion-year-old building stone in a downtown office tower, frost heaving on a rails-to-trails path, or towering Douglas firs in an old growth forest.

I would argue that more people start to develop those connections in a local park or green space than in a national park. One key to connecting with the natural world is to slow down, pay attention, and observe. This in turn often leads me to the who, what, where, when, why questions that drive my writing.

How does writing about nature affect you, in your work or personal life?

Over my several decades of writing about the natural world, I have come to realize that my writing helps me to fulfill what I consider to be my long-term mission: to become naturalized to Seattle. Since I was not born here and, by definition, am a non-native inhabitant, I feel that one way to naturalize myself is to try to adapt to living here in a sustainable and respectful manner and to learn about the connections that bind together and nourish plants, animals, humans, water, and earth.

Focusing on Seattle, though, is simply one part of my writing life and the opening gestures in naturalizing myself to the Pacific Northwest. Having the pleasure of writing a weekly newsletter, I am always seeking out the nature around me. No matter where I am, I am looking at plants and animals and rocks, and trying to be open to my senses.

While outside, have you ever experienced feeling small, lost or in danger? 

Not really. More often, I have gotten the willies from being on a ledge or having to cross a stream. I have learned that I have a healthy fear of falling and accept that there are certain areas where I will never be able to go. Oh well. I also recognize the privilege I have, of being a white male and of having grown up spending time outdoors. Both allow me a freedom that not everyone has.

What’s a favorite memory of nature from your childhood?

I have snippets of memories. Dipping a cup into a stream and drinking directly from it while on a hike with my parents. My father told me that I could do so but only in areas of running water, where it poured over a ledge. Hiking to the Paradise Ice Caves at Mount Rainier National Park. I have still never encountered the astounding, deep blue ice of that glacier. Playing with my friends in the wooded area near my house that we called the Ravine. This was an area with massive trees and kid trails (the kind that took crazy routes leading to something cool, not the adult routes that went from A to B); I later learned it had an adult name and wasn’t called the Ravine. Standing on the deck of the house where I grew up and watching steam erupt from Mount Baker. I was so disappointed that nothing else happened in the eruption. Fortunately, Mount St. Helens blew up several years later; I didn’t see it in person but ash from a later eruption landed on that same deck. I think that all of these encounters added up to allowing me to feel comfortable outside and not feeling alienated or worried about my safety when outside.

What do you hope for, for your writing? 

I generally have several goals when I write. I hope I encourage people to get outside and that my writing will be evocative enough that readers will want to make their own discoveries and find their own joy. I hope my writing will further their connections to the place they call home or to places they find special. I hope my writing will excite their curiosity and perhaps give them hope that each of us can make a difference in creating a better world around us for humans and more than humans.

A writer or other creative artist who makes you hopeful for humanity and the earth.

I have recently become a huge fan of

Elif Shafak

through two of her books: There Are Rivers in the Sky and The Island of Missing Trees. Each is elegant and evocative and filled with amazing descriptions of the natural world. Plus, how can I not be inspired by her choice to have fig tree as a narrator. She also writes an equally thoughtful and insightful newsletter on Substack, Unmapped Storylands.

I also derive hope from

Owen Lloyd Oliver

, a young Quinault/Isleta Pueblo writer and creator. He writes Southwest Wawa on Substack. I am regularly amazed at the work he is getting done on behalf of the environment and other Indigenous people here in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.

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Each season, we donate 30% of paid subscriptions to a worthy environmental cause. This season, it’s Indigenous Climate Action. They envision a world with sovereign and thriving Indigenous Peoples and cultures leading climate justice for all. Track past and current recipients here.

What did you enjoy most about this interview? I’d love to hear from you. Or share it with others by restacking on Notes, via the Substack app. Thanks!

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Notes and links

If you’d like to participate in this interview series, please DM me on chat, or reach out via email: gabrielli-dot-julie-at-gmail. Find previous interviews here.

For more inspired nature writing and artwork from the best of Substack, check out the articles in our final edition of NatureStack journal.

🍃 10 - 13 | NatureStack: shared wonder

In further service to Substack’s nature writers,

Wildheart

curates this lovely directory of nature-focused writers:

1. thanks, Mary Oliver