🍃 Reciprocity: the interview

6 questions for Dudley Zopp

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

“The writers here, the photographers who document species details, the gardeners who offer practical advice from their own digging experiences, and the storytellers who are visionaries and mystics, all contribute to a bedrock of nature writing that is a source of hope, inspiration and motivation to me. It has changed my both writing and the way I understand my work inside and outside the studio..” ~ Dudley Zopp

Hackleberry. Oil on linen by Dudley Zopp

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,

Dudley Zopp

is a visual artist, habitat fixer, lover of languages, and student of the Tarot. She grew up in Kentucky, fascinated by goings on in the natural world, which she’s been painting and drawing for most of her life. In Maine for the past 30 years, she lives a short walk away from the eponymous Hidden Pond of her Substack, where the natural world is always changing according to the seasons and which a growing number of animal and plant species now call home.

In the studio, Dudley’s drawings and paintings straddle a line between abstraction and representation, and her artist’s books are sculptural, often based on magic tricks like the Jacob’s Ladder. Dudley comes to the Tarot with the dedication she has brought to learning French, German and Spanish, and uses her knowledge of languages to communicate our responsibilities to the earth.

Dudley is a woman of many talents. This post is full of beautiful sketches that made my fingers itch to draw again. It’s so calming to focus one’s attention like that. She’s recently joined with

Stacy Boone

and

Mary Beth Rew Hicks

for a close read of Wendell Berry’s recent book, The Need to Be Whole.²

The Hidden Pond Substack takes readers behind the scenes of her practice, where she interweaves wildlife habitat restoration and studio work with her love of languages, myth and yoga.

Why are you drawn to nature writing?

I love the way your question links drawing and writing. Like most kids, I drew pictures before I could write letters and words, and both ways of processing information—drawing and writing—remain important to me.

Line drawings that depict a plant and the calligraphy of letters that form words are two ways for me to make sense of what I am seeing. With a pencil or other writing tool I can understand better the growth patterns of the natural world.

In the passive use of the word draw, I am pulled to nature writing because it allows me to shed light on my relationship with the non-human beings all around me. Most of what goes on here in my 4.5 acres of meadow and wetland does so without my help or intervention. I just lend a hand by keeping invasive plants at bay. Writing is a way for me to share what I’m learning as I witness habitat restoring itself.

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

I’ve been recording my thoughts in journals at least for the past 38 years, maybe more, but it’s only since the dawn of blogging that I began to write not only for myself, but as a way to share ideas with a public audience. Initially, I wrote about my art practice on Blogspot, then in newsletters, and then on my website. Over time, as my artist’s practice has come to include habit restoration, I’ve eased into writing about that as well, and then I discovered Substack, where there are so many excellent writers who take nature as their primary focus. They’ve given me more confidence to talk out loud about all the parts of me - not just the artist, but the passionate steward of habitat and the apprentice student of Tarot. Recently I’ve given each of those topics its own section on The Hidden Pond’s home page.

In considering how writing about nature affects me, I have to answer that it’s not only the sitting down to write every week that’s changed me. The writers here, the photographers who document species details, the gardeners who offer practical advice from their own digging experiences, and the storytellers who are visionaries and mystics, all contribute to a bedrock of nature writing that is a source of hope, inspiration and motivation to me. It has changed my both writing and the way I understand my work inside and outside the studio.

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

I grew up in Central Kentucky, which was once upon a time wooded before it was colonized and cleared for farming. When I first came to Maine, where according to the USDA Forest Service 89% of the land area is forested, I felt right at home. I attribute that to memories of childhood trips to the more wooded parts of Kentucky and possibly as well to some ancestral memory of the British Isles. Which is to say that I feel very safe in the woods, and have never felt threatened or lost even when hiking alone whether in Maine or in Kentucky.

Feeling small is more complex. On several occasions, even from the safety of a car with someone else at the wheel, I have felt overpowered and reverent. The first time, my artist friends and I were seeing from a distance and then ascending the multiple peaks of Montserrat Mountain that rise up from the Llobregat river basin near the village of El Bruc, Catalunya. Two years later in the Selva del Lamone in Italy, my hosts and I were inside a dense forest on volcanic soil where wild boars are kings of the road and the night skies are unbelievably black and starry. And the third time, I was speechless with awe as a friend and I drove from Santa Fe to the Valles Caldera and the Jemez mountains.

I’d never seen or even imagined there could be a part of the planet that appeared so newly created by the hand of some Primal Force. But I have also felt small in my own backyard, in moments when my soul opens to the universe and my earthbound self seems to disappear.

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

I spent a lot of time outside just playing in the dirt. My mother liked to tell a story about me that when I was a year old, she caught me playing with an earthworm. No one tried to stop me—and when they looked again the earthworm was gone. Presumably I had eaten it. And probably enjoyed it, though I was too young to remember the experience. Among the things I do remember, a favorite is the summer I spent catching crickets and cicadas and keeping them in glass jars and an old fish aquarium so I could watch their behavior. I had some idea that I could train the cicadas to do circus tricks, which probably came from hearing about flea circuses.

What do you hope for, for your writing? 

I hope to be a rock in the wall, a brick in an edifice of hope where compassion grows for the earth and her creatures, where the balance of life shifts toward sustainability. Like the resilient species of sedges that grow in wetlands and along the margins of paths, we who advocate for a healthy planet each have our own micro-environment where we work best, where our voices take root and thrive. I am glad to be part of the community, and grateful to Julie and to

Rebecca Wisent

of Home I Nature Directory for giving us a place to speak together and share our enthusiasm.

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

There are many, so I will go with my first thought, and name David Abrams as one of the visionaries who shows us the way home. I first read Spell of the Sensuous a few years after I moved to Maine in 1996, and later read Becoming Animal, published in 2010. In his writing I recognize a kindred soul who understands the magical apparitions in which the natural world communicates with us. Though he expresses and lives that reality more fully than I will ever be able to do, I am encouraged to try my best.³

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Each season, we donate 30% of paid subscriptions to a worthy environmental cause. This season (through today!), it’s the Center for Humans and Nature, where they explore what it means to be human in an interconnected world. Track past and current recipients here.

What did you enjoy most about this essay? 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 NatureStack journal.

🍃 08-09 | NatureStack: shared wonder

In further service to Substack’s nature writers,

Rebecca Wisent

curates this lovely directory of nature-focused writers:

1. thanks, Mary Oliver

2. Here’s an example for Chapter III

3. Editor’s note: BIG YES to this! I’m so glad I heeded a mentor’s advice to read The Spell of the Sensuous years ago. David writes eloquently and convincingly of “the magic of the real.”