🍃 Reciprocity: the interview

6 questions for Rebecca Hooper

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

“I remember the feeling of a nestling landing in my palm, the hot weight of it, and the feeling of its feet pushing against my skin as it lifted off again. That was very special. It’s the first time I think I really understood that not only do we have the power to deeply connect to the natural world, but also the power to nurture and protect it.” ~ Rebecca Hooper

Swimming with seals, courtesy of Rebecca Hooper

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,

rebecca hooper

is a writer and evolutionary biologist with a PhD in animal cognition. From her house in the north isles of Orkney, tucked between the steely North Sea and the wild Atlantic, Rebecca writes between two seas, a Substack about life and death, land and sea, science, art, and finding joy.

Rebecca alchemizes her world into spellbinding, incantatory words,² whether exploring profound questions of life’s thick mysteries or sharing weird, amazing details of natural history. Here’s one delightful example:

“A bird’s respiratory system is also not confined to the chest, as ours is. Instead, it spreads its tendrils through a bird’s body, lacing its way through the bones. A bird with a broken wing, if the bone is exposed to air, can have its head underwater and still breathe.”³

---

Why are you drawn to nature writing?

Like so many, I write to understand myself, and to understand others, and to understand this world of ours, and I fundamentally believe that we cannot understand much of anything without the context of nature. We are each – all of us – birthed from nature. How could we understand ourselves, the world we live in, the interconnectedness and fragility of it all, without acknowledging and interrogating this context? I think in some sense I do resist the label of ‘nature writing’ though, because I feel that I am just writing about life in the same way as any other writer – it just happens that for me, writing about life is synonymous with writing about nature.

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

Since I was very young, I have felt a kinship with the natural world that is difficult to describe. Perhaps the best way to say it is this: my life is, and always has been, so fully interwoven with nature (and understanding my small place within it), that I cannot separate my ‘self’ from it. And so I wouldn’t say that I write about nature, or that writing about nature affects me. I just write about who I am, what I feel, what I see, and nature is an intrinsic part of it all.

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

Oh yes! I feel wonderfully small every day. I walk the coastline of my island and let myself get swallowed up by the great expanse of life and water and rock around me. It is my therapy. Without that grounding of smallness each day, my brain becomes all buzz and noise. I wrote a poem last year about the joy of feeling small –

the gannets

the throat of the sky
has opened, she is
ruby-tongued and sliced
with the ice-white
of gannet-wing and
no-one but those
blue-eyed birds
witness me
and i – sky-drunk,
earth-bound – am nothing
more than a flicker, a wink
upon the shore

what joy, to be so
small

I think humanity would fare well from a greater awareness of our smallness. Evolutionary biology is a wise teacher of this. It is very difficult to study the expansive web of life and retain a sense of human superiority.

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

Oh my gosh, so many! I was very lucky to have a childhood brimming with nature. But a memory that stands out to me is of two song thrush nestlings whose nest fell from a tree in our garden. We (mainly my dad) hand-reared them in the conservatory. I was about five years old, and my memory of those nestlings is hazy, but I do remember this with such astonishing and delightful clarity – my dad and I standing in the conservatory, a few feet apart, and the nestlings flying between our outstretched hands. I remember the feeling of a nestling landing in my palm, the hot weight of it, and the feeling of its feet pushing against my skin as it lifted off again. That was very special. It’s the first time I think I really understood that not only do we have the power to deeply connect to the natural world, but also the power to nurture and protect it.

What do you hope for, for your writing? 

I suppose what I hope for, on a personal level, is to understand what I think, how I feel, who I am (for I only ever start to get to grips with this when I write), and to connect with others who resonate with my words. But, beyond that, I also hope that my writing helps readers connect with nature. In a time of climate crisis and environmental destruction, we need to better understand our connection to the natural world, its fragility, our fragility, the fact that human suffering is no different from nonhuman suffering, and we are inflicting so much suffering across the globe. I hope to be a small part of the movement of artists and activists and scientists who are speaking out about this.

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

There are so many writers here who fill me with joy and hope. Writers who work with compassion and wonder and open minds and an insatiable curiosity for understanding the world, and for making it better. Some of my favourites are the wonderful

Kimberly Warner

,

Michela Griffith

,

Chloe Hope

,

Holly Starley

,

samuel forbes

, and

jared mulhair

. All of these writers give me hope for the world we live in, and fill me with the warm fuzzy feeling of getting to exist on this earth at the same time as them.

---

Each season, we donate 30% of paid subscriptions to a worthy environmental cause. This season, it’s Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International. For The Earth And All Generations - Women Are Rising For Climate Justice & Community-Led Solutions. 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!

---

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,

Wildheart

curates this lovely directory of nature-focused writers:

1. thanks, Mary Oliver

2. Immerse your senses into the soundscape, photos, and poetic reading of this post, “come to the cliffs.” Or this one about fog as real and alive as sand, rock, sea, and seal.

3. From “bird lung”