🍃Reciprocity: the interview

6 questions for Andrea Joy Adams

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

“Writing with nature is like a tuning fork: it resonates with what I am seeing or experiencing. When something seems off, I try to give it time to sort itself out, usually with more walks. Nature and writing, when combined, help me figure out what is true. This has a profound influence on all areas of my life.” ~ Andrea Joy Adams

The forest immediately before the wind storm.

Today’s guest, Dr. Andrea Joy Adams, Ph.D., is a conservation ecologist and writer. Her Substack, Hopecology, explores hope in the face of the environmental crisis. I was drawn to Andrea’s writing because I think of hope as a superpower we can all cultivate—even in the darkest times—and because ecologists are without exception amazing people.

Case in point: Andrea has chased Spotted Owls through the Olympic Rainforest, tracked American Marten by snowmobile in the Boreal Forest, counted native plants with tweezers in the Sonoran Desert, studied carnivorous songbirds on a Pacific island, reintroduced frogs to alpine lakes via helicopter in California, and, most dangerously, stared down haughty bureaucrats. She even was one once.

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Why are you drawn to nature writing?

I’m not convinced that I am drawn to nature writing. I’m interested in writing that is grounded in presence and true experience, and nature can inspire and facilitate these. 

Idealized thoughts about nature and the direct experience of nature are two very different things. There is a Buddhist teacher who says, “It doesn’t have to be good; it just has to be true.” I feel this way about nature writing, because if it is true, its “goodness” often emanates from it, naturally.

If I am drawn to nature writing, it is nature itself giving me the impetus to write when I happen upon something true, like picking up a signal that gives me energy and inspiration. Then I write to explore the seed idea, whatever it is.

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

I often write on nature-adjacent topics, such as ethics in ecology and academia, pondering whether I should keep a rock, or learning international compassion from an island community in Scotland. 

When I am walking in nature, whole sentences will write themselves in my mind and I have to stop and take notes so that I don’t lose them. I then transcribe the notes into essays or other writing projects. Occasionally, poetry finds me.

Writing with nature is like a tuning fork: it resonates with what I am seeing or experiencing. When something seems off, I try to give it time to sort itself out, usually with more walks. Nature and writing, when combined, help me figure out what is true. This has a profound influence on all areas of my life.

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

I nearly drowned in the Arkansas River on a whitewater rafting trip. The sense of danger did not occur on the raft, when I exited it, or even when I was submerged. It was only after some time underwater—when I realized that I no longer had the option to come up for air—that it became clear that this might be the end of my life. I got the “life flashing before my eyes” experience, but it wasn’t what I expected—there was a calm to it. 

In 2019, I was caught in a severe windstorm on top of a mountain with giant, dead trees toppling all around me. I ran as fast as I could, in the hail, to get down to safety. When the largest gusts tore through the forest, I would try to take shelter up against the sturdiest tree trunk I could find. 

I pressed the back of my body into a massive cedar, gripping the shaggy bark with my fingernails. With the large trunk partially sheltering me and the skirt of branches draped around me, it gave a whole new meaning to Suzanne Simard’s “Mother Tree”²: I felt (a little) protected from the surrounding pines that had turned from pleasant to terrifying in an instant.

Rather than a signal that nature is inherently more dangerous than anthropogenic life, I see my brushes with death and danger as a result of my appetite for living life to its fullest extent. Doing so ups the ante, and the risk, in any endeavor—whether I’m hiking on the trail or writing on my laptop.

Dangerous experiences can be transformational. The day of the wind storm, I trudged off on that hike in considerable emotional turmoil. By the time I made it down the mountain, that turmoil had been replaced by gratitude and reverence for my life—the problems that had before seemed insurmountable had become relatively insignificant.

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

There were large pine and spruce trees in my neighborhood growing up. The white pines, with their horizontal branching pattern, were perfect for climbing. The spruces created tent-like skirts with their lower branches that I would play under and use as forts. I loved being tucked away where no one could find me. The trees provided solace and solitude in nature, which are still essential to my sense of wellbeing today. 

What do you hope for, for your writing?

A Hopecology reader recently told me that my writing strikes a beautiful emotional chord for them, and makes them feel seen and supported. Knowing that what I am inspired to write can have this effect on others feels like a great honor and responsibility. 

I want my writing to help dispel despair and misinformation, so that hope can arise organically from within. I do this work for myself, and if sharing it with others benefits them, too, then that is a remarkable thing. My ultimate hope for my writing is to translate some of my work into book-length projects in order to reach different audiences.

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

I really admire Rebecca Solnit’s work—she has a wise, grounded approach to facing the environmental crisis. Her writing and activism seem to stem from her ability to root herself in the truth, even if it’s difficult to come to terms with. She has a unique way of embodying hope without saccharine platitudes.

I once watched an interview with her where the interviewer opened with a statement that struck me as insulting, followed by a question. She answered it unflinchingly, with admirable grace, dignity, and power-of-fact that kept the conversation focused on the topic at hand. She is an extraordinary role model.

Andrea Joy Adams. Photo credit: Simone Noble

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If you enjoyed this post, a lovely ❤️ keeps me going. Another way to show love is to share this post with others by restacking it on Notes, via the Substack app. Thanks!

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

In further service to Substack’s nature writers,

Rebecca Wisent

curates this lovely directory of nature-focused writers:

1. thanks, Mary Oliver

2. https://bookshop.org/a/98409/9780525565994