"One of the reasons we're lonely is that we've cut ourselves off from the nonhuman world and have called this 'progress'."
Barry Lopez
A Barry Lopez article in 'Emergence' magazine is well worth reading - as is anything related to this author. (PDF download).
Image: Alan Parkinson - Nant Ffrancon Valley, Snowdonia
His writing is guided all the while by a belief, as Barry wrote in Horizon, “that the physical land … is sentient and responsive, as informed by its own memory as it is by the weather, and offering within the obvious, the tenuous.”
“My particular reason for writing is to provide illumination for a nation that is chronically, pathologically distracted,” he told me. He wasn’t interested in writing those everyday stories that entertain or make us laugh or create conviviality—what he called maintenance stories. Three-meals-a-day stories. They might fill the belly, but they don’t nourish. “The stories I’m trying to write, and which I want to promote, are stories that contribute to the stability of my own culture,” Barry told me, “stories that elevate, that keep things from flying apart.”
Source: https://medium.com/thewildones/barry-lopezs-advice-to-aspiring-nature-writers-93a122e5996d
And here's a talk that Barry gave on a similar theme.
Check out these articles too.
Stories create avenues for sharing the meanings and social implications of scientific knowledge. We explore their value when told between scientists during a volcanic eruption. They are important vehicles for understanding how risk is generated during volcanic eruptions and create new knowledge about these interactions. Stories explore how risk is negotiated when scientific information is ambiguous or uncertain, identify cause and effect, and rationalise the emotional intensity of a crisis.
Source: Barclay, J., Robertson, R., and Armijos, M. T.: Scientists as storytellers: the explanatory power of stories told about environmental crises, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 3603–3615, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-3603-2023, 2023.
His writing is guided all the while by a belief, as Barry wrote in Horizon, “that the physical land … is sentient and responsive, as informed by its own memory as it is by the weather, and offering within the obvious, the tenuous.”
“My particular reason for writing is to provide illumination for a nation that is chronically, pathologically distracted,” he told me. He wasn’t interested in writing those everyday stories that entertain or make us laugh or create conviviality—what he called maintenance stories. Three-meals-a-day stories. They might fill the belly, but they don’t nourish. “The stories I’m trying to write, and which I want to promote, are stories that contribute to the stability of my own culture,” Barry told me, “stories that elevate, that keep things from flying apart.”
Source: https://medium.com/thewildones/barry-lopezs-advice-to-aspiring-nature-writers-93a122e5996d
And here's a talk that Barry gave on a similar theme.
Check out these articles too.
Stories create avenues for sharing the meanings and social implications of scientific knowledge. We explore their value when told between scientists during a volcanic eruption. They are important vehicles for understanding how risk is generated during volcanic eruptions and create new knowledge about these interactions. Stories explore how risk is negotiated when scientific information is ambiguous or uncertain, identify cause and effect, and rationalise the emotional intensity of a crisis.
Source: Barclay, J., Robertson, R., and Armijos, M. T.: Scientists as storytellers: the explanatory power of stories told about environmental crises, Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 23, 3603–3615, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-23-3603-2023, 2023.
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