January 13, 2025 • 47 mins
We celebrate a milestone episode of Sustainability In Your Ear, our 500th program since we launched in 2018, with an in-depth conversation with Paula Whyman, author of the captivating collection of essays, Bad Naturalist. It's a tale about her purchase and efforts to restore a couple hundred acres of meadowland in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia that had once been a farm and orchard. Paula's stories explore the complex interplay of identity, vulnerability, and the natural world with wit, depth, and an eye for natural detail. Paula's book reflects on the connection between our internal lives and the landscapes we inhabit—how nature becomes a mirror for our thoughts, decisions, and personal change. She explains how she learned about the land, the flora, and fauna in the meadow through conversations with scientists, conservation experts, and her neighbors.
Paula's decision to move to and take care of, in the sense that she is preserving and restoring, a plot of land represents a new option for people who, enabled by digital technology, can stay connected to the economy and earn a living while investing their time and energy in a new, local relationship with land and people. You can find Bad Naturalist on Amazon, at Powell's Books, or your local bookstore now. Sign up for her Bad Naturalist newsletter, which she describes as updates from a writer "stuck in bramble, stinking of bear poo," at https://paulawhyman.com.
Paula's decision to move to and take care of, in the sense that she is preserving and restoring, a plot of land represents a new option for people who, enabled by digital technology, can stay connected to the economy and earn a living while investing their time and energy in a new, local relationship with land and people. You can find Bad Naturalist on Amazon, at Powell's Books, or your local bookstore now. Sign up for her Bad Naturalist newsletter, which she describes as updates from a writer "stuck in bramble, stinking of bear poo," at https://paulawhyman.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable, carbon neutral society. I'm your host, Mitt Tracliffe.
Thank you for joining the conversation today. And you know what,
today is a big, big episode for Sustainability in Your
(00:30):
Ear because it marks our five hundredth programs since we
launched back in twenty eighteen. So I want to take
a moment to thank each of you for listening. By learning, connecting,
and acting, you are making the great ship of society turn,
albeit never fast enough and constantly in the face of
pushback from extractive industries that too often prioritize profit over planet.
(00:53):
But as you've heard on the program, a new generation
of leaders, companies, activists, authors, in flow, runcers and investors
are working to make a positive impact. And I'm committed
to getting the story out and I hope you'll continue
to share the show to help connect more people to
the movement for an environmentally responsible, sustainable and carbon neutral
(01:14):
economy that we can pass on to our children, grandchildren,
and many more generations of humans. Thank you all for
your attention and time over the past six years. Sincerely, folks,
thank you very much. Now let's get to today's conversation.
I've been looking forward to this opportunity to talk with
Paula Wyman, who's the author of a captivating collection of
(01:35):
essays called Bad Naturalist. It's a tale about her purchase
and efforts to restore a couple hundred acres of meadowland
in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia that had once
been a farm and orchard. Paula's stories explore the complex
interplay of identity, vulnerability, and the natural world with wit
and depth and an eye for natural detail. Her work
(01:56):
feels especially resonant for me personally, as I also recently
traded city life for the rhythms of the countryside, settling
into a holler in the Cascade Mountains of southern Oregon.
A holler, by the way, is a place that lies
below the land around it, surrounded by horizons higher than
it on all sides, you know, sort of a cul
de sac in nature. Like Paula, I've found myself reflecting
(02:19):
on the connection between our internal lives and the landscapes
we inhabit. How nature becomes a mirror for our thoughts, decisions,
and personal changes. It was a pleasure to encounter and
read Paula's stories because they weave the every day and
the extraordinary together, and I'm excited to explore what she's learned.
Paula's book Bad Naturalist is available online and in bookstores now,
(02:41):
and you can follow her work on her site, which
is at Paulawyman dot com. Wyman is spelled why m
an Paulawyman dot com. No space, no dash. We're going
to jump into this great conversation right after a brief
commercial break. Stay tuned, Welcome to the show, Paula. How
(03:04):
you doing today?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Thank you so much. I'm doing well. I'm glad to
be here.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Thank you for joining us today. It's a special day
because we're doing our five hundredth episode and it's a
pleasure to have you here because I really enjoyed your book.
But I wanted to ask a question to start off.
Is you know, after reading it, I don't think you're
a bad naturalist? Why the self deprecating idle?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Well, besides the fact that my publisher really liked that title,
the reason I would say is in the beginning, I
really didn't know that much about what I needed to
do in order to do an ecological restoration, which is
what I'm trying to do here. And I made a
lot of mistakes and there were times when I feared
(03:44):
I was making things worse until I learned that that
was normal. And at the same time, it was something
of a surprise to me. Even though I'd been passionate
about nature for my whole life and had done a
lot of deep reading on it, it was still a
surprise to me that there wasn't going to be an answer,
(04:06):
Like no one could come to me and say, Okay,
here's what you should do and it will absolutely work.
And that was so I get. So that's where bad
naturalists comes.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
It's kind of, you know, the human condition is that
constant and uncertainty about what's going to happen when you
intervene in anything. But we really can't understand nature without
beginning to understand ourselves. What did you learn about your
life and its impact on the environment as you were
working on the book and working on the restoration project.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, one of the things that really hit me was
when I started to understand all the interconnections among species
and plants here, and just on such a minuscule level
that there's this caterpillar that will eat a leaf gall
that's created by mites on a cherry tree, and there's
(04:56):
an ant that protects that caterpillar from being eaten by others.
And if one of those things, if one of those
links broke, if someone decided to spray the tree and
kill the mites, it'd actually killed the caterpillars. Those kinds
of interconnections made me realize that I could also have
(05:18):
a very negative effect if I accidentally, or with the
best intentions, did the wrong thing. And even just unknowingly,
the things we do every day I thought about because
I grew up in the suburbs. I've lived in the city,
I've lived in the suburbs. Now I live on the mountain,
(05:38):
and all those times in the suburbs, a lot of
times I was thinking of the natural world around me
in terms of pests, the mosquitoes, the mice, the ants
that were coming into my house all the time, and
instead of engaging with the natural world, where I found
myself in a more positive way. So that's something that
(05:59):
I really started doing here on the mountain, which I
should have done before.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Tell us about the land. It's a large track. What
does it look like? What does it feel like to
stand there?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, right now I'm looking out a window at about
seventy five acres of rolling hills and meadow, open meadow
on a mountaintop. It's very unusual out here. There are
many rock out croppings that are covered with lichens. There's
a grove of old orchard cherries, also covered with lichens.
(06:32):
Everything here is covered with lichens. And right now there's
snow on the ground, so I can actually see. I
can see this deep mountain road that leads down and
I can see that it's still covered with snow, and
there are forested slopes oak hickory forest. There is a
(06:52):
high point at one end where you have like a
one hundred and eighty degree view of the Blue Ridge
and the Piedmont in the distance, and Shenandoah National Park
is about five miles across the valley. So I can
see Old Rag, which is one of the It has
sort of a bald rocky top and I can see
(07:16):
that from here. And there are all of these very
steep hills in parts of the meadows, especially at either end.
One of them I call the sledding hill, and this
is a good time to sled down it. And at
the other end there's a high point where there's an
old oak which probably grew in the open. It's still
(07:38):
in the open and it's buffeted by wind and weather
and so on, because it's right at the edge overlooking
the valley, and it's about three hundred years old. So
we know that that spot at least has been open
that long. And the reason we know that it grew
in the open was because of its shape. It has
(08:00):
a wide trunk and a very round crown rather than
a tall and thin, you know, trying to reach the
sunlight if it had been surrounded by other trees. So
I had a scientist out here at one point who
specializes in grasslands, and he said he thought that this mountaintop,
(08:22):
a lot of it, had been open for many more
years than what the farming history reflects, and he thought
it was probably savannah, you know, grassland with the occasional tree.
He said, it would have been maintained by lightning induced
fires just about every five years.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
You're describing reading the land in a really intimate way.
And as I related in the introduction, I'm trying to
do the same thing with where I've just recently moved,
and I've spent the last year, you know, cataloging plants
and rocks and animals and those types of soil in
this little holler I live in the Mind Mountains. How
did you get started learning about the place?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Well, this is a great question because I came to
My interest in nature has always been more focused on
insects and critters, animals, and often in unusual places. So
I wasn't really focused on plants, except occasionally. I tend
to do deep dives into things and become obsessed. So
(09:26):
for a while I was obsessed with mangrove swamps. For
a while I was obsessed with horseshoe crabs, or there
was another time I was obsessed with lizards. So I
would go through these things, and the mountain is my
deep dive. So the first thing I had to do
was learn something about plants, which I really I mean,
you can't restore native meadows without learning about plants. So
(09:49):
I found out that the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in
Virginia has a division called Virginia Working Landscapes, and they
help farmers and landowners improve the native habitats on their land.
They give them advice and they're also studying it. They
(10:10):
are trying to learn more about the species here. And
there are grassland bird species that are in steep decline,
like the bob white quail, grasshopper sparrow, and I wanted
to be able to encourage these ground nesting birds. So anyway,
the woman who came out from Virginia working landscapes, they
(10:32):
did bird and plant surveys here. So the first thing
I got, very first thing, really just a couple months
after we bought the land, I had this list of species,
including invasive species, you know, the dominant species and what
else you know they saw on the mountain. Well, then
I needed to learn how to recognize them myself, and
(10:55):
I ended up walking around with Charlotte as Charlotte Lorick
is the woman's name. She's now with a place called
Oaks Baning Garden Foundation, and she is a real expert
on plants, and she was able to point out and
identify plants even when they were dead and dry. And
I started learning a lot from her, and every now
(11:16):
and then I'd send her a photo and she would say, oh,
that's such and such and then I got a really
good app and a bunch of guide books, and I'd
walk around with juggling these things. So I started to
recognize things. I started to learn, and every person I
talked with would come out here and walk around with
me and point to things. And i'd meet one person,
(11:38):
they'd say, Oh, have you talked with so and so yet?
So that would lead to the next person, the next person.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
You kind of weave yourself into the community and the
land that way. You know, writers, A lot of people
think writers get people to talk to them because they're writers.
But it sounds to me like you could learn this
from anybody. It'd certainly been the case that I'd learned
this from my neighbors. Right. What's your advice to somebody
who maybe doesn't even have the land, but wants to
understand the land that they're surrounded by. What would you
(12:06):
suggest they do? What's their first moment?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, say, the first thing I would do is start
paying closer attention. Just walk around wherever you happen to be,
and observe and allow whatever it is that engages you
most to be the thing that grabs you, because then
(12:30):
you'll really absorb it and stick with it, and you'll
also learn about the things that are connected with it,
like with that might and the caterpillar that I was
talking about. I really wanted to know more about this
caterpillar and why it ate these mites and you know,
and and why it was good for the tree. So
(12:55):
one thing leads to another, and I think curiosity buyers
more curiosity, and then it can eventually inspire action. At
least that's the hope.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah. In fact, I remember one early in my time here,
I walked outside and there was an oak leaf with
a gall on it, a giant gall that lived like
an alien pod. Noticed that they were all over the place,
and it was a spider that was inside. Was just
kind of tuning into it and then doing the research
because I've got hundreds of pictures of rocks in this
rock app, you know, hundreds of pictures of insects and
(13:29):
an insect app and trying to get it all in,
to take it all in is I think maybe the
modern mistaken way the wander, the kind of the brows
that you're talking about, might be a more fitting way
to go about it. You know, you declared early in
the book that restoration is the process of moving forward,
which suggests we can't really restore or go back to
(13:50):
the previous state of nature. Can you talk about that
tension between where the land is today and where you want.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It to be sure? Yeah, the word restoration is really
the wrong word, and it's it's hard to find the
right word because restore implies going back to something, and
you can't only go backwards with land because new plants
are coming here, new creatures are coming here. You can't
(14:18):
erase them. You can manage them, but you can't. You
may be able to manage them, but you can't erase them.
So really it's about moving forward to get to the
best possible.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Balance balance of what the past.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah. Yeah, Well it depends on your goals because and
it also depends very much on what you start with, because,
as in so many things, what you see is what
you get in many ways. I was told early on
that given the number of native plants that were growing
(14:54):
here amid grasses that were left from the cattle farm
years and invasive plants that been you know, brought in
in various ways, those native plants indicated that there were
native plants in the seed bank, you know, seeds waiting
in the soil, and if they could get light and
water and room to grow. You know, if I could
(15:18):
clear out the fescues and some of the hay grasses
and the dense matt, I might see those native plants
grow back. But it was a big mystery. You don't know.
So how do you decide? Well, it really depends on
your goals. You know, if you're a farmer, you don't
want a bunch of milkweed growing in your pastor. And
if you're starting out with eighty percent non native plants,
(15:42):
then saying oh, I'm going to get to eighty percent
native plants is maybe, you know, not not the right right,
You'll just be frustrated. It also depends what kind of
place you have. If if you're talking about a suburban backyard, well,
then you have a much better chance of getting to
that eighty percent, and even better.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
When you think about this, how would you describe the
criteria for thinking about what is natural in a place?
Nature's constantly on the move, migrating, spreading, and also dying off.
How do you how do you describe natural.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
When you talk about Well, I would say what's unnatural
is what people brought in for one thing, and that's
you know, as long as the history of humans, but
especially in the past few hundred years, what people intentionally
and unintentionally brought in on you know, to plant or
(16:43):
through shipping through exotic plant trades. In the late seventeen hundreds,
how a lot of it started. Then a lot of
invasive plants started here. That way to me, if a
plant serves the local wildlife community, serves the local community
(17:07):
food or shelter effectively, then then it's fine. But if
it's if it's not, if it's doing the opposite, like
so many invasive plants become monocultures and push out native plants.
Native plants evolved with native wildlife, so a lot of
(17:29):
native wildlife, like pollinators, can't use non native plants at all,
whether they're invasive or not, they can't use them. So
when native plants get replaced, those bees and butterflies die
out right, and that's a problem for us, you know,
it's a problem for the ecosystem, and eventually it's a
(17:49):
problem for us as well. So I look at it like,
if if those plants are native, they're probably better serving
the local ecosystem, the local community. But how you decide
what is native. I guess maybe what you're asking, but
I think it's it's like over thousands of years or
maybe more, you know, the creatures that evolved together with
(18:11):
these plants. That's that's what uh, that's what determines it
for me, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
I guess so another way, incumbency been there long enough
that it actually fits in. But that's the challenge that
we have is how do we move from not being
part of it to being part of it again, which
I think is our great delusion that we're not.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, I think I'm trying to remember if it was.
I mean, kudzu has been here for a couple hundred
years and there it still has no predators. I mean,
dear work nipple on it. But but it has no predators.
And that's the problem with a lot of the plants
that come from elsewhere is that they leave their predators
(18:52):
behind and there's nothing to stop them. And they've developed
all of these great, you know, impressive abilities to reproduce
and spread in order to defeat those predators so that
they can continue to survive at home. But here, all
of those abilities just mean that they outperform the plants
(19:14):
that actually do feed wildlife. And insects here.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I want to continue to dig into this, but we
need to say commercial break. Will be right back. Okay, Now,
let's return to the discussion with author Paula Wyman, who
writes about her moving to and restoring an abandoned farm
in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Or book Bad Naturalist is
available now and hardback. Paula, as we were talking, I'm
(19:43):
wondering what bias or misinformation about nature that's propagated by
our media and just humans talking to one another. Should
we be vigilant about recognizing and being aware of when
we're thinking about decisions about our relationship with nature.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Well, I think a great example would be my idealized
view of what I thought was going to happen when
I lived here. I looked at on this meadow and
I thought, okay, I'm gonna actually, in general, any place.
I decided to plant a small meadow. I sort of
(20:20):
envisioned myself in this little writer shed in the middle
of this meadow, with flowers growing everywhere and butterflies flying
around me. I didn't think about ticks or rattlesnakes. I
didn't think about wind weather. And I think that that
idealization and that romanticization of nature is really prevalent in
(20:45):
a lot of pop culture and marketing. And the other
part of it is the idea that nature is going
to be pristine. And this this very like, I don't know,
monumental thing. It's it's sort of intimidating.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Like I understand, that's what we all want to think about.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, I understand, I mean, and I understand and agree
with leave no trace and all of that. That is
all obviously very important. But our national parks and state
parks and local parks don't hold the majority of natural space.
And I think that that is something that people may
(21:34):
not realize that literally eighty five percent of grasslands are
privately owned, more than fifty percent of forests are privately owned.
That means that private landowners have a responsibility to care
for that land, maybe not as if it's a national park,
(21:55):
but to care for it in a way that maintain
it for whatever local natural community relies on it, even
while you know they're farming or doing their recreation. It's
(22:15):
possible to do all that.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
As I think about this, we try to legislate our
relationship with nature right the boundaries of a national part
as you're describing are kind of this arbitrary line in
our minds. Can we have a fixed policy about this,
or do we have to roll with nature and nature
and follow nature's lead more than we do instead of
trying to shape nature.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I think we have to manage. I think that was
the conclusion I came to after a lot of difficulty
thinking I could control things, you know, coming to the suburbs,
trying to control mosquitoes, trying to control the mice that
kept coming into my attic. I came to it with
(23:02):
that word in my head and that tendency to control,
and I had to I had to back off and
realize that managing plants were going to do what they
were going to do. Animals were going to bring in seeds,
wind was going to act, and weather was going to act,
and I couldn't control any of that, and I just
had to but sort of coaxing things or directing things.
(23:26):
I think in my book I said something about like
like like dealing with toddlers, you kind of try to redirect.
But the thing is that the point is that since
the beginning, humans have been affecting nature. They've been working on,
you know, the natural environment in various ways and the
(23:48):
idea of now let's just leave it alone and see
what happens. I think once we've started managing something, now
we have to manage it in the right direction. We
can't just let it go and say maybe a good example.
This is not a great example, actually, but sometimes I
think of the movement for no mo May Okay, in
the Northeast, a lot of people there's a movement to
(24:13):
not mow your lawn in may. I think the idea
is to somehow help pollinators or birds. But if what
you've got is a lawn of non native fescue, not
mowing it is not going. All you're doing is allowing
the fescue to seed and growing more fescue. But what
could happen Because I allowed my subban lawn to grow
(24:38):
up for ten days and I found these flowers in
it that I didn't know existed, and some of them
were native. So you might find something like that and
that's worth preserving, and then you know, mow around it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
But you talk about our affecting nature, but is it
one of the delusions that we have is they were
not part of it.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yes, that's absolutely true. We carry it with us everywhere.
We go. And it's funny when we say I'm going
to be I want to be in nature. I want
to be closer to nature, and like, well, you're pretty
close to it all the time, to.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Feel it inside for a change instead of looking forward.
And you dwelt on this in a number of portions
of the book was the role of fire and the
way that we try to prevent fire and have prevented fire.
And we are actually speaking on a day when a
third of la is at risk of burning to the ground.
How is human intervention using fire changed in recent centuries,
(25:34):
particularly in the land that you've been on.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Early on, Like I said, a scientist had told me
that this meadow was likely maintained by lightning deuced fires
every few years. And I don't know about indigenous activity
here in this particular spot, but I know that indigenous
people of this as we know, used fire effectively. And
(26:00):
when oh, I'm trying to remember what year it was now,
but the when the Forest Service came along and started
suppressing fire, that's when, well, I mean there were fires
burning out of control because of trains going through the
woods and throwing off sparks, and people didn't know how
to stop at fires, So it was a problem. It
(26:22):
was a real problem. But the fire suppression was over
zealous and it resulted in excessive understory growth in forests.
It resulted in the growth of, you know, the succession
of fields that had been grassland or meadow before. I
(26:44):
think in part it's one of the things that led
us to this place where we have these devastating fires.
Of course they're worth worse because of global warming, but
they're also worse because there's all that fuel and if
we hadn't suppressed fires for all that time, you know.
But now that is starting to change in some places
(27:07):
from what I understand, especially out west, they're doing some
understory burns and I've done prescribed burns here on the mountain,
and it's really important for native plants. Yeah, it's very
important for the.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Land on fire.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
It was really fascinating to watch just everything had to
be perfect. The wind couldn't be above a certain speed,
the humidity had to be within certain parameters so it
wouldn't burn too much or would burn enough. It was
It was really interesting, and there were seven people out here,
(27:46):
some of them were volunteers. They were with the State
Department of Forestry and they knew what they were doing.
They cut a fire line around a field and they
would start from me out side with these drip torches,
and just seeing a hillside on fire, I mean, it's
(28:10):
both disturbing and exciting. But then afterwards, afterwards the soil
it kind of almost looks like coffee grounds. It's like
this rich color. And the burn I had here was
in early March, and so a few weeks later, early spring,
(28:31):
I could see things starting to grow. And that was
really exciting because it was sort of validating to see, Okay,
they were native plants coming up. For the most part,
native plants and native plants here are encouraged and aided
by fire. They evolved in the presence of fire, and
(28:53):
or many of them did. And so for instance, blueberry
bush will produce more blueberries if it's if you burned it,
and a lot of plants will produce more seeds grow
more prolifically, whereas non native plants are not necessarily going
to do well in the presence of fire, although that
is something you have to be careful about because there
(29:14):
are some invasive plants that do like fire. So when
we were choosing which fields to burn and Luckily I
had great advice about that. I had to make sure
that there weren't certain plants in those fields, and that
can be hard when you've got a really dense old hayfield.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
You've talked about the expertise that you've been able to
tap into, and a lot of that was your neighbors,
And I'm wondering if you could talk a little about
the difference between what the urban view of nature and
that or the rural community is, and maybe share what
your thoughts are about how those two worlds could be
bridged in different ways to create a better view of
our relationship with nature.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Well, I think maybe when you live in city or
in a suburb, as I have, you're definitely more shielded
in a lot of ways from nature. But when you're
in a rural area, you need to focus on it really,
probably as much as people in the city focus on traffic.
(30:16):
And you need to know what's happening with the weather.
You need to know what's happening with your water. You know,
most people out here are on well water like we are,
and you need to keep track of those sorts of things.
And you know there's in some ways, for better or worse,
less government, you know, doing things. So I come from
(30:37):
a county where I grew up in Maryland, where the
government did all sorts of things for you, and now
in a rural place where that's not the case because
it's just a much smaller government. But the other side
of that is that people rely on their neighbors for things.
And even though we all live very far apart, my
(30:58):
nearest neighbors are about a mile away. But you know,
we actually when it was going to snow the other night,
we were texting each other saying, well, what should we
park a car at the bottom of the road. Do
you mind if I park here? There were you know,
That's just how it is.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, that's been so striking for me too, is I
have a much much better relationship with my neighbors here
in the sense that I even talked to them. I
remember I lived in San Francisco when we had the
Luma periat A quake back in the nineteen eighties, and
it was the time when everybody ran outside because of
the earthquake, and it was the first time we met
our neighbors and everybody checked on one another and we
(31:34):
did the things that happened in the country but then
we went back to being completely isolated. But you're talking
about this new intimate relationship. It's a fascinating difference in
your comment about how government does more for us and
is I think one of the keys to understanding the
conflict that people have about the role of government. The
red and the blue are so clearly oriented to urban
(31:58):
and e seas me rural and urban thinking. Fundamentally, it'd
be remarkable if we could see through this conflict and
begin to talk about what we have in common, the
way our neighbors do, and as we found in the country.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I do want to say that I love my neighbors
in the suburbs. They are wonderful people. I do think
that well. I actually an example came to mind because
several years ago in a storm, we had some trees
that knocked down some other trees and our fence and
so on, and we found out there was a program
(32:32):
in the county where we lived in the suburbs that
would help you plant native plants to you know, and
and set up a natural drainage system like a rock
you know, sort of a rock based drainage system. And
so we got that help from the county to do
(32:54):
that when we when we had that happen and here
I mean that ially don't know if I doubt that
there's money for that, you know. But but all on
the other hand, actually the Soil and Water Conservation District
does help fund cleaning up riparian areas, fencing off streams
(33:14):
from cattle erosion control. So it's but it's a different focus. See,
it's not making your backyard pretty with native plants. It's
really functional stuff. And so they actually helped me with
the tree planting that we did in a riparian area
and on any rodable slope, and that was that was
(33:35):
very important and hugely helpful. And and and in terms
of government, I also have received advice from Department of Agriculture,
the NRCS. The Department of Agriculture advisors farmers on improving
native habitats in places where they're not producing, you know.
(33:56):
And so I got a I got a huge amount
of advice from the government. No money, but uh do
we get money, No, just ours management plan.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
It's a different trade off as we were talking about before.
And your neighbors stand in instead of the government a
lot more here in the cities. It's a I just
I'm constantly struck by the animosity that the two sides
feel about the support the other one gets m And
it's it's challenging to have the conversation at all with
(34:34):
city people. I have more of these conversations with folks
in the neighborhood because we are often trying to deal
with something. During fire season, for instance, we all have
watch duty and we're all watching what's going to go
at what's going to happen. And there's a or with
regard to irrigation rights off of the river that we
live on Muh and that's scene as an imposition. If
(34:56):
you don't have access to the water or the limit,
there are limits on the water, and for those of
us who lived downstream, that's of the concern. And that
tension is actually between the neighbors rather than because of
the government's intervention, because it becomes a personal relationship rather
than something abstract and far away in DC or in
(35:16):
whatever state capital you. So it's a really interesting tension.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
The thing that what you just said about the water
fencing off the streams for cattle has been that is
a contentious issue because some farmers are eager to do it. Obviously,
you don't mean it's healthier for the cattle as well.
They've actually shown there are studies that have shown that
(35:42):
cattle will gain more weight and be healthier if they're
not standing in their own you know, drinking it. But
when you fence off part of the stream, you're fencing
off part of the land. And one farmer framed it
as I'm losing one hundred ag if they fence off
my stream, and I was like, really that much is what?
(36:05):
I'm not sure it might have been an exaggeration, but
the fact is, right now, they'll pay you to do it.
They will pay for it, whereas in a few years
it's going to be mandatory and then they won't pay
for it anymore. Probably you'll be stuck. You'll still have
to do it, or you'll get fined.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Well, and that's that's the whole idea, is being fined
for something that feels like a natural part of the
relationship with the land. But that relationship with the land
is often has ignored the externalities of the folks who
are downstream, for instance, thinking about the long term impact
on the production of your cattle herd because they're using
a natural water source and standing in their own poop.
(36:44):
You've been very generous with your time, and I thank you.
But there's a couple more questions, and one is to
the wilderness, so to speak, the same thing. But I
have two poodles, and how do you I've been always
I've been struck watching these dogs that are so thoroughly
bred for human purposes interact with the environment, which I
(37:08):
like watching your poodle bar so to speak, like an
invasic plant might be too interact with the meadow.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I think she's working on discovering her inner wolf. I mean,
there's a definite difference in her behavior on the mountain
versus in the suburbs. She is just captivated by all
the smells. She wants to check out everything. She's always
sticking her head in the meadow, and I'm always worried
about snakes, and you know, if I let her, she
(37:41):
would dash into the meadow. And she always wants to
run after deer rabbits while that also in the suburbs.
She caught a squirrel in the suburbs one day, and
so she's pretty fast. She didn't kill it, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
You know, one of the things you're talking about is
this awareness of their environment that I never gave dogs
credit for until I watched them. So the river in
my backyard is a very narrow creek in the summer,
but in the winter is like a ninety five foot
wide raging torrent. Wow, And it'll go up and down,
and as it does, the dogs are out there and
you can see that they're going what happened? You know,
(38:20):
there's new stuff, there's new smells, and they're so tuned
into the land that in a way that you don't
get the opportunity to see in the city.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, they're animals exactly. You remember
their animals and what their natural instincts are, especially for
the breed. Poodles are really smart and goofy, and and
she is really inclined to just go after smells. Poodles
(38:51):
are also retrievers. People don't always know that, so she
is verly interested in going after animals, but not necessarily
killing them, just chasing after them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah, when the deer watch the yard, they just take off,
and so we have to watch them very carefully, like
you were saying, and.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Worry about do you have a GPS or something, or
do you have a fence or what do you do we.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Have well trained dogs who accept when the deer races
up the game trail that comes through the backyard will
not go or I.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Tell them that's good. I haven't quite gotten there yet.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
GPS. I did see a collar that does that the
other day, and I thought, is that too much tech?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
What's next in the journey of restoration? What's on the
docket for this summer?
Speaker 2 (39:42):
As you look at the meadow right now, I'm actually
waiting to see if I'll get a winter burn. I'm
hoping to burn several acres of meadow that haven't been
burned yet, and then I'll see what grows up in
the summer. And also I have I have two nest
boxes for the American kestral that were just installed, and
(40:06):
I'm supposed to see if I see any of them
flying around, because they'll start looking for their spring nesting places.
The kestrel is in decline in this area, and several
organizations are studying the kestrel. So the Smithsonian Grassland Bird Initiative,
which is a collaboration among these various nonprofits, gave us
(40:29):
these nest boxes put them up so that they can study.
And that's something I'm very excited about. And in fact,
the other day I saw a kestrel flying over the meadows,
So I'm hoping that I'll see nesting kestrels there and
I do because I'm continuing to do work here. It
didn't stop with the end of the book. I am
(40:49):
keeping a newsletter. I'm writing a newsletter called the Bad
Naturalist Newsletter, and it's free. It has a lot of photos.
You can subscribe in my website where I talk about
new things that I'm finding or doing on the mountain.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
I'm going to be following that story and I hope
you I hope you get a castrat. We have. We
have a great blue paron who's nests right about our house,
and it is an awesome thing to see an animal
like that. And I'm envious of you being able to
see a castro. Paula, thank you so much for your
time today.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Oh it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Hey, welcome back. You just heard my conversation with Paula Wyman,
author of Bad Naturalist, and you can find her book
at Amazon, on Powell Book's website, or at your local
bookstore now, and I encourage you to sign up for
a Bad naturalist newsletter, which he describes as updates from
a writer stuck in bramble, stinking of bear pooh. You
can find that newsletter and lots more about Paula at
(41:51):
Paulawyman dot com. That's all one word, no space, no dash,
and Wyman is spelled w h y M A N
Paula Wyman and I hope you enjoyed that conversation as
much as I did. It was a great five hundredth episode.
Paula's decision to move to and take care of in
the sense that she's decided to preserve and restore it
a plot of land, represents a new option for people
(42:14):
who are enabled by technology to stay connected to the
economy and earn a living while investing their time and
energy in a local relationship with land and people. And
I think that's a really interesting new option. It's the
opposite of what we usually hear about when we hear
the term digital nomad. That movement encourages people to travel
from place to place. It's kind of like a perpetual
(42:36):
tourist lifestyle while working remotely, never putting down routes, always
on the move, which while it can feel pretty good
and be a fabulous learning experience insulates those digital nomads
from the challenges and consequences of modern life, even if
their activities seem to be one of the fullest expressions
of the modern mobile life. I personally have been a
(42:58):
digital nomad since nineteen ninety three, when I was working
at a magazine and asked why I had to come
to the office every day when I had an Apple
Power Book and an Internet connection, and I was told
by my editor, well, you have to come to the
office because we tell you to. Well, I'd just written
a book called PowerBook, The Digital Nomad's Guide, and being
(43:19):
young and full of myself, I just up and quit.
So for the next thirty one years, I lived one
hundred miles and sometimes a thousand miles away from the
office is where I worked. Instead of being anchored to
the jobs, I anchored myself and my family to a
place where we had family and we had friends, and
my kids could grow up the way my wife and
I wanted to raise them. I've always had concerns about
(43:39):
that other digital nomad lifestyle because it's a great experience
to travel and everybody should do it, but it also
allows people to move on, not to recognize the challenges
that locales have and join in with the community to
make a difference to preserve it. For instance, the world
can collapse around you when you take that approach because
(43:59):
he just keep moving on and eventually it all falls apart.
That's happened to many nomadic cultures. For example, the Scythians
you might have read about in history their grazing lands
and the steps of Eurasian declined due to their overgrazing,
and then by settlements of sedentary civilizations that had laid
down roots where the Scythians had been visiting intermittently. Their
(44:21):
choice of lifestyles vanished before their eyes. And the point
is of all of this is we have the ability
to adopt a place independent from where we work, and
that I think is really a new and great option
that only took true flower in the beginning of the
twenty first century. Paula's a living example, and she wrote
(44:42):
a book that you can learn from encourage to take
the time to read it. Paula's comment that in the
country people pay attention to nature and particularly the weather.
Like urban folks. Track traffic is important. It's an integral
part of life out here, not a place to go
and get away. Nature's right here, It's us wherever you are.
(45:03):
Take the time to tune into the land, the soil,
the rocks, the bugs, the plants, the trees, the animals
and birds. The reward for your effort will be astonishing
new experiences. For instance, when I moved to live beside
a river, I knew about flooding, but I didn't realize
it would be like having a wild animal in my backyard,
one that could grow from a shallow, twelve foot wide
(45:24):
creek into an eighty five foot wide, raging torrent at
the height of rainy season fourteen and fifteen feet deep.
I'd heard and chosen heard about this, of course, and
I'd chosen a place that is not likely to be flooded.
But the revelation of seeing how nature pulses with the
seasons was an astonishing experience. In the city, nature was
(45:46):
mostly contained, and water flowed in gutters and then underground.
The lesson I took from bad naturalist is that around
every corner, around every tree, a new discovery awaits. We
just have to choose to look. Take it from me,
the effort is well worth it. And would you take
a look at other episodes of Sustainability in your Ear.
You know we've got five hundred shows to choose from
(46:08):
and share them with your community. Writing review on your
favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us. Folks,
you are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to
create less waste. Please tell your friends, your family, or
your coworkers, the people you meet on the street that
they can find Sustainability in your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
(46:29):
Audible or any fine purveyor of podcast goodness that they prefer.
Thanks for your support, and thank you for six years
of your attention. I'm Mit Tracliffe. This is Sustainability in
your Ear and we will be back with another innovator
interviews soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself,
take care of one another, and really let's all take
(46:50):
care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable, carbon neutral society. I'm your host, Mitt Tracliffe.
Thank you for joining the conversation today. And you know what,
today is a big, big episode for Sustainability in Your
(00:30):
Ear because it marks our five hundredth programs since we
launched back in twenty eighteen. So I want to take
a moment to thank each of you for listening. By learning, connecting,
and acting, you are making the great ship of society turn,
albeit never fast enough and constantly in the face of
pushback from extractive industries that too often prioritize profit over planet.
(00:53):
But as you've heard on the program, a new generation
of leaders, companies, activists, authors, in flow, runcers and investors
are working to make a positive impact. And I'm committed
to getting the story out and I hope you'll continue
to share the show to help connect more people to
the movement for an environmentally responsible, sustainable and carbon neutral
(01:14):
economy that we can pass on to our children, grandchildren,
and many more generations of humans. Thank you all for
your attention and time over the past six years. Sincerely, folks,
thank you very much. Now let's get to today's conversation.
I've been looking forward to this opportunity to talk with
Paula Wyman, who's the author of a captivating collection of
(01:35):
essays called Bad Naturalist. It's a tale about her purchase
and efforts to restore a couple hundred acres of meadowland
in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia that had once
been a farm and orchard. Paula's stories explore the complex
interplay of identity, vulnerability, and the natural world with wit
and depth and an eye for natural detail. Her work
(01:56):
feels especially resonant for me personally, as I also recently
traded city life for the rhythms of the countryside, settling
into a holler in the Cascade Mountains of southern Oregon.
A holler, by the way, is a place that lies
below the land around it, surrounded by horizons higher than
it on all sides, you know, sort of a cul
de sac in nature. Like Paula, I've found myself reflecting
(02:19):
on the connection between our internal lives and the landscapes
we inhabit. How nature becomes a mirror for our thoughts, decisions,
and personal changes. It was a pleasure to encounter and
read Paula's stories because they weave the every day and
the extraordinary together, and I'm excited to explore what she's learned.
Paula's book Bad Naturalist is available online and in bookstores now,
(02:41):
and you can follow her work on her site, which
is at Paulawyman dot com. Wyman is spelled why m
an Paulawyman dot com. No space, no dash. We're going
to jump into this great conversation right after a brief
commercial break. Stay tuned, Welcome to the show, Paula. How
(03:04):
you doing today?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Thank you so much. I'm doing well. I'm glad to
be here.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Thank you for joining us today. It's a special day
because we're doing our five hundredth episode and it's a
pleasure to have you here because I really enjoyed your book.
But I wanted to ask a question to start off.
Is you know, after reading it, I don't think you're
a bad naturalist? Why the self deprecating idle?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Well, besides the fact that my publisher really liked that title,
the reason I would say is in the beginning, I
really didn't know that much about what I needed to
do in order to do an ecological restoration, which is
what I'm trying to do here. And I made a
lot of mistakes and there were times when I feared
(03:44):
I was making things worse until I learned that that
was normal. And at the same time, it was something
of a surprise to me. Even though I'd been passionate
about nature for my whole life and had done a
lot of deep reading on it, it was still a
surprise to me that there wasn't going to be an answer,
(04:06):
Like no one could come to me and say, Okay,
here's what you should do and it will absolutely work.
And that was so I get. So that's where bad
naturalists comes.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
It's kind of, you know, the human condition is that
constant and uncertainty about what's going to happen when you
intervene in anything. But we really can't understand nature without
beginning to understand ourselves. What did you learn about your
life and its impact on the environment as you were
working on the book and working on the restoration project.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, one of the things that really hit me was
when I started to understand all the interconnections among species
and plants here, and just on such a minuscule level
that there's this caterpillar that will eat a leaf gall
that's created by mites on a cherry tree, and there's
(04:56):
an ant that protects that caterpillar from being eaten by others.
And if one of those things, if one of those
links broke, if someone decided to spray the tree and
kill the mites, it'd actually killed the caterpillars. Those kinds
of interconnections made me realize that I could also have
(05:18):
a very negative effect if I accidentally, or with the
best intentions, did the wrong thing. And even just unknowingly,
the things we do every day I thought about because
I grew up in the suburbs. I've lived in the city,
I've lived in the suburbs. Now I live on the mountain,
(05:38):
and all those times in the suburbs, a lot of
times I was thinking of the natural world around me
in terms of pests, the mosquitoes, the mice, the ants
that were coming into my house all the time, and
instead of engaging with the natural world, where I found
myself in a more positive way. So that's something that
(05:59):
I really started doing here on the mountain, which I
should have done before.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Tell us about the land. It's a large track. What
does it look like? What does it feel like to
stand there?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, right now I'm looking out a window at about
seventy five acres of rolling hills and meadow, open meadow
on a mountaintop. It's very unusual out here. There are
many rock out croppings that are covered with lichens. There's
a grove of old orchard cherries, also covered with lichens.
(06:32):
Everything here is covered with lichens. And right now there's
snow on the ground, so I can actually see. I
can see this deep mountain road that leads down and
I can see that it's still covered with snow, and
there are forested slopes oak hickory forest. There is a
(06:52):
high point at one end where you have like a
one hundred and eighty degree view of the Blue Ridge
and the Piedmont in the distance, and Shenandoah National Park
is about five miles across the valley. So I can
see Old Rag, which is one of the It has
sort of a bald rocky top and I can see
(07:16):
that from here. And there are all of these very
steep hills in parts of the meadows, especially at either end.
One of them I call the sledding hill, and this
is a good time to sled down it. And at
the other end there's a high point where there's an
old oak which probably grew in the open. It's still
(07:38):
in the open and it's buffeted by wind and weather
and so on, because it's right at the edge overlooking
the valley, and it's about three hundred years old. So
we know that that spot at least has been open
that long. And the reason we know that it grew
in the open was because of its shape. It has
(08:00):
a wide trunk and a very round crown rather than
a tall and thin, you know, trying to reach the
sunlight if it had been surrounded by other trees. So
I had a scientist out here at one point who
specializes in grasslands, and he said he thought that this mountaintop,
(08:22):
a lot of it, had been open for many more
years than what the farming history reflects, and he thought
it was probably savannah, you know, grassland with the occasional tree.
He said, it would have been maintained by lightning induced
fires just about every five years.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
You're describing reading the land in a really intimate way.
And as I related in the introduction, I'm trying to
do the same thing with where I've just recently moved,
and I've spent the last year, you know, cataloging plants
and rocks and animals and those types of soil in
this little holler I live in the Mind Mountains. How
did you get started learning about the place?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Well, this is a great question because I came to
My interest in nature has always been more focused on
insects and critters, animals, and often in unusual places. So
I wasn't really focused on plants, except occasionally. I tend
to do deep dives into things and become obsessed. So
(09:26):
for a while I was obsessed with mangrove swamps. For
a while I was obsessed with horseshoe crabs, or there
was another time I was obsessed with lizards. So I
would go through these things, and the mountain is my
deep dive. So the first thing I had to do
was learn something about plants, which I really I mean,
you can't restore native meadows without learning about plants. So
(09:49):
I found out that the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in
Virginia has a division called Virginia Working Landscapes, and they
help farmers and landowners improve the native habitats on their land.
They give them advice and they're also studying it. They
(10:10):
are trying to learn more about the species here. And
there are grassland bird species that are in steep decline,
like the bob white quail, grasshopper sparrow, and I wanted
to be able to encourage these ground nesting birds. So anyway,
the woman who came out from Virginia working landscapes, they
(10:32):
did bird and plant surveys here. So the first thing
I got, very first thing, really just a couple months
after we bought the land, I had this list of species,
including invasive species, you know, the dominant species and what
else you know they saw on the mountain. Well, then
I needed to learn how to recognize them myself, and
(10:55):
I ended up walking around with Charlotte as Charlotte Lorick
is the woman's name. She's now with a place called
Oaks Baning Garden Foundation, and she is a real expert
on plants, and she was able to point out and
identify plants even when they were dead and dry. And
I started learning a lot from her, and every now
(11:16):
and then I'd send her a photo and she would say, oh,
that's such and such and then I got a really
good app and a bunch of guide books, and I'd
walk around with juggling these things. So I started to
recognize things. I started to learn, and every person I
talked with would come out here and walk around with
me and point to things. And i'd meet one person,
(11:38):
they'd say, Oh, have you talked with so and so yet?
So that would lead to the next person, the next person.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
You kind of weave yourself into the community and the
land that way. You know, writers, A lot of people
think writers get people to talk to them because they're writers.
But it sounds to me like you could learn this
from anybody. It'd certainly been the case that I'd learned
this from my neighbors. Right. What's your advice to somebody
who maybe doesn't even have the land, but wants to
understand the land that they're surrounded by. What would you
(12:06):
suggest they do? What's their first moment?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, say, the first thing I would do is start
paying closer attention. Just walk around wherever you happen to be,
and observe and allow whatever it is that engages you
most to be the thing that grabs you, because then
(12:30):
you'll really absorb it and stick with it, and you'll
also learn about the things that are connected with it,
like with that might and the caterpillar that I was
talking about. I really wanted to know more about this
caterpillar and why it ate these mites and you know,
and and why it was good for the tree. So
(12:55):
one thing leads to another, and I think curiosity buyers
more curiosity, and then it can eventually inspire action. At
least that's the hope.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah. In fact, I remember one early in my time here,
I walked outside and there was an oak leaf with
a gall on it, a giant gall that lived like
an alien pod. Noticed that they were all over the place,
and it was a spider that was inside. Was just
kind of tuning into it and then doing the research
because I've got hundreds of pictures of rocks in this
rock app, you know, hundreds of pictures of insects and
(13:29):
an insect app and trying to get it all in,
to take it all in is I think maybe the
modern mistaken way the wander, the kind of the brows
that you're talking about, might be a more fitting way
to go about it. You know, you declared early in
the book that restoration is the process of moving forward,
which suggests we can't really restore or go back to
(13:50):
the previous state of nature. Can you talk about that
tension between where the land is today and where you want.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
It to be sure? Yeah, the word restoration is really
the wrong word, and it's it's hard to find the
right word because restore implies going back to something, and
you can't only go backwards with land because new plants
are coming here, new creatures are coming here. You can't
(14:18):
erase them. You can manage them, but you can't. You
may be able to manage them, but you can't erase them.
So really it's about moving forward to get to the
best possible.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Balance balance of what the past.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah. Yeah, Well it depends on your goals because and
it also depends very much on what you start with, because,
as in so many things, what you see is what
you get in many ways. I was told early on
that given the number of native plants that were growing
(14:54):
here amid grasses that were left from the cattle farm
years and invasive plants that been you know, brought in
in various ways, those native plants indicated that there were
native plants in the seed bank, you know, seeds waiting
in the soil, and if they could get light and
water and room to grow. You know, if I could
(15:18):
clear out the fescues and some of the hay grasses
and the dense matt, I might see those native plants
grow back. But it was a big mystery. You don't know.
So how do you decide? Well, it really depends on
your goals. You know, if you're a farmer, you don't
want a bunch of milkweed growing in your pastor. And
if you're starting out with eighty percent non native plants,
(15:42):
then saying oh, I'm going to get to eighty percent
native plants is maybe, you know, not not the right right,
You'll just be frustrated. It also depends what kind of
place you have. If if you're talking about a suburban backyard, well,
then you have a much better chance of getting to
that eighty percent, and even better.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
When you think about this, how would you describe the
criteria for thinking about what is natural in a place?
Nature's constantly on the move, migrating, spreading, and also dying off.
How do you how do you describe natural.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
When you talk about Well, I would say what's unnatural
is what people brought in for one thing, and that's
you know, as long as the history of humans, but
especially in the past few hundred years, what people intentionally
and unintentionally brought in on you know, to plant or
(16:43):
through shipping through exotic plant trades. In the late seventeen hundreds,
how a lot of it started. Then a lot of
invasive plants started here. That way to me, if a
plant serves the local wildlife community, serves the local community
(17:07):
food or shelter effectively, then then it's fine. But if
it's if it's not, if it's doing the opposite, like
so many invasive plants become monocultures and push out native plants.
Native plants evolved with native wildlife, so a lot of
(17:29):
native wildlife, like pollinators, can't use non native plants at all,
whether they're invasive or not, they can't use them. So
when native plants get replaced, those bees and butterflies die
out right, and that's a problem for us, you know,
it's a problem for the ecosystem, and eventually it's a
(17:49):
problem for us as well. So I look at it like,
if if those plants are native, they're probably better serving
the local ecosystem, the local community. But how you decide
what is native. I guess maybe what you're asking, but
I think it's it's like over thousands of years or
maybe more, you know, the creatures that evolved together with
(18:11):
these plants. That's that's what uh, that's what determines it
for me, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
I guess so another way, incumbency been there long enough
that it actually fits in. But that's the challenge that
we have is how do we move from not being
part of it to being part of it again, which
I think is our great delusion that we're not.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, I think I'm trying to remember if it was.
I mean, kudzu has been here for a couple hundred
years and there it still has no predators. I mean,
dear work nipple on it. But but it has no predators.
And that's the problem with a lot of the plants
that come from elsewhere is that they leave their predators
(18:52):
behind and there's nothing to stop them. And they've developed
all of these great, you know, impressive abilities to reproduce
and spread in order to defeat those predators so that
they can continue to survive at home. But here, all
of those abilities just mean that they outperform the plants
(19:14):
that actually do feed wildlife. And insects here.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
I want to continue to dig into this, but we
need to say commercial break. Will be right back. Okay, Now,
let's return to the discussion with author Paula Wyman, who
writes about her moving to and restoring an abandoned farm
in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Or book Bad Naturalist is
available now and hardback. Paula, as we were talking, I'm
(19:43):
wondering what bias or misinformation about nature that's propagated by
our media and just humans talking to one another. Should
we be vigilant about recognizing and being aware of when
we're thinking about decisions about our relationship with nature.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Well, I think a great example would be my idealized
view of what I thought was going to happen when
I lived here. I looked at on this meadow and
I thought, okay, I'm gonna actually, in general, any place.
I decided to plant a small meadow. I sort of
(20:20):
envisioned myself in this little writer shed in the middle
of this meadow, with flowers growing everywhere and butterflies flying
around me. I didn't think about ticks or rattlesnakes. I
didn't think about wind weather. And I think that that
idealization and that romanticization of nature is really prevalent in
(20:45):
a lot of pop culture and marketing. And the other
part of it is the idea that nature is going
to be pristine. And this this very like, I don't know,
monumental thing. It's it's sort of intimidating.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Like I understand, that's what we all want to think about.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, I understand, I mean, and I understand and agree
with leave no trace and all of that. That is
all obviously very important. But our national parks and state
parks and local parks don't hold the majority of natural space.
And I think that that is something that people may
(21:34):
not realize that literally eighty five percent of grasslands are
privately owned, more than fifty percent of forests are privately owned.
That means that private landowners have a responsibility to care
for that land, maybe not as if it's a national park,
(21:55):
but to care for it in a way that maintain
it for whatever local natural community relies on it, even
while you know they're farming or doing their recreation. It's
(22:15):
possible to do all that.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
As I think about this, we try to legislate our
relationship with nature right the boundaries of a national part
as you're describing are kind of this arbitrary line in
our minds. Can we have a fixed policy about this,
or do we have to roll with nature and nature
and follow nature's lead more than we do instead of
trying to shape nature.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
I think we have to manage. I think that was
the conclusion I came to after a lot of difficulty
thinking I could control things, you know, coming to the suburbs,
trying to control mosquitoes, trying to control the mice that
kept coming into my attic. I came to it with
(23:02):
that word in my head and that tendency to control,
and I had to I had to back off and
realize that managing plants were going to do what they
were going to do. Animals were going to bring in seeds,
wind was going to act, and weather was going to act,
and I couldn't control any of that, and I just
had to but sort of coaxing things or directing things.
(23:26):
I think in my book I said something about like
like like dealing with toddlers, you kind of try to redirect.
But the thing is that the point is that since
the beginning, humans have been affecting nature. They've been working on,
you know, the natural environment in various ways and the
(23:48):
idea of now let's just leave it alone and see
what happens. I think once we've started managing something, now
we have to manage it in the right direction. We
can't just let it go and say maybe a good example.
This is not a great example, actually, but sometimes I
think of the movement for no mo May Okay, in
the Northeast, a lot of people there's a movement to
(24:13):
not mow your lawn in may. I think the idea
is to somehow help pollinators or birds. But if what
you've got is a lawn of non native fescue, not
mowing it is not going. All you're doing is allowing
the fescue to seed and growing more fescue. But what
could happen Because I allowed my subban lawn to grow
(24:38):
up for ten days and I found these flowers in
it that I didn't know existed, and some of them
were native. So you might find something like that and
that's worth preserving, and then you know, mow around it.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
But you talk about our affecting nature, but is it
one of the delusions that we have is they were
not part of it.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Yes, that's absolutely true. We carry it with us everywhere.
We go. And it's funny when we say I'm going
to be I want to be in nature. I want
to be closer to nature, and like, well, you're pretty
close to it all the time, to.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Feel it inside for a change instead of looking forward.
And you dwelt on this in a number of portions
of the book was the role of fire and the
way that we try to prevent fire and have prevented fire.
And we are actually speaking on a day when a
third of la is at risk of burning to the ground.
How is human intervention using fire changed in recent centuries,
(25:34):
particularly in the land that you've been on.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
Early on, Like I said, a scientist had told me
that this meadow was likely maintained by lightning deuced fires
every few years. And I don't know about indigenous activity
here in this particular spot, but I know that indigenous
people of this as we know, used fire effectively. And
(26:00):
when oh, I'm trying to remember what year it was now,
but the when the Forest Service came along and started
suppressing fire, that's when, well, I mean there were fires
burning out of control because of trains going through the
woods and throwing off sparks, and people didn't know how
to stop at fires, So it was a problem. It
(26:22):
was a real problem. But the fire suppression was over
zealous and it resulted in excessive understory growth in forests.
It resulted in the growth of, you know, the succession
of fields that had been grassland or meadow before. I
(26:44):
think in part it's one of the things that led
us to this place where we have these devastating fires.
Of course they're worth worse because of global warming, but
they're also worse because there's all that fuel and if
we hadn't suppressed fires for all that time, you know.
But now that is starting to change in some places
(27:07):
from what I understand, especially out west, they're doing some
understory burns and I've done prescribed burns here on the mountain,
and it's really important for native plants. Yeah, it's very
important for the.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Land on fire.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
It was really fascinating to watch just everything had to
be perfect. The wind couldn't be above a certain speed,
the humidity had to be within certain parameters so it
wouldn't burn too much or would burn enough. It was
It was really interesting, and there were seven people out here,
(27:46):
some of them were volunteers. They were with the State
Department of Forestry and they knew what they were doing.
They cut a fire line around a field and they
would start from me out side with these drip torches,
and just seeing a hillside on fire, I mean, it's
(28:10):
both disturbing and exciting. But then afterwards, afterwards the soil
it kind of almost looks like coffee grounds. It's like
this rich color. And the burn I had here was
in early March, and so a few weeks later, early spring,
(28:31):
I could see things starting to grow. And that was
really exciting because it was sort of validating to see, Okay,
they were native plants coming up. For the most part,
native plants and native plants here are encouraged and aided
by fire. They evolved in the presence of fire, and
(28:53):
or many of them did. And so for instance, blueberry
bush will produce more blueberries if it's if you burned it,
and a lot of plants will produce more seeds grow
more prolifically, whereas non native plants are not necessarily going
to do well in the presence of fire, although that
is something you have to be careful about because there
(29:14):
are some invasive plants that do like fire. So when
we were choosing which fields to burn and Luckily I
had great advice about that. I had to make sure
that there weren't certain plants in those fields, and that
can be hard when you've got a really dense old hayfield.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
You've talked about the expertise that you've been able to
tap into, and a lot of that was your neighbors,
And I'm wondering if you could talk a little about
the difference between what the urban view of nature and
that or the rural community is, and maybe share what
your thoughts are about how those two worlds could be
bridged in different ways to create a better view of
our relationship with nature.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Well, I think maybe when you live in city or
in a suburb, as I have, you're definitely more shielded
in a lot of ways from nature. But when you're
in a rural area, you need to focus on it really,
probably as much as people in the city focus on traffic.
(30:16):
And you need to know what's happening with the weather.
You need to know what's happening with your water. You know,
most people out here are on well water like we are,
and you need to keep track of those sorts of things.
And you know there's in some ways, for better or worse,
less government, you know, doing things. So I come from
(30:37):
a county where I grew up in Maryland, where the
government did all sorts of things for you, and now
in a rural place where that's not the case because
it's just a much smaller government. But the other side
of that is that people rely on their neighbors for things.
And even though we all live very far apart, my
(30:58):
nearest neighbors are about a mile away. But you know,
we actually when it was going to snow the other night,
we were texting each other saying, well, what should we
park a car at the bottom of the road. Do
you mind if I park here? There were you know,
That's just how it is.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Yeah, that's been so striking for me too, is I
have a much much better relationship with my neighbors here
in the sense that I even talked to them. I
remember I lived in San Francisco when we had the
Luma periat A quake back in the nineteen eighties, and
it was the time when everybody ran outside because of
the earthquake, and it was the first time we met
our neighbors and everybody checked on one another and we
(31:34):
did the things that happened in the country but then
we went back to being completely isolated. But you're talking
about this new intimate relationship. It's a fascinating difference in
your comment about how government does more for us and
is I think one of the keys to understanding the
conflict that people have about the role of government. The
red and the blue are so clearly oriented to urban
(31:58):
and e seas me rural and urban thinking. Fundamentally, it'd
be remarkable if we could see through this conflict and
begin to talk about what we have in common, the
way our neighbors do, and as we found in the country.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
I do want to say that I love my neighbors
in the suburbs. They are wonderful people. I do think
that well. I actually an example came to mind because
several years ago in a storm, we had some trees
that knocked down some other trees and our fence and
so on, and we found out there was a program
(32:32):
in the county where we lived in the suburbs that
would help you plant native plants to you know, and
and set up a natural drainage system like a rock
you know, sort of a rock based drainage system. And
so we got that help from the county to do
(32:54):
that when we when we had that happen and here
I mean that ially don't know if I doubt that
there's money for that, you know. But but all on
the other hand, actually the Soil and Water Conservation District
does help fund cleaning up riparian areas, fencing off streams
(33:14):
from cattle erosion control. So it's but it's a different focus. See,
it's not making your backyard pretty with native plants. It's
really functional stuff. And so they actually helped me with
the tree planting that we did in a riparian area
and on any rodable slope, and that was that was
(33:35):
very important and hugely helpful. And and and in terms
of government, I also have received advice from Department of Agriculture,
the NRCS. The Department of Agriculture advisors farmers on improving
native habitats in places where they're not producing, you know.
(33:56):
And so I got a I got a huge amount
of advice from the government. No money, but uh do
we get money, No, just ours management plan.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
It's a different trade off as we were talking about before.
And your neighbors stand in instead of the government a
lot more here in the cities. It's a I just
I'm constantly struck by the animosity that the two sides
feel about the support the other one gets m And
it's it's challenging to have the conversation at all with
(34:34):
city people. I have more of these conversations with folks
in the neighborhood because we are often trying to deal
with something. During fire season, for instance, we all have
watch duty and we're all watching what's going to go
at what's going to happen. And there's a or with
regard to irrigation rights off of the river that we
live on Muh and that's scene as an imposition. If
(34:56):
you don't have access to the water or the limit,
there are limits on the water, and for those of
us who lived downstream, that's of the concern. And that
tension is actually between the neighbors rather than because of
the government's intervention, because it becomes a personal relationship rather
than something abstract and far away in DC or in
(35:16):
whatever state capital you. So it's a really interesting tension.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
The thing that what you just said about the water
fencing off the streams for cattle has been that is
a contentious issue because some farmers are eager to do it. Obviously,
you don't mean it's healthier for the cattle as well.
They've actually shown there are studies that have shown that
(35:42):
cattle will gain more weight and be healthier if they're
not standing in their own you know, drinking it. But
when you fence off part of the stream, you're fencing
off part of the land. And one farmer framed it
as I'm losing one hundred ag if they fence off
my stream, and I was like, really that much is what?
(36:05):
I'm not sure it might have been an exaggeration, but
the fact is, right now, they'll pay you to do it.
They will pay for it, whereas in a few years
it's going to be mandatory and then they won't pay
for it anymore. Probably you'll be stuck. You'll still have
to do it, or you'll get fined.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
Well, and that's that's the whole idea, is being fined
for something that feels like a natural part of the
relationship with the land. But that relationship with the land
is often has ignored the externalities of the folks who
are downstream, for instance, thinking about the long term impact
on the production of your cattle herd because they're using
a natural water source and standing in their own poop.
(36:44):
You've been very generous with your time, and I thank you.
But there's a couple more questions, and one is to
the wilderness, so to speak, the same thing. But I
have two poodles, and how do you I've been always
I've been struck watching these dogs that are so thoroughly
bred for human purposes interact with the environment, which I
(37:08):
like watching your poodle bar so to speak, like an
invasic plant might be too interact with the meadow.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
I think she's working on discovering her inner wolf. I mean,
there's a definite difference in her behavior on the mountain
versus in the suburbs. She is just captivated by all
the smells. She wants to check out everything. She's always
sticking her head in the meadow, and I'm always worried
about snakes, and you know, if I let her, she
(37:41):
would dash into the meadow. And she always wants to
run after deer rabbits while that also in the suburbs.
She caught a squirrel in the suburbs one day, and
so she's pretty fast. She didn't kill it, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
You know, one of the things you're talking about is
this awareness of their environment that I never gave dogs
credit for until I watched them. So the river in
my backyard is a very narrow creek in the summer,
but in the winter is like a ninety five foot
wide raging torrent. Wow, And it'll go up and down,
and as it does, the dogs are out there and
you can see that they're going what happened? You know,
(38:20):
there's new stuff, there's new smells, and they're so tuned
into the land that in a way that you don't
get the opportunity to see in the city.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, they're animals exactly. You remember
their animals and what their natural instincts are, especially for
the breed. Poodles are really smart and goofy, and and
she is really inclined to just go after smells. Poodles
(38:51):
are also retrievers. People don't always know that, so she
is verly interested in going after animals, but not necessarily
killing them, just chasing after them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Yeah, when the deer watch the yard, they just take off,
and so we have to watch them very carefully, like
you were saying, and.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Worry about do you have a GPS or something, or
do you have a fence or what do you do we.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Have well trained dogs who accept when the deer races
up the game trail that comes through the backyard will
not go or I.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Tell them that's good. I haven't quite gotten there yet.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
GPS. I did see a collar that does that the
other day, and I thought, is that too much tech?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
What's next in the journey of restoration? What's on the
docket for this summer?
Speaker 2 (39:42):
As you look at the meadow right now, I'm actually
waiting to see if I'll get a winter burn. I'm
hoping to burn several acres of meadow that haven't been
burned yet, and then I'll see what grows up in
the summer. And also I have I have two nest
boxes for the American kestral that were just installed, and
(40:06):
I'm supposed to see if I see any of them
flying around, because they'll start looking for their spring nesting places.
The kestrel is in decline in this area, and several
organizations are studying the kestrel. So the Smithsonian Grassland Bird Initiative,
which is a collaboration among these various nonprofits, gave us
(40:29):
these nest boxes put them up so that they can study.
And that's something I'm very excited about. And in fact,
the other day I saw a kestrel flying over the meadows,
So I'm hoping that I'll see nesting kestrels there and
I do because I'm continuing to do work here. It
didn't stop with the end of the book. I am
(40:49):
keeping a newsletter. I'm writing a newsletter called the Bad
Naturalist Newsletter, and it's free. It has a lot of photos.
You can subscribe in my website where I talk about
new things that I'm finding or doing on the mountain.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
I'm going to be following that story and I hope
you I hope you get a castrat. We have. We
have a great blue paron who's nests right about our house,
and it is an awesome thing to see an animal
like that. And I'm envious of you being able to
see a castro. Paula, thank you so much for your
time today.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Oh it's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Hey, welcome back. You just heard my conversation with Paula Wyman,
author of Bad Naturalist, and you can find her book
at Amazon, on Powell Book's website, or at your local
bookstore now, and I encourage you to sign up for
a Bad naturalist newsletter, which he describes as updates from
a writer stuck in bramble, stinking of bear pooh. You
can find that newsletter and lots more about Paula at
(41:51):
Paulawyman dot com. That's all one word, no space, no dash,
and Wyman is spelled w h y M A N
Paula Wyman and I hope you enjoyed that conversation as
much as I did. It was a great five hundredth episode.
Paula's decision to move to and take care of in
the sense that she's decided to preserve and restore it
a plot of land, represents a new option for people
(42:14):
who are enabled by technology to stay connected to the
economy and earn a living while investing their time and
energy in a local relationship with land and people. And
I think that's a really interesting new option. It's the
opposite of what we usually hear about when we hear
the term digital nomad. That movement encourages people to travel
from place to place. It's kind of like a perpetual
(42:36):
tourist lifestyle while working remotely, never putting down routes, always
on the move, which while it can feel pretty good
and be a fabulous learning experience insulates those digital nomads
from the challenges and consequences of modern life, even if
their activities seem to be one of the fullest expressions
of the modern mobile life. I personally have been a
(42:58):
digital nomad since nineteen ninety three, when I was working
at a magazine and asked why I had to come
to the office every day when I had an Apple
Power Book and an Internet connection, and I was told
by my editor, well, you have to come to the
office because we tell you to. Well, I'd just written
a book called PowerBook, The Digital Nomad's Guide, and being
(43:19):
young and full of myself, I just up and quit.
So for the next thirty one years, I lived one
hundred miles and sometimes a thousand miles away from the
office is where I worked. Instead of being anchored to
the jobs, I anchored myself and my family to a
place where we had family and we had friends, and
my kids could grow up the way my wife and
I wanted to raise them. I've always had concerns about
(43:39):
that other digital nomad lifestyle because it's a great experience
to travel and everybody should do it, but it also
allows people to move on, not to recognize the challenges
that locales have and join in with the community to
make a difference to preserve it. For instance, the world
can collapse around you when you take that approach because
(43:59):
he just keep moving on and eventually it all falls apart.
That's happened to many nomadic cultures. For example, the Scythians
you might have read about in history their grazing lands
and the steps of Eurasian declined due to their overgrazing,
and then by settlements of sedentary civilizations that had laid
down roots where the Scythians had been visiting intermittently. Their
(44:21):
choice of lifestyles vanished before their eyes. And the point
is of all of this is we have the ability
to adopt a place independent from where we work, and
that I think is really a new and great option
that only took true flower in the beginning of the
twenty first century. Paula's a living example, and she wrote
(44:42):
a book that you can learn from encourage to take
the time to read it. Paula's comment that in the
country people pay attention to nature and particularly the weather.
Like urban folks. Track traffic is important. It's an integral
part of life out here, not a place to go
and get away. Nature's right here, It's us wherever you are.
(45:03):
Take the time to tune into the land, the soil,
the rocks, the bugs, the plants, the trees, the animals
and birds. The reward for your effort will be astonishing
new experiences. For instance, when I moved to live beside
a river, I knew about flooding, but I didn't realize
it would be like having a wild animal in my backyard,
one that could grow from a shallow, twelve foot wide
(45:24):
creek into an eighty five foot wide, raging torrent at
the height of rainy season fourteen and fifteen feet deep.
I'd heard and chosen heard about this, of course, and
I'd chosen a place that is not likely to be flooded.
But the revelation of seeing how nature pulses with the
seasons was an astonishing experience. In the city, nature was
(45:46):
mostly contained, and water flowed in gutters and then underground.
The lesson I took from bad naturalist is that around
every corner, around every tree, a new discovery awaits. We
just have to choose to look. Take it from me,
the effort is well worth it. And would you take
a look at other episodes of Sustainability in your Ear.
You know we've got five hundred shows to choose from
(46:08):
and share them with your community. Writing review on your
favorite podcast platform will help your neighbors find us. Folks,
you are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to
create less waste. Please tell your friends, your family, or
your coworkers, the people you meet on the street that
they can find Sustainability in your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
(46:29):
Audible or any fine purveyor of podcast goodness that they prefer.
Thanks for your support, and thank you for six years
of your attention. I'm Mit Tracliffe. This is Sustainability in
your Ear and we will be back with another innovator
interviews soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself,
take care of one another, and really let's all take
(46:50):
care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green day.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!