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I am a nature writer. I like to think that I have a fairly solid sort of relationship with the more-than-human world: I watch birds, I pick up frogs, I help my kids find beetles under logs. I think nature is complicated and marvellous. Sometimes I think it is beautiful. But never once in my life have I considered it sacred, and never once would it have occurred to me to consider my relationship with nature to be \u201cspiritual\u201d.<\/p>\n
Current trends suggest that I am missing something.<\/p>\n
\u201cNature connectedness\u201d is a wishy-washy term, but it is supported by a sturdy (and expanding) academic substrate. The authors of a 2025 study<\/a> make the troubling claim that higher levels of \u201cnature connectedness\u201d, or \u201ca sense of oneness with nature\u201d, are associated with \u201cgreater spirituality\u201d and scepticism about \u201cscience over faith\u201d. This is a finding that might surprise many in the natural sciences \u2013 it certainly surprises me \u2013 but the sentiment pervades recent nature writing.<\/p>\n Where the Druids of old worshipped nature, cultivating sacred groves of mistletoe and oak, we of the 21st century find enchantment and communion in our own sacred space: the nature section of the bookshop, somewhere between gardening and personal development. The fact is that it is in nature writing that many of us find much, if not all, of our nature connectedness. We get it at a remove, mediated, translated. We\u2019re birdwatchers by proxy, second-hand botanists, armchair explorers. And I think that is OK. Lives are busy, and most of us live in towns or suburbs \u2013 one of the great things about being human is the fact that we can be transported to deep woods or high hills by ink marks on wood pulp.<\/p>\n The problem, I think, isn\u2019t in how we connect but in what we think we are connecting with. Nature isn\u2019t a fantasy or a parable. It exists on the same mundane earthbound plane as us \u2013 it is us \u2013 and it is still marvellous, still fascinating, still spectacular, examined through a scientific lens. It is hard to see what is gained by uncoupling science from a sincere love of nature.<\/p>\n It might help if we were to reconsider our enthusiasm for finding lessons in nature. Perhaps we really can learn<\/a> from moss how to stick together and abide by natural laws, learn<\/a> resilience from the grass and learn<\/a> from fungi to accept the ends of cycles, as nature writers have recently advised. But we can also learn from the shoebill how to turn our weaker child out of the nest to starve, and from various internal parasites how to force our hosts to die by suicide. Looking to nature<\/a> for advice seems about as wise as asking ChatGPT to solve our personal problems (both resources literally have all the answers). Perhaps wise humanism consists of finding our own lessons among ourselves.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the old question of where the human sits in all this \u2013 that is, the human with the book contract. The nature writer, some argue, needs above all to learn to shut up. But the awkward truth is that all writers are fond of the sound of their own voices. We all have to find a balance between what is going on out there and how things are in here \u2013 there is huge value in each, done well, and the best nature writers report from both frontiers with clarity, expertise, sensitivity and skill. Sometimes \u201cout there\u201d means the non-human \u2013 the animals, plants and landscapes among which we live. I wish that more often it was allowed to mean other humans, from different backgrounds and with diverse perspectives.<\/p>\n I do hope nature writing keeps growing, flaws and all. I hope it only gets richer, tanglier, more multidisciplinary, more messy. It will have to, if it is to keep pace with ever-changing \u201cnature\u201d, whatever we mean by that \u2013 with real life, the living, breathing world, and our place in it all.<\/p>\n