Fact or Fiction
Creative environmental nonfiction may be a better way to communicate with readers about complex issues. Step aside, environmental journalism?
Projected excerpt from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. Sehome Arboretum, Feb. 29, 2024. // Photo by Nathan Barber
Story by Zoe Wiley // Photos by Nathan Barber
March 18, 2024
Wendy Walker stood at a north Whatcom County streambank, gazing at the task laid out before her and her team. Their goal was to build a bridge and remove the invasive canary reed grass– tedious work without the right tools. She and the environmental studies students she was working with would need a backhoe to remove the stubborn grass. Luckily for them, a local farmer volunteered his time and machine. He was politically conservative in nature. All he wanted was to see the stream full of salmon again so that his kids would get the chance to enjoy it.
“He didn't want to hear words like ecosystem and environmentalism, those were words that just set his hair on fire,” Walker, a senior instructor in the College of the Environment at Western Washington University, said. “But if we just talked about the stream, and the plants and the kids and never used the sort of environmental words that we all use in the university setting, there was no sense of othering. We were all in it together.”
Creative environmental nonfiction is a genre of writing that could bridge the gap between the public, like this farmer, and environmental scientists, scholars and journalists. While a valuable way to communicate information, traditional news journalism may not be the best way to reach a general audience. Creative environmental nonfiction takes a more nuanced approach than traditional environmental journalism. The genre is able to engage the public by evoking the power of imaginative storytelling to engage readers on a deeper, emotional level.
Walker has taught “The Literature of Nature and Place” for 20 years. The class first started as “The Writings of American Naturalists and Outdoorsmen” at Western in 1981. Now she and her students examine creative environmental nonfiction writing through a historical lens.
Sehome Arboretum, Feb. 29, 2024. // Photo by Nathan Barber
Many of the pieces in Walker’s class were written during the transcendentalist era, a period from 1830 to 1855. A similar writing style then resurfaced in the 1970s (with authors like Rachael Carson and Wendell Berry) in tandem with the environmental movement and continues to gain traction.
Gene Meyers also teaches the course. His curriculum showcases a variety of positionalities, voices and perspectives. Notably, his themes stretch the definition of environmental writing to include more human-centered ideas of nature.
Meyers uses his background in psychology to break down the process of understanding for his students as a combination of perspective, concepts, facts and experiences.
“A piece of fiction that digs deeply into a person's life and context contains more of reality than scientific data that have been constructed to be replicable,” Meyers said.
Storytelling staples like heroes, villains and dialogue between characters make creative nonfiction vivid and compelling. These elements speak to the reader in ways that traditional journalism might not.
Brad Underland, an honors English teacher at Olympia High School, has experienced firsthand how a personal account of an environmental experience can be influential. Regina Ballew, a former student of Underland’s, hiked about 2,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail one summer. Underland later invited her to speak with his students about what that meant for her physically and psychologically.
Ballew's experience piqued another student’s interest in the class. After hearing her story, Chandler Sam hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 90 days between his sophomore and junior years of college. At the time, Sam was majoring in political science. This experience changed his outlook drastically– he's now double majoring in English and biology and works part time for the Nature Conservancy in Washington, D.C.
Thoreau’s “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience” are additional parts of Underland’s curriculum, and were written during the transcendentalist era.
Sehome Arboretum, Feb. 29, 2024. // Photo by Nathan Barber
“Some people read him as the prophet of minimalism and simplicity and some read him as an outdoor writer and amateur naturalist who did a lot of study,” Underland said.
Creative environmental nonfiction is often written in the first person, like Thoreau’s work, or Ballew’s firsthand accounts of her time on the trail. This allows the reader to think critically about their own experiences.
People are more receptive to detailed, artful storytelling as opposed to simple presentation of facts, according to a study published in Climatic Change in 2019.
“My first time reading “Refuge” by Terry Tempest Williams I stayed home from work to finish it, crying at the sense of loss of connection to mother and earth and place,” Walker said.
Walker emphasizes the importance of creative environmental nonfiction in a world that is becoming increasingly polarized. Nuances and complexities get lost when we try to make things simple, according to Walker. Journalism often examines one topic at a time and fails to connect related issues for the reader. Creative environmental nonfiction embraces these complexities.
“I really think the way people make up their minds has less to do with facts, no matter how much we might want it to be that way, and more to do with emotions,” Walker said.
Sehome Arboretum, Feb. 29, 2024. // Photo by Nathan Barber
Zoe Wiley is a senior Environmental Journalism student minoring in Canadian American Studies and Geography. She enjoys exploring cross-border and big picture environmental issues.
Nathan Barber is a third year visual journalism student at Western. He gets inspired by wildlife restoration and wants to share that inspiration with others.