What Do Humans Like? What Do They Care About?

And what about nonhuman beings and doings?

A week or so back, a publication called Substack Writers at Work opened a forum to help writers find an audience for their work. The premise was this: commenters would post a subject they’d like to read about, and then any interested writers would compose a piece on that topic in the near future, tagging the initial commenter.

The idea was to give writers a chance at hitting on a topic of wider interest, and there was no limit on the subjects that could be proposed (other than that they be “non-newsy”).

Scrolling the comment section, I suppose in anticipation that someone might be interested in reading what I write about, I gradually became aware that virtually no one wanted to hear about nature or the other-than-human world.

People were interested in people.

And in fact, I saw many requests that interested me, human that I am: navigating friendships, workplace power dynamics, parenting, neurodivergence in self or loved ones, historical perspectives on current issues, and best practices for writing success.

But still, only one person had requested a non-human centered topic: “facts about whales.”

At that point, there were several hundred comments. Not all of them were topic suggestions. Many were replies, but I’d guess maybe 100 topics had been requested. So, one out of perhaps 100 was nature-related.

I checked back today, and the forum now has 1,255 comments. I dove in for another skim. Beyond that single request for facts about whales, only one other nature topic has materialized. It is sort of tangential, because it’s primarily about human experience, but let’s give it credit: “the way that connection to nature can help us find our way to recovery and to our true nature.”

Assuming maybe 250 topics have now been proposed, I’d say — generously — that at most one percent of those were nature-related.

I learned a couple of interesting things from this exercise.

~~ One, there is an incredible depth of knowledge among writers on Substack.

The request for facts about whales led to not one, but two marine biologists on this platform, plus a third writer who raises awareness of whales and other ocean species to benefit marine conservation, and a fourth who had become fascinated with whale song and wanted to write about it. How cool is that!

~~ Two, the vast, vast majority of people are primarily interested in human beings and human doings.

And that’s only natural.

If whales had a Substack equivalent, I suppose they’d want articles about whale things: the best krill blooms around, how to get in shape for migration, the real story on those boat-toppling orcas in the Mediterranean, and so forth.

To my mind, the comment section of that writing forum serves as a good indicator of what’s on people’s minds. What issues are they grappling with, and how can they manage certain aspects of their lives?

And, to be clear, I don’t think this means people are totally uninterested in nonhuman nature. I just don’t think it’s the first thing that comes up; I don’t think it’s top of mind.

Fair enough. But to be honest, I was left with a sort of miasmic feeling after reading through hundreds of comments. While there were certainly folks who wanted to know more about broader topics, it seemed many were “in their heads” about something personal. Something rather difficult.

Look, I am the queen of being all up in my head. And the only thing I’ve reliably found to help with the sickness of overthinking is to get out in nature, to get outside my head by going outside.

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I use words like “natural world” and “nature” as shorthand. Deeper thinkers than I am have inquired into what we can and should mean when we talk about nature. Those think-pieces have an important place, of course.

And yet, I know a couple of simple things are true: what nature means is different for all of us, and we know it when we see it.

Author photo. Lady Bird Johnson Grove, Redwood National Park, California

My daughter knows it when she feels it. Since she was just a wee person tottering bravely along a walking path, she has called it “that nature-y feeling.” She still loves to bounce a little in excitement when she’s got it, even though she’s almost as tall as me now.

She names that feeling in places that fit a more traditional definition of nature, such as when we’ve completed a three-day backpacking trip in the wilderness. But she’s also noted it when we’ve hiked through a forest park in city limits, with paved trails and a playground at the end, and when we’ve spent an hour walking along a California beach, with the freeway roaring just across the dunes.

I recall a nasty shock upon reading that inanimate, human-made creations now outweigh all the biomass — everything living — on Earth. But there are still places we can go where living things outnumber manmade things.

Maybe that’s one barometer for whether you’re “in nature.” Are there more living things around you, or more manmade ones?

As humans, we both know intuitively, and have proven empirically, that we feel better in nature. I suspect it’s that we resonate with being around other living beings. That, plus having some space from our typically loud, smelly, dangerous — in a word, unlovely — creations. Semi trucks, highways, strip-malls, fast food.

I understand why people want to read about people, but I will say that the more I am in nature — out from under the tyranny of manmade things — the more I am interested in what exactly is going on out there. You know, nonhuman beings and their nonhuman doings.

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I am so grateful for this little corner of the internet, for you lovely folks who read these pieces where I try in my small way to illuminate the infinite beauty of the natural world. I am aware many of you are extremely fine nature writers. Thank you.

And go get outside in nature, if you can.

In the meantime, maybe you just want to read for awhile, so I’ll share my favorite nature (or nature-adjacent) writers on Substack. I suspect I am missing quite a few, but my list below is a damn deep bench.

These, in no particular order, are the writers whose posts I never skip, along with a piece of their writing that has stuck with me.

Chris Clarke
Letters from the Desert

• In this piece, a committed advocate for Southwest desert ecosystems visits Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the Arizona/Mexico border, and tells a story of human hope and suffering through a photo essay of discarded items among the cacti.

Antonia Malchik
On the Commons

• This article on the origins of American property law sets the stage for perhaps the greatest genocide and ecocide the world has seen. A wildcrafted and abundant continent was thus transformed into the raw materials for capitalism. The implications are timely and globally relevant.

Jason Anthony
Field Guide to the Anthropocene

• This piece on the inexplicableness of human loneliness in a world truly bursting with other lives and intelligences to befriend is so, so poignant.

Rob Lewis
The Climate According to Life

• The topic of this post has stayed with me — it’s nominally about climate change policy, but Rob takes a new perspective, one that perhaps Mother Earth would endorse.

Richard Gregson
1001 Species

• I can’t stop thinking about the encounter that kicks off this thoughtful post, wherein an observer decries the rewilding of a former golf course by saying, “Yes, it’s such a shame that it’s gone. Look at it now, there’s nothing here. Just nature.”

Ruth Allen
Breccia by Ruth Allen

• Everything this former geologist and current therapist writes is so worthwhile, but something about this meditation on life holding fast to stone struck a special chord with me.

Amie Pearce
Beached

• I have a soft spot for the critically endangered Vaquita porpoise in the Gulf of California, and so does Amie Pearce. Her pieces on marine species and conservation are always good.

Bryan Pfeiffer
Chasing Nature

• An entomologist explores the beautiful complexity and downright weirdness of insect lives with his remarkable photographs as accompaniment. What could be better? This article highlighted a fascinating gender dynamic in winter moths that I just keep thinking about.

Bill Davison
Easy By Nature

• Maybe my favorite type of nature writing: here the author encounters a woodpecker pair and shares his gorgeous photography of a secret tree-trunk dance, with excursions into the natural history of the species, their appearance in art, and thoughts on human relationships thereto. So satisfying.

Chris Rurik
Infinite Peninsula

• If you might think field notes from a culvert-removal project sounds boring, think again. I love stories that find humans fixing infrastructure mistakes that harm our wild cousins — demolishing dams, taking down fences, building wildlife bridges over highways — give me those any day. Repairing roads so salmon can pass beneath to reach their home waters is magic stuff.

Patrick Donnelly
Sage and Sand

• Practicing wildlife and wildlands law in the western U.S. for several years, I’d been peripherally aware of Patrick’s work with the Center for Biological Diversity. But I only discovered his Substack a couple of months ago. Here’s a great recent piece on the importance of “getting it right” with our green energy transition so we don’t harm more than we heal.

Chloe Hope
Death & Birds

• The name of her publication says it all; don’t miss your chance to step inside the fairy portal she provides into a world of beauty and complexity with these two words as a starting point. You won’t regret it.

Erik Hogan
Field Notes

• Photographer Erik Hogan explores the wild places of his homeland of Appalachia, and the creative writing and visual storytelling that result are a delight. I keep this post in my inbox permanently so I can see his pic of a little barred owl face every time I scroll by — it never fails to give me a thrill.

Jonathan P. Thompson
The Land Desk

• The OG of writing on the U.S. West, former editor-in-chief of High Country News and still in the saddle there as a contributing editor, writer of great books; how lucky we are that he shares his thoughts here as well. This recent piece on things that “get his goat” entertained and informed, as they all do.

Mike Shanahan
Global Nature Beat

• I am astounded by Mike’s generosity in freely sharing a deep pool of resources for nature writers: recent scientific studies, global news updates, and employment opportunities for writers, among other things. Here’s an example of all the incredible info he shares each week.

Kollibri terre Sonnenblume
Speaking for the Trees, Wherever They’re From

• This excerpt from a book Kollibri is co-authoring with Nikki Hill captured my imagination: just envision a broad, fertile river valley, now converted to intensive chemical agriculture, but once a landscape of immense diversity and beauty supporting a healthy human and nonhuman population. Maybe, like me, you will start to think about returning it, to some degree, to that state of heaven on earth. Such good stuff.

Jeanne Malmgren
Rx Nature

• I loved this piece from this former journalist and current nature therapist on the healing sounds of the forest. See if you don’t feel a little better just from reading her words.

Max Wilbert
Biocentric with Max Wilbert

• Max is well known in enviro circles for his deep-green activism, writing, and the project to protect Thacker Pass from destructive lithium mining. His publication is full of gems. This one has really stayed with me.

Karen Davis
Life in the Real World

• Karen’s photography never fails to amaze. Recently, she has focused her lens on ducks and ice, and the results are stunning.

John Lovie
Mostly Water

• I have loved catching up on John’s work through his deep archives. I find thought-provoking his views on exclusionary ownership and ways to make clean water flow freely. Here’s an overview of his work and theories.

Forest Heart
Amanda Claire Vesty

• I loved Amanda’s most recent post on celandines and violets: highlighting connections to human culture and medicine, and describing their places in the ecosystem. Just delightful.

Peter Shepherd
The Nest

• This piece was my entry to Peter’s work. It asks what the fox would think, the fox who was the subject of a very important and very strange legal case. I can’t wait to read more.

Robert LaCombe
The Woodlands of Ivor

• This piece on the changes in a waterfall through the course of a human lifetime gave me a beautiful sense of perspective and peace. Highly recommended.

Robin Applegarth
Mother E

• Robin leads a tour through the redwood forest, spindly now from generations of logging, but on the road to recovery if given a chance. She notes, “It feels like an unjust theft by previous generations” — oh, how I resonate with this, and with trying to make amends, as her work does.

David E. Perry
In the Garden of His Imagination

• I am new to this publication and am so, so glad readers recommended it. This post on birding and its human social overlays brought tears to my eyes, especially the quick, wild communion in the final photo.

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Many comments have come in with recommendations for wonderful nature writers working here on Substack. I haven’t had time yet to pore through them all and pick out a post to share, but I very much look forward to doing so!

In the meantime, I’ll list the publications your fellow nature writers have recommended so you can browse them yourself. Thanks everyone for sharing these, and keep the suggestions coming!

Pamela Leavey
Words and Pictures

Jo Thompson
The Gardening Mind

Chad Shelton
Ridgeline Magazine

Sarah Byfield
The Holloway

Jo Wimpenny
The Nature of Animals

Jo Taylor
Seeds, Weeds and Wildflowers

Janisse Ray
Trackless Wild

Carmine Hazelwood
A dryad’s tale

Priscilla Stuckey
Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a Living World

Marsha Stopa
Essential Nature

Diane Porter
My Gaia

Linnesby
Pen, Book and Garden

Ken Lamberton
The Big Yard

Sandy Obodzinski
A Curious Nature

Abert Essays
The Abert Essays

Whitney Barkman
A Quiet Moment

Ruth Bradshaw
Stories of Coexistence

Roselle Angwin
In the Beautiful Middles of Nowhere

Bradley Stevens
Ecologist @ Large

Christopher Brown
Field Notes

Thomas Winward
Urban Nature Diary

Anne Thomas
Anne of Green Places

Michaela Griffith
FLOW by Michaela Griffith

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NB: There is a separate and important ecosystem of climate-change/green-energy writers that I’m not linking to here, simply because their work is more typically focused on human civilization’s transition and energy needs and less on nature.

What other nature writers do you love? Are you a nature writer or photographer yourself?

Please link to your or others’ websites, blogs, or Substack newsletters in the comments so the rest of us can know them too!