lucid vagary

Modern nature enthusiasts

I’ve been a nature enthusiast for awhile. I love to bike through forests, go camping, canoeing, etc. For years now, I’ve read the works of the like of Emerson, John Burroughs, Thoreau, Whitman, John Muir (see a transcendentalist 18th century pattern unfolding here?), and today’s Theodore Roszak’s Voice of the Earth.

The thing that gets me with the differences between the nature loving of yore and the modern day equivalent is the lack of eloquence. Roszak is certainly earnest and well researched but I’ve yet to encounter someone who extols a yearning, a connection to nature that is almost palpable. It seems to have been replaced with neo-Paganists and folks who feel that recapturing the imagery of anglo-filtered Amerindians and talking about the healing power of drumming are methods for getting people excited about nature.

I really miss the articulate, well thought, earnest connection to nature in a modern context. James Hillman, an archetypal psychologist, has an interesting perspective in regards to nature but he hasn’t written about expressly about the environment that I am aware of.

Perhaps it’s my lack of research in to modern nature writers but I can’t imagine that the Crocodile Hunter is the modern day equivalent of H.D. Thoreau describing the intricate patterns and beauty in a leaf.