In this interview I spoke with nature writer Neil Ansell, author of The Last Wilderness: A Journey into Silence and The Circling Sky: On Nature and Belonging in an Ancient Forest, on his experience with deafness and underrepresentation in nature writing.
Q: Silence finds all kinds of meanings in the context of ecology and environmentalism. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring of course comes to mind, but also the 'silence' that one experiences in spaces blossoming with biodiversity. In your book The Last Wilderness: A Journey Into Silence, you speak of both your journey into the remote 'wildness' of the Scottish Highlands and your journey into deafness, as you mention potentially hearing particular bird songs for the last time. But you also talk about how hearing loss has shaped your relationship with nature since you were young, drawing you to more solitary activities which intensified your experience of the natural world. Silence seems to have many meanings for you, could you tell us about how it has shaped your relationship with and perception of nature?
Neil Ansell: Even as a young child, my hearing difficulties resulted in my finding social activities a challenge as I struggled to understand what was being said. Though I might enjoy these activities, I found them draining. Nature, on the other hand, invites your attention rather than demanding it. Being out wandering in the woods and fields, I was in a place where I could find peace, and it became a kind of refuge for me, and a place of endless fascination.
Q: Given the significance of the senses in shaping our conception of nature, has your experience with deafness enhanced any of your other senses? And if so, how has this shaped or intensified your experience of nature?
NA: I am not sure if it is the case in scientific terms that the loss of a sense physically enhances your other senses. What it does do, I think, is increase your appreciation of what you have, and leads to you paying more attention to what your other senses have to offer. We all have a view of the world which is structured around the limitations of our senses – many other animals see other parts of the colour spectrum, or hear other parts of the frequency range from us, and so perceive a very different world to us. Our understanding of the world around us is very much structured by what we can perceive of it, and we effectively reimagine it using whatever tools we have at our disposal.
Q: Nature writing has often been accused of ableism, of reinforcing a conception of nature normatively mediated by able bodied people, who can walk, see, smell and hear perfectly well for example. Given your experience with deafness, do you think that it is important that we acknowledge a diverse range of experiences of nature which are not just reflective of able-bodied people?
NA: There is certainly a much-needed drive towards greater diversity in nature writing, which is somewhat overdue. Since Richard Mabey wrote about nature and depression in Nature Cure, we have had Amy Liptrot writing about addiction and nature in The Outrun, and writers with Asperger’s such as Dara McAnulty and Katherine May. There is still something of a gap when it comes to physical abilities. I understand that the writer Sally Huband, author of Sea Bean (which I have yet to read) has a physical disability, but so far as I know I am still the only nature writer who writes from the perspective of a sensory impairment.
Q: In your nature writing you often recount your experiences with solitude, such as rambling alone in the Scottish highlands or even living alone in a cottage in a very remote part of Wales with little human contact. Do you think that your experience with hearing loss engendered your proclivity for solitude or is this journey into silence a way for you to escape the cacophony of human activity?
NA: I find that there is a great deal of what you might call cognitive load in trying to interpret what is being said in a social setting. I can manage for a while, but eventually need to retreat back to being on my own. It begins to feel that solitude is your safe space, the place where you feel most at home, and ventures out to spend time with other people are consciously chosen and time limited, so you know you are free to return to what feels like your natural state.
Q: Some might consider this almost Thoreauvian experience of nature to be very isolated and dangerously cut off and disengaged from the wider public. But in your book The Circling Sky, a title you derive from John Clare's poem on enclosure, you write about the tragedy of the enclosure acts in displacing people from common land, especially Gypsies and Travellers whose livelihood has been and continues to be threatened by the legacy of these acts. In some sense, the issue of silence enters the conversation again in a new light. Silence in this case seems to pertain to a silencing of the voices of the public, particularly those most marginalised, who are largely denied from experiencing much of what nature has to offer in this country. Do you think that nature writing can play an important role in helping to break these silences? And given criticisms that nature writing is often reflective of 'privileged voices', do you think that this is something that must or is starting to change?
NA: While there has been much diversification in nature writing, with as many women writers as men now, and a first wave of writers of colour, I think that it is almost a dirty secret that nature writing, even more so than most writing, is overwhelmingly middle-class, or even upper middle-class. When I first became a writer, I was shocked to discover just how posh the entire world of publishing seemed to me. When I was shortlisted for a literary award, I found that two of the other shortlisted writers, out of five, lived in castles and had inherited titles. A lot of this comes down to access, and the fact that it is very difficult to make a living out of being a writer without the resources to back you up. Gypsies and Travellers have limited access to educational opportunities, and are restricted by law from access to much of our countryside. The vast majority of our landscape has restricted access, and this impacts particularly on the urban poor, and people of colour, who may not feel they will be made to feel welcome. We are seeing some black writers beginning to challenge this – see I Belong Here by Anita Sethi, or Belonging by Amanda Thomson. But there is still a long way to go, and it seems that while the publishing industry is able to consider that they might need more black writers on their roster, they find it harder to see things from outside their world-view. It is a privilege of the privileged to not see class as an issue. I feel that because of my background I have a role in trying to portray nature in a more inclusive way, so far as I am able.
