Human/Nature

Novelist and nonfiction writer Jane Rawson has written a fascinating, highly personal book about the environment and humanity’s relationship with it that asks many intriguing questions without simple answers. Why are we currently so obsessed with extinction rates? In Darwin’s time, they believed that if a species went extinct, it was no longer adapting to its environment. What is a species anyway? Apparently, it depends on who you ask. Why did the thylacine become so important to us only once we had hunted it to death? At one time in Tasmania, it was as common as the pademelon, a wallaby that is so prevalent it is frequently found dead at the side of the road and regularly killed by farmers.

Rawson begins with the confession that she is not a bushwalker, despite having moved to Tasmania to escape the city and climate change. She puts herself smack bang in the middle of a discursive meditation on humans, the environment and our desire to both separate ourselves from it and immerse ourselves in it. Rawson shares a wry, self-aware humour that is quite ready to poke fun at herself and others where necessary.

Wide-ranging in scope, this book had me thinking afresh about some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time. The chapters include excerpts and digressions from thinkers including Aristotle, Abigail Desmond, Olivia Laing and Victor Steffensen, just to name a few. Rawson asks us to question what nature really is and why we only call it nature when we are staring at a beautiful landscape – preferably without other people in it. We rarely consider nature while living our everyday lives, even though we ourselves are part of it.

This work will be of interest to nature and environment readers, as well as those who like to question the mainstream narratives, particularly philosophers and artists. It is a fascinating provocation that is a delight to read.