Diary of a Young Naturalist
By Dara McAnulty
Hi everyone,
Today’s recommendation features a new author who I find very inspiring. If you end up reading his book, I hope you also feel inspired to protect our wonderful planet 🌎.
Have a great rest of the week!
mariana
Why did I read this book?
Many years ago, my friend Khushbu gave me a beautiful book called Pilgrim in Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. I didn’t know reading about nature could be so calming and meditative. I was searching for a similar read, and I saw Diary of a Young Naturalist recommended in a random article. It was featured as a great read, so I decided to give it a chance.
What is the book about?
The natural world through the eyes of a 15-year-old: In an interview with The Guardian, Dara McAnulty said that one of his ways of processing the world is by writing things down. At age 12, he began writing a blog (Naturalist Dara) focused on nature, wildlife, and conservation. One thing led to another and a few years later he published his first book focused on those same topics as well as a glimpse of his life in Northern Ireland. The diary entries are beautiful, human, and scientific. I was amazed by the number of species that Dara can recognise, and I found myself using Google Images multiple times to visualise what he was referring to. Dara was diagnosed with autism when he was five, and nature has been a key support system for him.
Change: Spring turns into summer, summer into autumn, autumn into winter, and winter into spring. Repeat. In his diary, Dara carefully narrates the wonders (big and small) that he’s able to witness in each of the seasons. It’s captivating to see how Dara and his family are fascinated by nature, and how they arrange their lives to be immersed in it as much as possible. The book also covers other life changes like moving from one place to another, from a state of anxiety to a state of calm, from childhood to youth.
Call to action: Dara and his family are unquestionably in love with nature. Through his words, the author tries to inspire in his readers the same love and awe that he feels towards nature. Perhaps if we all saw what he sees, we’d be kinder to the natural world? Dara is also actively raising his voice to protect our planet. He’s a prominent figure on Twitter and he’s been invited to speak at important events, TV shows, political events, etc.
“When you visit a familiar place, it’s never stagnant. There’s always change, and every new day brings a tilt, another view, something that previously escaped you.”
― Dara McAnulty, Diary of a Young Naturalist
Why should you read it?
Meet an incredible young author and activist: Dara McAnulty is now a 17-year-old naturalist, conservationist, and activist from Northern Ireland. Diary of a Young Naturalist has won many prizes and awards and his second book just got published! There’s something very refreshing about reading the thoughts of a younger person on what life and the planet have to offer.
Fall in love with our wonderful planet and take an active part in conservation: When was the last time you paid attention to which flowers bloom around you? Can you recognise which birds surround you by listening to their call? When did you last let a bug crawl on your arm? It’s hard to protect our natural surroundings if we’re not aware of them in the first place.
If you want to know more about autism and neurodiversity: Dara and his family are all autistic. Dara’s detailed anecdotes helped me to further understand how other people experience and view the world. I found Dara’s observations profoundly enriching and educating.
“We can create a safe space for nature in our gardens, especially during the winter months when food is scarce. Caring for nature and for ourselves can happen anywhere and everywhere: gardens filled with life, nature reserves, resting spots, feeding spaces, nourishing places. Focusing in on the activity and behaviours of wildlife in our garden is so satisfying, for the mind, for the heart. Homework doesn’t feel like a chore after time spent quietly feeling rain and watching birds. There is nothing better than tending to this connection between all living things, and maybe even ensuring the survival of some species living in our back gardens and along our busy streets.”
― Dara McAnulty, Diary of a Young Naturalist
Links to buy the book
Always try to support your local bookshop. If you’d like me to add any bookshops to the list, let me know. Thanks to those who keep sharing new bookshops with me.
UK
Spain
Mexico
Italy
US
Favourite quotes
//The purpose of this section is to share some of my favourite book bits, so you can come back to them when you finish a book, if you wish to do so. I’ve put in bold my favourite ones, in case you want to read a few (or all) ahead of the book.//
“Spring is all about watching each resurgence.”
“...because his story shows that we just can’t help intruding on wild places, and altering the balance between people and nature.”
“Spring does something to the inside of you. All things levitate. There’s no choice but to move up and forwards. There’s more light too, more time, more doing. Every past spring merges into a collage and it’s so full of matter, all that matters.”
“As nature is pushed to the fringes of our built-up world, it’s the small pockets of wild resistance that can help.”
“I love the feeling of holding a creature in my hand. It’s not even the connection I feel, but the curiosity it quenches.”
“Talk of the corncrake and sight of the injured seal remind me that even here, in such a wild place, nowhere escapes human intervention. There is loss everywhere. Loss of habitat, loss of species and ways of life. Though it’s being reclaimed here and in many places, it’s such a complicated matter. I don’t feel qualified to understand it or pass judgement. I know it unsettles me, though. The balance is just never quite right.”
“I like school, I really want to learn. But the learning is so flat and uninspiring. The apathy of the surroundings is intolerable. The things we’re learning are as captivating as a dripping tap, while outside the world is so much easier to condense, to understand. You can focus in on one thing: a flower, a bird, a sound, an insect. School is the opposite. I can never think straight. My brain becomes engulfed by colour and noise and remembering to be organised. Ticking things off brain-lists. Always trying to hold in the nervous anxiety. To keep myself together.”
“It’s the norm to stop wildlife thriving in the gaps of our homes and office buildings.”
“It’s so hard to believe that many of the babies just fly out of the nest and set off on their massive journey alone. Astonishing. I muse on how much we humans depend on each other for survival, and how wild species are at our mercy for survival.”
“It caught my eye because I love dandelions. They make me feel like sunshine itself, and you will always see some creature resting on an open bloom, if you have a little patience to wait.”
“Do they have the same sense of privilege on hearing a bird like the sedge warbler? After one continuous flight from the Sahara, it lands right here to embellish our summer with crackling excitement.”
“When you visit a familiar place, it’s never stagnant. There’s always change, and every new day brings a tilt, another view, something that previously escaped you.”
“Wait and watch a stone wall and I promise you, what emerges is a performance, reserved only for those who stop and look.”
“Plus I just love staring into ponds, so it must be good for the mind. My head is pretty hectic most of the time, and watching daphnia, beetles, pond skaters and dragonfly nymphs is a medicine for this overactive brain.”
“A bluebell wood takes much longer than our time on earth to get to this carpet of bloom. It is precious and ancient and magical. And it arrives like clockwork, if left alone, casting a charm on so many open hearts. Here since the Ice Age, the bluebell takes five whole years to grow, from seed to bulb. A labour of slow and perfect growth.”
“Then dragonfly nymph and the holy grail: tadpoles. Birds drink and bathe in our magic cauldron, while under the surface metamorphosis is alive and well with five whole tadpoles! Squiggly, squirming teardrops, eating algae from the side of our potion pot. If you brew your own cauldron, magic will surely happen. A spring evening spent watching life in a bucket on your doorstep is pure enchantment. Yes, it absolutely is!”
“I especially love watching how different species interact.”
“My mind skips because, well, I’m too old for my body to be seen skipping into the house. I go to bed happy. We’re told that childishness is wrong, bad almost. I mourn a world without such feelings. A joyless world, a disconnected one. I push the feelings aside. As I close my eyes, all I can see is scuttling tadpoles, springingtails and a lurking water boatman.”
“Friendship has always eluded me – what is it anyway? A collection of actions and words between two people or more, people who grow and change anyway. It’s a good thing, apparently. That’s what some people say. I don’t have any experience, though.”
“How could I feel lonely when there are such things? Wildlife is my refuge. When I’m sitting and watching, grown-ups usually ask if I’m okay. Like it’s not okay just to sit and process the world, to figure things out and watch other species go about their day.”
“Many people accuse me of ‘not looking autistic’. I have no idea what that means. I know lots of ‘autistics’ and we all look different. We’re not some recognisable breed. We are human beings. If we’re not out of the ordinary, it’s because we’re fighting to mask our real selves. We’re holding back and holding in. It’s a lot of effort.”
“This tree, in its living stage, rooted in sights and sounds that I’ll never know, has witnessed extinctions and wars, loves and losses. I wish we could translate the language of trees – hear their voices, know their stories. They host such an astonishing amount of life – there are thousands of species harbouring in and on and under this mighty giant. And I believe trees are like us, or they inspire the better parts of human nature. If only we could be connected in the way this oak tree is connected with its ecosystem.”
“Autism makes me feel everything more intensely: I don’t have a joy filter. When you are different, when you are joyful and exuberant, when you are riding the crest of the wave of the everyday, a lot of people just don’t like it. They don’t like me. But I don’t want to tone down my excitement. Why should I?”
“I want to belong, yet I hate the notion of belonging.”
“Goshawks and ospreys are still being mercilessly killed by people. Shot. Poisoned. Trapped. That a human being thinks and feels it’s okay to persecute such beautiful creatures is implausible to me. I feel enraged.”
“Ideally, none of this would be necessary. The technology, the conservation teams. The constant vigilance. The responsibility. The heartbreak. But so long as raptors like goshawks, golden eagles, hen harriers, buzzards and red kites are persecuted, this sort of human intervention is necessary.”
“The singing stops but always comes back. This realisation is close but still out of reach, too far away to be real. At least the swifts are still screaming, and they will be here for a good while yet.”
“Nature is constantly surprising. Only by looking can we challenge our own prejudices, clearing them out and making way for possibilities.”
“The smallest creatures carry the same importance and demand as much attention and awe as the ones that roam the savannah, fly through the skies or swing from trees. To Bláthnaid, to me, they are all equal.”
“It’ll take time, but soon enough the seasons will tell me what I need to know. The turning of the year will reveal its secrets.”
“I love spiders, especially the garden cross and orb-weaver. They’re such a beguiling sight – it hurts me to think how people so carelessly kill them or just remark on how disgusting they are.”
“My generation will experience the worst of it: rising sea levels, oceans with more plastic than marine life, oceans starved of oxygen because the phytoplankton cannot survive the acidity of the warming water. The loss of wildlife crashing to extinction at a rate never seen in human history. Soil, where all living land life springs from, is so toxic from pesticides that insects can’t survive.”
“Snow days are magical, but what about the rest of winter?”
“The absence of abundance reveals contours and shape in the land.”
“The fragility of the air and the tendency of darkness to overshadow all seasons.”
“More darkness means more quietness in the evenings, when all that can be heard is the robin’s song, the rook, jackdaw, raven or hooded crow, the sitant squealing of gulls. I can hear so much more between.”
“So much more can be seen in winter, the shiver of branches as wind travels through, more perching shapes too, and so much uncovering still to come.”
“Of course, the length of winter does take its toll. It becomes overwhelming, especially when the expectancy overtakes you with wishes for spring.”
“Inside, that’s where I store these moments, accumulated in a cabinet of noticings and happenings, brought out when I need them most, to illuminate. I must go into the world to find new things. They are always there. Always.”
“Granny believes that the dead live in robins, or that their souls do. Grandad died when I was two years old, and every time she went to visit his grave, a robin appeared and sang gustily. It felt like Grandad, she said.”
“Noticing nature is the start of it all. Slowing down to listen, to watch. Taking the time, despite mountains of homework.”
“I don’t see it as ‘leisure’ though. This is good work. Heart work. Taking the time to observe nature, to immerse oneself in its patterns, structures, happenings and rhythms. It’s how mathematicians and scientists are nurtured. Alan Turing studied the patterns in nature: the spherical organisation of cells in an embryo, the arrangement of petals on a flower, the waves on a sand dune, spots on a leopard, the stripes on a zebra. He was looking for a mathematical formula for the development of cells in living things. He called it the Reaction Diffusion System, the transformation of pattern into stimulating reactions. The complexity of it! There’s no way I can interpret his theory at the moment, but it was contemplating nature that inspired him and his ideas. Nature sparks creativity. All we have to do is start with the question, Why? The way my mind whirrs and whirls in nature, or even when ‘daydreaming’, is way more productive than the work I do in school.”
“We can create a safe space for nature in our gardens, especially during the winter months when food is scarce. Caring for nature and for ourselves can happen anywhere and everywhere: gardens filled with life, nature reserves, resting spots, feeding spaces, nourishing places. Focusing in on the activity and behaviours of wildlife in our garden is so satisfying, for the mind, for the heart. Homework doesn’t feel like a chore after time spent quietly feeling rain and watching birds. There is nothing better than tending to this connection between all living things, and maybe even ensuring the survival of some species living in our back gardens and along our busy streets.”
“I don’t think people realise what needs to happen behind the scenes so ‘we autistics’ can look like we’re doing alright. Mostly though, we hold it in, so controlled, until we reach a safe space.”
“How lucky we are, to always have somewhere warm and welcoming to go.”
“It might be the year’s darkest day, but there is always light. Darkness and light. Both needed for respite, for regeneration.”
“The tiniest creatures can be the most interesting and easiest to observe.”
“I’ve also found that focusing in on a local level, on my immediate surroundings, is where I can be most effective as a force for hope and change.”
“In a fast-paced and competitive world, we need to feel grounded. We need to feel the earth and hear birdsong. We need to use our senses to be in the world. Maybe, if we bang our heads against a brick wall”
“I’m not a doomsday prophet, though. I can’t be like that because I see so much beauty every day, and this is a huge privilege. I would never question anyone’s grief or fear, because these are real things too.”
“In snow, things are different. Expansive thoughts unravel in the moment. There are fewer colours, less depth, less of everything. It really is quite a magical experience, secluded but with so much intense feeling, and even now in the howling wind and with cascading, blizzarding flakes of snow, my mind thrums differently. I can feel synapses sending signals. I can listen, I can hear. I can think and speak and feel and move all at once, instead of one process knocking clunkily into another. I never know if it makes sense to anyone else when I explain this feeling. I guess you would have to be me to really know. But I think we all have this sort of reaction to snow, just with different intensities.”
“Civil disobedience is better in a group!”
“A blackbird might never choose to nest and lay its eggs in my palm, but I know that my hand will always be outstretched, to nature and to people. Because we’re not separate from nature. We are nature. And without a community, when you’re always on your own, it’s more difficult to share ideas and to grow. I’m so used to keeping my thoughts locked inside and being in a space where it’s only me and my family. But now there are concentric circles, rippling out through a digital, online world into the very real world of activism, social action and interaction. It keeps on rippling. I have to drift and swirl with it, but always I’ll need to retreat, back to the foundation stones of myself.”
