Adventures of a Young Naturalist, by Sir David Attenborough

David Attenborough has long been an important figure in my life. I have greatly admired him as a pioneering TV presenter who has created some of the best documentary programmes in history. He helped shape television and has been one of the most influential figures in the – sadly futile, it seems – resistance to our human war on nature. His recent work, such as Planet Earth I and II and Blue Planet, is astonishing. It seems that every show he makes brings something utterly new to a cynical audience that thinks it has seen everything.

I didn’t know that I could be any more impressed by David Attenborough, but then I found out that he is an incredible writer. Adventures of a Young Naturalist is a collection of three journals he kept whilst making very early programmes for the BBC. Two of them see him visit South America and one recounts his travels through Indonesia in search of the Komodo Dragon. All of them see him attempting to capture animals for London Zoo and at the same time film them in their natural habitat for the BBC.

I was expecting interesting, occasionally witty descriptions of animals and plants, but while they do indeed appear in this book, most of it is made up of wonderful observations about the landscape and culture of these places, and his often hilarious interactions with the local people. Attenborough was travelling in the era of the adventurer, long before the tourist trod across these lands and ruined them. His journeys were difficult, often fraught with hardship. Yet unlike writers such as Paul Theroux (whom I’ve read often these past few years), Attenborough takes every set back with good humour. Indeed, this book is often laugh-out-loud funny. It is very much an adventure tale, filled with dangerous people and wild locations.

It is also a sad reminder of what we have lost. Attenborough wrote these stories only sixty years ago, yet they may as well have come from another planet. The jungles have been cut down, the animals brought to extinction, and the cultures all blended into nothingness as Facebook and Instagram make everyone look and act and think more and more like each other. This book is a beautiful paean to all we’ve lost.

David Attenborough really is a stunningly good writer, and this book at times made me jealous for my inability to describe places and people the way he does (although of course I always assumed he could do better at describing animals). He is a national treasure, a world treasure, and this book is one of the best things I have read in many years. I highly recommend it.

Kingdom of Rarities, by Eric Dinerstein

This past week I've been reading the wonderful Kingdom of Rarities, by Eric Dinerstein on my Kindle. As soon as I read the synopsis I was excited to get into it, and it absolutely did not disappoint. Though it may sound a bit inaccessible, it is a thoroughly readable look at species on this earth which are rare, exploring why exactly they aren't in abundance.


Dinerstein has spent his life travelling the world, studying rare animals, and his knowledge and experience guide the reader from chapter to chapter. We are taken on a trip around the world, from South America to the Himalayas to Southeast Asia. His descriptions of his surroundings are vivid and impressive. I've travelled much of my adult life and I envy his ability to capture the magnificence of a locations.

Moreover, he knows a lot about biology and the workings of the world, and where he isn't the expert, he talks to those who are, and eloquently captures their perspectives of rarity. He describes jaguars and rhinos and other amazing creatures, explaining why these animals are rare and what exactly their place in nature is.

The book is filled with fascinating information. For example, in the UK there are 15 species of trees which occur naturally, while in the tropics - where rarities abound - there are 70,000 species. 1,000 of these exist on a single mountain, which harbors numerous rarities. Elsewhere, he describes the tropics canopies and methods scientists are using to explore the life they support. All of it is surprising and informative.

Sadly, though many of these animals exist naturally in small numbers, many of them are endangered due to human activity, and many naturally occurring rarities are pushed from rare to extinct due to our own growth. It is incredible sad how Dinerstein details amazing creatures all across the globe over his career, and yet whenever he draws close to the present day, he finds them extinct or nearly extinct. It is nothing short of heartbreaking just how much destruction we are doing to our planet, and much of it is irreversible.

He talks about the Vietnam War and its aftermath - the battle between conservation and development. Unsurprisingly, the conservationists are losing all the way. Where American bombs damaged populations of wildlife, now the population is hunting every remaining species and ensuring that natural diversity disappears.

Though Dinerstein often seems optimistic about conservation, it is hard to read this beautiful book without feeling the opposite. I've been lucky in my life to have come face to face with the most incredible animals, yet if I have children I'm sure I'll have to explain to them how so many of these animals are no longer with us. 

All the West that Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West, by David Gessner

I am embarrassed to admit that prior to reading All the West that Remains I had never actually heard of Wallace Stegner or Edward Abbey. Somehow, in thirteen years of studying American literature, and in particular the period during which they were most active, they'd entirely slipped under my radar.
I will, however, soon rectify that during my next Kindle purchasing session. I will also be seeking out other books by the author, David Gessner, whose innovative first-person narrative style intrigued me throughout this enjoyable book.
I'm at a loss, however, in describing All the West that Remains. Indeed, one of the difficulties in deciding whether or not to buy it in the first place was the odd description:

Now, award-winning nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches National Park in Utah, braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the lives of all those who care about the West.

Honestly, I didn't know what to expect. The result was more or less as the synopsis goes. Gessner travels around his native country, visiting places he'd seen as a young man, or not, and ruminates upon the lives and work of Stegner and Abbey.
I suppose it's not so complicated, yet when reading this for the longest time you're left wondering why it's written this way... Why not a straight biography of either man? Why not a straight travel journal? Why not a literary criticism comparing their work? Why not an environmentalist call-to-arms?
Well, the book is all these things, and somehow it works. Despite the wandering narrative, or perhaps because of it, it remains engaging throughout. Despite the differences between the two authors, or perhaps because of them, it provides a gripping view of these two under-rated giants of Western literature - and when I say Western I mean the American West.
Gessner portrays this land as their land - a land that inspired them, and which they worked to save. He shows the present state of the American West long after the death of both men, and speculates that they would not be surprised by water shortages and an increasing strain that is causing forest fires and untold destruction to the landscape.
On a personal level he explores his own struggle between sensible Stegner and wildman Abbey:

The question I now ask myself is whether it is possible to live responsibly, to have a Stegnerian commitment to wife and child, family and friends, while still having real wildness in my life. Is it possible to be properly wild?

He decides that we, as hairless monkeys, are still on some level wild and that's why we need the wilderness. We need to return to the wild now and then, not to make YouTube videos or upload photos to Instagram, but to have experiences because it's still very much a part of our DNA.
And these are ideas I would very much agree with.