Eco Writing - what comes first, ecology or story?
Image credit: Tim Stief
The seagull wasn’t my first choice of character. But searching for a different perspective I stopped to listen and transcribe his rant. After all isn’t this what writing does best? Listening to unheard voices; asking probing questions; going deeper; analysing and going beyond our first reaction; finding a new viewpoint we’ve never considered before and sharing it through words with others?
I was in a workshop and the prompt was to choose a specimen, from the many stuffed animals, bare skeletons and desiccated plants that were loaded on trolleys and shelves around the Museum of Life Sciences and write their story. I scanned the room for an appealing specimen, asking the question, why this story, why this character, now? I dislike taxidermy: the desire to know and catalogue the world around us seems to be more respected in European culture than an animal’s life. Do the means justify the ends? I sat out of dissecting frogs in my GCSE Biology class despite my curiosity to understand the non-human. To find myself peering at these animals long since passed, preserved for the advancement of knowledge, and enjoying it without the deep sadness overwhelming me, was a first. Perhaps I am ashamed to say it was liberating. What had changed? My approach: I was here to write their story.
My research interest is extinction. I was looking for a last-of-its-kind specimen. I believe there’s much we Europeans can learn from our early exploits wiping out species wherever we go. Other human societies have been able to live without causing an end of days scenario. For hundreds of years Europeans arrive in lands they haven’t seen before and within decades, species are exterminated. Read Elizabeth Kolbert’s fantastic The Sixth Extinction to go deeper.
My eye was on the Tasmanian wolf, whose body skeleton was in the case near me and head in the next aisle over, to tell her story. Hopeful, I’d recently been reading about 19th century travelling menagerie canine escapees, more likely released by the menagerie owners, but she held her silence. I changed area, my mission to find the most unusual, extinct, specimen in the room. Looking into a glass jar of formaldehyde, a teeny transparent marsupial frog suspended inside, I focused on describing what I saw. I wrote ‘small chest walls protruding to kiss the thin dark line of frog skin’ and felt wildly poetic. But still no story in her form, so I wandered on round the room, frustrated, the clock ticking.
I tried to keep my mind open. So, when I passed the gull, I lingered. He launched into his monologue, me racing my pencil over the page, to capture his words.
Coming back together as a group, despite my anxiety, I read out my gull notes. Part way I muttered, ‘after this it’s pretty wacky’, but encouraged, read on. Feedback after; the wacky part was good. This boosted my confidence to continue when I came to finish it. Well worth the anxiety of putting myself out there.
The thrust of my gull friend’s argument in this original version was, gulls are ecologically adaptable and may out-survive humans. This turned out to be problematic.
When I began my gull research, my first big hurdle to making the gull’s words fit ecological facts was that it turns out lesser black-backed gulls are in decline. Walking through Penzance’s streets I believed I had seen a gull boom. They’d , moved into our environment because they were resilient and expanding their habitat. This was a misconception: human activity pushes gulls out of their natural habitat. Gulls have moved into our urban world; nesting and feeding on what we discard. It is ironic that the animosity many people have towards gulls is because our behaviour has forced them out of their natural habitat. Nearly driven to extinction, gulls were saved by the Sea Birds Act of 1869. But why? Every search resulted in, their population ‘declined in the nineteenth century due to persecution’[1].
The piece lacked story. How could I turn ecology into story? The gull had come from Aldeburgh Museum. They sent me a copy of Hele’s notes, a local ornithologist, written in 1870[2]. I imagined my gull hanging out on the streets of Aldeburgh in the nineteenth century. What drives a gull? I wrote a scene about my gull and his mate arriving in a nesting colony at the Olde Estuary.
A week to go until deadline day, my research skills falling short, I had a revelation – which famous stories contain gulls? My list included Hitchcock’s The Birds and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. Then I remembered Chekov. A second break came when I stumbled upon a new article: ‘Feathers were a foundation of eighteenth-century life from cradle to grave.’ Feathers filled mattresses, became ‘quills to write with, brooms and dusters to clean with.’[3] British women’s taste for feathered fashion was largely to blame for the demise of these birds.[4]
The story I pulled together is a synthesis of Nina’s story in The Seagull, my nesting scene, ecological and historical details from 1860’s human-caused gull persecution and my gull’s rant. Am I happy with it? Not really. But I am happy with the process and journey. I better understand story construction where the concept is driven by a human issue and made relevant to our literary history. The gull had a lot to say. I learnt so much through listening and researching. I am looking forward to reusing the process of translating a seed concept into story through researching ecology and literature for my next round.
Stephanie Hirtenstein is a Freelance Writer and Creative Writing PhD student at the University of Exeter. Living in a seaside town in Cornwall has helped her develop a gull’s perspective. Find her on Twitter @s_hirtenstein
Notes
[1] British Naturalists’ Association, The British Gulls, https://bna-naturalists.org/id-guide-to-gulls/ [accessed 23rd July 2022]
[2] Nicholas Fenwick Hele (1870) Notes or jottings about Aldeburgh, Suffolk, London
[3] Gernerd, Elisabeth (2022), Feather Muffs of all Colours, Apparence(s), Rennes
[4] Barclay-Smith, Phyllis (1959) The British Contribution to Bird Protection, Ibis, 101: 15-122, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1474-919X.1959.tb02363.x
