About the Book
With humor, humility, and awe, one woman attempts to restore 200 acres of farmland long gone-to-seed in the Blue Ridge Mountains, facing her own limitations while getting to know a breathtaking corner of the natural world. When Paula Whyman first climbs a peak in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of a home in the country, she has no idea how quickly her tidy backyard ecology project will become a massive endeavor. Just as quickly, she discovers how little she knows about hands-on conservation work. In Bad Naturalist, readers meander with her through orchards and meadows, forests and frog ponds, as she is beset by an influx of invasive species, rattlesnake encounters, conflicting advice from experts, and delayed plans--but none of it dampens her irrepressible passion for protecting this place. With delightful, lyrically deft storytelling, she shares her attempts to coax this beautiful piece of land back into shape. It turns out that amid the seeming chaos of nature, the mountaintop is teeming with life and hope.
About the Author :
Paula Whyman is a finalist for the Philip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award, and the author of Bad Naturalist, a Library of Virginia People's Choice Award Finalist in Nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post and The American Scholar, and in journals including McSweeney's Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Hudson Review. Her earlier book, You May See a Stranger, is an award-winning linked short story collection. She has been in residence at MacDowell, Yaddo, VCCA, The Studios of Key West, and Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Her work on this book was supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council. She spends her time on a mountain in Virginia with her husband and a mercurial standard poodle. You can find her at paulawhyman.com, and keep up with news from the mountain via her Bad Naturalist newsletter.
Review :
"Glorious"--Washington Gardener
"With delightful, lyrically deft storytelling, Whyman]shares her attempts to coax this beautiful piece of land back into shape...amid the seeming chaos of nature, the mountaintop is teeming with life and hope."--The Good Men Project
"A fascinating and engaging memoir." --Read Her Like An Open Book
"Introspective...sympathetic and informative." --The Bulletin, Garden Clubs of America
"In her new memoir, Bad Naturalist, Whyman describes the unrelenting labor of stewarding her meadow." --The Washingtonian
"This charming memoir finds short story writer Whyman (You May See a Stranger) recounting how she attempted to restore a 200-acre former cow pasture in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains to its natural state."
--Publishers Weekly
"Albeit a cautionary tale, Whyman's sprightly memoir of her super-sized endeavor provides valuable insight for like-minded gardeners, no matter how large or small their project." --Booklist
"This is the story of someone trying to plant a meadow on a mountain in Virginia--depending on how much you already know, that sounds either ridiculously easy or insanely difficult. The beauty of Bad Naturalist is that it dramatizes the true difficulty of the task and at the same time makes it seem not quite easy, but natural, even logical. Why doesn't everybody do this? A lyrical, free-ranging, deeply informed, and completely charming book that will change your relationship to every landscape you pass through."
--Peter Trachtenberg, author 7 Tattoos and Another Insane Devotion
"How can someone who knows nothing about ecological restoration successfully rehab 200 acres of retired farmland? In Bad Naturalist, her self-deprecating, humorous, and thoroughly engaging book, Paula Whyman tells us exactly how. She describes the many pitfalls, explains how she triumphed over them, and details the many benefits of persevering, both for herself and for her mountaintop ecosystem. Why should landowners read this book? Because they own--and need to restore--most of the landscape, an awesome responsibility whose meaning Whyman has distilled for us."--Douglas W. Tallamy, New York Times bestselling author of Nature's Best Hope
"Bad Naturalist is a thoughtful, engaging, and fascinating exploration of the riddle of land stewardship. What is a weed? What should you eliminate, and what can you protect? And what does it mean to own property? Whyman is eager, curious, and humble in the description of her journey as the owner of a 200-acre mountaintop in Virginia. She draws on all sorts of sources in her narrative --philosophical, poetic, literary and ecological. As a gardener and modest landowner, myself, I found it instructive and deeply absorbing. Brava!"--Roxana Robinson, author of Leaving
"Whyman's writing comes alive when exploring the history of people and place among the Piedmont and Blue Ridge, and then in the weaving of living with and reviving nature in all of the inevitable tribulations that feed a soul and liberate life. No garden, even a meadow, is perfect: perfection rests in the struggle to do better and be better, to leave the land healthier, and to create stories tied to place that help us remember we are nature figuring itself out, too. Bad Naturalist is one such story."--Benjamin Vogt, author of A New Garden Ethic and Prairie Up
"In Bad Naturalist, Whyman writes with grace and good humor about the wonderful stubbornness of the natural world--and of her attempts to restore it. Down-to-earth yet poetic, impeccably researched and intensely personal, Whyman's charming, good-natured prose is a joy to read. Bad Naturalist feels like a conversation with your best friend, your quirky neighbor, and the most remarkable adventurer you've ever met. At once the story of an amateur naturalist and a moving family history, Whyman chronicles her all-too-human foibles and her even more human determination in this thoughtful, wry nonfiction debut."--Courtney Sender, author of In Other Lifetimes All I've Lost Comes Back to Me
"A brilliant, richly layered exploration of the natural world, Paula Whyman's gripping tale embeds the reader on a mountaintop, sweeping us through the landscape and her life while braiding memoir, biodiversity, expertise, and doubt, along with inevitable setbacks that she counters with sheer determination. Whyman, a 'pretty good' naturalist, is the perfect guide to today's urgent questions, proposing some unexpected answers and delivering it all in unputdownable prose, with a sense of humor and a joyful spirit."
--Jordan Goodman, author of Planting the World: Joseph Banks and His Collectors, an Adventurous History of Botany
"With dry humor and an always engaging voice, Paula Whyman takes us on an entertaining and unexpected journey restoring a wild Virginia mountaintop. Bad Naturalist is a master class in ecology, humility, and perseverance, that will have you thinking about mid-life larks, plants, and gardens, in a whole new light."
--Susan Coll, former president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and author of Real Life and Other Fictions
