Richard K. Nelson'sThe Island Within:Environmental Life Writing as Ecological Identity Work

The power of nonfiction life story narratives to communicate conservation to a non-specialist audience

“…It recounted a series of expeditions to an unnamed island in Alaska, where Nelson learned ancient wisdom from the Native American residents and incorporated it into his book. The Island Within was published during another environmental upheaval – the Republican party’s opposition to environmental policies of the 1960s and 1970s (Edlich, 2010). Nelson’s (1989) future-focus questioned and critically examined human impact, clearly encapsulating the challenge of the Anthropocene: ‘I have come seeking a better sense of how I fit into this place, not only as a visitor and watcher, but as a participant’ (p. 172).…”

“…Only one lifetime after Gilbert White's diaries, as the transcendentalism movement of the 1820s and 1830s elevated the role of individuality, American Henry David Thoreau moved from Waldo Emerson's homestead and 'squatted' in a cabin on the banks of Walden Pond (still on Emerson's land; Killingsworth, 2013). The diaries he wrote during this transient period formed the basis of Walden (Thoreau, 1999) which is regarded as seminal natural biography (Edlich, 2010). Thoreau penned Walden while simultaneously conducting scientific study, resisting 'traditional disciplinary and generic boundaries' (Kuhn, 2009).…”