Sandra Neily here:

“Since we cannot expect truth from our institutions, we must expect it from our writers.”  Edward Abbey, quoted in my 2018 post, reprinted below.

(OK. Here goes. Trump is the only president to have removed more protections from U.S. lands and waters than he put in place. He removed 35 million acres of public lands and ocean preserves. President Biden, with legal help from dedicated organizations’ legal teams, restored most of it. Below, I share links to those organizations.)

Here I reprint (with a few edits) most of a 2018 post that I think, might be a good current read.  I have elevated Abbey’s ending quote into a headline.

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Fiction and Truth. Not An Oxymoron

It’s a mystery to me why essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote these lines: “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” I’m just grateful that he did. These words are my writing mantra.

My fiction is based on an early truth I learned growing up in East Boothbay, Maine.

Damariscotta River, East Boothbay. “Our” island.

I learned that the natural world is a disappearing world.

At age six, I saw bulldozers dump fill to bury my sandbar and island to create boat storage. Not my island and not the shipyard’s either, but it was our sibling sanctuary, our pallet for adventure, and our home away from home. (We quickly learned to read tide charts my mother never mastered so we’d be “stuck” on the island as she paced the far shore. A fine way to avoid naps.)

The shipyard begins to bury the island to create more land for boat storage. It filled the cove all the way to the island.

Over the years, the wild woods and waters around me disappeared under bulldozers or behind gated driveways. These losses are my fiction’s marrow.

My seriously unsupervised childhood grew into a career deeply engaged with our woods, waters, and wildlife assets. I’ve been a whitewater river outfitter, a licensed Maine Guide, founder of a coalition to protect Maine’s Penobscot River from a destructive dam, and the director of a conservation school. Working for Maine Audubon, I researched and authored “Valuing the Nature of Maine,” and ‘Watching Out for Maine’s Wildlife,” (reports revealing the money and jobs intact resources produce.)

I’ve penned op-eds, legislative testimony, articles, and newsletters for receptive audiences, but no more. Far too often people select reading material and media that reflect their own preferences and life stories. They are trapped in narrow, information silos that isolate them from the knowledge and compassion we need to secure a future for the natural world.

Headwaters of the Kennebec River. Protected.

And because not enough folks from all walks of life have found Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and they aren’t reading Terry Tempest Williams, Rick Bass, Wendell Berry, or even braving Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent The Sixth Extinction, I decided to leave non-fiction and write murder mysteries. I wanted to pile up bodies, and clues, and sleuths and have them all inhabit special landscapes that could spawn a murder or ultimately solve one.

Moosehead Lake seen from Maine Public Lands “Moose Mt.” Unit. Protected.

I chose the mystery genre to captivate and entertain readers, but of course I hope to seduce them toward the outdoors and have them discover some truths that “reality obscures.” My novels dive into the heart of Maine’s outdoors, its vibrant wildlife, and the reality of what’s lost or at risk.

A favorite ‘protected ‘corner of the world with favorite friends.

When I am invited to speak, I suggest that authors who create nature-themed fiction might be true and trusted voices in the wilderness of modern life, helping us savor what is unknown or ignored or unappreciated. If writers help us fall in love with or marvel at a corner of the world, even as they pull us from page to page with their skill, we are already signed up to care about that corner of the world.

To share some of my favorite authors, I bring the audience a handout of quotes and reviews. Here’s some of what I share. (My website has more.)

 “A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest’s conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.” Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness.” Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

 “The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.” Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.” Willa Cather, My Ántonia

 “When he says ‘Skins or blankets?’ it will take you a moment to realized that he’s asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation he’ll decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, he’ll say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for two—was it hours or days or weeks? It’s December, and your skin is never really warm, so you will pull the bulk of it around you and pose for him, pose for his camera, without having to narrate this moose’s death.” Pam Houston, Cowboys Are My Weakness

Here are more voices bringing the natural world to us: Heat and Light, Jennifer Haigh. Breaking Point, C.J. Box. Winter Study, Nevada Barr. The Nature of the Beast, Louise Penny. Massacre Pond, Paul Doiron. The Weight of Winter, Cathie Pelletier. Skinny Dip, Carl Hiaasen. The Secret Wisdom of the Earth, Christopher Scotton. The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey.

Today, when truth is under relentless assault, perhaps Ed Abbey … again …  should have the last word. “Since we cannot expect truth from our institutions, we must expect it from our writers.”

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Join Up. The last time we experienced an anti-environmental administration, I joined the Sierra Club the day after the election. I’m glad I did. During those tough four years The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Wilderness Society shouldered huge costs and burdens fighting legal and institutional battles needed to protect our woods, prairies, wildlands, waters, wildlife assets and most significantly, our public lands. They accomplished miracles. They know what’s coming. They are gearing up. They need our help. I invite you to copy this info and share it with your own networks and friends. Maybe after you join up. (I renewed my Sierra Club membership on November 6^th.) 

Sandy’s debut novel, “Deadly Trespass, A Mystery in Maine” won a national Mystery Writers of America award, was a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association “Rising Star” contest, and was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. The second Mystery in Maine, “Deadly Turn,” was published in 2021. Her third “Deadly” is due out in 2025. Find her novels at all Shermans Books (Maine) and on Amazon. Find more info on Sandy’s website.

Another protected (but secret) place.