Despite my love of the humanities, my formal education has been in the sciences. I have a biology degree, and have spent the last six years or so employed in a biology-related field. Sometimes the field has been quite literal, other times I’ve worked in a lab or classroom setting. I’m relaying my work history to you because I want you to understand that biology has been my chief livelihood for sometime now, and biology is eminently concerned with the correct ordering and classification of life. Even as a child, I was obsessed with having the right names for things. I owned every field guide that my local bookstore stocked, and some that it didn’t. When my wife and I go on hikes, we take great pleasure in pointing out the names for each flower, tree, and squirrel that crosses our path. We eat wild currants, elderberries, huckleberries, blackberries, and thimbleberries in their season. We work to recognize the calls of frogs and the songs of birds. We find joy in naming the stars, streams, and mountains. I can’t remember the last time we went on a hike and returned without a beautiful flower, rock, or shell. At home, we garden and raise livestock. Nature is important to me, and to my family. It is no wonder that it’s important in my writing.
If you’ve ever read one of my books or poems, you’ve no doubt noted how long I dwell on natural descriptions. I’ve been told that beautiful descriptions of landscapes is a hallmark of my style. A beta reader of a recent draft remarked that my natural descriptions are always detailed and poetic, but my descriptions of towns and villages are terribly terse. I think his assessment was fair. I spend hours researching trees and flowers, making sure that I’m not putting an American plant in a European setting, or planting it in the wrong part of the forest. Foxglove grows in clearings and along forest margins, while bluebells prefer to carpet the center of ancient woodlands. It’s important to me for these details to be correct.
Many fantasy authors do some hand waving, mutter “magic” a few times, and admit whatever plants and animals they please into their stories. Even Tolkien, who is my hero in all other respects, is fairly lax with his flora and fauna. In a setting that is primarily European, Tolkien gives the hobbits potatoes and tobacco (under the name of pipe weed), which are both American plants. Granted, there is nothing inherently wrong about mixing disparate organisms in a fantasy world, the mixing can even serve a literary purpose. The hobbits in Tolkien’s books have a diet that is readily comparable to the rural Englishman, providing his average reader with a sense of ‘home’ when considering the Shire. Unless I am feeling particularly cantankerous, I don’t usually have a problem with this device. I think its also acceptable for authors to invent their own plants and animals to populate their fantasy world. However, I just can’t bring myself to tinker with the natural world. There is something really special about getting the details right; I think it weaves a kind of spell. Humanity has a strong connection to nature. We instinctually feel the character of a natural scene, and understand its constituent parts. When each name is right, and each creature is in its proper place, the scene becomes more real to me. Then I can stroll through the land of my imagining and stoop to drink from the poetic font that springs forth from its center. If the details are wrong, the way is shut to me.
The Sensiahd word of the day is “anu”, meaning, “name”. Example sentence: Ser rho dhun anuna et eth twrra enanu. He gave names to the nameless hills.