A Conversation with Paula Whyman author of Bad Naturalist
One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop
When writer Paula Whyman climbs to a peak in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of an empty-nester home in the country, her plans for a tidy backyard ecology project quickly morph into a massive endeavor. Just as quickly, she discovers how little she knows about hands-on conservation work. In Bad Naturalist, Whyman struggles with conflicting advice from experts, an influx of invasive species, delayed plans, and the occasional rattlesnake—but none of it dampens her irrepressible passion for protecting this place.
“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 Tallamy, New York Times bestselling author of Nature’s Best Hope
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.
Q&A with Paula Whyman
What did you see—and feel—when you first set foot on the mountain?
The mountain is a foothill at the western edge of the Piedmont, just east of the northern Blue Ridge. It was most recently used as a cattle pasture, and before that it was an apple orchard for 150 years. Those cows had some impressive mountain views to graze by. You can see a range of the Blue Ridge silhouetted to the west and south and the Piedmonts to the east. The first time I hiked up, I was overwhelmed by the beauty, the scale, the wildness of the place; I was standing at a high point on the mountain, the flowers towered above my head all around me, the meadow rolled out all around—it took my breath away, and all the other clichés! It was utterly unexpected and a little overwhelming. I’ve seen a lot of unusual natural places, but I’d never seen a place quite like this mountaintop in what was practically my own backyard.
Why did you decide to take on a large-scale restoration project?
Because I’m a glutton for punishment? No, seriously, I have a longtime interest in conservation, and I was looking for an outlet for it, a way I could support the bees and birds and butterflies. The idea of planting a small native meadow was one that I had been cultivating for a while through reading and research. And then I was faced with this gigantic opportunity, and I jumped right in, totally idealistic, certain I could simply “scale up” my plan a little…and make this vast meadow into a haven for native wildlife. Sure, just a tiny difference between the acre or two I originally had in mind and the 200 acres in front of me—no problem! But how could I turn my back on this opportunity? Why shouldn’t I take on something more ambitious? All of those thoughts drowned out the tiny voice inside my head going—but, wait, HOW??? It became a personal challenge—I was going to do it and that was that. I didn’t even stop to think about the fact that I’m historically terrible at making plants grow…
What is a naturalist—and what makes for a “bad” one?
To me, a naturalist is someone who takes the time to pay close attention and learn a lot about some aspect of the natural world. It’s not someone who just skips through a meadow picking daisies or naps under a tree with a grass stalk between their teeth, but it also doesn’t have to be someone who can tell you the Latin name of every single beetle and bird and flower they see. There are naturalists who know a lot about birds or bees or plants, but they probably don’t know all of those things equally well. There are intense, rigorous courses for people who want to become certified “master naturalists,” which means a lot of classroom time and on the ground volunteer time. Master naturalists always impress me.
What “bad” naturalist really means to me is that for a given conservation problem or question, there is no perfect solution. Everything is a trade-off. It also means I’ll never know everything I want and need to know about the natural world. I’ll always have more to learn, and I think that’s a good place to be in life. The great thing about being called a “bad” naturalist is, anytime I get something wrong, I can just point to that moniker—“oops, sorry! I did say I was a bad naturalist…!” I’m not really a bad naturalist, but sometimes it’s nice to have an easy out!
What is a (native) meadow?
A native meadow is a field made up of predominantly native plants—plants that originate in the region where they’re growing. A meadow is usually a combination of grasses and flowers, which are technically called forbs. There might be occasional large trees dotting the meadow, like on a savanna, but there won’t be a significant density of trees. If there are a lot more grasses than forbs, it’s a grassland. If there are a lot more shrubs and bramble, it’s no longer a meadow but a shrubland. Confused yet?
Tell us about invasive species.
Invasive plants are poised to take over the mountaintop like the Blob in the old monster movie—I need Godzilla on my side to fight them. Invasives are aggressive introduced plants that are growing in regions where they don’t belong, where they have no natural predators. At home, they’re not a threat, but in a new place they crowd out native plants and leave local wildlife hungry. They take advantage of human disturbance to spread, so anytime we break ground for a building, put in a road, a crop field, a suburb, these plants gain ground and native plants lose. I’ve spent many hours of the past few years in the hot sun flicking ticks off my arms while pulling vines and grasses, uprooting saplings, and spot-spraying in a seemingly futile attempt to keep these plants from spreading. This will be an endless struggle.
Do you have a favorite species on the mountain? A least? A plant enemy?
There are plants on the mountain that are so diabolical in their resourcefulness and their ability to spread that I can’t help admiring them, even as I despise them and have nightmares about them marching all over the meadow multiplying like Mickey Mouse’s magical broomsticks in Fantasia. I’m thinking of the Ailanthus tree (or tree of heaven) and spotted knapweed, which is a flower.
My favorite individual plant on the mountain is probably our 300-year-old white oak. It’s seen so much and withstood so much in its position on the mountaintop, growing out in the open rather than sheltered by a forest. It’s been buffeted by winds and storms, hit by lightning, eaten by insects, and yet it persists, and it’s still beautiful. It’s a metaphor for what I hope to be like when I’m old.
My favorite species…hard to say. It might be wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa). It’s not uncommon, and it’s pretty, but it’s not amazingly beautiful. It’s a lavender or white flower with fringey petals for lack of a better term. In the book I say it reminds me of my grandmother’s swim cap—she had one with these dangly rubber strands all over it, kind of like Medusa, but after a trim. The flower is a favorite of native bees. It grows in a lot of fields here, and for whatever reason, it makes me smile whenever I see it.
Does the idea of land ownership bring up any conflicted feelings?
As I discuss in the book, I never aspired to own land. I’m descended from a family of entrepreneurs, people who wanted to be their own bosses, who had small businesses—some successful, some not. That was the context I was brought up in; it was always about work. My family comes from a place where, not too many generations back, their property and any small amount of land they had was stolen from them. So, I never envisioned myself as a landowner. To me, large tracts of land were a symbol of either leisure or farming. My family didn’t farm, nor is there a Brideshead to revisit that I’m aware of. Even when my husband and I started looking for a place in the country—we looked off and on for nearly 30 years—even then I was thinking of the house that would be there; I wasn’t thinking about the land aspect of it. So, I have very mixed feelings. I feel like I’ve taken on this big responsibility, it’s my job to make sure I’m a good steward of this land. It’s part of what makes me feel overwhelmed sometimes, like, how can I ever keep up with what needs to be done here?
Do you have any advice for those considering a large-scale conservation project? What about folks who are just here for the story?
Just don’t do it! No, no, I’m kidding. Please do it! It’s so important for those with land of any size. I’ve lived in a city apartment with potted plants, and I’ve lived in the suburbs with a yard. No matter what scale you’re working on, it’s an intrinsically and extrinsically rewarding process. You can see the results growing and changing before your eyes. And every bit of what you do matters! My advice is to go easy on yourself—start small, tackle one thing at a time, ask questions—you can ask me, and then I’ll ask someone who knows! Seriously, though, little by little, you’ll see rewards. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to see the meadow grow after we burned it—and on a totally different scale, to see milkweeds I planted from seed finally come up and flower; to watch bumble bees all over the flowers was just as much of a thrill to me. That first time you see a new plant bloom and a butterfly or a bird shows up in your yard that you haven’t seen before—it’s worth the effort.
And if you’re here for the story, even better! You can sit back and enjoy being a witness to my foibles, while I try and fail and try again!
Conservation can feel like a formal space to some. How can we show people it is closer to their life than they realize
There doesn’t need to be a barrier to entry when it comes to how each of us gets into conservation. The first step can be as simple as taking a moment to look around. Most of us have the ability to look out our window, or to be outside someplace and appreciate what nature is around us, whether it’s the birds and insects and plants you see from a city sidewalk, or a public park, or your own backyard. It’s a cliché to stop and smell the roses—I suggest instead that you stop and watch an ant on the sidewalk, or stare at a plant. Eventually you’ll see something interesting about the plant that you never noticed before. And maybe there’s a cool beetle on it, too.
What did you find about the history of the mountaintop and how people interacted with the land?
My own reaction when I was learning about the recent history of the mountaintop surprised me. At first when I learned that the mountain was planted with apple trees for 150 years, all I could think about was what it might have looked like before that and how we could never really get that condition back. Then when I learned that the farmer who owned it next had bulldozed almost all of the apple trees to make a cattle pasture, I was sad about the apple trees, because that felt like a lost piece of history! Each subsequent decision about managing the land was I’m sure what seemed like the best idea at the time, but each time, with each change, the mountaintop’s condition was moved inexorably away from its natural state. I wish I could have seen it before that. There’s so much I don’t know, and I’m curious what it was like in much earlier times, when the savanna would have been maintained naturally by lightning fires, or when the mountain might have been home to Indigenous people.
I was less excited to learn about what I was left to deal with because of the past few hundred years of activities. Everything I’m faced with on the mountain is because of what happened to it before I got here. But the story is similar everywhere; our understanding of things doesn’t necessarily keep pace with our actions. And as a group humans can be thoughtlessly destructive. It’s often unintentional, but then even once we know better we don’t always change our approach. I’ve made some mistakes, too; I’m still learning. We have to be willing to ask questions and then try to make the best decisions. I want to do a better job living with all of the other species we’re sharing space with.
What do you think about when you walk into a garden store these days?
More and more garden stores are starting to include native plants in their displays—which is so great! Yay for this! But often they’re more expensive than nonnative plants and cultivars. Which is kind of crazy considering that they grow here naturally… And what I think about when I see those displays is, were those plants sprayed with pesticides before they got here? Because often they have been, and if so, they will harm the insects that people usually hope to help by planting native plants. So, it’s important to ask.
I also still see invasive plants being sold in some garden stores, and this distresses me. Ask questions! Know what you’re buying, and please don’t plant invasive plants.
What was the biggest misconception you had before you began this project?
I thought there would be one right answer, a universal recommended approach – one right way to go about bringing more native plants to a given place. Was I ever wrong!
What is the most important thing you have learned along the way?
Probably that I can’t control nature! I mean, I knew that, intellectually, of course; but still, I had an idealistic, and unrealistic, sense of what I could accomplish in a certain timeframe. This lack of control is brought home to me every time I approach a task on the mountain. But maybe the biggest thing I’ve learned is patience. I’ve never been a patient person, but I’ve had to be to do this work. Everything involves waiting. Or maybe I haven’t learned that and I never will! Time will tell…
Tell us about your view as you write this.
From my office, I can see over the cherry orchard and across a field to the silhouetted Blue Ridge. (The cherry trees have leaf spot right now, so they’re badly wilted, and whenever I look out the window I’m reminded of yet another thing I need to do!) If I stand at a certain angle, I can see the rocky peak of a mountain called Old Rag, where I hiked when I was a kid. Turkey vultures are circling over the distant meadow, and I wonder what they’ve found. The field just below my window is full of ragweed—that’s not bad! It’s a native plant and quail love to eat the seeds. I try to ignore my nemesis, the invasive ailanthus tree that pokes up at the edge of the field.
What’s next for you and your mountain?
I’ve recently started adding nest boxes on the mountain, and I was excited to see pairs of bluebirds nesting in the boxes for the first time. (Of course, one resourceful couple decided to nest in an empty light cavity outside my house instead…) Next, I’m hoping to add nest boxes for kestrels, a small raptor that needs help in Virginia.
I’ve also started thinking seriously about raising sheep. I was hoping I could teach my standard poodle to be chill around them, but anytime she sees a sheep, she throws herself into her full-blown circus-poodle act, leaping in the air and dancing around on her hind legs, while the sheep just stares at her, like, What the–? Another uphill battle, I guess.
