John S. Farnsworth, MFA, MLA, PhD
The president of Santa Clara University, where my chair was in environmental writing and literature, recently granted me status as Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies and Sciences, Emeritus. After 21 years in the classroom, I took early retirement to pursue a lifelong passion: nature writing. My quest brought me to the San Juan Islands, where my first order of business was to build a writing shack back in the forest.
My deep connection with the natural world didn't happen overnight. During my undergraduate years I spent the summers working at a scout ranch in Colorado, teaching hiking and nature merit badges. My first four years out of college I ran an outdoor school in the Sangre de Cristo mountains, and I later worked my way through grad school as a scuba instructor. For much of my time on the SCU faculty I would take a class sea kayaking in a desert archipelogo in Baja, where they would immerse themselves in the natural history of the Sea of Cortez.
These days, I tend to put my fieldcraft aside in order to understand nature on its own terms. My focus has been to develop a writing craft that gives me the ability to write from nature, rather than meerly writing about it. Although I still relate to the environment as a lifelong student of natural history, I'm doing so with a newfound freedom that enables me to peer differently into the world around me.