Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop

This charming memoir finds short story writer Whyman (You May See a Stranger) recounting how she attempted to restore a 200-acre former cow pasture in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to its natural state. Quickly discovering that there are few straightforward strategies for reversing the intrusion of invasive plants, Whyman discusses how the experts she consulted encouraged spraying the land with chemicals that would allow her to replant the fields from scratch but would also decimate native plants and cause untold ecological damage. Instead, she commissioned controlled burns, which culled invasive plants while allowing native species, which had adapted to annual wildfires, to grow back. Whyman complicates traditional conceptions of nature and belonging, as when she notes that determining which plants are “weeds” depends on one’s perspective (milkweed is typically regarded as undesirable because it’s toxic to livestock, even though it’s native throughout the U.S. and provides crucial nesting places for monarch butterflies), and she provides illuminating explorations of ecosystems’ complexity. For instance, she explains how invasive stiltgrass has crowded out native plants throughout the Blue Ridge Mountains because ravenous deer, whose population has been growing unchecked after human development drove away their natural predators, have cleared the way for the plant by overeating native species. The result is an enchanting complement to Isabella Tree’s Wilding. (Jan.)