The passing of Michael Viney in May marked, for me, the end of an era. Also a naturalist, writer and smallholder, I read avidly every one of his Saturday Another Life columns throughout their 45 years in The Irish Times almost without a break. Throughout these same years his experiences paralleled my own involvement in nature, my fumbling attempts to become more self-sufficient and to leave a lower ecological footprint on the planet.
Michael’s was truly “another life”, both in the radical about-turn that he and his wife Ethna took in their careers, and in the sense that he was portraying a lifestyle that seemed in 1977 like a departure from the “norm”. Why would anyone give up a steady, well-paid job and a nice house in the suburbs for an uncertain future in a wild environment far from the English seaside town where he grew up?
[ Michael Viney: Why I moved to Mayo in 1977 and never came backOpens in new window ]
As Michael explored his new surroundings on the edge of the Atlantic, I walked with him in my imagination, down the boreens, across the tidal inlet, along the strand, over the duach and up to the bog. I shared his desire to harvest the riches of the sea without depleting them and his gargantuan efforts to catch fish on long lines of hooks set out in the shallow water. I too wandered along the beaches of the nature reserve where I worked, searching the strandline for useful things and daydreaming of life in an even wilder place.
Most of all, I began to write in the 1970s, to record my observations and my thoughts in nature journals that form the bedrock of my own memories and scribblings. Like Michael, I was conscious that my life was also a departure from the typical pathways of my peers and contemporaries.
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In the 1980s, I was given a unique opportunity to know Michael in a more personal way. As a last-minute substitute for an original team member, in June 1984 I was invited to join Michael, David Cabot and Steve Newton on the first Irish expedition to Jameson Land in East Greenland. The aim was to study the breeding of the barnacle goose, a species that migrates annually between the Arctic and the west coast of Ireland.
In the remote wilderness of a frozen valley leading down from the Greenland ice cap, we trudged through marshes and waded through rivers together, rowed across partly frozen lakes to round up flightless geese and explored Arctic nights in our flimsy tents and listened to the sounds of wild nature without any hint of other human presence.
These experiences cemented our friendship and our shared memories of the Arctic, the harsh wind off a frozen sea and our struggles to contribute something meaningful to science. Michael’s columns in The Irish Times, reporting on this privileged opportunity, captured our shared excitement and amazement at the variety of nature in an unspoilt environment.
Back in Ireland in the 1990s, as my writing efforts extended from short articles to nature books, I was heavily influenced by his style. He usually began his books, newspaper columns, features and book reviews with a personal experience or observation, expanding from there to the wider topic and referencing any recent research or publications on the subject. His reports on nature in the west of Ireland captured the imaginations of thousands of devoted readers and opened their eyes to the serious threats to nature, from overgrazing of the hills to overfishing of the seas, from stranding of whales and dolphins to the plight of the badger in the face of an official policy of extermination.
Michael managed the unusual achievement of bridging the divide between factual reporting and personal experience. Scientists are usually trained to avoid writing down their thoughts, feelings and personal opinions and instead to concentrate only on statements and conclusions that can be supported by evidence. Michael was never afraid of including his own views on a particular topic, whether it was the dire state of Ireland’s freshwater habitats or the recent critical review of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. His books, especially A Year’s Turning and Ireland: A Smithsonian Natural History, are classic works and will surely stand the test of time. His final book, Michael Viney’s Natural World, was published posthumously and includes some of his most lyrical writing as well as some of his exquisite paintings and sketches.
Every one of my own books was either reviewed by Michael or mentioned in a column. I owe Michael a huge debt of gratitude for showing me how nature writing should be done and how it can capture the attention of readers who would otherwise consider it outside their normal interests. May he rest in peace among his beloved landscapes of the west.
Richard Nairn is an ecologist and writer whose latest book is Wild Waters (Gill Books)
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