Nature Obscura by Kelly Brenner came as a welcome respite in the midst of 2020, bringing us a much-needed burst of curiosity and joy. Kelly eschews the adventurous locales and charismatic large animals found in most nature books in favor of searching urban landscapes for underappreciated organisms like flies, slime molds, and lichen. Her anecdotes are moments that anyone can experience for themselves: noticing different kinds of moss in your back yard; finding a snail at the beach. Coupled with Kelly’s down-to-earth voice, this makes Nature Obscura one of the most accessible nature natural history books of the past few years.
I sat down with Kelly to discuss her book and the inspiration behind it.
Me: Tell me, why is nature important to you?
Kelly: That’s a big question! For me personally, I am completely dependent on nature for my own mental wellbeing, because being autistic, it’s my one place to escape and reset and connect to the world in a peaceful way, which doesn’t always happen in the human world. But aside from that, to me nature is a way to keep that sense of curiosity, that sense of wonder, like Rachel Carson talks about. Because there’s never any lack of wonder and amazement, even in the city. The days of exploration are over, which is probably a good thing, but you can still channel that adventure and exploration in your yard or wherever. There’s a quote from E.O. Wilson that you can take a lifetime voyage around a single tree trunk, and there’s so much truth in that. If you really get into it, there’s that ability to channel all that really fun curiosity and adventure, even when you’re stuck at home.
Me: Tell me about how you got involved in science communication. Because you don’t come from a science background.
Kelly: My degree is in landscape architecture, and a big piece of that was ecology and botany. But especially ecology, which you wouldn’t think of when you think of landscape architecture. When I graduated I started writing, because I wanted to communicate more about how to incorporate habitat into the urban landscape, because I was convinced that it was possible. We see the landscape in the city as concrete and cars and pigeons and rats, but there’s so many nooks and crannies and little spaces where it’s possible to incorporate that habitat that we’re sadly lacking in the city, oftentimes.
And so I started writing about how to create that habitat, because that was my degree. Then I started researching more about how people had already done that, and that led me to more and more into communicating that, and from design it just kind of merged into urban nature. And then I just kept going, I guess.
Me: You have a bit here when you talk about the moss garden. Is that the sort of thing that got you interested in nature in the city more broadly?
Kelly: Yeah. I think studying the city from a landscape architecture perspective got me more into urban nature as a whole. Because I grew up not in the city. It was a small town, and we spent our weekends in the mountains camping. And so I was running feral and collecting alligator lizards and things. But then moving to the city, I don’t think I consciously realized how challenging that was. I think unconsciously I started to connect to that childhood experience of finding nature. “Well, now I’m here. I still gotta find it. Where is it?”
And then yeah, finding these little nooks like the moss garden. Graveyards are a really cool place to find nature, and bridges for bats and peregrine falcons. All those weird spots in the city.
Me: Most nature books focus on charismatic species like birds and wolves, but your book focuses more on organisms that are less cute and cuddly, like flies and slime molds. Why is it important to learn about these less charismatic species?
Kelly: Smaller organisms, the ones that we overlook or the ones that we say “ew, ick, burn it with fire,” are the ones that make the world go around. Birds are important, bears are important, but you could argue that all those small organisms are even more important. Bugs are the base level for feeding most of the rest of the natural world. They’re so vital to our ecosystem, and also as indicator species for what’s going on. All the bugs are disappearing, so we know something’s wrong.
Me: Talking about things going wrong, you have a story in this book about a fern die-off that’s very worrying. These kinds of die-offs are becoming more and more common. Why should people be concerned about that?
Kelly: Because, for one, what’s that quote from Muir, you can’t pick apart one thing without realizing it’s hitched with everything else. And we don’t understand that complexity yet. We know bits and pieces of it. We know birds rely on insects to feed their nestlings. But there’s so many more complexities that we don’t understand, and if one piece breaks down, it could topple an entire ecosystem. We’ve seen it happen in small places, like islands. It’s so vital that we don’t mess it up before we understand it. And plus it’s just the human mentality. Why should we mess it up? I mean, what gives us the right to disregard an entire ecosystem that was here long before we were?
Me: What inspired you to organize this book around the seasons?
Kelly: I go out all year around and I love all the nature, but I notice that nobody’s out in the wintertime, and very rarely in the autumn, except to find mushrooms. And with the book, I wanted to draw people’s attention to the fact that there’s nature all the time, all year round. And different nature. If you like dragonflies, you might just go out in the summertime and then stay at home in the winter. But if you go out, then you really discover that there are other things out that you might be just as enthralled with. Like for me, this time of year is nudibranch season. And then next is dragonfly season, and then after that it’s slime mold season. Watching a landscape change throughout the seasons, it’s really beautiful to just observe it and document it. That’s how people write poetry.
Me: One thing in your book that surprised me was the muskrats. I grew up in Seattle and I had no idea that muskrats live in Seattle. What organism were you most surprised to find in the city?
Kelly: I think it was the tardigrades. And not just finding them in the city, but find them in huge numbers up on my rooftop. Because I’d read about them. Everyone knows about tardigrades. They survive in space. They’re really cool. They’re badass and whatever. And I was like, well, I guess I’ll try and see if I can find some. And I started with the moss in the lawn and on the trees where I thought organisms would live and be happy. And then I tried the moss on my roof, and there were thousands of them in the moss on my roof!
Me: It makes you wonder: How did they get there?
Kelly: What I understand is when they turn into a tun, they shrivel up and when the moss dries out, they dry out and everything just blows away.
Me: So they’re kind of like mold spores?
Kelly: Exactly!
Me: That’s interesting.
Kelly: If they land in moss on a roof, they stay. If they land on a leaf, they might end up dying. Who knows? Or just staying in a tun indefinitely. That’s the benefit of cryptobiosis. But yeah, it was really surprising that not only were they on my roof when they were hardly anywhere else in the mosses around my yard, but that there were so many of them and they were so easy to find. I’m always happy thinking there’s tardigrades living above my head. But now I’m also really sad every time I see a neighbor scraping the moss off or putting that powdery poison stuff up there. The tardigrades!
Me: You have this wonderful wildlife habitat in your yard. What are some ways that people can make their yards more welcoming to wildlife?
Kelly: There are so many ways and it’s so easy. The coolest thing about being a wildlife gardener is that you have permission to be lazy. You don’t have to rake up the leaves. It’s better to leave the leaves, or at least make them in a pile somewhere for overwintering invertebrates. You don’t have to cut down all the dead stems because those are perfect for bee nests and other hibernating insects.
Other than being a lazy gardener, the key aspects are four components: Food, water, shelter, and a place to raise young. Most people think about birds. I gotta put a bird nest up. But if you think about places to raise young, those dead stems are a place to raise young bees. So that counts. You don’t have to have a big space to create this glorious habitat with nest boxes and all these other fancy things. You can do it on a small balcony or a small garden, if you think of it in small terms.
The easiest thing to do is planting native plants, especially wildflowers. And diversity. Diversity is key. A lot of bees and moths and caterpillars or butterflies have specialty plants, or host plants. You don’t have to be like “I want this caterpillar, so I’ll plant this plant.” Just create diversity of plants and that will cover a range. You’ll get more wildlife that appreciates that. The diversity will help with the constant bloom cycle. So you’ll get flowers all year, during the blooming season, anyway. And those are all super easy things to do and you don’t have to have tons of things, just a few. I had a wildlife garden on my balcony in Capitol Hill, Seattle, so it’s very easy to do.
Me: Do you have suggestions for people who live in apartments or don’t have a lot of access to outdoor spaces that they’re allowed to modify?
Kelly: Yeah, so just having a couple of containers of native plants and a little water container. I got this Ikea plastic plant container and I filled it up with water and I put some aquatic plants in it and I had that on my balcony. You just have to think in a smaller scale. You can provide shelter, food, all those things, just in a smaller scale. And they can be really successful. In the time I was there, I had three different species of lady beetles go through their complete life cycle. I found the eggs, the larva, the pupa, and the adults. Not just the Asian lady beetle, but three different kinds. And a benefit to having a small space garden is that you’re more intimately acquainted with it. If you have a little balcony you’re sitting on, you’re noticing all the plants and what’s going on with them, whereas if you have a larger garden, it’s much harder to keep track of all those things that are happening.
Me: My last question for you is: how else can regular people get involved in discovering nature in the city?
Kelly: Going out in different times of the day to experience different things. You can have a whole different group of organisms in the morning versus the evening versus the middle of the day. Finding all those nooks and crannies. Parks are easy. I mentioned the cemeteries. College campuses are a great place to go look. Botanical gardens. There are all these little nooks where you might not think of to go find nature throughout the seasons, throughout the day. Changing your perspective. Instead of thinking you’re going to go see a bear, think smaller. Look for the plants. Look for the bees. Look for the lady beetles. Invertebrates are everywhere. You can always find them.
Nature Obscura by Kelly Brenner (Mountaineers Books, 2020) is available in bookshops or online as a paperback, ebook, or audiobook.