Talking on the Water: Conversations about Nature and Creativity

by Jonathan White

During the 1980s and 90s, the Resource Institute, headed by Jonathan White, held a series of floating seminars aboard a sixty-five-foot schooner featuring leading thinkers and writers from an array of disciplines. Over ten years, White conducted interviews, gathered in this collection, with the writers, scientists, and environmentalists who gathered on board to explore our relationship to the wild.

White describes the conversations as the roots of an integrated While at first these roots may not appear to be linked, a closer look reveals that they are sustained in common ground.

Beloved fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin discusses the nature of language, microbiologist Lynn Margulis contemplates Darwin's career and the many meanings of evolution, and anthropologist Richard Nelson sifts through the spiritual life of Alaska's native people. Rounding out the group are writers Gretel Ehrlich, Paul Shepard, and Peter Matthiessen, conservationists Roger Payne and David Brower, theologian Matthew Fox, activist Janet McCloud, Jungian analyst James Hillman, poet Gary Snyder, and ecologist Dolores LaChapelle.

By identifying the common link between these conversations, Talking on the Water takes us on a journey in search of a deeper understanding of ourselves and the environment.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Essays, Philosophy, Environment

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 10, 1994

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

solid collection of conversations about eco-philosophy had on board a restored sailboat as it sailed (mostly around) Southeast Alaska. many beautiful passages by a wide range of people including poets, ecologists, novelists, activists, even a theologian and a psychoanalyst. i read this slowly, pencil in hand. JoAnn R-C, do you happen to have a copy of this on your boat..?

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of speaking on behalf of populations, and treating a number of populations as monoliths. Specifically, almost all of the interviewees at some point spoke on behalf of people indigenous to a number of lands—in ways that, to me, transcended discussion of the interviewees experiences studying or living with them.

There were great nuggets on the environment and ecologies—for me it was if non-human beings, land, and ecologies were treated with more nuance than the people referred to.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
This book has not necessarily aged well. Written in 1990s, I believe many of those interviewed would have evolved their thinking in the last 30 years, especially around native cultures.
I picked it up because it contains an interview with Ursula K LeGuin, who is a personal hero. Some of the other interviews/chapters are more interesting than others, but there was at least one nugget about ecology or nature or philosophy that I pulled out of each of them.

[Jenny Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came upon this wonderful book at a second hand store while in a camping trip. Sadly, many of the books they refer to are no longer in print and hard to find. This is a beautiful book with an amazing collection of interviews.

[Shubhneet Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In koyukon, bik’ugnaatltonh means “something took care of him”. I love the idea, hunters goes out gets a moose or something, people will say bik’uhnaatltohn

[Helen Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing collection of essays on nature, spirituality, creativity, being human, ecology, anthropology.... book of the year so far!

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the 1980s and 1990s the author interviewed a diverse group of thinkers and writers (Ursula Le Guin, Gretel Ehrlich, Matthew Fox, Gary Snyder, etc) about their relationship with the natural world. Their conversations were held on a wooden schooner.

[Rehmat]

Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want, too. If we never find our experience described in poetry or stories, we assume that our experience is insignificant.

Art of the storytelling is so significant that what we read books on politics or fiction are all story. History is in toto storytelling and history itself is reflection of art of storytelling. Without equipping oneself with this art a person is dumb.

If you want to cultivate your art of storytelling read Jonathan White's Talking on the Water.