A Year in Reading: On Paying Attention
I’ve been wondering about what it means to see the natural world.
我一直想知道看到自然世界意味着什么。
My daughter, now 6, is blossoming into an explorer.
我的女儿现在 6 岁了，正在成长为一名探险家。
It’s a joy to see her interact with the environment, whether we’re tidepooling on the Pacific Coast or walking through old-growth redwoods in Northern California.
无论我们是在太平洋海岸的潮汐池中，还是在北加州的古老红杉林中漫步，看到她与环境互动都是一种乐趣。
She sees the details.
她看到了细节。
She observes with wonder.
她惊奇地观察着。
I, on the other hand, am constantly adjusting my lens.
另一方面，我不断调整镜头。
Or not looking at all.
或者根本就不看。
Among a handful of nature reads I recommended in 2024, one encouraging thought emerged during yet another year of climate disasters: that it’s possible to interrogate, and ultimately shift, my own thinking and understanding of the natural world, despite decades of learning and being in a human-centric world.
在我在 2024 年推荐的几本自然读物中，一个令人鼓舞的想法在又一年的气候灾难中出现：尽管我在一个以人类为中心的世界中学习和生活了数十年，但仍有可能质疑并最终改变我自己对自然世界的思考和理解。
Raising a young daughter, I’m pushed to see situations each day through her eyes, so parenting had already primed me for experiencing a jolt in perspective.
抚养一个年幼的女儿，我每天都被迫通过她的眼睛来看待事情，所以养育孩子已经让我做好了经历视角震动的准备。
Some of my favorite stories this year have made me more open to new outlooks and solutions for restoring and supporting the earth.
今年我最喜欢的一些故事让我对恢复和支持地球的新观点和解决方案更加开放。
They challenge me to pay more attention to the natural world, and to remember that we’re all connected, even to the tiniest and simplest forms of life.
他们挑战我更多地关注自然世界，并记住我们都是相互联系的，即使是最微小和最简单的生命形式。
So many stories about the environment are #SadReads.
很多关于环境的故事都是#SadReads。
These are important and necessary.
这些都是重要且必要的。
But this year, I responded more positively to writing I found uplifting and hopeful.
但今年，我对那些令人振奋和充满希望的写作做出了更积极的反应。
Dialogues between ecologists, scientists, and science writers have been especially illuminating.
生态学家、科学家和科普作家之间的对话尤其具有启发性。
In a recent Orion conversation, “Gift Thinking,” Jenny Odell and Robin Wall Kimmerer talk about a gift economy, in which humans cultivate reciprocal relationships and take their cues from Earth’s biodiverse ecosystems.
在猎户座最近的一次谈话“礼物思考”中，珍妮·奥德尔和罗宾·沃尔·基默勒谈论了礼物经济，在这种经济中，人类培养互惠关系，并从地球生物多样性的生态系统中获取线索。
This is in stark contrast to society’s dominant systems that extract and destroy, as if the planet is one massive warehouse stocked with infinite resources.
这与社会上掠夺和破坏的主导系统形成鲜明对比，就好像地球是一个储存着无限资源的巨大仓库。
Odell recounts a time she observed people filling jugs at a local spring and realized she’d never had that sort of relationship with water.
奥德尔回忆道，有一次她观察到人们在当地的泉水里往水罐里灌水，她意识到自己从未与水有过这种关系。
She asks: “Are there ways we might begin to rehabilitate our ability to see things as the gifts they are?” It’s a wise question that I haven’t stopped contemplating.
她问道：“有没有办法让我们开始恢复将事物视为天赋的能力？”这是一个明智的问题，我一直在思考。
To think this way requires “a muscle,” replies Kimmerer, one “that atrophies without exercise.”
基默勒回答说，以这种方式思考需要“一块肌肉”，一块“不锻炼就会萎缩的肌肉”。
In another conversation, “From Silicon to Slime,” Willa Köerner and Claire L.
在另一场对话“从硅到史莱姆”中，Willa Köerner 和 Claire L.
Evans discuss the growing overlap between biology and computing.
埃文斯讨论了生物学和计算机之间日益增长的重叠。
I’ll read anything and everything by Evans; so many light bulbs go off when reading her interdisciplinary writing and forward-thinking takes on the future.
我会读埃文斯的所有作品；当阅读她的跨学科写作和对未来的前瞻性思考时，很多人都灵光一闪。
In this interview in Köerner’s newsletter, Dark Properties—which I’d discovered in Sentiers, Patrick Tanguay’s excellent newsletter—Evans challenges outdated notions and definitions of computation.
在科尔纳时事通讯《黑暗属性》（Dark Properties）中的这次采访中——我在 Patrick Tanguay 的优秀时事通讯 Sentiers 中发现了这一内容——埃文斯挑战了过时的计算概念和定义。
“I’m fascinated by the fact that every living thing processes information, or computes, in a sense,” she says.
“从某种意义上说，每一种生物都处理信息或计算，这一事实让我着迷，”她说。
How are we limiting ourselves when we only think of laptops and iPhones as “computers”?
当我们只将笔记本电脑和 iPhone 视为“计算机”时，我们如何限制自己？
What about ant colonies, the root systems of trees, and slime molds?
蚁群、树木的根系和粘菌又如何呢？
Evans argues that if we can “align our interests with what living organisms and systems naturally do,” we could build far more innovative and sustainable solutions, and maintain the types of cooperative relationships that Odell and Kimmerer discuss.
埃文斯认为，如果我们能够“将我们的利益与生物体和系统的自然行为结合起来”，我们就可以构建更具创新性和可持续性的解决方案，并维持奥德尔和基默勒讨论的合作关系类型。
Speaking of slime molds, one of Ferris Jabr’s New York Times Magazine stories, The Mysterious, Deep-Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet,” pushed me to consider seemingly simple life forms in a new way.
说到粘菌，费里斯·贾布尔（Ferris Jabr）在《纽约时报》杂志上发表的一篇故事《塑造我们星球的神秘深居微生物》促使我以一种新的方式思考看似简单的生命形式。
These microbes, far down in the earth’s crust, have survived cataclysmic events over billions of years and may have helped to form the continents.
这些微生物位于地壳深处，在数十亿年的灾难性事件中幸存下来，可能有助于形成大陆。
Jabr writes that these subterranean microbes are “engaged in a continuous alchemy of earth,” which is a beautiful phrase I’ve returned to throughout the year, and one that mirrors Kimmerer’s and Evans’s ideas.
贾布尔写道，这些地下微生物“参与了地球的持续炼金术”，这是我一年来不断想起的一句美丽的话，也反映了基默勒和埃文斯的想法。
All living things—human and nonhuman, massive and miniscule—are part of Earth, creating and coevolving over time.
所有生物——人类和非人类，巨大的和微小的——都是地球的一部分，随着时间的推移创造和共同进化。
In fact, writes Jabr, “We are Earth.”
事实上，贾布尔写道，“我们就是地球。”
While we’re on the topic of the planet’s smaller living things, Benji Jones’s Vox story on the people in New York City who rehabilitate injured and abandoned creatures like rats, baby opossums, and stray birds was an unexpected yet delightful read.
当我们谈论地球上的小型生物时，本吉·琼斯 (Benji Jones) 的 Vox 故事讲述了纽约市人们对老鼠、负鼠宝宝和流浪鸟等受伤和被遗弃的生物进行康复的故事，读起来既出人意料又令人愉悦。
“As I spent time with rehabbers,” writes Jones, “I began to see their perspective.
琼斯写道：“当我与康复者相处时，我开始了解他们的观点。
They view these species not as pests but as part of nature—as part of the New York City ecosystem.
他们不认为这些物种是害虫，而是大自然的一部分——纽约市生态系统的一部分。
As part of their home.” I’ve always been a squirrel enthusiast, but after reading Jones’s piece, I realized I’d never considered them in the same category as cats and dogs.
作为他们家的一部分。”我一直是松鼠爱好者，但读了琼斯的文章后，我意识到我从未将它们与猫和狗归为一类。
Why not?
为什么不呢？
We can’t implement some of the systems that ecologists and thinkers envision on a bigger scale if we’re unable to recognize a rat or a pigeon as worthy of life.
如果我们无法认识到老鼠或鸽子值得生存，我们就无法在更大范围内实施生态学家和思想家设想的一些系统。
Jones’s look at wildlife rehabbers, who model how we could live alongside critters in our urban environments, made me question my own definition of coexistence.
琼斯对野生动物康复者的观察，他们模拟了我们如何在城市环境中与动物一起生活，这让我质疑自己对共存的定义。
What does it mean to coexist with other life on the planet?
与地球上其他生命共存意味着什么？
Better yet, what does it look like to be in harmony with them?
更好的是，与他们和谐相处是什么样子的？
In “My Harmony and the Heron,” an essay at Atmos, Jarod K.
在 Atmos 上的一篇文章《我的和谐与苍鹭》中，Jarod K.
Anderson describes how he rediscovered the magic of nature during a time of depression.
安德森描述了他如何在抑郁时期重新发现自然的魔力。
“Real magic requires your intention, your choice to harmonize,” he writes.
“真正的魔法需要你的意图、你的选择来协调，”他写道。
After years of being disconnected from wildlife for so long, he goes for a walk in the Ohio woods and sees a majestic great blue heron at the edge of a pool—and she also sees him.
多年来与野生动物断绝联系后，他在俄亥俄州的树林里散步，在水池边看到了一只雄伟的大蓝鹭——她也看到了他。
“It’s still here,” he writes of the heron, the water, the wilderness.
“它还在这里，”他在谈到苍鹭、水和荒野时写道。
“I had just stopped noticing.” Like Odell and Kimmerer, Anderson acknowledges that many of us no longer pay attention and fail to see the gifts in front of us.
“我刚刚不再注意到。”与奥德尔和基默勒一样，安德森承认，我们中的许多人不再关注，也看不到摆在我们面前的礼物。
Ultimately, he considers a more positive pathway and way of thinking—one that looks to nature for light, especially in times of darkness.
最终，他考虑了一种更积极的途径和思维方式——向大自然寻求光明，尤其是在黑暗时期。
As Kimmerer notes, paying attention is the ultimate act of resistance.
正如基默勒所说，集中注意力是最终的抵抗行为。
I hope these reads stimulate that muscle within you—the one we must constantly exercise, the one that makes us more open to positive change.
我希望这些读物能刺激你内心的那块肌肉——我们必须不断锻炼的那块肌肉，这块肌肉让我们对积极的改变更加开放。
—CLR
—CLR
Browse all of our year-end collections since 2011.
浏览我们自 2011 年以来的所有年终系列。