Outlines of Ecological Consciousness in W. H. Hudson's Environmentalism

Abstract

William Henry Hudson has been largely overlooked by the ecocritical paradigm of recent decades, yet he stands out as one of the most prominent voices of late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century environmentalism. His fiction and nonfiction alike are characterized by Romanticism and nostalgia for what is perceived as a vanishing realm of pristine nature, as well as by a critique of anthropogenic exploitation of animals and their natural habitats. This fusion of Romanticism and environmentalism is interesting when considered in the light of current ecocritical scholarship. This article examines how it is possible to read the inherent environmentalism of Hudson's work as exhibiting a form of ecological in congruence with the thinking of current ecocritical scholarship.

THE ANGLO-ARGENTINE nature writer William Henry Hudson has been largely overlooked by the ecocritical paradigm of recent decades, yet he stands out as one of the most prominent voices of late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century environmentalism. Driven by "an unreasoning love for wildlife"¹ and a fierce environmentalist defence of nature against industrial society, Hudson based his writing career on the aim of verbally manifesting "something illusive, mysterious, and inexpressibly beautiful"² that could only be found in the natural world. As a result, his fiction and nonfiction alike are characterized by Romanticism and nostalgia for what is perceived as a vanishing realm of pristine nature, as well as by a critique of anthropogenic exploitation of animals and their natural habitats. This fusion of Romanticism and environmentalism is interesting when considered in the light of current ecocritical scholarship, where thinkers such as Timothy Morton have sought to problematize environmentalist ideology.

At first sight, several aspects of Hudson's work will no doubt appear problematic: the dichotomy being constructed between nature and urban society, the feminization of the natural world, and repeated anthropomorphisms, to name a few. However, a reading that dismisses Hudson's thinking as merely symptomatic of his time is too one-sided. In an attempt to avoid what Glen A. Love describes as the practice of adopting "the 'gotcha' manner of an eco-policeman, dragging past writers to the dock for violations of today's sense of environmental incorrectness,"³ this article examines how it is possible to read the inherent environmentalism of Hudson's work as exhibiting a form of ecological consciousness in congruence with the thinking of current ecocritical scholars, particularly Morton.

In his work, Morton draws what he refers to as a "rigorous distinction" between environmentalism and "genuine" ecological awareness.⁴ The contrast is central to Morton's theorizations, which he sums up under the terms "dark ecology" and "the ecological thought."⁵ What we traditionally think of as environmentalism, Morton argues, is in fact an ideology that disguises itself as a notion of sustainable environmental ethics, while actually facilitating anthropocentrism and ecological degradation. In order for ecological consciousness to become manifest, Morton contends, we need to rid ourselves of both the word "nature" and the term "environmentalism," as environmentalism typically subscribes to the Romantic construct of "Nature": green, aesthetically pleasing, and existing as a "reified thing in the distance" away from civilization. As long as this dualism persists, it prevents ecological thinking from taking place.⁶

The "dark ecology" that Morton advocates as a replacement for environmentalism entails a more complex form of thinking, involving an awareness of the interconnectedness of all things, what Morton has termed "the mesh": a web of lifeforms, living and dead, without centres or edges, that is truly interconnected. The implications of thinking "the mesh" are that categorizations of the environment, such as patterns of hierarchies or species, no longer work. Externally oriented notions of nature then become impossible to sustain. This, briefly described, is the essence of Morton's idea of ecological awareness.

Although Morton may be right to maintain that firmly held beliefs in environmental aesthetics can prevent us from engaging with ecological issues, one might nevertheless claim that he also oversimplifies the relationship between environmentalism and ecological awareness in his insistence on the rigid distinction between the two. One way to examine the dynamics between these concepts more closely could be to revisit texts that are regarded as influential examples of nature writing, such as nineteenth-century works that were foundational for the rise of the environmentalist movements of the twentieth century. Since ideas from nineteenth-century environmentalism were gradually adopted, popularized and appropriated by the rise of mainstream environmental consciousness, examining these works in their original forms might be beneficial. With this in mind, Hudson's largely forgotten environmentalism is an interesting case. Indeed, Hudson's work, and especially the novel Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (1904), provides several examples of how Morton's "rigorous distinction" between environmentalism and ecological awareness can be reconsidered and negotiated.

In Defence of Nature's Beauty

In his recent Hudson biography, James Wilson admits that his goal for the book was "to bring Hudson to life, but not to explain him."⁷ Wilson, along with several other Hudson biographers, sketch an outline of a man they perceive as fundamentally unknowable.⁸ Born in 1841, Hudson was the son of North American farmers who had settled outside Buenos Aires. His childhood, writes Ruth Tomalin, was characterized by a close affinity with nature and by firsthand wildlife experiences.⁹ He learned to identity the sounds of the Argentine pampas' many bird species, fostering a passion for ornithology that Hudson would retain throughout his life and that would strongly influence his career as a writer. After settling in London during the 1870s, he would never return to South America, and until his death in 1922 he made a meagre living through ornithological work, field naturalism, and nature writing. As a result, what lives on is a legacy of numerous texts, many of which received positive acclaim at their times of publication but today remain largely forgotten. Green Mansions, for instance, which few today know of, rose to widespread fame upon its publication in the United States, where it became an immediate best-seller, its popularity culminating in a film adaptation in 1959.¹⁰

A strange patchwork of genres and ideas characterizes Hudson's writing. Green Mansions and The Purple Land: Being One Richard Lamb's Adventures in the Banda Oriental, in South America, as told by Himself (1885) are both set in South America and adhere to the narrative templates of late-Victorian imperial adventure fiction, but are arguably both anti-imperialistic. The novel A Crystal Age (1887) is Hudson's attempt at utopian fiction, expressing what one might speculate is its authors vision of an ideal society: community-based modes of living centred around a biocentric way of life in a world without industry or modern technology. Many of Hudson's nonfiction works were mistaken by his publishers as travel writing: books such as Nature in Downland (1900), Afoot in England (1909), The Naturalist in La Plata (1892), and A Shepherd's Life (1920) revolve around Hudson's perambulatory experiences in the countryside, describe encounters with locals along the open road, and offer detailed passages of wildlife portrayals.

The diversity of his background makes Hudson an interesting character, affording him a position at once local and global. As Richard Maxwell and Katie Trumpener suggest, "Hudson epitomizes a new, transcultural model of authorship" in the nineteenth-century literary scene,¹¹ meaning that Hudson's work expresses complex, culturally diverse impulses that derive from his in-between position on the thresholds of different cultures and literary periods. Although perhaps above all, as Fletcher calls him, a belated Romantic,¹² Hudson also falls between the categorisations of Victorian and Edwardian literature, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century author.

But despite the classificatory instability of Hudson's work, his texts all share the same environmentalist stance, put forward either directly through pleas for humanity to halt any further environmental degradation or through the themes that his fiction expresses. It is through the use of ubiquitous ornithic imagery that this environmentalism becomes particularly evident. His protagonists regularly take on the roles of ornithologists, providing elaborate descriptions of what Hudson saw as the "unimaginable beauty and grace" of birds. Hudson's perhaps most overtly expressed environmentalism can be found in a letter he wrote to The Times, later reprinted as a pamphlet, entitled "Feathered Women." Here, Hudson launches an attack at the Victorian fashion industry's use of bird feathers for ornamental purposes and at women "decorated with the remains of slaughtered songsters,"¹³ which he rightly argued contributed to the extinction of several bird species. From Hudson's perspective, then, the survival of endangered species depended on halting the expansion of an urban, industrial capitalist sphere on a course towards generating "an impoverished nature and earth."¹⁴ As a result, his fiction highlights the inherent value of "the many local sites in which capitalist pressures cannot finally dominate,"¹⁵ but always with a background awareness of the threat that the modern way of life poses to these remote places.

In Green Mansions, Hudson chose the deep Guyana tropics to serve as this remote setting. The novel's protagonist, Abel, sets out into jungle after taking part in a failed attempt to overthrow the Venezuela government. While staying with a native tribe, Abel explores the nearby forest and is captivated by its beauty and mystique, awed at "those green mansions where I had found so great a happiness."¹⁶ The novel's environmentalism and Romantic idealization of nature culminate in the portrayal of Rima, a mysterious forest-dwelling girl who lives in harmony with all nonhumans and has the ability to speak in a birdsong-like language. Abel deduces that Rima is the last remaining descendant of an ancient race that lived as an isolated community with greater respect for nature than modern humans, and the novel sees the couple journeying further into the jungle in search of Rima's place of birth. The romantic relationship that has been developing between Abel and Rima is quickly brought to an end, however, when Rima is murdered by the native tribe with which Abel has been staying, as she falls from a burning tree "like a great white bird killed with an arrow and falling to the earth."¹⁷

As John Glendening suggests, "Rima's demise expresses Hudson's often expressed sadness over the mass extinction of species, perpetuated by the civilized savages of his own culture."¹⁸ The novel's environmentalist themes are also evident in how Rima's vegetarian and ecologically harmonious lifestyle seems to be Hudson's ideal image of human coexistence with nature. The novel is constructed around the environmentalist notion that pristine nature, located in the distant jungle far away from civilization, is inherently benign and beautiful. Hudson hereby sets up the exact contrast between nature and society that resonates throughout Morton's criticisms: "Nature writing partly militates against ecology rather than for it. By setting up nature as an object 'over there'—a pristine wilderness beyond all trace of human contact—it re-establishes the very separation it seeks to abolish."¹⁹ Yet, although these environmentalist impulses are clearly apparent in Hudson's work, other aspects of it point to a much deeper ecological awareness than its façade environmentalism would imply.

"A New Nature, Black and Implacable"

Both Ian Duncan and David Trotter classify Green Mansions as an "eco-romance," denoting the novel's celebratory stance towards the natural world and the protagonist's attraction towards the mystical Rima.²⁰ However, the narrative shift that occurs in the novel's final chapters brings this classification of the novel into question. Up until this point, the novel's overall romanticizing tone has been centred upon Abel's extreme idealism of both Rima and the forest. But when Abel learns about Rima's death, a transformation takes place in his attitude to nature, which consequently affects the tone of the first-person narrative. The grief and anger that he now experiences force Abel to let go of his Romantic notion of Nature. No longer capable of maintaining this former belief, Abel instead embraces a darker orientation towards his environment, now perceiving it as cruel and threatening. "I was conscious that something new and strange had come into my life; that a new nature, black and implacable had taken the place of the old," he states.²¹

This dark ecological vision informs the final dramatic chapters of the novel, as Abel notices aspects of his environment that he was previously incapable of seeing due to his Romanticism. The change in Abel's consciousness is remarkably similar to the kind of transformation Morton encourages society to undergo: "The very idea of 'nature' which so many hold dear will have to wither away in an 'ecological' state of human society."²² The novel exemplifies precisely this when Abel's idea of sublime nature begins to "wither away" following Rima's death, as he abandons the environmental aesthetics that previously fostered his belief in Nature.

Parallel to this shift in narrative tone, Abel also undergoes a change in his awareness of himself. In the feverish and delusional state that he enters after Rima's passing, he increasingly surrenders his anthropocentrism and thereby also lets go of the distance that previously set him apart from his surroundings. Becoming more aware of his own animality, he describes how he regards himself as "a wild animal with no thought or feeling beyond his immediate wants," and his "impulse to spring like a tiger on one of the Indians."²³ This is indeed a dark ecological state where human and animal, dead and alive, are entangled in the mesh-like jungle environment, and where the boundaries between them dissolve.

This is further illustrated when Abel comes across the human skeleton of Rima's guardian and recounts in detail how the flesh has been devoured by armadillos. After dark he hears the "night-sounds of the forest … ghostly sounds, uttered by the ghosts of dead animals." Having built a temporary shelter in the jungle, he discovers a "monstrous hairy hermit spider" and lives alongside it for days.²⁴ This scene illustrates the coexistence and inter-species intimacy that for Morton means becoming aware of "strange strangers," a term he uses as an extension of Derrida's notion of the arrivant, as a way of thinking about lifeforms by moving beyond human/animal categorisations and hierarchies. The goal of ecological awareness is to "become acclimated to the strangeness of the stranger," but not so familiar with it that the strangeness disappears.²⁵ For Abel the spider is both strange and familiar, as he becomes aware of "that strange hairy figure" in a new way, fascinated by yet uneasy towards its features and behaviour.²⁶

This coexistence now includes intimacy not only between Abel and the spider, but also between him and other lifeforms that have been left unmentioned up until this point in the narrative:

More companionable, but still in an uncomfortable way, were the large crawling, running insects—crickets, beetles, and others. They were shapely and black and polished, and ran about here and there on the floor, just like intelligent horseless carriages. … Centipedes and millipedes in dozens came too, and were not welcome. I feared not their venom, but it was a weariness to see them; for they seemed no living things, but the vertebrae of snakes and eels and long slim fishes, dead and desiccated.²⁷

The newly afforded attention given to these creatures illustrates Abel's attunement to the ecological realities of his environment. In fact, what the novel depicts here is Abel's recognition of "the mesh" as "an entangled web of ambiguous entities."²⁸ In the delirious and feverish state that he enters after Rima's death, Abel is, as Glendening describes, "caught now in the meshes of dark nature and nearly insane";²⁹ he is becoming aware of nature's fundamental entanglement.

The novel also portrays this ecological coexistence with particular clarity towards the close of the narrative, when Abel makes his way out of the jungle and back to civilization. Along the route, he kills a snake lying in his way, but instantly regrets it and calls himself a cannibal. Abel is subsequently haunted by the sensation that the snake still accompanies him: "I walked home troubled with a fancy that somewhere, somewhere down on the black, wet soil where it had fallen, through all that dense, thorny tangle and millions of screening leaves, the white, lidless eyes were following me still."³⁰

The scene is reminiscent of Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," where in a similar hallucinatory episode the Mariner blesses the water-snakes that swim along the side of the ship. James McKusick has argued that because he comes to the realization that all lifeforms are interconnected and are equally important in the natura world, "by blessing the water-snakes, the Mariner is released from his state of alienation from nature."³¹ With regard to Green Mansions, another way of putting it is to see Abel's orientation towards the snake as symptomatic of his realization that there is no nature and that the jungle environment in its entirety is a mesh. In the new "black and implacable" nature that the novel now presents, Abel perceives the jungle as a claustrophobic space, admitting that "into the deepest blackness of the interior I dared not venture,"³² much in the same way as the ocean evokes a sense of claustrophobia in the Mariner.

This confined jungle atmosphere also recalls Heart of Darkness, the work of Hudson's friend Joseph Conrad. According to Morton, the sense of labyrinthine claustrophobia that these texts evoke is exactly how we ought to think about nature, as it means that there will be "no exit" and no possibility of achieving "a sadistic/aesthetic distance" to it.³³ Abel, then, is already in nature and is incapable of longing for assimilation into it. In this way, the final chapters of Green Mansions portray Abel undergoing a shift from believing in Romantic Nature to adopting the ecological perspective of dark ecology, a transformation that opens his eyes to his intimacy and coexistence with other lifeforms of the jungle. As a novel constructed around environmentalism, Green Mansions in this way also becomes a novel that exemplifies the ecological thought of Morton's theorizations.

"The Little Feathered People"

As demonstrated by his works' undercurrents of Romanticism, as well as by their inherent environmentalism, Hudson's love of pristine nature clearly verges on a belief in animism and nature mysticism. The often-expressed animistic ontology that his work subscribes to is another way in which Hudson negotiates environmentalism and ecological awareness. Tomalin notes how for Hudson as a child "one particular wildflower could call up this sense of the supernatural; certain trees evoked it powerfully, especially by moonlight; sometimes the great flaring pampas sunset seemed more than he could bear."³⁴ This closely resembles the elation experienced by Richard Lamb, the protagonist of The Purple Land, in a scene where he rides across the pampas during sunset and spots a flock of orioles. He asks: "Face to face with Nature on the vast hills at eventide, who does not feel himself near to the Unseen?"³⁵ This is one of Hudson's most animistic-sounding passages.

Further, in Afoot in England, Hudson describes one of "those rare days when nature appears to us spiritualized and is no longer nature." Shortly after, while walking along the seaside in the heat and sunlight of a summer's day, the sight of a group of seagulls leaves a strong animistic impression:

They were not birds but spirits … and I, standing far out on the sparkling sands, with the sparkling sea on one side and the line of dunes, indistinctly seen as land, on the other, was one of them. … That was the effect on my mind: this natural world was changed to a supernatural, and there was no more matter nor force in sea or land nor in the heavens above, but only spirit.³⁶

For both Hudson and the narrators of his work, then, the natural world is clearly experienced as animated and alive.

Traditional animism is also something that speaks to Morton's idea of ecological awareness. Morton proposes that his ecological critique can be thought of as "an upgraded version of animism."³⁷ He praises animist philosophy for moving beyond the human/nonhuman dichotomy that is central to Western thought in the tradition of Cartesian dualism. In highlighting the value of an animistic cosmology for ecological thinking, Morton echoes emerging impulses in philosophical approaches such as new materialism, object-oriented ontology, and material ecocriticism, where the agency of object and matter are acknowledged. Bruno Latour, for instance, in his compositionist manifesto, advocates the idea of bringing animism into dialogue with contemporary ecological scholarship, pointing out how the "inanimism paradigm," along with the threat of being accused of anthropomorphism if attributing agency to inanimate things, "is so strong that it paralyzes all the efforts of many scientists in many fields."³⁸ Many critics, then, clearly understand animism and related new materialist approaches as useful tools for challenging the myth of human exceptionalism.

Hudson's animism is particularly evident in his work's recurring use of the phrase "feathered people" in the reference to birds. In A Crystal Age, Smith, the protagonist, encounters a group of "little feathered people" in the forest.³⁹ Likewise, Richard Lamb describes his experience of listening to "the little feathered people that came about me."⁴⁰ While illustrative of Hudson's belief in animism, this phrase can of course be interpreted as merely an expression of anthropomorphism, or what Thomas C. Gannon says is a privileging of the human in a case of "self-serving projections of human ego," common throughout the history of bird portrayals in Western literature. Gannon states that such anthropomorphisms of the avian are necessarily Othering and always privilege the human.⁴¹ This may well be the case, but in the light of Morton's ecological thought, the phrase "feathered people" actually speaks to the ecological awareness of Hudson's work, as Morton himself espouses the word "people" as a useful term for describing both human and nonhuman. "Like animism, ecology without Nature regards all beings as people, while not restricting the idea of 'people' to human being as such. There is no Nature, only people, some of whom are human beings," he asserts.⁴² This enables us to see Hudson's term "feathered people" as practically anticipating Morton's ecological thought.

Subject/Object Dynamics in Hudson's Ecological Awareness

In Morton's description of dark ecology as "really deep ecology," he expands on Arne Næss's deep ecology. Although "far from being hostile to deep ecology," Morton nevertheless takes issue with Næss's philosophy; its ecocentric approach leaves too little room for the human subject.⁴³ Through its desire to overcome the Cartesian dualism that is perceived as separating humans from nature, deep ecology has internalized a Romantic Nature construct and therefore does not "suffice" as genuine environmental ethics, according to Morton. "Ecology may be without nature. But it is not without us" are Morton's final words in Ecology without Nature—the ecological thought still demanding that there be room for the human self.⁴⁴ This showcases another central concern in Morton's discussion of ecological awareness, namely that of subject/object dualism.

Green Mansions presents us with some interesting scenes that can shed light on the dynamics between subject and object in Hudson's ecological awareness. What can be described as two different ecological orientations make themselves apparent exemplified through Abel and Rima respectfully. Whereas Abel may be said to represent deep ecology's wish for total assimilation of the subject into nature, Rima's behaviour might be construed to illustrate the thinking that Morton has in mind with dark ecology: she does not wish for integration into nature, but she is always guided by her own subjectivity and is aware of her position in the mesh.

The discrepancy between Abel's and Rima's ecological orientations are demonstrated in how at several points in the novel Abel's progress through the jungle is hindered by dense vegetation, whereas Rima consistently navigates the jungle with ease, more synchronized with the nonhuman world. Glendening observes that in Green Mansions, the many descriptions of entangled jungle vegetation form an intentional repetitive pattern and overtly recollect Darwin's famous "entangled bank" passage from Origin of Species.⁴⁵ These descriptions, Glendening remarks, illustrate how Abel finds himself trapped in the vegetation because he represents Darwinian natural selection; Abel moves through the forest, motivated only by his own wants and needs, whereas Rima is more attuned to a sympathetic and Lamarckian theory of evolution. The forest "entrap[s] Abel in vegetation whenever his egotism alienates him from nature. Rima, however, glides through the densest vegetation because she sees and sympathises with all that surrounds her."⁴⁶

However, one might also interpret Abel's inability to navigate the forest in the same effortless manner as Rima as, on the contrary, a loss of subjectivity and sense of self, and thereby also his egotism. After having been bit by a poisonous snake, Abel desperately runs through the forest and falls down a precipice, eventually losing consciousness. Prior to the fall, Abel states: "I soon became entangled in a dense undergrowth, which so confused me that at last I confessed despairingly to myself that for the first time in this wood I was hopelessly lost."⁴⁷ Here the reason for Abel's inability to navigate the entanglement is that he has lost all sense of self-awareness and is unable to distinguish between himself and his surroundings. Lesley Wylie argues that Abel exemplifies the vanishing subject's total immersion into the jungle landscape, and explains that falling asleep or losing consciousness in this way is a prime example of this integration into nature: "Asleep or unconscious, the human being ceases to distinguish himself/herself from the surroundings, and becomes fully integrated into the landscape."⁴⁸ Abel achieves this complete immersion into his environment, but only because of his loss of consciousness.

Rima, by contrast, can easily move through the entangled vegetation "with swift, easy, undulating motion."⁴⁹ This control that she possesses is due to her awareness of her own self, where the boundaries of her own body are and where her environment begins. In other words, Rima exemplifies ecology with room for human subjectivity, a "darker" ecological orientation. Already aware of her embeddedness in nature, as an integral part of it she cannot long for immersion into it and cannot conceive of an outside-position. She comprehends her presence in "the mesh" but does not lose her sense of self. Through its portrayal of Rima, therefore, the novel again illustrates a form of ecological awareness that seems to anticipate Morton's dark ecology.

The Embodied Naturalist

While Hudson's work is to a large extent informed by Romantic Nature imagery and environmentalism, his texts also contain impressive amounts of accurate and realistic wildlife descriptions, implying a genuine awareness of ecosystems and ecological complexities. The physiology and behaviour of birds, in particular, are often recounted with detail. In Green Mansions, Abel describes "a humming-bird moving about in an aërial dance among the flowers—a living prismatic gem that changes its colour with every change of position—how in turning it catches the sunshine on its burnished neck and gorget plumes—green and gold and flame-coloured."⁵⁰ These types of bird descriptions occur regularly throughout Hudson's work.

The attentiveness to the nonhuman and to organisms in their environments is central to the narrative of The Purple Land, as Lamb frequently pauses to observe birds, flora, and fauna on his journey across the pampas. The minute wildlife descriptions that his narrative provides reveal not only extensive biological knowledge of individual species, but also a deep awareness of the local biodiversity and interplay of species. One of these descriptions evidences Lamb's knowledge of ecotones—"edge" areas between different biomes, where biodiversity tends to be particularly rich:

Here, growing in picturesque irregularity, were fifty or sixty old peach, nectarine, apricot, plum, and cherry trees. … All about the ground, tangled together in a pretty confusion, flourished many of those dear familiar Old World garden flowers. … At the farther end of this wilderness of flowers and fruit trees was an aloe hedge. … This hedge was like a strip of wild nature placed alongside of a plot of man's improved nature. … The hedge was also rich in animal life. There dwelt mice, cavies, and elusive little lizards; crickets sang all day long under it, while in every open space the green epeiras spread their geometric webs. Being rich in spiders, it was a favourite hunting-ground of those insect desperadoes, the mason wasps, that flew about loudly buzzing in their splendid gold and scarlet uniform. There were also many little shy birds, and my favourite was the wren.⁵¹

Lamb here describes the synthesis of the human-designed orchard and the "wilder" hedge biome. In doing so, he demonstrates how human life forms a natural part of the pampas' entanglement of organisms.

The natural presence of humans in this ecological interconnectedness is also emphasized in Lamb's encounter with a local family. John Carrickfergus, an emigrated Scotsman, along with his wife and children, abide by the philosophy of literally mixing their bodies with soil and grease to remain healthy. Carrickfergus explains that all "we think about in the old country are books, cleanliness, clothes; what's good for the soul, brain and stomach; and we make 'em miserable. … Dirty children are healthy, happy children. … In Scotland dirt's wickedness."⁵² The way that the novel here advertises this type of lifestyle is reminiscent of Morton's dark ecology and his arguments about how genuine ecological thinking involves finding ways to "stick around with the sticky mess that we're in … making thinking dirtier, identifying with the ugliness."⁵³ Rather than being dominant over the land that they live on, the Carrickfergus family, through their nonconformist lifestyles, are at one with it.

This is also something that can also be said of Lamb himself. As Maxwell and Trumpener have suggested, The Purple Land is an example of a "geographical novel"—its narrative is defined by "the simple traversal of space" rather than relying on a plot to move forward." Instead of Lamb serving as the novel's hero, the land itself becomes the heroic force as it "reigns triumphant over all those who would tame it."⁵⁴ Lamb's stance towards his environment is not one of domination, but rather one of mutual connectedness: he is at one with it rather than conquering, allowing what he observes and experiences to fascinate and transform him rather than the other way around.

While Abel, Lamb, and Hudson himself all fit the description of the gentlemanly naturalist type that Mary Louise Pratt outlines in Imperial Eyes (1992), the style of Hudson's work always remains humble and anecdotal rather than claiming to possess the objectivity of a naturalist. Pratt argues that the naturalist, while venturing out "in search of non-exploitive relations to nature" and innocently "desiring nothing more than a few peaceful hours alone with the bugs and flowers," consolidated Eurocentrism through the systemizing knowledge production that resulted. Print was a crucial component of this project, which through the systematizing and classification of nature, was to "assert even more powerfully the authority of … the class which controlled it."⁵⁵ In light of this, Green Mansions provides the reader with an interesting scene in the beginning of the narrative that serves to undermine any possibility Abel has to dominate the jungle environment through writing. When first setting out into the jungle, Abel carries with him a notebook where he logs his impressions and experiences, fantasizing that it might bring him fame and that his writing "might prove useful and interesting to the public."⁵⁶ However, the notebook is destroyed by rain even before his journey has begun. In this way the scene suggests an intentional rejection of empiricism, naturalism, and Eurocentric knowledge production. Indeed, Hudson himself in Idle Days in Patagonia had previously written that if "there is anything one feels inclined to abhor in this placid land, it is the doctrine that all our investigations into nature are for some benefit, present or future, to the human race."⁵⁷ Deliberately, then, Hudson wishes to avoid the aims and practices of the objective naturalist.

This is also reflected on the level of Hudson's writing through the way in which Hudson always situates his own body and the bodies of his narrators in the text rather than projecting what Donna Haraway refers to as "a conquering gaze from nowhere."⁵⁸ The effect is a minimization of the distance between observer and object of study. In Afoot in England, for instance, Hudson specifically states where he is standing before he begins a lengthy description of his view of Salisbury Cathedral.⁵⁹ Similarly, it is always through the embodied practices of walking or cycling that Hudson narrates his nonfiction works. Along the same lines as Haraway, Val Plumwood has theorized that humans can avoid anthropocentrism by envisioning themselves as "ecologically embodied beings," by which she means that humans should think of themselves as components of the ecosystems they are part of.⁶⁰ In the same way, Hudson might be said to exemplify the "ecologically embodied" author. Instead of writing in the tradition of transcendent, objective, and disembodied scientific narrators, Hudson is always embodied in the text, highly aware of his presence and how it affects the surrounding environment.

This ecologically embodied style of nature writing, as well as the other aspects of Hudson's work mentioned here, demonstrate Hudson's continued relevance today for thinking about environmental matters, confirming the importance of revisiting environmentalists of the past and not dismissing their thinking as outdated and unfit for twenty-first century ecological discourse. Although Hudson is largely forgotten, his "work, of course, is not yet done," writes Tomalin, referring to the continued threat posed by anthropogenic species extinction to the world's bird populations and other forms of wildlife.⁶¹ But in another way, Hudson's work is unfinished because of his texts' continued capacity to foster engagement with the environmental challenges the planet is currently facing. Hudson's environmentalism is not merely the sum of fin-de-siècle anxieties over progress, industrial expansion, and modernity, but partakes in a complex negotiation of environmentalist tendencies and ecological awareness, foreshadowing the sort of ecological consciousness advocated by many twenty-first-century thinkers, particularly Morton.

As these critics show, reconsidering environmentalism and debunking anthropocentrism is crucial for managing the environmental degradation of our current geological era, which many now refer to as the Anthropocene.⁶² Hudson and other nature writers of the past can help broaden our sense of ecological awareness in unexpected ways and more effectively than if these writers are left unstudied. Revisiting these writers also challenges the ecocritical bias towards studying contemporary literature and canonical authors. In this way, Hudson and other nature writers of the past still have a great deal more work to accomplish.