‘Writing of Place:’ Mark Tredinnick, in his anthology A Place on Earth, says, “This literature, which is, at its best, part science and part poetry, and passes on lessons—from the more-than-merely-human world, and from those who live intimately with it—about living with dignity, with restraint and wisdom, with intelligence and grace, within the places on earth; and about the nature of the real world.” Good nature writers, he says, “try to see through nature’s eyes, to hear with its ears; they try to write from the point of view of the land, that compli­cated set of relationships, here.”

extracted from the guidelines to the Nature Conservancy Nature Writing Prize.