A Force of Nature

This fall, the Members Association welcomes a special guest to Birmingham—but it’s really more of a homecoming for Margaret Renkl, an award-winning author and New York Times contributing opinion writer. Renkl is an Alabama native who spent much of her youth in Birmingham and attended Auburn University. Now based in Nashville, Renkl is best known for her essays about the joys and heartbreak that are part of nature and life in the South. Her latest book, The Comfort of Crows, chronicles her discoveries as the changing seasons in her yard mirror changes in her life.

How did your time in Birmingham shape your love for nature?

Renkl: My family moved around a lot in Jefferson County. I spent all four years of high school at Homewood High, so Homewood feels most like home. We lived behind Homewood Park, and I loved the little creek that ran behind our house and through the park. It was much wilder and lusher in the days before flood control.

You have seen both positive and negative outcomes of Nashville’s rapid development. What insights can you share with Birmingham leaders?

Renkl: Growth can be very good for a city—growth is often what makes a community lively and diverse and ever-renewing. In many ways Nashville is a much more vibrant place than it was when my husband and I moved here in 1987. But growth that is poorly managed makes a city feel unrecognizable to the people who call it home.

Remember to keep what longtime residents need foremost in mind. Tourists may bring in dollars and excitement, but at what cost to community cohesion and happiness? Enticing out-of-state companies to relocate may bring growth, but at what cost to the cost of living? You don’t want to become a city where the people who teach your children can’t afford to live in the school systems where they teach.

Why is it important for leaders, particularly those in growing urban areas, to help provide access to nature?

Renkl: As a species, we evolved in close connection to the natural world, and we feel it in our bodies when we are closed off from it. When you have access to green space, you are healthier and happier. Your blood pressure is lower, and your immune-system function is higher. You have lower levels of stress hormones circulating in your bloodstream. You sleep better and heal more quickly from illness, injury, or surgery. Human beings don’t function properly without dirt and leaves and wild things around us.

How else can we promote an appreciation for the natural world?

Renkl: I’m a big believer in letting kids get dirty and explore at their own pace. In schools, recess too often gets sacrificed to test prep or redesigned as P.E. At home, too often organized sports take the place of poking around outside. If we let children lead the way, they will always take us straight to the creek.

Also, a civic policy that inspires developers and homeowners to preserve native trees—whether through carrots or sticks or a combination of both—goes a long way toward preserving an ecosystem. Keep the trees and you keep the whole wild world.

Do you have a favorite native plant and bird species?

Renkl: I hesitate to call them favorites because I have spent my whole life learning how interconnected everything in the natural world is to everything else in the natural world. Which means that loving one of them is to love all of them. But I will admit to feeling especially at home in the presence of pine trees. A blue jay calling from a pine tree is the very sound of home to me.

Your essays explore the beauty of the South but also its complicated, challenging parts. What makes you hopeful for the region’s future?

Southerners give me hope for the South. Too often we trust “leaders” who are doing the will of their donors instead of the will of their constituents, and too often we trust media figures who lie to our faces. There are some mean, angry people among us, too. But I really think most Southerners—like most human beings generally—are good people who are trying their best to create a better world. And I believe the truth will out. One day soon, even down here, the truth will out.