NATURE WRITERS # 5 – JOAQUÍN ARAÚJO

Joaquín Araújo (Madrid, December, 31- 1947)

Now is the turn for a Spanish one, and besides many great Spanish poets, this one is without a doubt the best Nature writer of our times. There are many international awards and recognitions that this man has received, both for his work as a promoter of the innumerable treasures of nature and for his work as a writer. Is impressive how many documentaries, publications, radio and television programs, and projects related to the conservation of the natural environment this man has created, directed or conducted (and many times, all at once).

And yet, in this country (Spain) of ours, for the majority he is a complete stranger. It would suffice to say that he worked hand in hand with Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, in the creation of the mythical series “El Hombre y la Tierra” (one of the greatest tv programs on Nature ever in the story of Spanish television), to situate him. But it is not like that, and it would also be unfair, because he has done so much more.

I discovered him a long time ago, in a Radio3 program (an alternative and disruptive Spanish radio station). His voice immediately captivated me. More than his voice, the tempo he used when speaking. A timeless tempo. His language was unusually rich, but it was neither pedantic nor academic. He mixed cult words with expressions and popular words almost forgotten, from a deeply rural Spain strongly connected with its surroundings. Listening to him was like a balm. He said beautiful things about everyday events and actions, but without being cloying. They were beautiful simply because he called them by their names. Disused names, cornered by progress, which he polished up, almost absentmindedly. He made me think that speaking well, and cultivating our vocabulary, is a way of taking care of ourselves and others. Speaking beautifully and with a significant dose of truth feels good and helps you live better. After listening to him, I am convinced of it.

When I read his book “Trees will teach you to see the forest” (2020, Ediciones Critica), I felt the same again. He wrote as he spoke (or vice versa). His knowledge is vast, but he never makes you feel bad about it. On the contrary, there is no page that does not invite you to learn more, to continue asking yourself. He is an eminent cultivator of curiosity and wonder (apart from being an ecological farmer on his farm in Las Villuercas in Cáceres). He has planted as many trees as days he has lived (about 25,000). He is a man of action, who writes what he thinks (and feels) and does what he says. Both he and his book immediately became a reference for me.

In the words of Araújo himself: “…everything that this book contains is intended to lead to the necessary and urgent recognition of what the trees did and do for us with the aim that some reciprocity dawn.” And he gets it. At the end of the book, one feels enormously grateful and indebted to the forest, and in general to the entire plant kingdom.

Another of his printed jewels “The Pleasure of Contemplating” (2015, Ediciones Carena) invites us to the now rare occupation of contemplating. And of course, it is about contemplating our natural environment, our landscapes, the space “of liveliness”, as he calls it.

“Missing the great spectacle of natural environments is the first step to losing them altogether… I have maintained, for a long time, that all unfelt landscape is already dead”

“…contemplation includes, by including you in the plots of liveliness, the possibility of being instructed in the essential by the essential”

The book is full of pearls that, whether in the form of aphorisms or poems, speak directly to the heart, the only muscle capable of provoking and generating change.

Here are a few:

“What is essential is the whole. A look in love is panoramic”

“If you manage to become an inveterate voyeur of the lively, you make the most of all yours. Without taking it off.”

“It’s about turning into feelings inmensities that don’t feel anything and ask you to do it for them”

“Out there often to be silent is to finally call things by their name”

“We will die of an acute attack of lack of amazement”

“If you look at it, it looks at you, immensating you”

“To contemplate is to cultivate your senses. Then they cultivate your sensitivity”

This being in ambush, who is capable of transmitting so much without beating around the bush, lives to communicate and spread the “sense of wonder” to new and old generations. With each book, he bridges the gap between those who believe they are different from what surrounds them and their environment. Thanks to his enormous erudition and direct knowledge, to his experience and experience of the natural landscape and what makes it up (including us, humans), he gradually makes us assume that we are nature. Reading it gives me hope and reconciles me with my kind. And it is not little.