Nature writers and storytellers might save Florida yet 

By Joe Murphy 

I believe that everyone moving to Florida should be given a reading list to complete before they can get a Florida driver’s license, sign a lease or buy a home here. A “Florida Sense of Place Exam” should be mandatory for those seeking to relocate to the Sunshine State. 

This might not stem the flow of humanity continuing to move here, despite all the reasons not to do so. If we can’t stop them completely, perhaps we can winnow down the herd to those who are open to experience and understand Florida – and don’t just want to move the Midwest or Northeast down with them. 

This could help transplants understand what was here before them and why it is so critical to conserve it. My reading list and subsequent exam could identify those who might fall in love with all things Florida as deeply as old timers, natives and lovers of all things wild do.

One writer who surely would be on my list, a writer that embodies the very soul of the idea of cultivating a sense of place, is Janisse Ray.

If Janisse Ray is not one of the American South’s greatest living writers and storytellers, I surely do not know who is. Ray is an author, advocate, poet and voice for the natural and cultural history of the longleaf pine. She is rooted in place deeper than a longleaf pine taproot. 

I first read a work by Janisse Ray in 2000 when I found “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood” in a local bookstore. The title intrigued me, as I grew up among the longleaf pine of Withlacoochee State Forest. I casually started reading the book and was drawn deeply and quickly into her stories of family and community in rural southeastern Georgia, and by her eloquent and loving descriptions of the pine forests and wildlife she loves. I then understood what writers meant when they spoke of a sense of place. 

My wife and I had occasion to hear Janisse Ray speak recently – and it was transcendent, sublime, powerful, transformative and inspiring. University of Florida professor Jack Davis, himself an incredible and gifted author, organized a nature writing series in Levy County that included Ray and Cynthia Barnett, and will also include him. Barnett is another truly impressive writer and author. All three will be or were featured at their own readings and programs as part of the series. 

I will never cease to marvel at the power of the written and spoken word to illuminate ideas and create spaces where people can come together around things of such profound and deep meaning. Ray did not just speak about pine forests or the rural families of her childhood; she took us there with her.  

Ray told a deeply personal and passionate story of her encounters with a manatee mother and her calf. The magic she experienced in that encounter was just as vibrant and pronounced as she read to us her chronicle of the experience. She is a master storyteller.

We could start the “So You Want to Move to Florida” reading list with some foundational Florida writers in terms of nature and place: William Bartram, Stetson Kennedy, Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Then I would sprinkle in some of the writers I started reading when I began my journey into being a Florida reader: Ray, Jack Rudloe, Archie Carr, Al Burt, Carl Hiaasen, Susan Cerulean, Patrick D. Smith, Jeff Klinkenberg and Lars Anderson. 

Finally, there are writers I think of as contemporary Florida writers such as Davis, Barnett, Craig Pittman, Clay Henderson, Leslie Kemp Poole, Doug Alderson and Lauren Groff. My apologies to all the amazing Florida writers I did not mention. 

Nature writers and storytellers might save Florida yet if we could ensure their powerful words reached the next generation, the new residents and the elected officials who surely need guidance and wisdom. 

Think of what Florida might be like if we all cultivated the sense of place that Janisse Ray creates in her writing – all of us sinking tap roots deep like a longleaf pine, deep into the place we call home. 

Joe Murphy is a native and lifelong Floridian who lives in Brooksville along the southern Nature Coast. You can follow Joe on Instagram @naturecoastjoe. Banner photo: A woman reading outside (iStock image). 

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