No.15–I am Becoming an 19th Century Victorian Lady Naturalist
- and my childhood self would be overjoyed.
When I was a child, my family would sometimes come out to the west coast to visit and enjoy Tofino and all the hiking, beachcombing, and stormwatching it has to offer.
I would eagerly run over large swaths of the beach, trying to find the best, coolest, beachcombing finds. I felt deeply that if I covered more of the beach than anyone else I was sure to find the coolest thing. But it was always my grandmother, walking slowly but surely down the beach, that would have the best finds: a mermaid’s purse, a rare colour of beachglass or beach marble, a piece of abalone. As I child, I never understood why she was so “lucky”.
Now, as an adult, I understand it wasn’t luck but it was about slowing down and paying more intention to the place you are walking. You “see” more going slow than you do running to points of interest.
I’ve been doing a lot more slowing down as an adult in my near-30’s now. Now, I find myself being the slowpoke on walks, always running to catch up to others because I paused to look at something of interest. Or, I’m leading people on tangents into the woods to look for mushrooms or pause for me while I dart off to pick up a feather I spied on the other side of the trail.
In some ways, this slowing down process has been easy and felt natural and, in some ways, it’s been very hard. Having long covid for the majority of 2022 was in many ways the instigator of my slowdown: it was forced, not decided on. I suddenly wasn’t able to do what I used to. I didn’t have the capacity.
Now that I’m “recovered” (praying there aren’t unknown long-term side effects we won’t know about for another 10 years haha), I have a greater capacity. But in many ways, it isn’t the same. I still lose steam faster than I used to. I don’t have quite the same ability to hustle grind when I truly need to. And when I do, I need more recovery time.
There is much I am still mourning. I mourn a loss of greater capacity. Of more confidence in the world: of a belief that others won’t unintentionally harm me. I worry about small social gatherings with people I do know closely.
It hasn’t all been bad. My sense of comfort and this slower pace of living is what I always dreamed of achieving. I didn’t know that this ease would come from revisiting my childhood interests and now I cannot see it any other way. I just wish it hadn’t come on the heels of chronic illness.
For the first time in a long time, perhaps since reaching adulthood, I feel at home with myself, my interests. I feel I am living a life that’s quite authentic to my idiosyncrasies.
I want to burrow deeper into the things that make me “weird”. The things about me that aren’t accepted into capitalistic culture where our curation of self is an act of labour; one that must conform to fit into a personal brand. I don’t want to live that way anymore; I want to embrace the things that make me unpalatable to capitalism. The thing that bring me joy for free. Naturalist explorations have given my brain the final push to rewire away from shopping-induced capitalism. I find myself no longer chasing after random desires of things to purchase, and what I do buy is either books or somehow related to my naturalist endeavours (ie: guidebooks, various powders to turn natural dyes into shelf-stable pigments that I can then mull into watercolor pigments, a notebook to record observations in, etc).
I recently learned more about the naturalist craze in the Victorian Era: while this was predominantly a male-oriented hobby, Victorian women often kept extensive herbariums of seaweed, collected shells, and engaged with naturalism in equally important ways to their husbands.
Amateur Victorian algologists were drawn to seaweed for its status as ‘rejectamenta,’ something which had been washed up on shore and, if not scrapbooked, would go to waste. (Source: Pressed Seaweed: The Victorian Pastime Making a Comeback) 1
The Victorian era democratized natural history. The pursuit was for everyone. I love this.
Inspired by the Victorians, I am creating my own cabinet of curiosities with feathers, rocks, snake sheds, and shells I find. Just the other day, I started the process of cleaning/whitening a rabbit skull I found. The vast majority of my interests are now revolving around the things I find and see on nature walks; learning more about different animals, plants and fungi; identifying feathers, mushrooms; pressing leaves; and documenting seasonal changes.
I have a small but growing collection of butterflies and dragonflies I’ve found already dead and have preserved. I am, in some ways, building my own natural history “museum” just from small things I can find, just like I did when I was a child.
I know that what I am documenting and exploring now won’t be here in decades. Will I find the same butterflies in 25 years? The same plants? What will have vanished, and what will remain? I’m creating a snapshot in time of what the nature around me looks like in 2023. It’s important to treasure it while it’s still here, with us.
I resonate a lot with the Victorian concept of ‘rejectamenta’ from what I find. Obviously, it’s important to be careful about what you take and understand what you’re removing from an ecosystem (as well as follow any actual laws around possession). Little birds use feathers and moss and lichens to build nests and it’s important not to make their lives harder than they need to be to. Everything in moderation. But it feels a bit bad, in the time of a mass extinction event for things like feathers, pieces of eggs, and such to be lost to the detrivores. It is part of a healthy ecosystem, but I cannot help but feel a twinge of anxiety for what will be lost forever in a few decades. These feelings are complex and I haven’t fully sorted them. I know that building collections also increases desirability and if everyone took things it would also work to damage the ecosystems we live in as well.
I don’t know what my collection will look like in the years to come. All I know is that finding and cleaning or preserving bones or dead insects I find isn’t what a traditionally “fulfilling” career life looks like.2 In fact, I know that many people might even be put off from that idea. But it’s what brings joy to me. More so than any career achievement or prestigious client. That reward is fleeting until you begin chasing the next greatest thing. My curiosities instead are rewarded with time in nature, and the feeling of a greater connection and understanding the world around me.
And so, in this way, I’m becoming a Victorian naturalist, and I’ve never been happier.
Thank you so much for reading and engaging in my Strandline project. This is a personal project I’ve started outside of my day-job of being a graphic designer. I want to document my love of nature, work on improving my art.
Please consider following for free if you enjoyed this to support my work! It means the world :) I hope you found something wonderful or curious while reading, as I did writing it.
As a side note, I came across this hilarious anecdote about how the Victorian’s viewed seaweed as useless but fascinating. “When the preeminent algae scholar William H. Harvey decided at age fifteen to devote his life to algology, it was the same as if he’d pledged allegiance to profitless esotericism. He wrote his former teacher that he intended “to study my favourite and useless class, Cryptogamia. I think I hear thee say, Tut-tut! But no matter. To be useless, various, and abstruse, is a sufficient recommendation of a science to make it pleasing to me.” No other field of study was so delightfully feckless.” (Source: Love and Longing in the Seaweed Album by Sasha Archibald) This is deeply funny and relatable to me. Of course, now we know seaweed like every other living thing on this planet is deeply useful and important but I love the idea of just devoting your life to something other people find completely mundane and unproductive.
I do just want to note that nothing I’ve found has caused harm to a creature. I only take what has already passed on or been lost (in the case of feathers).
This post had some of the best language. I want to to start the Order of Rejectamenta and pledge to be useless, various, and abstruse!
This quote struck me:
“I want to embrace the things that make me unpalatable to capitalism. The thing that bring me joy for free.“
We are thinking along the same lines, with my lamentations on the difficulty of finding wonderful things to enjoy for free. I am dog-sitting in another town this week and am at a moment where the weather is cold and I have no disposable income at all. It is so isolating.
Damn this is so cool! And so well written! I used to do this all the time as a kid, and still do occasionally as an adult when I come across little treasures during field work. My house is full of bouquets of owl and raptor feathers. I also would like to sign up to be a Victorian era naturalist please!