“Nature is right outside our door, and here’s what I’ve learned: nature is the door too, and what’s on the inside… So let’s look around. Time is short. And none of us can live without wild things.” Joanna Brichetto, introduction to How a Robin Drinks
Have you ever looked, really looked at the trees in your front yard, or the carpenter bees buzzing around your front porch railing, or the dead bird in the street as you jog by? If you do, according to naturalist Joanna Brichetto, you are one, too. “Anybody who is paying attention to the natural world around them is a naturalist,” she says, “All you have to do is slow down and observe.”
Brichetto, who lives in Nashville, has been observing things pretty much all her life. “I was kind of born that way. Even as a kid I was a big porch sitter. I could sit on the porch with my oldest relative and never get bored. There’s always something to see and hear.” In fact, she says she has wanted to be a naturalist and a writer since she was a child, but as is true for many childhood dreams, life intervened. That life included marriage and two children, both of whom are now grown, and a long stint teaching at West End Synagogue’s Beit Miriam. “Years and years get in the way, especially for women and caregivers,” she says.
Finally in 2010 the Tennessee Naturalist Program began, and Brichetto was accepted into the second year’s class. “That was really when a systematic study began.” The experience was life changing for her. “I was enrolled in a course, I had colleagues around me. I suddenly had people around who cared about the same kinds of things, who were excited about frog spawn or who could nerd out with a hand lens on a bug on some tree.”
The experience was, in her words, a game changer that led to a popular blog, Sidewalk Nature. And now she has published a book, This is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature. The compilation of 52 essays is organized by season, beginning with summer. Only a couple of them are from her blog, which means faithful blog readers will find new observations and musings. “I’d been trying to write creative nonfiction, really short essays, and to submit them to literary journals for several years, so this is a collection of those essays, plus some extras that have never been published.”
In her biography, Brichetto is introduced as someone who is neurodiverse, something she says plays a key role in her ability to be observant. “It’s a huge factor because I am happiest when I’m alone and without any external stimuli other than what the natural world can give me. So that means I’m automatically going to be a really good observer.”
Brichetto’s unique experience of the world is also what led her to write the book. “After the naturalist program they really want you to go out into the community. They’re trying to form this corps of volunteers statewide who can plug themselves into very public programs.” The goal for her class specifically was to go out to sites and lead school groups, teach programs and the like, all things she is passionate about. But as someone living with chronic illness, it was often not possible. “The most important thing is introducing children to nature. But I was always too sick to go and I realized that rather than let people down and cancel, I just wouldn’t sign up to do these things.” She decided that although she might not be able to drive to a local park, she had nature all around her. “Little by little, day by day, I realized oh my gosh, this is nature, too.” And so, she began writing.
Brichetto has a graduate degree in Jewish Studies from Vanderbilt University. She says her early research about Judaism and nature, along with her years teaching religious school also inform her current views on nature. “When I was teaching in religious school there was that book called What’s Jewish about Butterflies, it was for preschool really. And it just knocked me out. I just love those things.” She credits the late school director Miriam Halachmi z’l and current school director Sharon Paz for giving her total freedom to teach her own way. “I could teach whatever I wanted and however I wanted and all of that stuff played into it. Everything was tied into the natural world; everything was hands on. Whether it was language or holidays or mitzvot. It was just bliss.”
According to Rabbi Joshua Kullock of West End Synagogue, Brichetto’s approach to teaching aligns exactly with what the Torah says. “Judaism has a deep connection with nature. From the Psalmist singing that all creation sings to G-d, to Rabbi Nachman teaching that every piece of grass has its own special niggun, passing through the midrash that says that G-d walked with Adam and Eve showing them the garden of Eden and reminding them to take care of the world because it is the only one that we have.”
Additionally, the way Brichetto’s book is organized around the seasons is also a very Jewish perspective about nature, according to Kullock. “The Jewish year is based on the cycle of seasons, and every month is connected to the cycle of the moon. Time, in Judaism, is always associated with the different cycles of nature, which requires us to be sensitive and aware to them.”
Brichetto’s book has already garnered praise from some well-known authors, including the New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl, who lives in Nashville. Brichetto says their paths first crossed years ago through Chapter 16, the monthly newsletter of the Tennessee Humanities Council. “She was the editor at the time. So she edited my essay, she ran it, and I’m pleased that it’s in this collection.” But the two really met and became friends during the Covid-19 pandemic when Renkl came to Brichetto’s home to pick up some plants. And in September the two will be in conversation for the official launch event at Parnassus Books.
This first book has been in the works since 2016 with some of the essays taking minutes to write and some taking much longer. “There are some I will hammer away at for years until it says what I want it to say in the way I want to say it.” And she is more than halfway finished with a second collection, tentatively titled The Hackberry Appreciation Society, a collection of 12 essays. “Everyone hates that tree in Middle Tennessee, so this is one giant apologia about the hackberry tree,” she says.
Brichetto’s voice and vision in her writing is often whimsical, sometimes sentimental, but at the heart of it all is her reverence for the natural world and her serious drive to protect it. “The protecting thing is absolutely paramount. Because we protect what we love, but we can’t love what we don’t know, what we haven’t met yet. And all we have to do to meet these things is to walk out the door.”
The book will be released on September 24, the launch event at Parnassus Books is on September 23 at 6:30, and currently there is a waiting list to attend. Brichetto will also be at the Southern Festival of Books which is scheduled for October 26-27.
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