No Joy Filters: Dara McAnulty’s Diary of a Young Naturalist
by Cassia Gaden Gilmartin
“I’m Dara, a boy, an acorn,” Dara McAnulty writes in the opening page of his first book, a memoir recounting a year of physical and personal upheaval. Encompassing a move from County Fermanagh to County Down as well as a broadening of the author’s work as an advocate for wildlife and nature, Diary of a Young Naturalist channels personal transformation through the lens of seasonal change. As we move from the abundance of spring to the clarity of winter, self and nature remain inextricably bound up.
Dara is eloquent on myth, language and the ways in which nature shapes our collective and personal identities. Recounting how his mother, in her own childhood, used to go out collecting oak and sycamore leaves, pine cones and conkers for her school’s nature table, he tells readers that she wore a red rose badge on her school pinafore and that “She loved it because her name, Róisín, means ‘little rose.’” The name Dara, in turn, comes from doire, the Irish for “oak tree.” There are of course, as Dara notes, fewer nature tables in schools today, and the book raises urgent questions around the future of nature as a frame of reference and a crucial aid in children’s identity formation.
Childhood and the dangers inherent in it are central to Dara’s story. He recalls a painful eighteen months spent at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, the same boarding school attended by Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett (Beckett loved it; Wilde didn’t), where the words of bullies left lasting scars. What made the insults most damaging, perhaps, was their subject matter: “Autism makes me feel everything more intensely,” Dara writes. “I don’t have a joy filter.” This exuberance, joy deemed an embarrassment, made him a target.
The idea that we shouldn’t get too excited, that self-expression beyond modest social norms should and will be punished, takes time to unlearn. Considering his younger brother’s fascination with the Cold War, Dara reflects on the language often used to demean the special interests common among individuals on the autism spectrum. The word “obsession,” he says, creates undue negative associations: “It’s not that dangerous or foreboding, quite the opposite. It’s liberating and essential to the workings of my brain. It calms and soothes: gathering information, finding patterns, sequencing and sorting out is a muscle I must flex. I prefer the word passion.”
And why, Dara rightly asks, should we not pursue our passions? Some of the most beautiful passages in Diary of a Young Naturalist occur where its author becomes lost in the excitement of a moment. On hearing the song of a sedge warbler at sunset, he writes “My insides explode, words ricochet outside-in. I hold them close, because capturing this on a page allows me to feel it all over again.” The purpose of writing, in his eyes, is in large part to capture and recreate the experience of a moment in nature, to hold on to it for times when such joys are more distant and to pass it on to others. This makes writing an urgent social pursuit. The creation of this book itself feels akin to a moment within it when, seeing a mother take a “dirty” conker from her six-year-old, Dara brings another conker to the boy in secret. Many passages read simply as efforts to say, with unfiltered joy, look what I found.
A memoir of activism on behalf of nature by an autistic teen invites an obvious comparison. Sure enough, as he charts his own growth Dara refers to “a girl on Twitter called Greta Thunberg,” who has drawn media attention by leaving school to strike for climate action outside the Swedish parliament. This comparison brings with it some poignant meditations on the balancing act of understanding but stretching our own limits, and on the role of the introvert in social movements. For Dara, Greta’s activism is “brilliant but frightening.” It gives rise to the impossible question, faced by all activists, of whether we are doing enough.
The imposter syndrome common to those facing unexpected prominence within a movement is, for a self-styled perfectionist like Dara, a constant presence. “There are plenty of other people out there who fit the bill better than me, with large social-media followings and who say the right things and look the right way,” he writes. “In my own way, I thought I was helping to fight for nature, by doing things locally, at my school, and contributing to science by recording data and taking part in protests. It isn’t in my personality to go around regurgitating statistics about the horrors inflicted on the natural world, because they are outside of my experience.” Throughout this account of one year’s personal growth, he writes thoughtfully on the practice of finding new forms of action that suit his talents and capabilities, that increase his impact without cutting too hard against a need for quiet and solitude.
While exploring the challenges of his own journey, Dara puts forward wise words against the popular tendency to support young activists through personal praise and concern rather than through shared commitment to the young person’s cause. Recalling the attention of teachers, parents and reporters to his first school strike, he writes “Instead of talking about the issues they wanted to talk about ‘me,’ how ‘I felt.’” When we idolise but fail to join in with a teen activist such as himself, he reminds us, we place a burden back on their shoulders.
It’s a credit to this book and its author that the answers proffered to the questions raised, of how to find one’s place within a movement and how to maintain equilibrium in the face of spiralling opportunities, are never full or easy. In a final scene involving an encounter with the sculpture of St Kevin at Glendalough, though, we witness a voice of burgeoning authority. Considering the story of the saint, a journey from inward, solitary work to community, Dara tells us “I know that my hand will always be outstretched, to nature, and to people.” The passion with which he writes leaves little choice but to believe him.
Review by Channel co-editor Cassia Gaden Gilmartin. Diary of a Young Naturalist is available for purchase from the publisher, Little Toller.