The Value of Nature by Paul Dixon

I just received a copy of The Australian Greens Magazine as I have recently become a member, and I was reading through it and in this issue, Paul Dixon shares his very personal story of economic structures failing him, and his return to nature as a result.

I would like to share this with you, and as I usually do not like to write a blog that quotes a story word for word (exceptions of The Story of a Carbon Atom), I wanted to share this particular one as I felt it was quite a powerful read.


"In October 2012 I published a small collection of environmental poetry which represented a distillation of more than 35 years experience in nature.  It had been written more than a year earlier at a time when I became homeless and unwell from my overall predicament.  Even though I had continued working as a lawyer from the swag, the only thing I had to leave to my children of any real value was a connection to nature hopefully to be described forever in writing.

Some personal financial arrangements and my socio-economic background meant I had nowhere else to turn.  With certain lessons in mind I had taken from nature over the years and which I wished to pass on to my children, the book penned hastily in the light of my campfires in local State forests and National Parks where I was sleeping.  It did however confirm just how distant my heart and mind had become from my own people.

I was soon forced into bankruptcy and a disgraceful ending to my eight or so years of work without a holiday for clients from a lower socio-economic background on behalf of Legal Aid NSW.  The NSW Law Society allowed me to continue practicing as a lawyer, however by that stage my relatively public demise and reconnection with nature on a more substantial level through the book made practicing as a lawyer unpalatable.  The book was released for sale more or less unedited and I now act occasionally for disabled or mentally ill persons and make a meagre living selling my landscape photos.

Retreating to nature was a bit of history repeating itself for me.  I grew up often needing nature as a place to hide, to become unseen and a part of it served my small interest as a little and frightened child.  I was allowed more dignity in nature from very early on and was extremely grateful for it, and I wanted to know everything about nature.  I studied science at university and approached indigenous peoples and artists, and I found being an Anglo Saxon Australian (educated or not) was not the best place to come from in understanding our place in nature.  I was always more interested in spending my time exploring local bushland than going overseas or drinking sessions.  It was therefore sad but not difficult for me to eventually be forced to work as a lawyer during the day and sleep in the bush at night as ridiculous as that may sound.

I place much weight on going deep into nature continually throughout my life, and my not carrying the burden my siblings now do and that which many others do because of their socio-economic childhood. As a criminal and mental health lawyer I got to know the fine details of people's lives many of which I shared, but I was their lawyer not an inmate, fellow patient or support person.  I could see why they became drug or alcohol dependent and develop mental health difficulties.  The repeated theme for me was they had no haven to retreat to when they were often exposed to depravity as children and adults, nothing.

The book is therefore an expression of an individual who has relied upon nature as a sanctuary as a matter of necessity, and the observations I have made as part of that process.  Essentially I have seen many undesirable traits in people with extremely serious consequences such as death, and many desirable traits in nature which get very little airtime.  I just wanted my children to know these things, and not have a watchmaker's view of nature but an open one based on them being part of it and after all from it.

I think it is obvious I was under a great deal of stress when I wrote the book, in that some of the poems are not as well composed as others although the messages are still there.  But I also know that when I read some now I was clearly in nature when I wrote them.  It is clear to me the poems are from nature not me, I was just the reporter when I wrote them and I am so glad that if I never go on to leave anything else to my children which is a distinct possibility, I did this for them.  I will never regard nature as being there for me or others, but that does not equate to nature not having significant and possible life changing meaning to me or others which I wish my children and now others to contemplate through my poems".


Paul Dixon now lives in rural NWS with his two young children and is glad to be living a quieter life alongside forests once again.  He studied science and Law at the University of Newcastle. Paul's book, Of Nature and Latent Art is available as an e-book on Amazon for $2.99 or he can be contacted directly at pauldixon@comcen.com.au