Interview with Prof. Bernd Heinrich
Professor Bernd Heinrich discusses his life as a Biologist, Naturalist, Prolific Writer, Author, and Artist
It seems that “runners on writing” is a recurring theme on this writing corner. In this installment of Corners of the Mind, we are honored to host Prof. Bernd Heinrich, a renowned biologist, naturalist, former record-setting ultrarunner, author of numerous books and scientific articles, and artist. Professor Heinrich is a familiar face at the ultrarunning arena, and perhaps the most famous running recluse in the mountains of Maine. In this interview, we are asking Professor Heinrich about his unconventional multicultural upbringing and the ways it has impacted his writing and outlook on life, as well as the potential link between cabin life and creativity. [The interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.]
1. Dear Professor, it is an honor to have you on “Corners of the Mind.” Your blended heritage and prolific writing combined constitute the epitome of the subjects we are exploring here. I would like to start with the obvious: Your writing is so rich and diverse, ranging from memoirs to academic-meets-general-audience kind of books. Which book you have authored is your favorite or dearest to your heart and why?
I cannot say I have a favorite book, because it all depends on what I am “into” every time, with regard to my experiences. The categories are very different: dramatics/adventure etc., but I would probably say it is “The Snoring Bird."
I wish we all spoke the same language; different countries and languages just create artificial separations.
2. You were born in Germany but have lived in the United States for the longest period of your life, with a short break in Africa. How much has this transnational travel and multicultural upbringing affected your mentality, your outlook on the world, and, of course, your writing?
I’m not even sure whether I was born in Germany or Poland (depends on the date, which is 1940; so I think it was Poland back then). At the age of 12, we came to America and established ourselves in the state of Maine. Later, while a student at University, I took a year to be with my parents in Tanganyika (today’s Tanzania). I spoke a little Swahili and took French and Latin in school.
My conclusion from all this traveling and moving around in the world is that I wish we all spoke the same language; different countries and languages just create artificial separations. This is one of the reasons why I like Life and Nature, and running; anything for sharing with each other, rather than separating. That is the concern of my writing.
3. More often than not, one can find you in a log cabin in the mountains of Maine, with nothing but the basics for your survival, writing, and painting. How important is isolation to creativity?
Personal isolation is not something I seek, except when I must concentrate. I loved the running teams and clubs I was a member of. There was great companionship in them, and I felt them as home, as belonging.
4. Please describe your writing process. How often does an idea for a book make its appearance and how long does it take for you to reach the final product?
I have no specific writing process, except for the necessity for prolonged and deep contact with something very interesting to me, as well as personal experience. Once inside oneself, an idea yearns to be shared. And then more is learned. As for the time needed? It depends: my Raven work took about 25 years or so to reach the writing threshold for sharing it with a wider than just a technical audience. My first project, the Bumblebees, needed 4 to 5 years of research at all levels -the aesthetic, the lab, and then the field experiments, and those relating to physiology, energy, and aging- all of which had an impact on my comparisons with many other as well as our own species.
5. Apart from being an acclaimed academic, you are also a famous ultrarunning athlete. At age 82, you still run every day. How important is running to you and how do you conceive of it vis-à-vis your creativity?
For me, running and creativity are not directly connected. In a way, they seem opposite, and so they each provide a break from the other. When one starts to get tiresome, then I switch and that keeps the energy up to see and feel it anew. After running a lot, I want to sit down; after sitting for too long, I want to get up and run.
6. Apart from the classic “Why We Run” which is a favorite of mine, your latest book, “Racing the Clock,” is also very dear to me as it explores running while aging with a purpose. What prompted you to write it?
Writing “Racing the Clock” was not anticipated after I had much earlier written “Racing the Antelope” (which was later reprinted in paperback as “Why We Run”). I did it because I had run my best at age 41, and I thought I would be thought old for a runner, but I did great! And here I was, now, twice that age, feeling like I just HAD to run another ultra. So I had a lot of biology under my belt by that time, which was combined with the biology of aging. It was just a “natural” thing to do and write about, as this is a topic of interest to most of us.
7. Are you currently working on any new project(s)?
Currently, I am writing a book about the Seasons of Life in the Northern Forest, where I have been living on and off since age five, and here I am again, or still. My earliest memories of it are the beauty that naturally fascinates kids; in me, this beauty prompted the need to capture, by sketching and water-coloring, what was perceived by the eye, leading to the beauty beyond that which is accessible by the eye; the science of biology. I started drawing and water-coloring at perhaps the age of 6 or 7 and have continued ever since, with the collection of my art and/or illustrations now preserved with the Maine Historical Society in Portland, Maine. Working with that collection and transforming it into a book that highlights the visual aspect is a project I am now looking forward to.
8. You write in a language other than your mother tongue. How challenging has it been for you to find your voice, especially in your non-academic writing, in a second language? Have you ever written something in your native language that you later translated into English? On a deeper level, do you find yourself thinking or even dreaming in German and then trying to express the equivalent of your thoughts in English?
When my parents were in Africa, we wrote back and forth in German. I have never written anything in one language and then translated it into another. I thought in German at least halfway through my 20s, but since then I have been writing in English. Now I think and dream only in English, but I am giving a talk in Frankfurt this month and, just for the heck of it, I was recently trying to deliver it in my mind in German, and to my great surprise I was doing it (silently). I will try it there to see how it goes!!
9. Your writing is so diverse, from academic to nature writing to memoirs. Which kind do you enjoy more and how easy do you find switching between genres in terms of style?
These are indeed different genres but I have never given it a thought. I just think or visualize who I am addressing, and I have addressed Californians, Mainers, New Guinea and African tribesmen, and Inuit in Alaska.
My guess is that it all relates to feelings, and feelings have reasons, so this may be a bit garbled. But I think it starts from the simple human instinct of communication. Maybe my six years away from my parents, when they were in Africa and I was “alone” in a “home” among strangers, reinforced a kind of potential emptiness that yearns to be filled, coming from the instinct to reach out when alone -and from where I was, it was a long way out!! I tried “running it away” in school where I had been for six years without a single day off. It was a huge difference from when we first landed in America, where we (at least I) had an idyllic welcome with a family, the Adamses, next door. I learned English fast and I had playmates, friends, and tutors. Then, they were all gone: six years in a “Home-Farm-School” routine, 24 hours a day. Meanwhile, I was always dreaming of freedom, of adventures, such as those of my father. He had written about his adventures, which were considerable, and that was an awakening of consciousness about writing down life’s experiences. His own life had been amazing beyond imagination -Iran, Burma, Celebes- with international connections all over the place.
As a graduate student, I was acutely aware that science was all about having something to publish and then actually doing it. If something was exciting to oneself, others would find it also exciting, but only if they understood it. So when I opened my eyes and mind, as I had been in the habit of doing ever since I was 4 to 5 years old, I came up with a whole lot of strings of thoughts, one connected to another like a beautiful string of pearls that make up something more beautiful than each one separately. This is how I came up with the bright idea of writing Bumblebee Economics, in which I summarized the issue from a behavior, physiology, sociobiology, ecology, and evolution point of view, plus an analogy with human politics. It ended up a huge success, with lots of praise in the New York Times, and other prominent publications like Scientific American, plus an invitation to visit Harvard for a while, by E.O. Wilson. I will not elaborate more, but it was a roller-coaster, with opportunities in every corner. The point is that it appealed to many diverse people, with each audience requiring a different voice… and I had merely grown up on a farm.
10. Apart from your academic obligations, what is the force behind your writing? Is it, for example, the need to record facts/life, the will to leave a legacy for the next generations or simply, as per Charles Bukowski, it "comes bursting out of you in spite of everything"?
Leaving a legacy is, of course, nice. But I very much doubt I ever gave it a thought as a 30-year-old whose every year was always crammed with responsibilities and invitations, with only ever more gold nuggets shining up ahead. I did not think there would be another book after Bumblebee Economics. It was recognized, of course, and even Ed (O. Wilson) told me, “I wish I had thought of it.” I had no other thought, except to review the whole academic work in the world on my specialty, which is the behavior, physiology, and ecology of body temperature regulation, where it occurs, and why. This was my magnum opus, my academic specialty that I thought interested nobody else but me: insect thermoregulation. I “had” to write it down because I was leaving that field for the birds and, if not preserved, all would soon be forgotten. It was published by Harvard University Press, in 1993. Its title is “The Hot-Blooded Insects: Strategies and Mechanisms of Thermoregulation” and counts 601 pages, my record. I have never heard of anyone reading it.
Then one day in Berkeley, California, the editor from Princeton University Press knocked on my lab door and asked “Are you writing something else?” I was not. But I had, during my summer fieldwork in Maine, acquired a Great Horned Owl, along with several crows. I was also living in the woods precisely where I am writing from right now, only, by then, I had built a log cabin and, before that, there was only an old hunting shack. I soon became a witness to some very interesting stuff and was taking careful notes in my diary every day. All these observations were leading to ever-more questions, because of the close daily contact with the birds, as a whole bunch of them became my companions who were long dependent on me, before they, too, became independent. I was also interested in running - in part I had to, in order to find roadkill for my always hungry charges. That meant eventually a 20-mile run every day, the distance around a lake. I had run and won a marathon, and that had given me the crazy idea I might make a legacy by setting the American record for the fastest time to run a 100k Ultramarathon. At the time, I was 41 years old, and not quite feeling like an adult, but still was not so crazy as to reveal that thought. So when the editor from Princeton University Press later knocked on my lab door at the University of California, Berkeley, and asked: “Can I see your notes?” I gave them to him -the one on the birds- not the one on the running. After looking at the text and my accompanying sketches and photos, he said: "It’s a book!”
Yes, things were going places but, in spite of everything, I soon quit my job as Professor of Entomology simply because I was homesick for the Maine Northern Forest, on the other side of the continent, near where my parents now lived full-time on our rundown farm, and where my friends from my childhood were; everything that I loved with all my heart.
Thank you, Professor Heinrich, for the rich interview on your life and work as a scientist, author, and ultrarunner. It has been a joy to inhabit your world for a while.
Professor Bernd Heinrich’s books and works as a naturalist can be found HERE.
For his scholarly articles and a comprehensive list of all his writings, please go through the Professor’s impressive Curriculum Vitae on his academic page.
For running inspiration and a glimpse of his life in the Maine woods, please watch the video below:
With gratitude,
Katerina
