Over the years, nature writers and country diarists have developed an increasingly sophisticated ecological literacy of the world around them through the naming of things and an understanding of the relationships between them. They find ways of linking simple observations to bigger issues by remaining in the present, the particular. For writers of my generation, a nostalgia for lost wildlife and habitats and the business of bearing witness to a war of attrition in the countryside colours what we're about. The anxieties of future generations may not be the same.

　　Articulating the "wild" as a qualitative character of nature and context for the more quantitative notion of biodiversity will, I believe, become a more dynamic cultural project. The re-wilding of lands and seas, coupled with a re-wilding of experience and language, offers fertile ground for writers. A response to the anxieties springing from climate change, and a general fear of nature answering our continued environmental injustices with violence, will need a reassessment of our feelings for the nature we like—cultural landscapes, continuity, native species—as well as the nature we don't like—rising seas, droughts, "invasive" species.

　　Whether future writers take their sensibilities for a walk and, like a pack of wayward dogs unleashed, let them loose in hills and woods to sniff out some fugitive truth hiding in the undergrowth, or choose to honestly recount the this-is-where-I-am, this-is-what-I-see approach, they will be hitched to the values implicit in the language they use. They should challenge these.

　　Perhaps they will see our natural history as a contributor to the commodification of nature and the obsessive managerialism of our times. Perhaps they will see our romanticism as a blanket thrown over the traumatised victim of the countryside. But maybe they will follow threads we found in the writings of others and find their own way to wonder.

　　16. The major theme of the passage is about ______.

　　(A) the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

　　(B) the development of the discipline of natural history

　　(C) the English language tradition of nature writing

　　(D) the style of nature writing and country diaries

　　17. In writing the essay, the author seems to be directly talking to the "future generations" and "future writers" probably because ______.

　　(A) they will carry forward the tradition of nature writing

　　(B) they will confront a changing environment and have their own perspective of natural history

　　(C) they will study the causes of climate change and promote the notion and significance of biodiversity

　　(D) they will value more the sophisticated ecological literacy of the nature writers and country diarists

　　18. The author says that our feelings for the nature we like (as well as the nature we don't like) will need a "reassessment" probably because ______.

　　(A) we should not like the cultural landscapes, continuity and native species