You might remember that I have resolved to choose some books differently this year. Not only library duedates and review deadlines: I have been trying to look out my window as often as I look down at my book.
And, so, I reread Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller (Trans. William Weaver), which was followed by Anik See’s Cabin Fever (featured as an IndieRead), and finally Guadalupe Nettel’s After the Winter (Trans. Rosalind Harvey). In the photo, you can see one of bpNichol’s poems that was good company too.
See’s book would require the most shovelling. There’s a concept familiar to northern readers that appears in her book, reference to “the melt”, a hinged point in time, signalling the arrival of the spring thaw (but simultaneously referencing the kind of pervasive snow cover that precedes it).
Nettel’s captures a sense of loneliness that some associate with the season. Much of Calvino isn’t snowy at all.
But the opening chapters of Margaret Renkl’s book are wonderfully wintry as well. It’s a “literary devotional”, with each of the fifty-two “chapters” accompanied by the author’s brother’s artwork.
The epigraph from Mary Oliver captures the spirit of the work: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” But so does the cover blurb from Ann Patchett: “A howling love letter to the world.” They might seem nearly contradictory, but Renkl’s style is both measured and passionate.
Anyone who has enjoyed Lynn Lyanda Haupt, Barry Lopez, E.B. White’s essays, or Aimee Nezhukumatathil will appreciate this volume.
What I enjoy about it most, is that it is about the details, with talk of brush piles and decomposition. (If you have allowed your shrubs to go untrimmed, if you have not cleared away the leaves that accumulated in every corner…you will feel vindicated. Bonus points if you mindfully pursued this course of action.) The pieces could be fully enjoyed as is.
However, one can choose to read another layer to her observations. Choose to adopt another way of seeing. So that instead of seeing a barren and lifeless scene in the middle of winter, we can imagine those creatures who are hibernating, who are resting now but will emerge once more. There is a philosophical underpinning.
“An unkempt garden offers more than just food for the birds. The late offspring of certain butterflies, like the black swallowtail, spend fall and winter sealed away in a chrysalis clinging to the dried stems in what’s left of a summer garden. Others overwinter as eggs or caterpillars buried in the leaf litter beneath their host plants. Most species of native bees—or their fertilized queens, at least—hibernate underground during winter. An industrious gardener pulling up dead annuals could expose them to the cold, and one who mulches too thickly could black their escape in spring. Other beneficial insects like ladybugs, lacewings, and parasitic wasps spend winter in the hollow stems of old flowers. These days we don’t drag fallen limbs out to the street for the city chipper service to clean up, either. A good brush pile is a boon to ground-foraging birds, who eat insects from the decomposing wood, and to all manner of small animals hiding from predators or sheltering from the wind and snow.”
Renkl lives in the American South, so there are some differences in flora and fauna but, because it is her way of seeing that I most enjoy and appreciate, this doesn’t bother me one bit.
We have had two big storms in as many weeks. Just this morning it was snowing so hard and fast that it almost looked like rain. The temperature is hovering around zero today, and tomorrow there’s a chance of some rain amidst the forecast for more snow. Then we will be back to double-digit negative temperatures for another week (at least).
But on a “warm” day like today, it’s easy to see that, soon, I will need to finish my Love and Heart reading from February (inspired by Bookish Beck’s years-long habit) and look for some spring options on my shelves instead.
Renkl’s Week Eight begins with a Ross Gay epigraph: “I turned to see a crow standing in a low point in the creek, dipping its head in and whacking the surface hard with its wings, again and again, whap whap, whap whap whap, which I took to mean, of course, take your head out of your ass and be glad.”
I love a book that justifies my laziness in the garden! Also interesting to note that it’s a Resse’s pick. I wasn’t aware that she chose non-fiction? I actually just received a copy of her latest pick, ‘Broken Country’ from Simon and Schuster. A thriller, not surprisingly. I can’t decide if I’m sick of thrillers, or just need to read less of them…
How lovely to get a glimpse of your seasonal reading — and even a tie-in to my silly Valentine’s theme! I’m reading Nettel’s The Accidentals for review; I hadn’t heard of that novel of hers but will certainly have to get hold of it. And funnily enough, Renkl’s Late Migrations is on my current bedside reading stack. It’s in very short essays, some of them just a paragraph or two, so ideal for reading a few pages before bed. This week I have been enjoying displays over the canal by our local corvids. Mostly jackdaws, but a few crows in their midst, and separate groups of magpies. They swoop and swarm a bit like starlings, landing in a few treetops for some seconds and then taking off again. They’ll do this four or five times just after sunset. I’ve wondered if it’s play, or if they’re disturbed by something.
I’ve read this one! It was a couple of years ago so the details are fuzzy. I enjoyed it but also found it vaguely disappointing because I wanted more than it gave. We had a blizzard Tuesday night into Wednesday morning! I intentionally keep an “untidy” garden, and as I was shoveling snow from my sidewalk in the afternoon I noted with satisfaction how the snow on the prairie grasses bends them over and makes a kind of tent with a snug dry space underneath to protect the critters 🙂
The Comfort of Crows very much appeals. I like the idea of being taken daily through a year in the natural world, albeit a very different from the one I live in given our temperate climate.
If the idea appeals, I don’t believe the regional difference would bother you at all. She strikes many universals. And the artwork is such a nice touch.
I love crows but I completely see why people don’t like them. We’re just starting to feel spring-like here now, with warmer temperatures and lighter days.
For me, a crow is like an elephant or an octopus, in that once I learned about certain rituals and habits, I can no longer imagine not admiring them. “Daylight Savings Time” starts here on Sunday, which will make it harder to get out of bed (in the dark, once more) but longer evenings, which will make reading nicer.
Crows are not my favourite bird. I see them (ignoring whether American and Australian crows are even the same species) all the time of course, both in the city and out on the road, pulling at roadkill, or standing back to give the wedgetail eagles first go. Walking across paddocks of stubble as a boy to bring up a mob of sheep you might be surrounded by an endless silence broken just by the Arrk of a crow in the distance.
It’s hard enough to keep track of birds you “know”, let alone other regions’ relatives in the same family. I’m still having enough trouble deciphering which are crows and which are ravens, let alone figuring out what other kinds of crows might live in other places.