September 14, Reading from the Book of Nature

Angela writes:

We live in the midst of a colony of chipmunks. At this time of the year they gather acorns for the winter. This year their task is accomplished with more fervor than before. Every morning we open the door to the outside only to step into a pile of leafy branches ripped away by careless riders avid to acquire as many oak nuts as critterly possible. The looting accompanied by screams and squabbling. I hear this is a new habit; the old generations used to be known for the delicate method by which they separated the nut out of its shell.

It might be, I hear, sign of the terror that the coming of a very harsh winter instills in those who have not set aside enough for the dark season.

This is quite how I feel while writing here. Writing used to be about careful planning and only opening the shell of promising ideas. The rest, passion, imagination, fear, was left for later. Yet since I do not know what winter holds in store for me, I will try to set aside as many words as I can, before loosing grasp of my branches.

On the other hand, what a marvelous experience, that of the hibernation of the reading and writing animal we have become. This is the second time I am tested by such an interruption of purpose. The first time it happened 33 years ago.

Neither the year before, nor the year after my coming to Canada, did I read any book, or did I write a line outside the aching letters addressed to my mother. As soon as I set foot in this country, I thought the best way to learn its language would be to read more books in English. Such had been the case when I was a student back home. And because my favorite novels in those days were Latin-American, I bought a pile of translations of those into English. I thought you learned a language by reading books you loved. As it turned out, I became immediately impatient, if not bored. Those novels could teach me nothing of the new life I was exposed to, like a naked body exposed to the burning sun, in need of cover. What they did was to incessantly remind me of the life I had left behind. Ordinary, tacky fashion magazines, tabloids, the Calgary Sun, taught me more, more shockingly and efficiently, and so did all those hours of sitting, scared and befuddled, in front of the incomprehensible television set.

Once a year or so of such learning went by, I was ready to go back to school.

I ignore what kind of school I am attending now. I cannot read but I do not miss my readings, those which have been second nature for me for so long will not teach me what I need to know under my new circumstances. Just as I do not find succor in your guide to gentle, non-toxic healing. The other day, listening to the French CBC as I do lately, I heard a French philosopher extol the advantages of “reading from the book of nature”. Having published some fifty books or so, he discovered that nature has more to teach us than the printed word. In order to make that point, he performs in a play, alongside twenty thousand bees also called to bear the heat of the stage.

one way of reading from that book

But who has the time, I ask, to "read from the book of nature”? Ill parents lying on hospital beds and waiting for another morning, children like Marius who wants to know where we go to from here and weather we come back again after, patients like myself who, while waiting for another test, jealously watch the multitude of critters who carry on preparing for winter, blissfully ignorant of imaging techniques. And people like our sister in law Robyn, whose job it is to bring that which used to be called nature back to the city; and who, incidentally, also keeps bees. But be warned: whatever we get to glimpse out of this book of nature under the form of some understanding becomes, even for those who have got hold of it, one more impenetrable secret to preserve.