Meditations on world around us treats for armchair naturalists
Both of these books ofer delicious bites of nature over the course of the seasons — vicarious experiences for a diferent sort of armchair traveller, the armchair naturalist.
It’s difcult to state a category for either of these works, as both are a mélange of beautiful images and writing. Sufce it, perhaps, to call each a meditation — the Humphreys one placing its focus on an Ontario river (most specifically, the section of it where she lives) and Curry’s examining a particular stretch of forested waterway near her home on Vancouver Island.
Those familiar with the work of Helen Humphreys know that her books are always beautiful and that they often build upon her knowledgeable relationship with nature — whether with birds, as in her most recent novel, The Evening Chorus, or with the land itself (The Lost Garden, The Frozen Thames). In The River she furthers her reach and explores the history of the area surrounding the Napanee River as well as the history of the waterway itself. She creates stories that bring alive the voices of people from the past — a lifelong sailor searching the forest for a tree that will make a good replacement mast, brothers who hunt robins as survival food for their mother and three baby sisters, a group of female conservationists who set out to end the practice of killing herons for their feathers.
There are inventories — of fauna and flora inhabiting the waterway — even a list of vari- ous bits (crockery, bones, bottles, pipes) the author has found by diving to the bottom of the river.
She ofers readers much to contemplate, as with this passage from the end of a piece on fireflies: “Loneliness is most noticeable when it is echoed. In the daytime … it is easy to believe that each home is a happy one, that every family hums with love and industry. But out here at night … she knows that each adult is really just alone, that no one has the courage to go to another’s light, and that all any of them are essentially teaching their children tonight is to move toward what is alive, and to extinguish it.”
Serving as a wonderful West Coast complement to The River is Gwen Curry’s Tod Inlet. Curry, an artist and a professor of fine arts at the University of Victoria, tracks the history of a very specific area — revealing the important role it played in the lives of the Wsanec (Saanich) people, through its days as the site of a cement factory, to current times where, butted up against Butchart Gardens, it has been declared parkland. The road to its becoming Gowlland Tod Provincial Park has not been easy, as various interests have attempted over the years to develop it as a commercial resort or for residential purposes.
The histories of the people who lived there have also not been easy. As Curry puts it, “Tod Inlet’s history is a microcosm of the history of the North American continent, if not the world.”
She goes on to cite the diseases that were introduced to the native population. Chinese and Sikh workers also lived there at various times, providing lowwage employees for the cement factory. The Sikhs in particular seemed to endure the worst jobs — clearing out and replacing still-hot bricks from the base of the long kilns.
But as it did for the people who lived there in the past, it is nature that still provides solace at Tod Inlet. And Curry, who has walked these trails since the 1970s serves as a skilful guide, whether pointing out the beauty of a rare forest orchid or calling attention to the glory of a banana slug.