Travel and Nature

H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

/ Memoir, Reading, Travel and Nature

★★★☆☆ | Memoir | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I came to this book with high expectations. The New York Times considers it one of the best books (so far) of the 21st Century.

The story is simple enough: a professor with a background in amateur falconry retreats from public life after the death of her father to train a goshawk. I enjoyed the descriptions of the hawk, the English countryside, and the fringe customs of falconry.

The book bogged down for me in two ways: the author’s overwrought descriptions of her descent into near madness over the loss of her 67-year-old father, and the inclusion of a quasi-biography of the writer T.H. White.  I think this book would have been better without the deep dives into her fascination with White. And the emotional punch would have been more effective had she let her actions speak for her feelings of grief. We all approach grief in different ways, so I know this is an unfair judgment on my part.  This one just missed the mark for me.

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The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl

/ Essays, Reading, Travel and Nature

★★★☆☆ | Travel and Nature | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

This one didn’t meet my high expectations. The essays feel too forced and contrived, like the author is trying too hard. Lots of handwringing.  Her circle of concern is very very large. I don’t know how many essays reference the sad departure of her children from her once full home. I have no patience for mourning the loss of a child who has simply moved across town.  If only.  I read a half dozen of her short essays in the hot sun, wanting to be done with the book and move on to something more comforting. The essays went down easier out of doors, even if I don’t subscribe quite so much to her views.

You can’t come back to something that is gone. — Richard Powers, The Overstory

Sometimes the only cure for homesickness is to enlarge the definition of home.

The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony

/ Reading, Travel and Nature

★★★★☆ | Travel and Nature | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I enjoyed these episodic adventures in the wilds of South Africa amongst elephants and the incredible struggle to preserve and cohabitate with these massive and intelligent animals. An Immense World by Ed Yong introduced me to the ways in which elephants see the world from a scientific basis. Here, the author tells the story from practical experience. 

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Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

/ Reading, Travel and Nature

★★★★☆ | Travel and Nature | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Steinbeck was 58 when he took his trip in his new “RV” with his dog around the country in search of an answer to this question: “what is America today?”

He doesn’t find a satisfactory answer, but I enjoyed his musings and evocative travel writing, especially since we plan to do something similar in our little RV.

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The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben

/ Reading, Travel and Nature

★★★★☆ | Nature | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

Reading Notes

Trees are much more complex than we observe:

  1. Mature trees transfer nutrients to other struggling trees through root systems (especially offspring)
  2. Communicate danger from invasive pests through root systems to other trees a long distance away.
  3. Strong indication that trees have memories of past events.
  4. Transplanted trees don’t have the same communication or intelligence.
  5. Symbiotic relationship with mycelium network of fungi (the wood wide web).

Are trees sentient? Impossible to say they’re not.  Perhaps akin to an alien life form — just different?

Tree time: a tree is still a toddler until they’re 50.  Mature at 500.

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