On Reading Nature Memoirs
Dear Kindred Spirit,
Have you ever read a book that opened your mind and heart so much that who you were after reading it was fundamentally different from who you were when you began?
These are the kinds of books that help you see the world in a brand-new way. The ones that open you to the experience of there being something more than the mundane reality we live in. The ones that help you access the depth and beauty of life.
I don’t need every book I read to be like this, but I really love it when at least some of the books I’m reading have this effect. That’s why I like to have a slow but steady reading diet of nature memoirs.
Nature memoirs are books where the author explores an aspect of the natural world through their own lived experience. The ones I love best also incorporate the science behind the nature.
One of the best nature memoirists out there today is Sy Montgomery, who has written many books, including the well-known The Good, Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood and Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness.
The Good, Good Pig is the story of a little runt Sy Montgomery brings home and raises at her New Hampshire farmhouse. It’s a great story because, wow, there was a big learning curve as she figured out how to raise a pig. Along the way, she shares her love for Christopher Hogwood as well as lots of amazing facts about pigs.
That’s one of the things I love about nature memoirs: coupling learning with storytelling, so that I actually remember the fun facts while being drawn into the emotional experience of the story.
In Soul of an Octopus, Montgomery shares her experience studying octopuses at the New England Aquarium. She opens with the first time she reaches into the tank, supervised by aquarium staff, and meets Athena by allowing Athena to reach up with her tentacles and feel her arms.
“Athena’s suction is gentle, though insistent. It pulls me like an alien’s kiss. Her melon-sized head bobs to the surface, and her left eye—octopuses have a dominant eye, as people have dominant hands—swivels in its socket to meet mine. Her black pupil is a fat hyphen in a pearly globe. Its expression reminds me of the look in the paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses: serene, all-knowing, heavy with wisdom stretching back beyond time.”
—Sy Montgomery, Soul of an Octopus
The other thing I love about nature memoirs is how they pull me out of the myth that we are somehow disconnected from nature, when we aren’t. We are so connected. It’s just a matter of attuning our attention to that connection.
It’s like reading a Mary Oliver poem about trees and never walking by a tree in the same way again.
Or reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s thoughts on mosses, and suddenly moss feels so present.
Or reading Sy Montgomery talk about meeting an octopus, and realizing we really aren’t alone here on planet Earth.
Nature memoirs remind us that there is far more to the world around us than we usually notice. Sometimes all it takes is someone showing us how to see it.
—Emma
P.S. Kindred Spirit, I hope you will join us for our next reading adventure, where we’ll be reading Soul of an Octopus one chapter a week for the next eight weeks. We’ll lose ourselves in the wonder of octopuses and remember that we aren’t alone here on planet Earth. → Learn More and Sign Up Here
P.P.S. Here’s a short list of other nature memoirs I’ve read and loved:
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Mirrors in the Earth: Reflections on Self-Healing from the Living World by Asia Suler
Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Hi, I’m Emma Basu. I’m a writer, tarot card reader, and book lover. My soul’s work is to help you find clarity amongst the chaos, meaning in the mundane, and purpose in your life’s winding journey.
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