Wild Comfort: The Solace Of Nature (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
Perhaps the best essay in Wild Comfort is the piece that launches the collection, The Solace of Snakes. It’s possible that it’s my favorite essay because of her cunning implementation of snake tins (sheets of metal) to give snakes a proper home in a cleared field. Kathleen Dean Moore further explains her recordings each day as she carefully lifts the snake tins and examines the life beneath: “A large vole. . . dropping blind babies from her teats like ripe plums,” garter snakes, rubber boas, an alligator lizard – treasures of the dark that are suddenly revealed in the light of Moore’s simple prose.While The Solace of Snakes is my favorite essay you might find that you prefer her essay on happiness, Moore’s scavenger hunt for joy’s many complexities, both surprising and apparent and how she fills a basket with her discoveries, a basket overflowing with hastily written revelations with unyielding permanence.Or you will weep when Moore is told that a portion of her parent’s remains will end up in a landfill, but rejoice as Moore realizes that a fragment of their remains will be “taken up into the body of a bird, their calcium crusting against the open spaces in the bones that lifts its wings.”You may be enthralled by Moore’s notion of using the word human as a verb, and you might attempt to define what it means to human, which could be a very remote path into the fragrant salt of the earth’s womb, or it could be a sudden fork that you take as you human your way through the decision. Whichever essay it is that you decide to love most; it will be a tough but joyous voyage as you sift through Moore’s words. You may choose to love them all. You may pluck a gem from each to ponder over just as a magpie jay runs “each of its extravagant tail feathers through its black beak, one and then another.” Irritating. Depressing. Pretentious. The author thinks she's being "meaningful" and "poetic", but her writing and her attitude are both crap. I could barely make myself read beyond the first chapter, but got to page 40 and skimmed the rest. Unsettling, leaves you in a bad mood. BLECH! Also: who loves nature and also burns her trash on the beach for the ocean to wash away?! Crazy lady, I do not understand you.(This month we had two books for book club, and I wish I had read this one first! Then I could have skimmed it, forgotten about it, and simply enjoyed the GOOD book, _La's Orchestra Saves the World_. I was somehow tricked into thinking this book would be "deep" in a way I like. WRONG!)
What do You think about Wild Comfort: The Solace Of Nature (2010)?
I really enjoyed the writing and the ideas. interactions with nature causing musings on life.
—gaelsoy
Lyrical essays as the author pays attention to nature, grief, loss, hope, and joy.
—aab7878
One of my favorite books. Poetic, philosophical, pacific northwest-- love it.
—Hamdi
This is a book to savor and keep and read over and over.
—Rufus
one of the better "nature" books i've read in a while.
—Vorbar68
