Ackerman + Walker + McPhee

 I ~loved~ the readings this week. I annotated the heck out of my book and jotted down a lot of notes on post-its, but I really wish that I had written a post after my first reading or even after our class discussion yesterday. I'm still going to cobble something together now, even though it's not quite as fresh on my mind.

First, I appreciated the diversity in author choice. Not that I havent enjoyed the selections so far, but I will say that old white men just don't get me excited like Alice Walker does. I'd also never read Diane Ackerman before and I am OBsessed. Her descriptions are vivid and visceral in the best way. I'm breathtakingly impressed by her scientific narration. Honestly! If science textbooks read as lyricly as her writing, everyone would want to study them. Ackerman managed to translate the rapture and fascination held by scientists for the biological processes of the natural world into the language of literature. This is a skill I would love to master. Usually, when I get excited about things like physiological processes, they don't exactly translate well to those with whom I try to share them. (Thankfully I have many wonderful like-minded friends who regularly respond with the proper excitement to texts like "Dude... the Vibrational Theory of Olfaction 😱 My mind is BLOWN" or "I think F-type channels in cardiac pacemaker cells are definitely my fave - they activate themselves!!!") It's quite depressing to watch someone's eyes glaze over as your excitement completely fails to translate. But, somehow, Diane Ackerman managed to describe chlorophyll, petioles, and anthocyanin, not only ~beautifully~, but also understandably?? Mind. Blown. (again!)

Additionally, I especially enjoyed Alice Walker's piece. I'd read some of her work before and appreciated her activism, but I never knew of any connection to the nature-writing genre. Her body of work is vast and her breadth is insanely impressive. She managed to articulate deep insights into human nature through a few pages of writing about a horse... If that's not impressive, I don't understand the meaning of that word. I thought it was interesting in class that we repeatedly called her attribution of human emotion (to the horse) and connection drawn to slavery "radical". Reading the passage, that thought never ocurred to me. I think I identify with Walker's view of the world. Empathy and advocacy are such important values to me, that I struggle to separate them from my daily lens. Rather, it's radical NOT to think of the emotions and experiences of others and relate every situation to social justice. I immediately read a critique of society as a whole rather than solely an analysis of human flaws in her work. She is unapologetic about her convictions and their relation to every part of her work. Walker is beautifully descriptive of her empathy and clear in her emphasis of human exploitation for economic gain. I think her references to the children's interactions with Blue speak heavily to performative activism as well. 

There were so many beautiful or meaningful quotes to pick from this week I'm honestly not sure that I even want to pull any out. I'll try to pick a few of my favorites below, though. 

From The Norton Book of Nature Writing:

"Early-morning frostsits heavily on the grass, and turns barbed wire into a string of stars" (Ackerman, 980). 

"Colored like living things, they signal death and disentegration. In time, they will become fragile and, like the body, return to dust (Ackerman, 982).

"They are as we hope our own fate will be when we die: Not to vanish, just to sublime from one beautiful state into another" (Ackerman, 982).

"Firmly tethered to the earth, we love to see things rise up and fly... (Ackerman, 982).

"Sometimes one finds in fossil stones the imprint of a leaf, long since disintegrated, whose outlines remind us how detailed, vibrant, and alive are the things of this earth that perish (Ackerman, 983).

And it was odd what the look of hatred it gave him, for the first time, the look of a beast. And what that meant was that he had put up a barrier within to protect himself from further violence; all the apples in the world wouldn't change that fact" (Walker, 867)