And a longer excerpt, rather than a poem this week, as we get familiar again with the darkness and night in the north. From Henry Beston’s book, The Outermost House:
Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of the night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of the stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day’s civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day."
Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity. By day, space is one with the earth and with man — it is his sun that is shining, his clouds that are floating past; at night, space is his no more. When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars — pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience.
This is lovely. I have an Airbnb in the forest near the Blue Ridge mountains in western Virginia. It gets totally dark at night. Many people who stay there feel unexpected fear. One older man from DC messaged me at 2 AM terrified... of the night. Even when I stay there, though I’ve slept there thousands of times—sometimes I’m still very scared.
Please let us know how you read it -- it feels old and White and male to me, but perhaps that is the loud memory voice of my 18 year-old self, which was the last time I read it?
Published nature writing/writing of place has so long been the place of White men of privilege. I'm craving different perspectives.
I'm craving those perspectives as well and have thought about it a lot lately. I don't need to read anymore white dudes finding whatever out in the wilderness. What I crave are nature writers who aren't white, as white women are probably the second most likely to get this kind of thing published ... which is fine, but still....
I've had that sense too reading it, but there are aspects of it that are insightful...but yes, that whole sense of nature as object to be observed and detailed by white men is maddeningly pervasive. I've loved some of Robert Macfarlane's works, but not all, specifically because of what Kathleen Jamie writes about here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n05/kathleen-jamie/a-lone-enraptured-male?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Still, Mountains of the Mind was a book I loved because it called out some of that history when it comes to mountains... and Jamie falls into that trope of nature-as-object-viewed-at-a-distance sometimes as well.... I'm reading May Sarton this week about her retreat to solitude--curious to see how the two (Sarton & Beston) compare, written at roughly similar times....
I really liked that Kathleen Jamie piece. My little group of science/creative nonfiction writer friends and I have talked about it a lot, including the seeming impossibility of many to not see nature-as-object rather than the interconnectedness.
I pulled out Journal of a Solitude (1973) last night.
I am struck by Sarton's internal-ness. Yes, she notes the natural world, but it is in service to illuminating herself and her relational world. (Also I am shocked that anyone was surprised at the biography that stated she was a mean person; she says it herself within the first 30 pages!)
I don't feel the imprint of man or ownership or objectifying the world in Solitude -- I'm curious which Sarton you chose -- but I think that's because to me, just at the start where I am, it feels more home-makerly, more feminine than conquering male-y.
And I want to thank you!! I have always loved writers-of-place but I haven't pulled out my old New England friends in decades. I am anticipating a cozy winter of exploring and expanding from the modernists, Old & White.
So interesting, I love this--and yes! I started her Journal of Solitude and had the same exact feelings--so internal and ruminative, and also much about her relationships with others, her friend's death, her anger, her internal reality and deep need for it. The way she talks about the flowers she brings into the house. So so different than the observer approach of Beston and other writers of solitude and observations of 'outside'... and her meanness too! Fascinating--and I'm so glad that you find joy revisiting them, I love finding fellow readers of the same books!
I just ordered that book after someone recommended it to me. Looking forward to it!
This is lovely. I have an Airbnb in the forest near the Blue Ridge mountains in western Virginia. It gets totally dark at night. Many people who stay there feel unexpected fear. One older man from DC messaged me at 2 AM terrified... of the night. Even when I stay there, though I’ve slept there thousands of times—sometimes I’m still very scared.
no! wow that is fantastic!
Ha! I just checked my mail and a copy of Beston's "The Outermost House" arrived. I wondered what compelled me to order it ... and here we are! 😂
Please let us know how you read it -- it feels old and White and male to me, but perhaps that is the loud memory voice of my 18 year-old self, which was the last time I read it?
Published nature writing/writing of place has so long been the place of White men of privilege. I'm craving different perspectives.
I'm craving those perspectives as well and have thought about it a lot lately. I don't need to read anymore white dudes finding whatever out in the wilderness. What I crave are nature writers who aren't white, as white women are probably the second most likely to get this kind of thing published ... which is fine, but still....
totally. and i’m a white woman and don’t want to read the same kind of crap. ugh. history. why did they do all of this to us?
I've had that sense too reading it, but there are aspects of it that are insightful...but yes, that whole sense of nature as object to be observed and detailed by white men is maddeningly pervasive. I've loved some of Robert Macfarlane's works, but not all, specifically because of what Kathleen Jamie writes about here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v30/n05/kathleen-jamie/a-lone-enraptured-male?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Still, Mountains of the Mind was a book I loved because it called out some of that history when it comes to mountains... and Jamie falls into that trope of nature-as-object-viewed-at-a-distance sometimes as well.... I'm reading May Sarton this week about her retreat to solitude--curious to see how the two (Sarton & Beston) compare, written at roughly similar times....
I really liked that Kathleen Jamie piece. My little group of science/creative nonfiction writer friends and I have talked about it a lot, including the seeming impossibility of many to not see nature-as-object rather than the interconnectedness.
I pulled out Journal of a Solitude (1973) last night.
I am struck by Sarton's internal-ness. Yes, she notes the natural world, but it is in service to illuminating herself and her relational world. (Also I am shocked that anyone was surprised at the biography that stated she was a mean person; she says it herself within the first 30 pages!)
I don't feel the imprint of man or ownership or objectifying the world in Solitude -- I'm curious which Sarton you chose -- but I think that's because to me, just at the start where I am, it feels more home-makerly, more feminine than conquering male-y.
And I want to thank you!! I have always loved writers-of-place but I haven't pulled out my old New England friends in decades. I am anticipating a cozy winter of exploring and expanding from the modernists, Old & White.
So interesting, I love this--and yes! I started her Journal of Solitude and had the same exact feelings--so internal and ruminative, and also much about her relationships with others, her friend's death, her anger, her internal reality and deep need for it. The way she talks about the flowers she brings into the house. So so different than the observer approach of Beston and other writers of solitude and observations of 'outside'... and her meanness too! Fascinating--and I'm so glad that you find joy revisiting them, I love finding fellow readers of the same books!