This is a delicious book. Like a delectable piece of chocolate, it is a richly tactile delight to be savored fully present in part because it does not last long. But it is also one of those books that, unlike chocolate, goes to the inner places of the soul (rather than the hips!) Linda Hogan is, by choice and by style, a poet. And her way of describing the natural world around her is poetic.

She is reflective, inward and still. Perhaps it is because she is a poet, or because she is a Chickasaw Indian, or a naturalist, or a woman who knows how to listen. Most likely it is the combination of all. Thus, she is able to see the world in detail and write about it with awe and wonder. But Ms. Hogan is also a healer. She recognizes "There is a separation that has taken place between us and nature. Something has broken deep in the core of ourselves (p.53).” Her writings help us to mend. Just as she helps at the Bird of Prey Rehabilitation Foundation to bring wounded birds back to health, Ms. Hogan helps us. It is because she is able to carefully and gently pick up the shards of our brokenness and lovingly bring them back together by "speak[ing] to the longing place inside us that seeks to be whole and connected with the earth. This, too, is a place of beginning, the source of our living." (p.83)

I also enjoy the bits of marvelous information Ms. Hogan shares and their implications. For example, one learns that a certain kind of bamboo flowers only once in a century at the same time, no matter where it is located or how old it may be. Chimpanzees were taught American sign Language and one "learned 132 signs, was able to ask questions and to use the negative" (p. 53) express emotions and humor. The Voyager spacecraft carries music, words and pictures from around the world -- but not an anatomically correct picture of a man or a woman or anything about human genocide.

Linda Hogan has woven together a beautiful tapestry of what this, our dwelling place earth looks like with us in it. Easy to read and wondrous, it would be an excellent book to use in a course on land, nature, Native American writers, philosophy, ecology or literature.

review © 2004 by Jane S. Rechtman and RSiSS
The Masters School

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