These short autobiographical essays weave together Scott Sander's gifts of highly evocative and beautiful language with thoughtful reflections on the wisdom he has gained from his life. These memories, “shifting shapes, playing jokes, reworking the past (9),”are often tied to specific places, a particular landscape, an encounter with an animal, as well as to the learning from or encounter with other important humans in his life. “When I think back over the scenes that have shaped me, the most vivid ones take place in woods and fields and along stony creeks, in sunshine or rain or snow or in the speckled shade of trees (11).” To add to this autobiographical framework, the text is interspersed with pictures that trace Sanders' journey from childhood to young adulthood to maturity. Reinforcing this autobiographical motif is Scott Slovack's highly informative biographical essay on Sanders along with a complete bibliography of his writings.
These short essays move in a rough chronological sequence. The early essay “Words” dwells on the magic of the discovery of language. This discovery, vital to us all, but especially magical to those like Sanders who have gifts of language, is evoked in this chapter. “I could say snake and see in my mind the green rope coiled in the crotch of a tree. I could say plum and taste the fruit in my mouth. I could say creek and smell the mud. Every last thing in the world had a name, I realized, a string to hold it by. I spent my days gathering up these strings (13).” Here, as in many of these essays, Sanders uses rich, sensual images that are yet somehow common to us all; images that evoke deep emotion and memory.
The chapters on his parents are especially poignant. From the vantage point of a seasoned adulthood he writes eloquently of his parents gifts and their failures. “My chief outdoor teacher was my father, who took me for long, ambling walks through the Ohio countryside.......Above all the other wild things he loved trees. They were steady and faithful, he told me. Trees found everything they needed right where they stood, without having to run all over creation like animals (23).” “I realized that my father thought of trees as persons. Dignified and deep rooted, and that was how I came to think of them as well..........We treat with care what we love, and we love only what we have truly learned to see, with all our senses alert (24).”
These obvious and free gifts from his father are balanced with the hard learning that comes from a parent's shortcomings and failures. “.......my father died, a few months shy of sixty-five, his heart ruined by tobacco and alcohol. The drinking had soured my last few visits with him, for when I pleaded with him to stop, he answered me with bluster, lies, and grief. I had no idea what caused the grief, and if my father knew he would not say (79).” “Only in the years since his death have I understood how many more ways there are of failing than of succeeding as a husband, father, and son, and how inescapable are the claims of love (82).”
“As I learned to recognize animal tracks and tree bark and leaf shapes from my father, so I learned the alphabets of flowers and vegetables and fruits from my mother, who was always the gardener.....She taught me to delight in pattern, no matter the scale, from the veining of a leaf to the branching of a stream, from the curl of a amoeba's false foot to the sweep of the Milky Way (24-25).” This rich mingling of people and place, of memory, emotion, deft language and deep insight, continually run through this work. Sander's writing awakens the reader's own memories and emotions, especially those of the power and beauty of the natural world; memories so often misplaced or forgotten. “To write about the natural order that sustains us is not to ignore the human condition, but to insist on our most fundamental needs - for light and earth and water and air, for companions, for beauty, meaning, grace (38).”
When Mr. Sanders turns his attention to these “fundamental needs” the impact of his writing on the reader only deepens. Through his gifts with language he returns the experiences of awe and fundamental mystery of the world to our memory. Speaking of the impact of the sounds of water he says, “The sound goes through me, dissolves the hard little cinder of the self, and leaves only the one vast current surging. What is this attunement of self and world if not an intimation of paradise? I have felt it often, not only in the presence of moving water or ghostly moths or nervous deer, but also in shimmering trees, in meadows of stars, in grasses swept by wind, in a chorus of crickets; and not only in meetings with nonhuman nature, but also in passages of music and poetry, in the elegant findings of science, in the sharing of food and talk with people I love; I have felt it indoors and out, in company or in solitude. If what I glimpse in these moments is paradise, the fulfillment of my constant hungering for wholeness, then paradise is all around us all the time, had we but eyes to see. It is as though most of the time we grow numb to the splendors of our dwelling place, as my ears grew accustomed to the exquisite ruckus of the Gihon River, and only occasionally do we come awake to behold what is truly and always here. This is one of my deepest and oldest intuitions, that one current courses through all things. I sensed this permeating presence before I learned any religious language to speak of it, and I sense it still, after I have grown weary of all the names of God (35-36).”
“The Country of Languages” is a beautiful book. Scott Sanders is an important author to read. He evokes in us memories and experiences that should not be forgotten nor tucked away into the dim corners of our mind. But is this a book for high school students? Maybe. The book draws on deep life experience, and our students, even as seniors, as just beginning that trek. All that being said, I do think seniors could gain much by reading this book; teachers could gain even more.
review © 2005 by Tom Collins and RSiSS
Palmer Trinity School
Miami, Florida