First off, introductions: Hello all, there’s a new Maggie of Lemuria in town!
Well, not really. You might recognize my face. I’ve been in and out of the Lemuria rotating staff since the summer of 2013 before my senior year of high school. After a summer internship in Oz, I worked part-time as a senior, learned enough to provide an extra hand to wrap or work Oz during the holidays, and here we are. I just keep coming back, even after my freshman year at Ole Miss. I’m working on an English degree my parents still disapprove of.
Okay, glad we got that out of the way.
Recently, I’ve become acquainted with the genre of “environmental creative nonfiction”. Bear with me- it’s a fascinating niche of literature despite its horrendous umbrella term.
When I say environmental creative nonfiction, I’m talking about adventure pieces by John Krakauer, Cheryl Strayed’s wilderness memoir Wild, and Rick Bass’s diary-style Winter: Notes from Montana. What these pieces have in common are their personal narratives of growth and experience as influenced by their environment. The environment becomes a character within the work because it plays such a crucial role in where the piece goes.
One of my favorite pieces within this highly specific genre is David George Haskell’s The Forest Unseen. I was first introduced to this work in Nature Writing, an English course I was lucky enough to weasel my way into during my second semester. I was mostly in it for the chance to get some real writing critique and a trip to Costa Rica (lemme tell you friends, it was awesome), but I was lucky enough to also be exposed to some really phenomenal works of nonfiction.
David George Haskell is a professor of biology at Sewanee, and The Forest Unseen follows what he refers to as “A Year’s Watch in Nature”. Haskell observes a one-square-meter patch of old-growth forest, referred to as the mandala, for an entire year. The work is divided into chapters concerning specific anecdotes and aspects of life in the mandala, from fungi to insects to plant and animal interaction, touching on how all are linked together in a complex web. Everything is intensely researched and backed up with scientific fact. There are detailed descriptions of life cycles, bizarre adaptations, histories of scientific discovery. But what makes The Forest Unseen such a phenomenal book is Haskell’s skilled weaving of the scientific and the spiritual.
It begins with Haskell’s use of the term “mandala”. Mandalas are small circular sand drawings that are representative of the entirety of the universe and are in the tradition of Tibetan monks. From this one concept, Haskell brings into his book a complex layer of spirituality. He alludes to many different branches of faith and their relationship to the environment, discusses the nature of souls within the concept of the natural world, and draws parallels between his observations and religious concepts. By discussing spirituality in relation to science within the concept of the mandala, Haskell connects humanity to the environment, something we so often tend to view as some inconceivable other.
I want to put this book into everyone’s hands. I look for any excuse to recommend it to someone, but it is such a hard book to quickly summarize. It is about so much. It is about humanity and the environment and religion and science and the relationship between it all. It is about the past and the future. It has the power to speak to you if you let it.
In short, Haskell transforms a potentially dry, textbook subject into an ethereal reading experience (okay, maybe it’s a bit dry at the beginning but you can’t have everything). He creates intoxicating yet informative prose that reads like a poetry collection and a textbook. He brings the environment he observes to life, lets it breathe on the page and gives it a voice. Haskell has me head-over-heels in love with environmental creative nonfiction, and I have a feeling this is going to be a rather drawn-out love affair.
This lovely graphic novel chronicles the entire history of one small space of earth. In 8,000 BCE a bog trickles out to the edges of the page; while in 1989, a house has been built on that very spot and two couples share cocktails and jokes in front of a dated coffee table. The geographical location never wavers, but to watch time weave in and out, changing the curtains,
the rivers, and the wildlife- it feels so strange to have so much history sandwiched between so few pages. A mother stands in front of a window in the corner of the room and shows her baby the moon, and a bison sleeps exactly where the hearth will be in over 10,000 years.
Get In Trouble: Stories 
Okay people. Why does no one buy Maira Kalman’s books?? This is beyond me. Kalman, writer, painter, children’s book author and illustrator, collaborator, art lover, and student of life, has put out yet another thoughtful and heart-tugging book. My Favorite Things is a collection of thoughts, memories, and objects that have gathered significance over the years. Similar to And The Pursuit of Happiness and The Principles of Uncertainty, My Favorite Things attributes poignant meaning to even the smallest of things. Instead of feeling forced or overly emotional, Kalman keeps her thoughts short and simple.
This book sheds light on the lives of people who lived in the shadows of their famous spouses, bosses, friends, and neighbors. Each mini biography is a page long, paired with unique portraits from more than 40 artists. Included in this collection is Charles Bukowski’s editor, Coco Chanel’s lover, Al Capone’s mentor, and Emily Dickinson’s dog. Did you know that Rosalind Franklin discovered that DNA had two forms and her research allowed Francis Crick and James D. Watson to prove the helix shape of DNA? Yeah well, now you do.
Rene Denfeld stuns with this crystal clear novel about a death row inmate during his last days and the movements of his death penalty investigator as she tries desperately to uncover the truth surrounding his case. This novel is an incredibly hard sell because of the subject matter, but never have I experienced a book so concisely and exquisitely written. In the words of a customer, “not a word is wasted”. The Enchanted is set in a timeless, fuzzy landscape that is intent on keeping to the background so that the characters can take the main stage. It is a quiet, still book, with gleaming bits of gold shining through the cracks.
I have spent hours looking at this book. Hours. When it was given to me as a birthday gift, I feared that it would simply sit on my shelf, collecting dust after one thorough looking-through, but in the few months since it was given to me, I have taken it back out and poured over it again and again. The encyclopedic collection documents hundreds of different types of beetles, their countries of origin, eating habits, mating rituals, significant physical markers, and include a life-size photo of each specimen. You guys, I don’t even like beetles. Except now I do. Strange how knowledge creates passionate curiosity. Please don’t shy away from this book just because you think bugs are icky. Pick it up, because nature is freaking awesome.
I have this thing with leaves and it’s kind of strange. It started two years ago when I was taking a few design classes and getting pretty arts-and-crafty at home. With the array of beautiful trees on the ole miss campus in Oxford, I began picking up more and more fallen leaves to and from class. I’m fascinated with leaves and the intrinsic design qualities they hold. It’s like each one is a little piece of symmetrical artwork. In a large way, they allow the trees different personalities. This leaf collecting became a problem when it ate up all my space. Delicate leaves that I didn’t want to crush were everywhere around my place. Leaves that I wanted to draw or paint on or epoxy. But after a while most of these leaves got crushed. This habit of leaf gathering has died down but not subsided. I’m sure springtime will be a different story.
