Book talk: Rural Hours

    I am reading Rural Hours by Susan Fenimore Cooper. Written in 1850, it is a naturalist’s diary-of-sorts set in Cooperstown, NY.  As she reminds us often, at her writing, that village had been carved from the wilderness only a generation before, after the Revolutionary War.  Still, she ruminates over the changes to the landscape wrought by farming, commerce and the hand of progress; this when that progress seems naively quaint to us.

    But it resonates down the years to me. I recognize in her reflection over venerable stumps, tender wild flowers and the lost “verdure” of the hillsides, my own observations as I take my walks through the woods and fields around my home.

    It is not all poignancies over what is lost; for her or for me. There is much to celebrate if we keep our eyes open and if we care. That is what shines through from her writing. The world around her village was no more exotic than my own, but it was  nonetheless, like mine, a world of diversity and nuance, fecundity and particularity, mystery and the miraculous - for those who will see.

    Susan Fenimore Cooper had her head in the game. She was awake in her world; noticing the incremental effects of the seasons on creatures and crops, wondering about habits of birds and the characteristics of flowers, reasoning-through the relationships of what she observed and what that might mean about how the world works.  She didn’t need to “make time” to engage nature. It was integral to her passage through life.

    My own awareness has its ups and downs. Over the years I have learned the names of trees, and flowers, and birds that frame my place on the planet. I take walks not for their destination, but for the path they provide through these moments I have. Like Susan Cooper, I want to appreciate how the world manages to be eternally old and eternally new, like me.

P.S. I have been enjoying this BirdsEye BirdLog app on my walks. It has helped me focus on details I sometimes pass over. Plus, my observations are compiled at eBird for some really nifty and meaningful insights!