Good writing, like good art, is moral without being moralizing, expresses deep sentiment without being sentimental, challenges without inducing false guilt, and is mature without being cynical. No easy formula.
But it is a formula that Trevor Herriot manages successfully in his most recent book, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds., This book walks that fine line: powerfully moral without a trace of bad moralizing, mature without a hint of cynicism, a book about death that leaves its reader with hope.
Who is Trevor Herriot? He is a Canadian writer, little known outside of Canada, but one who deserves a wider readership. In Canada, he has established himself as an important moral voice within society at large. He’s a trained naturalist, an historian, a natural theologian, a seminarian of nature, and a committed Roman Catholic. His first book, River in a Dry a Land, a sober reflection upon our sometimes overly careless relationship with nature, won critical acclaim and a series of literary awards in Canada. It was a pure meditation on nature, but it spoke volumes of theology. His second book, Jacob’s Wound, tried to be more explicitly theological, and his admirers were suddenly more parsimonious in their praise. They were prepared to listen to Herriot the naturalist, but not Herriot the church-goer. Somewhat stung, I suspect, he returns to his original genre in Grass, Sky, Song and writes a book that is a pure reflection on nature. It has been nominated for the Governor General’s medal, a prestigious literary award in Canada, and the nomination is well-deserved. Beyond its challenging content, this book is a fine piece of literature. Herriot writes well.
It is worth mentioning, too, that he wrote this book while his wife was undergoing treatment for cancer with an uncertain prognosis. He mentions this only in passing, but the book, affected by his wife’s cancer, carries a certain sadness and anxiety that is not at all unconnected to his sadness and anxiety about what nature itself is undergoing. What causes cancer in people causes it too in nature.
On the surface, this is a book about grassland birds declining and disappearing in the Canadian and American prairies, but it is a book about more than birds, much more. It’s about our relationship with the earth (all of us, whether we live in the country or in the city) , and how unconsciously, no matter how innocent our intentions might be, our grip on nature is slowly tightening so as to threaten to suffocate the very life forces that support us.
But perhaps this book might be a bit ahead of its time. Its narrative is a little like Nietzsche’s Madman a hundred years ago. He smashes a lantern in the market square to get people’s attention, but then announces that he has probably proclaimed an urgent message too early. The evidence needed to convince people will come only later, when they begin to feel the consequences of what they are enacting. Herriot’s message, I fear, will also face the same skepticism. Too many of us, with less sensitive eyes, do not yet see the evidence.
The essential message of this book might be summarized in a single metaphor he gives as he tries to sort through our ecological woes: “Denying, excusing, looking elsewhere, is easy enough until you hold one of the victims in your hand. Once Stephen Davies finished banding the pipit (a grassland bird) that morning at the Last Mountain Lake bird sanctuary, he asked if Don or I would like to release it. Receiving the bird in both hands, Don looked at it briefly, then extended his arms at eye level and opened his fingers. The pipit stayed crouched, as though hands were still holding it in place. It swayed a little, showing no interest in flying. We watched in silence and dread, wondering if it was hurt. Stephen touched it with an index finger – ‘C’mon. It’s okay’ – and the pipit took flight, fluttering off weakly a short distance and then diving into the familiar refuge of the grass. Later, Don talked about a sense of transgression he felt at that moment, as though we were being clumsy and graceless with a mystery. He spoke of a kind of attention, different from scientific attention, a leaning toward the other without wanting to possess it or turn it into forms of knowledge, a way of listening that might over time deepen our sense of what it means to be in a place. I have no good reason to believe that great numbers of us will soon be listening to the land, opening our grip and releasing all that we have been holding onto, but there is much in our political and philosophical talk to indicate that we are discovering just how clumsy we have been. At the very least we are beginning to see what suffering we have brought to the prairie by forcing alien and extractive lifeways on its people, places, and wild creatures.”
In a similar series of essays a few years ago titled Small Wonders, Barbara Kingsolver tried to point our eyes towards some small things that we should be noticing but, to our own peril, are not. For Trevor Herriot, one of these small wonders is the sparrow, a bird which Jesus himself assures us never falls from the sky without God noticing. Perhaps God’s noticing contains a lesson:
“True grassland birds – species that cannot tolerate trees or cropland – bear witness to the world in their own particular way. It is a testimony as worthy of our best efforts to listen, dream, and imagine as any other in Creation; not loud enough to attract busloads of tourists, perhaps, but all the more rewarding for the attention it cultivates in any who try. These small creatures make their stand in the face of great powers transforming their prairie world, living out a yearly drama, a freedom and fidelity to the wind that may escape our awareness even as they sing out to any soul within earshot. The influence of beings as unprepossessing and elusive as grassland birds is something like gravity, a weak though persistent mystery that holds us in place. The heart recognizes such a gentle force, knows that in simply becoming aware of its pull we take a small step towards belonging here ourselves.”
In the end, Herriot’s book is a deeply moral one, another way of formatting the preferential option for the poor. When the Jewish prophets warn us that we will be judged on how “widows, orphans, and strangers” fared while we were alive, and Jesus tells us that the “excluded one” will become the cornerstone, we don’t normally identify any of these with grassland birds. But the poor today include the grassland birds and the sparrows that fall from the sky without our notice, but with God’s notice. And we put ourselves in great peril when we ignore the poor.
Oblate School of Theology
Ronald Rolheiser OMI