 A Hidden History of the Natural World
Susan Brind Morrow’s “Wolves &
Honey”
on WSKG Radio’s OFF THE PAGE
Tuesday, October 5,
at 1:00 PM (Repeating at 7:00 PM)
 Listen
to the program now
in
RealAudio©
format
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The world of the ancient
Egyptians, the Greeks
and Romans of the classical era and Native
American people of
pre-Columbian times may have been very different
from the modern industrialized world we inhabit
today. But it is the same planet, and that
element we call “human nature” probably
hasn’t evolved very much. It is still
possible to encounter sky, stars, water, plants
and animals in a basic way and to know them as
you know yourself and others.
Susan Brind Morrow
is a classicist, translator of ancient Egyptian
texts and contemporary Arabic poetry. Her 1998
book, “The Names of Things”, tells of her student days and
her personal and professional strivings in Egypt.
Her new book, “Wolves and Honey” is about the experiences that tie
people to one another and to the land. It is set
mostly in the place where she was born and
raised, the Finger Lakes region of New York.
When we
were children, barely able to walk, my
parents would us out into the middle of
Seneca Lake and toss us off the side of their
boat into the deep green water. Although we
could float in our life jackets, and there
was the electric touch of the water itself,
the lake seemed dense and bottomless –
heavy matter, like a skin not easily shaken
free. We had an instinctive dread of what
could drift up through that heavy medium from
below – the immense primordial sturgeon,
like pale ghosts, plated in hard ridges of
leathery gray.
The lake
was something we knew by heart, through our
bodily senses as they themselves were formed.
In 125 pages of
text and drawings “Wolves and Honey”
tells of the conquest of the Iroquois, the rise
of the “burned-over district” of
visionaries and seers, the habits of wolves and
ermines, the life cycle of the honeybee and the
role of the beaver and the apple. Susan even
explains why the sky is blue. But the book's
strongest thread is the author’s
relationship to friends with both hands on the
natural world: hunters and trappers, beekeepers
and pomologists. The “hidden history”
could be of human life that is played out in a
natural world that is often too small to be
spotted or too enormous to be embraced.
Susan Brind Morrow
will join Bill Jaker on
OFF THE PAGE to tell about her encounters with
the Finger Lakes environment and her study of
words that is as deep as her observation of the
natural world. To join in the conversation, call
during the live 1:00 PM broadcast (toll-free) to
1-888/359-9754, or post a comment HERE... or directly to WSKG@STNY.RR.COM.
Listen
to the program now
in
RealAudio©
format
(requires free
RealAudio© player)
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