LIVING LIKE WEASELS, HOWLING LIKE WOLVES

Vivienne Elanta 12021131

Ecofemism S221 May2003-05-09

500 Word Critical Thinking Essay of

SISTERS OF THE EARTH

Annie Dillard, Anne Labastille, Lois Crisler, Susan Griffin, Marge Piercy and Rachel Carson

In this collection of very moving and heart felt stories the authors give the reader an opportunity to recognise and understand in greater depth our relationship to the more than human world. These stories are personal accounts and testimonies of what happens when we allow ourselves to experience our world as lovers of life, or as subjugators like that of a master over a slave. The stories all convey a single and simple message, namely that this world is alive and responsive and that our response will effect this greater being, of which we are a part, for better or for worse.

Here are a few glimpses of their experiences and deep knowings and the effects of being lovers of life…

”I was stunned into stillness….our eyes locked and someone threw away the key. .… Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies met unexpectedly on an overgrown path…. It emptied our lungs. …. He disappeared. …I tell you I’ve been in that weasel’s brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine”(p.75).

“The grace and rhythm almost hypnotised me… One morning, with my arms wrapped around the trunk, I began to feel a sense of peace and well-being. …..It was as though the tree was pouring its life-force into my body.”(p.79).

“…there came a sound we had never heard before, the howl of a wolf….Impulsively I imitated the sound, pouring out my wilderness loneliness. I was answered. Not by one voice but by a wild weird pandemonium of deep-pitched voices. We stood awestruck.”(p.82).

…..and a glimpse of the blindness and greed of ‘man’ …..

He will make her his own. … He will have her….. (Once catching their prey, they step on her back, breaking it,….)”(p.84). “He breaks the wilderness. He clears the land of trees, brush, weed”(p.85). “What he possesses, he says, is his to use and to abandon”(p.86).

“The sage was killed, as intended. But so was the green, life-giving ribbon of willows…Moose had lived in these willow thickets… Beavers had lived there, feeding on the willows. With the eradication of sage and grassland, “The moose were gone and so were the beaver. …and the lake had drained away. …..None of the large trout were left…… The living world was shattered”(p.91).

Poignantly told, the authors passionate first hand accounts are profound, stirring deep re-member-ring of the wild places in my own being. Their stories convey that, not by imposing their will unto the more than human world and the beings they encountered, but by simply being with and letting be, can one have deep communion with our fellow beings like wolf, beaver and trees.

Rachel Carson warns us that ‘man’s’ folly of thinking that he can improve nature, comes at a huge cost. If we want to rid the land of sage with poisons, we will have to pay the prize of not only loosing the grouse, but entire eco-systems, creating a “Silent Spring”.

Instead of breaking the wilderness and clearing the land, Marge Piercy puts it succinctly, when she says that “we must come again to worship you on our knees, the common living dirt”(p.88). These powerful “Sisters of the Earth” remind us, that we can only find our way home when we can once again allow ourselves to “share a feeling of continuity, contentment, and oneness with the natural world”(p.77), awakening and nurturing our own wild, warm, sensuous animal- self to enchanted moments.