Part Two of Oliver’s Long Life is titled, “Wordsworth’s Mountain,” which also happens to be the title of the first chapter in this part of the book. She begins again with the act of observing the world, something I’m beginning to suspect will always be her entry point, and perhaps her primary gift or teaching for the reader: Stop and look.

She said once, in an interview with Krista Tippet: “I was saved by the beauty of the world.” It’s almost as if Oliver wants to remind us to save ourselves, too, by finally opening our eyes and seeing the beauty all around us, even when it is disappearing, or has gone. Change, too, can be a beautiful thing, if only for its necessity.

One of my favorite parts in the first chapter, in fact, is when Oliver describes these little houses she used to make in the woods as a child, and how storms and animals would sometimes raze her tiny homes to the ground. She wasn’t ever upset by this, though. She’d only be upset if some other people, friends or neighbors or random wood-walkers, were to stumble upon her works and destroy them. It’s a curious but hopeful kind of edge to walk. To accept what nature brings but to fear the willful destruction of humankind’s worst impulses.

If the first part of this chapter is about our appreciation for nature, the second is about the wonders of animals. It’s a wonderful bridge to last month’s read, An Immense World. In “Dog Talk,” Oliver describes her pet’s sense of smell as auditory:

I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously into the shallow dampness of a deer’s hoofprint and shut his eyes as if listening. But it is smell he is listening to. The wild, high music of smell, that we know so little about.

Long Life, p. 27

I wonder if she knew how right she was, in describing her dog’s sensory experience that way! What might Yong and Oliver have to say to one another? How beautiful is a world where biology and poetry can meet in perfect uniformity?

Next, in “The Perfect Days,” Oliver turns her attention to weather. So, she’s taken us through her observations on nature, animal life, and now storms and skies. She calls herself rather an odd poet, being less impressed with the rages of wild weather and more in love with the simple, pleasant days. She contemplates the tension between acknowledging “ferocious weather as the perfect foundation” for creative acts, but also the craving for peace and ease. It’s easy, I think, maybe even cliche, to equate great artistic achievement with madness, but we can hold Mary Oliver up there with Wordsworth and Shelley and Poe, and find just as much accomplished in serenity as in the tempests.

Oliver’s closing segment in this part is called “Waste Land: An Elegy.” She walks the reader through a remarkable, once-wild area near her home, where she used to encounter an abundance of rare and seemingly random wildlife, plants and animals, but with a population boom and all that come with that, the life has disappeared. What remains is trash, new concrete, buildings and bike ways. It’s an elegy in the truest sense, and yet Oliver ends this piece on a hopeful note, a reminder about the nature of change and praise for memory.

Meditation: “I walk in the world to love it.” -Mary Oliver

Warmly,

~Adam

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