Entry tags:
[books 2015] Canadian natural history
27. The Road is How: A Prairie Pilgrimage through Nature, Desire & Soul by Trevor Herriot
Some time ago I raved about Herriot's book Grass, Sky, Song, which is about birdwatching and nature in the area where I grew up, and his noodlings about nature and our relationship to it. He has four books in total, and this is the latest.
The framework for this is that the author takes a several day hike through the area just outside Regina. It's mostly farmland but you can still see odd bits of the original prairie.
This one is less factual and more Herriot musing about life, the universe and everything. Most of it's quite good - he's a bit of a hippy but has enough humour and self-awareness that even when you don't agree with him, it's interesting and thought provoking.
My quibble was that it's great that he's big on the idea of community and mutual support, and being aware of and appreciating nature, but he can't seem to conceive of doing any of that in any way that doesn't involve having loads of kids (he has 4). You can see where I have some issues with that.
Then right near the end I went right off him. He's pretty cool - see above - but everything he's written about his wife in both books has rubbed me up the wrong way - whereas he can keep a distance from hippy flakiness and see it as metaphorical and a nice idea, she buys into it completely. So I get to the bit where he says that their kids haven't been vaccinated. I would have thrown the book across the room but I was in the cafeteria at work and I'm pretty sure braining the catering staff with a hardback book is a sackable offence.
I'll probably still go back and read the middle two books, though, because he really does write well about nature.
Some time ago I raved about Herriot's book Grass, Sky, Song, which is about birdwatching and nature in the area where I grew up, and his noodlings about nature and our relationship to it. He has four books in total, and this is the latest.
The framework for this is that the author takes a several day hike through the area just outside Regina. It's mostly farmland but you can still see odd bits of the original prairie.
This one is less factual and more Herriot musing about life, the universe and everything. Most of it's quite good - he's a bit of a hippy but has enough humour and self-awareness that even when you don't agree with him, it's interesting and thought provoking.
My quibble was that it's great that he's big on the idea of community and mutual support, and being aware of and appreciating nature, but he can't seem to conceive of doing any of that in any way that doesn't involve having loads of kids (he has 4). You can see where I have some issues with that.
Then right near the end I went right off him. He's pretty cool - see above - but everything he's written about his wife in both books has rubbed me up the wrong way - whereas he can keep a distance from hippy flakiness and see it as metaphorical and a nice idea, she buys into it completely. So I get to the bit where he says that their kids haven't been vaccinated. I would have thrown the book across the room but I was in the cafeteria at work and I'm pretty sure braining the catering staff with a hardback book is a sackable offence.
I'll probably still go back and read the middle two books, though, because he really does write well about nature.