Have you, like me, been enchanted by the pictures of tiny houses on the web and the alternate life possibilities that they hold out?
While tiny houses could be described as a new phenomenon, Henry David Thoreau built and lived in his own tiny house in the mid 1800s in the woods of the New England region of the United States. Thoreau was a naturalist and he sets out his story in the classic entitled Walden. Thoreau was keenly in tune with the natural world around him living in the woods on the edge of Walden Pond, and this is where he chose to spend his time and found his inspiration.
More recently, Gavin Maxwell wrote Ring of Bright Water and was awarded a prestigious literary prize. Maxwell was also a naturalist. His story is set on the coast in the remote north-west area of Scotland.
Like Walden, Ring of Bright Water is written beautifully. Both books detail everyday facets of the author’s lives. Without giving the story away entirely, Maxwell, when not in the great outdoors, comes to share his simple abode and even his bed with an otter, who he clearly becomes quite attached to. However, both Thoreau and Maxwell’s focus is on the wider world of nature.
If I have piqued your interest in Ring of Bright Water, it is available at the library in Armidale. A librarian there enthused over it, citing it as her all-time favourite book and declaring she had six editions of her own!
Charles Darwin was also a naturalist, but that is another story for another day.
I suspect there is a naturalist in many, if not, all of us.
Both books could be seen as love stories depicting a deep connection to nature and the joy to be found therein.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a literary giant, was a good friend of and to Thoreau. As philosophers, Walt Whitman, Emerson and Thoreau shared the thought of nature as a refuge.
When noise abounds, as it does, here is to some silence. We in the New England area have easy, abundant opportunities to immerse ourselves in the gift of nature, as do all Australians.
Whitman wrote:
‘After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality and …
have found that none of these finally satisfy … what remains?
Nature remains … Mother Nature.
Be good to your mum.
By Laurel Bradshaw
