Shifting Priorities -- Why I Write What I WriteBy: Deborah Straw |
As we age, our priorities become more defined. As a younger woman, I thought my primary battle was in the feminist ring. I wrote almost exclusively about women's issues, and taught mostly from women's books. But, as I have aged, my passions have shifted, back to those of my childhood. Since I entered my forties, my primary focus has been nature and animals. My first two books, Natural Wonders of the Florida Keys and Why is Cancer Killing Our Pets? How You Can Protect and Treat Your Animal Companion, reflect this focus. I've come to realize my strengths lie in fostering respect for all the creatures that share this planet. In my mind, the environmental crisis is the most pressing political issue.
The paths I have chosen to effect change or promote new consciousness are writing and teaching. I seek out women nature writers -- to read, to review, to teach at my community college -- and I write about nature, especially domestic animals and endangered species or wonderful nonprofit organizations. I leave active protesting to others and go about my business in a more quiet, yet no less impassioned, way.
In my own writing, I have slowly yet irrecovably shifted from telling other's stories, from writing about issues like insurance, police work, dairy farming, and single parenting, to issues more pressing in my daily life: celebrating domestic animals; protecting endangered species; rescuing injured birds; grieving the death of an animal (and of a parent); and more. Recently, I've written three articles about former biomedical reseach chimpanzees. As a younger woman, I dreamed of working with chimpanzees or dolphins. Now, I am , in my own way. These chimpanzees have stolen my heart, and I must keep telling their stories.
Let me recommend a few women writers whose works have altered my direction. One of the most moving books I've recently read is Intimate Nature, The Bond Between Women and Animals, edited by Linda Hogan, Deena Metzger, and Brenda Peterson. Included are short stories, essays, meditations and poems about creatures and their impact on humans. International writers include, but are not limited to, Gretel Ehrlich; Dian Fossey; Jane Goodall; Susan Griffin; Joy Harjo; Denise Levertov; Linda McCarriston; Marge Piercy; and Terry Tempest Williams. They write of varied and wonderful species: giraffes, elephants, rhinos, salmon, wolves and gorillas, among them.
One of the most haunting essays is "Dance with a Giraffe," by Christine Jurzykowski, co-steward of a wildlife preserve in Texas. As I watched my father die two springs ago, I read of Jurzykowski's time, waiting for a giraffe, Old Nick, to die. "I could caress his nose and brush his delicate eye-lashes. And the weight -- his head alone felt like fifty pounds of rock lying across my knees." The reader learns of the fidelity and community spirit of giraffes, who reacted strongly and protectively to Old Nick's illness and death. I've never known a giraffe, but I'd like to.
Equally moving is the essay, "How I Tithe," by Susan Chernak McElroy, who always takes in strays. She's one of those women who everyone calls if there's an injured animal or bird. Phaedra was a tiny llama who wasn't growing right. Too small to compete for food, she was starved; she lost weight. "I felt ribs beneath my fingers. She was a skeleton," writes McElroy, author of Animals as Teachers and Healers: True Stories and Reflections. What choice does an animal lover have? The author had other llamas. She also had a husband to whom she had promised not to take any more creatures: "No more charity cases," he told her. You can probably guess how this essay ends up; I will say she has a great husband. Phaedra and the others brought McElroy to the self-realization, "This is how I tithe."
If you don't know Joy Harjo's moving poem, "She Had Some Horses," from her collection by the same name, it's here in its entirety. Harjo's connection to the earth and to previous generations of women never cease to move me. Vermonter turned Alaskan Linda McCarriston's poems also concern horses , dogs, a dead deer, and nurturing.
At an enlightening, collegial academic event, American Women Nature Writers: An Interdisciplinary Conference (at which I presented a paper) at the University of New England in Portland, Maine, in summer 1998, more than 100 academics, writers and readers gathered from around the United States to discuss famous and obscure women nature writers' works. Women of all ages and backgrounds attended, as did a dozen men. As were the lectures and discussions, so was the company -- nourishing and challenging. This conference was so successful that it was repeated in a second session in June 2000 at Castleton State College in Vermont. Linda Hasselstrom, a gutsy and generous rancher/writer( Feels Like Far: A Rancher's Life on the Great Plains; Bitter Creek Junction; and other titles),and Jane Brox, author of Here and Nowhere Else, and Five Thousand Days Like This One, memoirs about attempting to take over the family farm once her parents were gone, were two of the stirring and accessible keynote speakers.
The highlights of both events were many, but the pinnacle was learning about women writers' works, especially those neglected or forgotten. Most of us in New England are acquainted with the works of Sarah Orne Jewett and Celia Thaxter, and certainly with Rachel Carson, the mother of women's nature writing in this country. But fewer contemporary readers recall the stunning work of Gene Stratton-Porter (including Girl of the Limberlost, published in 1909; she was also an accomplished bird photographer), who informed so many contemporary environmental writers, or know the current work of Ann and Susan Zwinger, a mother and daughter who, between them, have published more than twenty natural history books.
I was introduced to the work of Florence Merriam Bailey, a 1890s "literary ornithologist," and one of the first to study birds in the field, not dead specimens. Her most famous books include Birds Through an Opera-Glass (1889) and Handbook of Birds of the Western United States (1904).
I was reminded of the original voice of beekeeper and essayist Sue Hubbell (A Country Year, Living the Questions and Book of Bees), and I recalled how much Sally Carrighar's Home to the Wilderness (1973) and One Day at Teton Marsh (1965) resonated with me. As presenter Suzanne Ross noted, "Sally Carrighar had intense interactions with animals... she wrote powerful, ethologically-grounded portraits of animal selfhood." Carrighar, stated Ross, regarded animals as "creatures of intention and volition." So do I.
My real-life heroes are women like Marjory Stoneman Douglas, whose seminal work, River of Grass, helped focus national attention on the Everglades; she also worked tirelessly on behalf of the endangered Florida panther. Mrs. Douglas died two years ago, at the age of 108. Or the less-well-known Rita Reynolds of Virginia, who, out of her home, runs a no-kill shelter of at least 20 animals in a multitude of species. She also publishes laJoie, a journal in appreciation of all creatures, on a tiny budget.
A new hero is Gloria Grow, who runs Fauna Foundation near Montreal, Quebec, a sanctuary for retired biomedical research chimpanzees and other creatures. Grow spends eight to nine hours, seven days a week, caring for and reassuring these highly intelligent and emotionally damaged great apes.
I write and speak about these women whenever I can find a market or audience. I never know what might strike a chord somewhere. Maybe someone else will be inspired to write; maybe someone with more money than I will be inspired to support these women's causes.
Now 51, I continue on my path of reading, learning and writing about the earth and all its inhabitants. At times, I feel pangs of guilt for not opening a no-kill shelter or protesting at a nuclear power plant. But, on most days, I realize that teaching and writing are valid, active responses. Each of us must find our way to take a stand.
Deborah Straw of Burlington, Vermont, has been a published writer for more than 20 years. She has published hundreds of articles in magazines like Yankee, Amicus Journal, Coffee Journal, Paris Notes and others. Her first book, Natural Wonders of the Florida Keys, an ecotourism book, was published by Country Roads Press/NTC Contemporary Publishing Group in August 1999. Why is Cancer Killing Our Pets? How You Can Protect and Treat Your Animal Companion, was published by Healing Arts Press/Inner Traditions International in November 2000.
December 7, 2000
Back to Oasis