As a poet, as a writer of creative nonfiction, and as
a person fascinated by this world we inhabit, I am of course intensely interested in the link between people and place. When I heard Moore's book being read on Wisconsin Public Radio - heard snatches of it as I was driving now and again - I was drawn to the places she was discussing, to the stories she was telling. At first I didn't know who had written the words I was hearing; and - read aloud somewhat unempathetically in a man's voice - at times those words sounded glib and cheap and easy. Yet what Moore was searching for, what she wanted to hold in her hands, I could tell, was the same beating heart of place which I have been seeking; so, despite some misgivings, I ordered a copy of The Pine Island Paradox. I'm glad I did. Moore's words are not at all glib and cheap and easy when you're able to read them for yourself, when her voice comes through unmodulated by someone else's intonations. Indeed her voice is thoughtful and lyrical, passionate and caring and wise.
Early on, in the essay "Stalking Seals," I wasn't so sure. Moore told of kayaking out to visit a colony of seals on their rocks. Yet "some sentinel always gave the alarm," she said, "and they humped in a panic to the edge of the rock, heaved themselves overboard, and sank out of sight."
"I came in friendship," she said. E-uuuu, I grimaced. Can we speak of seals and friendship in the same sentence? I don't think so.
"My feelings were hurt when they didn't trust my efforts to make friends," she said. Oh, no, I thought, she's trying to make friends with nature. Things already seemed headed south by page 19.
Yet Moore redeemed herself. Within pages I had forgiven her lapse. Soon enough I was awash on the rush of her words and stories, ideas, insights.
*
Moore's is not a bloodless, bugless version of nature. Standing in water and holding bioluminescent plankton in their hands, she and her husband, Frank, were being bitten viciously by some of those bugs. "God," Frank said, rubbing his forehead. "These bugs are awful." And later:
"We stumbled through the darkness back to the tent. I had inhaled a blackfly, and I coughed for a long time before I fell asleep."
*
Continued in Part Three, below....
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