November 18, 2009
The Hidden Life of Deer by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas does what other great books on nature do: it prods dormant observation muscles, urging them through solid example and promises of great reward back into use. After reading this book, I found myself flexing and stretching my skills at looking around me and finding, once again, the quiet and beautiful aspects of nature all around.
In this season, fall, the drama of nature is both splendid and desperate, the last bursts of color before the onslaught of killing winter. The leaves this year seem especially spectacular in variations of red, orange, and gold, both on branches and in swirling mounds of color on the ground. Light itself has changed: without the filter of green the sun is stark and hard, and as the days shorten, the cold comes on. Winter is on its way and wild life prepares: chipmunks are scurrying to gather food for the hibernation, squirrels are burying acorns in my whiskey barrel planters, and whole legions of birds are passing by on their way south. The deer are out too, gathering the last of my shrubs and flowers, snapping the buds off my fall pansies and the final leaves off my Montauk daises, and slurping through the final pathetic colors of my very last flowers.
There are many people in my town who hate the deer for their decimation of plants and bushes, for the danger they pose on the roads, for the ticks they carry. But I like deer, I like to see them in my backyard, with their spindly legs and huge dark eyes and white as snow tails, lifted high as they dart away. Like Thomas, I feel that "deer are more important than exotic ornamentals" and although I don't understand why for four years running they left my Montauk daisies untouched and this year, in contrast, found them as addictive as I find candy corn, I do not begrudge them the food they clearly need. I will not start laying out corn for them, as Thomas did in a winter of very low acorn production and recounts in wonderful detail in The Hidden Life of Deer -- but I will start looking at them with even more sympathy -- and empathy -- thanks to Thomas' book.
What is striking about this book, and other books by Thomas, including The Hidden Life of Dogs, is that there is nothing so much that these animals hide but there is very, very much that we just do not see for lack of looking. We take neither the time nor the space to sit still and watch what the animals and birds all around us do, both as individuals and as members of a social group (and I mean that both ways: for the most part humans don't individually or socially observe animals or birds individually or in groups). But Thomas does watch, and she writes about what she sees. We are lucky to be treated to nature through her eyes.
Thomas is not a florid or particularly descriptive writer but she is detailed and clear, and very genuine. We get a real sense of Thomas the person, personality and characteristics, and she shares freely and instructively her knowledge of the many, many people and animals whom she has observed to great length her whole life. Reading her book was like spending a long winter afternoon with a learned, gifted, and wide-eyed nature guide. I will never look at deer the same, nor at mice, rats, coyotes or bears, all animals she discourses upon in The Hidden Life of Deer, and from all of whom we can learn some lesson, including tolerance, wonder, cooperation, and preparation for the coming frost. And if we are very, very lucky, and very, very quiet, we may even get to hear a mouse sing on a kitchen counter or see a fawn sleep, curled up tight under the fronds of a low branch: gifts from the natural world, received via the lessons transposed for us by Thomas.
Per FTC regulations, the book reviewed here was a review copy supplied by the publisher.
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