When I took a creative writing class in high school, our instructor gave us an assignment to choose a natural object like a stone or a stick or a leaf for a “friend” and carry it around with us for a week and talk about what it told us. The other students spoke about how their stones or sticks or leaves whispered secrets, sang songs, or griped about how their humans didn’t share their lunches.
Rocks don’t need to talk.
While I appreciated the creativity of this exercise, I didn’t appreciate the anthropomorphism, and when it was my turn, I inevitably said, “This is a rock. It doesn’t tell me anything. It doesn’t share any secrets with me. And it’s all the more beautiful because it doesn’t. It is perfect in its rockness.”
The teacher was inclined to flunk me for my stubbornness. (Seriously, he tried.) Or maybe it was because my “friend” looked different every day. (I kept forgetting to bring my particular “friend” to school so I often had to pick one up in the planter beds outside of the building.)
But I still think that way about the non-human. I love rocks and sticks and leaves and animals because they are NOT human. Because they just “are,” mysterious and marvelous in their own ways of being.
No human could create this
I don’t want to live in a world where everything must obey human laws. Although I recognize that they might be dangerous to me and other humans, I want bears and cougars and sharks to thrive; this is their world, too. So I write books that include bears and cougars and sharks and frogs and raccoons and possums and yes, gorillas. I try to portray all these creatures with all their true fierceness and strengths and vulnerabilities, because I respect them just as they are. They are not lesser because they are not human.
I want to be intrigued forever by walking sticks and spiderwebs and unfurling leaves in the spring and the amazing patterns left by glaciers on rocks. I hope I will always appreciate the qualities of the non-human wonders on our planet. I hope you will, too.
 Can you hover in mid-air and look this beautiful on a misty morning? |
 I’d like to see you swoop down and snatch a mouse at night on the fly. |
 What’s so great about being human? There’s no mortgage on my shell. |
Pam
As I sit in my temporary studio in Wyoming at Brush Creek Ranch, I can look out my windows at rock outcrops a few billion years old. I’ve seen antelope, mule deer, sandhill cranes, hawks, bluebirds, sagebrush, a few ranch dogs, and now snow and hail. These non-human objects in nature don’t talk to me but intrigue me beyond measure. Like you, I love their how separate and mysterious nature is, and feel grateful when I’m outdoors and not in. And somehow the landscape always plays a major role in my stories. Thank you for another thoughtful post.