Upload
zulfiqar-ali
View
214
Download
2
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
1
Overall Winning Essay, 2013 Essay Competition
INSPIRATIONS FROM A TOAD
By Isaac Yuen Writer from Vancouver, Canada.
Its horse, I think.
As if knowing makes a difference.
The trim man next to me paces around the mound of manure, wearing a mask of horror
and dismay. I cant help but grin, not being the one with low bike shoes, white sport socks, and
exposed calves. Theres no way this will end well. I run up to the top of the wet pile and start
shoveling, feeling my boots sink and stick into mud that isnt mud. Below me, the man sighs.
Splatter ensues.
Sunday morning, and were volunteering to ready a local high schools half-acre vegetable
garden for winter planting. Moving manure happens to be the task that needs doing. Its not so
bad. After a few minutes, my eyes stop watering, and only a sort of sour tang lingers in the
nose. The work does me good, unravels hidden knots, and keeps the urge to stare at screens all
day at bay. Cheered on by the steady warmth of the waning summer sun, I heave heaps of
partially digested grass and straw into waiting wheelbarrows. Other volunteers dump the
2
amendment on long beds to be planted later with a crop of overwintering garlic. The manure
will have the winter to break down into compost.
Thoughts of the changing seasons bring to mind the image of a particular animal. Nothing
fantastical or overly grotesque, just a common toad, the ordinary, stubby, bumpy sort with its
one curious trait being that it is in deep sleep, balled up inside a frozen pocket of mud, chilled
down into inertia. Its eyes are shuttered secrets, only to be revealed upon springs arrival. I
think of this toad because I have been reading Orwell.
Not George Orwell the novelist, immortalized in canon for his grim dystopia and porcine
despot, but the prolific essayist who wrote out of personal experience on everything from
shooting an elephant to brewing a proper pot of tea. There is an air of quiet authority to his
voice, one that conveys easy strength in service of hard truth, is plainspoken yet unforgettable,
and as clear as an unhurried mountain stream. As I carve small hollows in the dark steaming
pile on which I stand, passages from one of my favorite pieces, Some Thoughts on the Common
Toad, awaken from slumber to fill my drifting mind.
Great essayists are masters at the opener, usually in the form of an uncannily accurate
observation or an impossible statement that dares the readers to read on. Orwell begins Toad
with a combination of both, first likening the common toad emerging from hibernation to a
fasting Anglo-Catholic, then by declaring that the groggy amphibian has just about the most
beautiful eye of any living creature.
While I feel unqualified to speak about the former claim, the latter has strong merit. Ever
a champion for the neglected and downtrodden, Orwell manages to find awesome beauty in a
3
creature synonymous with ugliness, likening its golden eyes to chrysoberyl gemstones. In one of
most unusual and memorable introductions I have ever come across, Orwell reminds me that
natures splendors exist everywhere, even in one who will never become prince, if only I have
the presence of mind to see.
After a brief snack break, I trade in my shovel for a pair of gloves and help weed the
garden perimeter. Stretching out my back, I decide to heed Orwells suggestion and take a few
minutes to hone my skills of observation. Settling into a relaxed focus, I catch the blur of a
squirrel by the borders between garden and lawn, jet-black and glossy-coated. It bounds from
ten-foot shadows of towering sunflowers to the dappled shade of its oaken abode, stopping
momentarily to gnaw on one of hundreds of acorns strewn about the school grounds, feasting
on summers decadence in preparation for winters privations.
Closer by, the drunken veers of a bumblebee attracts my eye. I follow her as she touches
down on the delicate lip of a pink thimble, one of a dozen foxglove flowers vertically arranged
on the spike of a stalk. Up close, she looks both fearsome and absurd, shocks of blacks and
yellows blurred together by a fuzziness of body. Unsatisfied with her dining choice, she takes
off to dance awhile on the spiny-urchin centre of a purple coneflower before moving on,
disappearing into the gleam of high-rise glass on the horizon.
Closer still, behind the broad furry leaves of a comfrey bush, a constellation of cocooned
flies on a gossamer galaxy. A garden spider sits at the centre, practicing the unflappable
stillness spiders do even as my breath sways her universe. On her mottled back, five creamy
4
white dots form a sort of raised cross. Are others of her kind so anointed, or is this a
serendipitous encounter, never to be repeated?
Enough daydreams. Encroaching patches of morning glory and thistles await, and I settle
into the weeding. The intimate solitude afforded by the task soothes. Down low and up close, a
scoop of soil I excavate gains resolution, turning into a textured terrain of cracks and clumps
held loose together by a weave of root hairs. I sense the soft tremors of an annoyed earthworm
through the fabric of my glove, the lone visible representative of a community of creatures that
call this handful of earth home.
The lactic burn in my thighs causes me to sit back from my crouch and feel the cool damp
of the grass. All at once my observations catches up with me, and I am overwhelmed by the
multitude of worlds both wild and grand that exists unnoticed in the heart of my city. There are
stories everywhere.
After going in detail the mating habits of his beloved amphibian, Orwell steps back to
muse on natures influence on the bruised London cityscape during World War II. Ignorant of
suffering and despair, he notes, spring arrives as it always does, free for all to enjoy, bringing
about a measure of comfort to those made prisoners by the collective madness that is war. He
tells of the seasons transformative power on the citys people and creatures, describing green
elders sprouting from bombed husks, hues freshening on ashen sparrows, even blues
brightening on policemens uniforms. Each image is exact and rendered without flourish;
together they combine to evoke an indelible impression of natures ability to bring about
renewal and hope, even to the heart of a war-weary city.
5
I weed on. A keen gust knocks dried leaves off the bigleaf maples overhead. It is the first
chill of fall I can recall, and as I listen to the clatter of papery rain, like echoes of waves breaking
against hard cliffs heard from afar, my mind returns to toads unseen, and I wonder if they are
sensing what I am feeling, that tinge of ennui that accompanies shortening days and changing
shadows. Does the soft buzz of instinct beckon them to leave their puddles and ponds and
return to accept earths dark embrace? Only they know.
The fact that Orwell felt it necessary to defend his foray into nature in the middle of Toad
speaks to the general mentality of his time. This was an era where nature appreciation was
dismissed as sentimental tripe, only uttered by urban sophisticates who had never suffered the
backbreaking work of tilling the fields. To wax nonsense about toads and kestrels and daffodils
when humanity was about to embark on a golden age of atomics and possibilities, critics
argued, was at best backwards thinking, and at worst, politically dangerous. Having just beaten
back the specter of Fascism, humanity could not afford to be nostalgic. Social and technological
progress should be, must be made.
Yet Orwell saw the potential peril of this line of thinking when taken to its logical extreme.
A utopia in which one cannot stop to admire natures simple pleasures, he notes, is not one
worth pursuing. In what is arguably the climax of Toad, Orwell pens a statement that is part
personal conviction and part prescient warning, cutting hard against the grain of the prevailing
narrative of his time. To lose ones childhood love for the natural world, he cautions, is to
succumb to our own hubris and be left with nothing to invest our energies in but ego worship
and hatred. To forego appreciation for mysteries and wonders beyond our control, he
6
contends, is to let slip the chance for a more peaceful and content future. Seven decades later, I
find his message to have lost none of its potency.
There is always more work to be done in a garden. After weeding, I help others work ripe
compost into the vegetable beds with rakes and trenching shovels. It is a messy menial affair,
but I am grateful for the chance to, at least for a few hours, toil in soil instead of romanticizing
connecting to nature in abstract, from afar. A woman walks by with a tub filled with round and
misshapen squash large and small. I look not to her face but at her hands. Etched onto
blackened, beautiful palms: Twin networks of dark highways fanning out into thin lanes and
dead ends. There are no sophisticates here.
As we work, I glance over at the results of prior labor done on nearby beds: Rows of
paddle-sized leaves of curly kale and crinkled chard; cherry tomato vines twisting on wire cages,
heavy with bunches of red and green marbles; vivid beet greens nourished by their blood-red
stalks. Three months ago, this was a turf desert bereft of diversity and purpose; today, it is a
verdant, fertile, intricately interwoven web of life. My shoulders ache and my back throbs, but
my heart soars. People did this. We are doing it.
As we finish for the day, the event organizer thanks us for spending our Sunday to help
bring her vision to fruition. She explains that this half-acre half-farm, half-garden is the
culmination of a partnership between her non-profit organization and the local school board.
Before departing, she asks us to envision the space, one day, next spring, when classes will
stroll through to learn about biology, poetry, and the industrial revolution, when people in the
community will buy fresh vegetables from the on-site farmstand, and when first generation
7
immigrants who speak no English will share their farming knowhow with practicing urban
farmers. She asks us to imagine a future where these market gardens will exist at schools across
North America, reconnecting people and communities to the processes and relationships that
sustain us all.
It is possible, she says. We are doing it, right now.
Back home and freshly showered, I scan the days news: A potential airstrike on a foreign
country. Dismissal of concerns around a major oil pipeline. Revelations of government
partnerships with industry to circumvent privacy safeguards. Shaken, I walk over to my
bookshelf, flip open the well-thumbed collection, and read the last line of Toad to myself,
aloud:
The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling
through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is
still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as
they disapprove of the process are able to prevent it.
I consider this passage to be Orwell at his finest: An unflinching harbinger of abhorrent
truths, but one who speaks with a quiet, unshakeable defiance. Some Thoughts on the Common
Toad is not merely a meditation on toads and spring, but is also one mans emphatic assertion
of natures immunity in the face of human folly and tyranny. Abuses of power, horrors of war,
and the calls of propaganda come round and round again, but the earth and sunlight, the leaves
of chestnuts, and the toads golden gaze will endure, undiminished. From Orwells words I
8
derive an insuperable hope and the courage to strive for a better future, one shovel of dirt, one
pulled weed, one planted seed at a time.
Isaac Yuen is an environmental essayist interested in exploring connections between nature, culture, and identity. Specializing in deep, green longform writing, he is especially interested in the power of stories to promote personal, social, and environmental sustainability. You can follow Isaac on Twitter @ekostories or read his essays at Ekostories.com.