​Unknown Territory
This piece is a response to “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever” by Brian Doyle, published by Orion Magazine and available at: https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-greatest-nature-essay-ever.
Brian Doyle has given us a fine essay on the art of essay writing. After my initial response to the word “greatest” (is he kidding me?), I calmed down and found five paragraphs of genuine, perhaps gently humorous, views on what should happen in a nature essay. First, the essay must get the reader’s attention—not in the sensationalist terms of the news headline, but in a way that takes readers out of themselves and into an unexpected place where they secretly hoped to go.

In her poem “The Speed of Darkness,” Muriel Rukeyser says, “The world is made of stories, not atoms.” She then spins the reader into her world of pain. This is what Doyle proposes the next few paragraphs should do, but in the realm of nature. The beauty unfolds, but a threat to the natural world is unveiled. He then states that the writer should “tiptoe” back to the gently unfolding story without sermonizing or grandiose conclusions. I picture this perfect essay ending with the reader aware of a tapestry of beauty with dark threads of threat interwoven into a cloth of hope.

Some reviewers have said that Doyle’s essay meets its own criteria, that it is in fact “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever.” This makes the piece a “meta-essay,” a work written in the form it describes, much like the “Ars Poetica” of Horace (who, perhaps unexpectedly, founded a school of poetics that took the name of his poem). Though originally written in a poetic form, it is usually translated as prose, and the full text appears on the website of the Poetry Foundation.
Ye who write, make choice of a subject suitable to your abilities; and revolve in your thoughts a considerable time what your strength declines, and what it is able to support. Neither elegance of style, nor a perspicuous disposition, shall desert the man, by whom the subject matter is chosen judiciously. – Horace
 
Doyle’s essay might have led me to the conclusion that I have read very few nature essays. Make no mistake, I have read extensively from the works of naturalists, from Thoreau’s Waldon and Cape Cod to Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Peter Matthiessen’s National Book Award–winning The Snow Leopard. I had never heard of Brian Doyle before, and this may have led me to my first impression of arrogance. Greatest nature essay ever? From an author of whom I have never heard? Having read the essay, I’ve changed my mind. I like his work, and now want to read more of it.
So, I find Doyle’s comments helpful, but not an exclusive set of criteria for nature essays. The self-aware aspect of the work is interesting. I suppose the phrase “in the flow” might describe its opposite. This phrase is a poor approximation of the ancient Greek term “Kairos,” as opposed to “Chronos,” which is the ordinary time kept by a clock or chronometer. Kairos is sometimes described as “the opportune moment” but can also mean sacred time. It is the time in which hours pass unnoticed. It is the intersection of the divine with the ordinary. My time spent in nature and writing about nature is more Kairos than Chronos. 

Seeing you there, I take comfort in your presence. One standing in the water, safe from predators, as the other flexes wings in a posture of landing, beak agape. I hear the rattling call telling me all is well in the world of cranes, my land of solace. 

I learned of you from Aldo Leopold of Wisconsin, the naturalist I never met. I read his book, A Sand County Almanac, in which he lamented the sadness of marshes that held no cranes. He saw you as a disappearing species, like your cousins the whooping cranes, cut down to just a few hundred. 

You may have visited my childhood Ohio, but I never saw a crane there, not even a photograph. For me, a crane was a machine, an earthmover, or a steely blue-gray bird I would later call a heron, one Audubon calls the "heron crane." 

In later years I saw you in my adopted home of Tennessee, along its mighty river. I saw your winter dance as beaks gaped open, and I heard your call from miles away as you flew over or I approached your cold-weather refuge. I wrote poem after poem of your mystic personas. 

Year after year, the bird alerts tell me you have returned. "The cranes are back"—an annual event, but in the longer view, back from the brink. You fooled old Aldo Leopold and everyone else, abounding in tens of thousands beside the Tennessee, hundreds of thousands along the Platte. 

You always return along rivers, and we hold a festival here, though it will not take place in the years of Covid-19. Last year, I looked out at November fog and pondered anew, "the cranes are back." Festival or no, I will drive to the refuge and seek your presence there, being older now and not knowing if another November will come.

I drove to the refuge several times that winter and cranes were abundant. They came closer with the smaller number of people to view them. I will be back with their annual return this year. 

Matthiessen called cranes The Birds of Heaven, described every species named, called you "The Bird from the East," as you are known in Siberia where some members of your tribe nest, returning across the Bering Strait for winter. 

But you will always be the birds of Tennessee for me. You returned as I knew you would, back from Wisconsin marshes where you appear in pairs to sing, dance, mate, and nest. Welcome home.

***
​
Please visit my website for links to my works published in Appalachian Voice, The Chattanooga Pulse, and the Hellbender Press: Home (rayzimmermanauthor.com)

I also have pages for my color and monochrome photographs, and I archive these newsletter articles in my blog: The Rains Come (rayzimmermanauthor.com)

My newsletter began as a source of online activities during the early days of Covid-19, hence the title RayzReviewz. It became a place for my rambling writings, but I am now attempting to keep the writings short and make room for information of interest to other writers here in the review section. A few current opportunities:

The Southern Festival of Books returns to in-person programming on War Memorial Plaza in Nashville, October 9–10, with virtual programming during the week leading up to the festival. Chattanooga author KB Ballentine will read from her most recent poetry collection at the festival this year. Southern Festival of Books – Humanities Tennessee

Cagibi is currently accepting submissions. The journal is online, but they published a print edition at the end of 2020. My essay, “Postcard from Hiwassee Island,” appeared in the online journal. Cagibi – /kä'jēbē/ ▸n. a literary space. (cagibilit.com)

Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry at the University of Tulsa is now accepting submissions. I have sent them work in the past but none have been accepted. Nimrod – International Journal (utulsa.edu)

Writers/South Awards is a writing competition with prizes in several genres. I have not investigated or entered the contest, but information is available on their website. Writers/South Awards – Charlotte Lit
You may have noticed some changes in my blog and newsletter. I am now working with the exemplary editing support of Red Pen for Rent. Red Pen for Rent – Writer Support Services

 
Could a mockingbird mimic the strains of “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity,” or any other section of “The Planets,” that lovely set of tone poems composed by Gustav Holst? Imagine the melancholy tune of “Mars, the Bringer of War” issuing from the throat of a bird. Though such complex mimicry may be beyond birds’ abilities, animals frequently amaze and amuse us with their behavior.
 
Why do these behaviors hold such charm for us? Is it the recognition of our own triumphs and foibles when we look at them? We see ourselves in their behavior and even their anatomy. The bones of a bird’s wing, revealed in the glow of an X-ray, are those of a human hand. The same is true of a whale’s flipper, which moves it through the ocean in tandem with the thrust of its tail.
 
Our assessment of animals is often inaccurate. We gasp when hearing how a captive killer whale, incarcerated for years, bit more than the “feeding hand” and took the life of its keeper. These intelligent beings learn tricks rapidly, but intelligence makes them dangerous captives. For millennia, killer whales have survived in ocean currents, but an escape becomes a “current event.”
 
We forget that they are killers, able to take a seal or a man in a fast attack. Charm ends here, for they have become too much like us. We, too, kill to survive. Whether dining on wild-harvested venison or range-fed beef, we sacrifice other lives on the altar of our continued existence. Even a vegan, consuming only plants, feeds on the lives of other beings.
 
Killer whales, intelligent captives in public displays, are not meant to perform for our amusement, let alone on a regular schedule, not even when that performance includes a narrative intended to generate empathy and respect. We will only make peace with our animal neighbors when we see them in us as we see ourselves in them.
***
Where else would my article on the hellbender, North America’s giant salamander, appear than in the Hellbender Press? I wrote the article after interviewing Dr. Brian Miller, professor and researcher at Middle Tennessee State University. Dr. Miller has been researching hellbenders for 40 years and offered great insights into the lives of these impressive yet reclusive creatures. Hellbender Press - Hellbenders falling off Highland Rim of Tennessee
 
Waxing & Waning, a literary journal, publishes a diverse array of contemporary southern writers. In their own words, the editors “want what’s on the fringe. Whatever is deep and true. The moon represents this idea: what is dark, what is brooding, what is wild, what is crescent and changing.” https://www.waxingandwaning.org     
 
April Gloaming Publishing of Nashville has released Sinew, a collection of poems by Poetry in the Brew participants. This open mic group recently celebrated its tenth anniversary of live open mics at the loft of Portman Brewing East, a Nashville coffee shop. Pandemic panic sent them online, and while the online event continues, live performance at the coffee shop has returned as well. My poem “Green” appears in the anthology, along with work by Chattanooga poet Christian Collier. April Gloaming Publishing – “Amplifying the voices of the unbridled holler.”
April Gloaming Publishing – "Amplifying the voices of the unbridled holler."
 
I just received a copy of Bearshit on the Trail: Essential Poems of Earth First! The 477 pages of poetry appear to be drawn from the poetry column of the Earth First! Journal. There is an ISBN but no identifiable publisher.
 

Speaking of Nature

Years ago, I wrote a small book of poems that took the reader along on my journey from anesthesia to recovery from coronary bypass surgery. I began with terror and ended with hope. I thought it would be a guide for others experiencing the process—and some have called it a perfect description—but it was not well received. Perhaps it was too visceral. I received the comment from several sources that I should stick to nature poetry. Years later, I wrote this essay in response.

Speaking of Nature

Shall I speak to you of nature? I shall, but I must give a warning. Kali, the nature goddess and patroness of Calcutta, personifies the destructive forces of nature. When the typhoon, the earthquake, or the tidal wave strike, she is somewhere close by, adorned with her necklace of human skulls. Some illustrations show Kali with her foot on her husband's chest, his heart in her upraised hand. 

She is indeed the bringer of enlightenment, but her wisdom has a price.


Aerial photographs of an area hit by a typhoon may reveal human bodies awash in an ocean. Some wave hands in the hope of summoning an unlikely rescue. 

Those destructive forces of nature are essential for new growth. When wolves returned to Yellowstone after a long absence, they happily set about killing elk. Trees browsed and in decline recovered, and the forest regained its health. The herds became more vigorous under the predators' watchful eyes.

With the healthy growth of trees, beavers returned and dammed the streams. Rivers slowed down, and marshes grew. Fish populations thrived. Small mammals flourished.

So, nature is not a safe country for discourse, but I have known its beauty and grandeur. I see the beauty of canyons and waterfalls, and I suspect you refer to this beauty when you say nature. I will speak of those things as well.

I recall the rhythmic pulse of waves breaking on the rocky shores of the Florida Keys and the sands of Cape Cod, Assateague, and Edisto. The rhythm is like the pulse of a mother's heart and the waves not far removed from the amniotic ocean where our lives begin.   

The clean smell of the receding tide reminds me of how fresh the world can be, and I forget   the smell of oil and industrial refuse, which persists in some harbors.

The playfulness of otters on the Tennessee River or seals near Cape Cod's shores or dolphins off the coast of Florida fill my memory. I once learned the importance of playfulness from a Right Whale Calf who waved flippers and flukes as I watched from the deck of a boat.

I forget from time to time, but it is a recurring memory. It gives me hope that these creatures continue to recover. The three I saw—mother, calf, and escort—amounted to one percent of the three hundred that made up the worldwide population.

I have read that their population has now grown to 450. Perhaps these magnificent creatures will someday reach the population of thousands they numbered before whaling days. Such hopes provide my reason for speaking of nature.
*** 
 
After writing this essay, I discovered that a much better-known author had published a piece with the same title in Orion Magazine. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay is a wonderful exploration of how the words we use influence our thoughts. And those of others. You can read it here:Orion Magazine | Speaking of Nature

See my article on bird migration here
https://appvoices.org/2021/02/26/counting-hawks    

Images in this issue: Great Blue Herons at Chickamauga Dam. 

Rayz Reviewz Volume 2 Number 17
Language Meets Landscape
Postcard from Hiwassee Island
If you come, come in winter. January is best. And bring warm clothing—the hills of southeast Tennessee have cold spells with occasional snow, ice, and frost. Bring a telescope, too, if you have one, or possibly a friend with a telescope.

Past, present, and future intersect in this place, and you will want to see the geography scarred by the passage of time. In the distance, Hiwassee Island is visible, right at the confluence of the Hiwassee and Tennessee Rivers. The island has a long archaeological history going back to the Mississippian Era and earlier.

The ancient people of these lands are believed to be the ancestors of the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes, traditional enemies of the Cherokee who departed before the Cherokee passed through. The US Government removed their descendants to Oklahoma, like the Cherokee Removal on the Trail of Tears.

Perhaps as many as two-thirds of those Cherokee travelers passed through here, removed by a growing nation whose ways they had emulated. They had printing presses, log cabins, a constitution, and treaties. They published The Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, now in its 186th year. Some owned slaves. Their assimilation did not save them.

Like the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC, a series of walls at the Cherokee Removal Memorial bears these travelers' names. Replicas of implements common to Cherokee life are also part of the wall, and a small museum in a log structure holds displays that illustrate local wildlife and Cherokee culture.

When the state of Tennessee planted corn on the nearby Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge to attract Canada geese and goose hunters, they may not have foreseen the arrival of cranes, a bird sacred to some tribes. As many as 20,000 sandhill cranes now pass by each winter.

The refuge is a stopover, a staging area for the birds to rest before heading further south. On any given day, you may see as many as 5,000 sandhill cranes and even an endangered whooping crane or two. Only about 600 of the stately whooping cranes remain in the wild today. They are pure white, except for their black-tipped wings, and they stand over five feet tall.

On a foggy day, you may hear the rattling call of the sandhill cranes and imagine thousands passing through. The mystic call of a whooping crane may set you to imagining an ancient village on Hiwassee Island or a line of Cherokee people boarding boats for a long trip westward. The great Wisconsin naturalist Aldo Leopold said he could imagine the Pleistocene when he heard the call of cranes.

Lately, pelicans have begun overwintering here—the large white ones, not the smaller brown ones. I’ve seen as many as 300! They always passed close by en route to Yellowstone in the spring and the Gulf Coast in the fall, but warmer winters now encourage them to stay.
 
Wear boots, for the grandeur of the area is offset by muddy trails.

Notes

A slightly different version of "Postcard from Hiwassee Island" appeared in the online journal Cagibi: A Literary Space. They publish one short essay per issue in the Postcard section. It's a great read. They seem to be open to submissions from new writers. For guidelines, see cagibilit.com.

To read some of my freelance journalism, check out my articles in Hellbender Press, a Foundation for Global Sustainability publication (sustainably.org).

I composed the following poem in October 2013 at the Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville. While I attended the Southern Festival of Books, I stayed at the conference center and walked their labyrinth several times. I combined the poem with one of my photographs and published the work as an 11x17 broadside with design by Terrance Chouinard of the Wing and the Wheel press and printing by Wonder Press of Chattanooga.
 
Walking the Labyrinth
 
The path of the soul is not linear.
It spirals like the turns of this maze,
outlined with bricks on sides.
Like time, it circles back
passes by starting points.
 
I turn left one hundred eighty degrees,
not exactly the way I came, this path
to the center, where there is no Minotaur.
My dragons are all in my heart,
slain or otherwise.
 
The first wall outlines a square
which no paths cross.
Is this square sacred ground,
reserved for shaman, priestess,
and holy man?
 
If I stepped inside, where
no tracks appear, would I
transport to another place or time,
reappear burned to ash                                                      
by sacred geometry?
 
A friend asked a transit driver
in Nashville's less sacred geometry,
Is this my stop? Her simple reply:
"Either sit back down or get off the bus."
​

A Chattanooga Lookout
 
The Lookouts got their first shot at fame;
A New York Yankees Exhibition game.
 
They signed Jackie Mitchell, a publicity stunt,
but she pitched like a pro, not some sorry runt.
 
The starter gave up a hit and a double.
They sent Jackie in to heal this trouble.
 
She struck out Babe Ruth, third up to bat.
She struck out Lou Gehrig; imagine that.
 
Lazzeri, she walked, put a third man on base.
The manager pulled her just to save face.
 
The commissioner said that she had to go.
Should women play baseball? He just said no.
 
But Jackie achieved House of David fame.
That barnstorming team won many a game.
 
The men all wore beards and long hair to boot.
She donned a fake beard, thought it was a hoot.
 
She wasn’t afraid of a publicity stunt,
but she pitched like a pro, not some sorry runt.

Previously Published, but I only gave up first rights.
Hellbender – North America’s largest Salamander. They dine on fish, crayfish and aquatic insects.
 
She curls among the tumbled rocks,
and waits for a crayfish dinner.
If she doesn’t find a crawdad soon,
tomorrow she will be thinner.
 
She will happily eat a frog or fish,
for she’s an agile swimmer.
But the crawdad is a favorite dish,
it causes her eye to glimmer.
 
Beneath the rocks she laid her eggs.
There must have been a hundred or more.
At parenting she is the dregs.
She ate a few just to even the score.
 
Her mate saw this act and chased her away
If eating eggs, she just couldn’t stay.
He guarded those eggs till they hatched one day.
Then he swam away much slimmer.
 
Ray Zimmerman, Chattanooga, TN znaturalist@gmail.com
 

RayzReviewz: Volume 2 Number 14
​
A week ago, I spotted a regal moth beside the trail. Life had fled, and the orange-brown wings with white spots were stilled.  Movement in the abdomen made me think perhaps it yet lived, but no, there was a hole where the rearmost part of the abdomen had been.

A yellow jacket emerged from the abdomen. Others surrounded the head. They were far too busy scavenging the carcass, gorging themselves on moth flesh, to notice me, let alone unleash their painful stings.
I recently experienced the sting of a yellow jacket, not my first time, when my landlord evicted a nest of them from a landscaping tie near my apartment. He had set fire to their wooden home just after dark, and I discovered the small conflagration when I smelled smoke.
Thinking it best not to leave the fire unattended, I remained close by.  Intent on fire safety, I forgot about the yellow jackets being drawn to light, and one immediately investigated my headlamp. I recovered from a sting on my eyebrow that night and part of the following day. Thankful for an ice pack in my refrigerator, I rediscovered how ice prevents swelling.
Fortunately, I avoided the stingers on this day, though I am certain they would not hesitate to repel me, the intruder if I disturbed these yellowjackets. They were not shy about completing their task and went about stripping flesh like vultures on a dead cow.
I thought of Annie Dillard and her description of a moth that got too close to a candle and became a second wick. The story appears in her book Holy the Firm. She chose to think of the moth as female and said that she did not know if the moth had completed her work, laid her eggs.
I, too, know little of the life of the moth that lay beside the trail to Glen Falls. I know that the regal moth is a close relative of the lime green luna moth and a member of the genus Saturniidae. As such, the adult moth has no functional mouthparts. Adult luna moths, regal moths, and other saturniid moths live on stored reserves.
Books of natural history tell me that after a winter as a subterranean pupa, the regal moth emerges to grow wings and find a mate. The males then die, but the females must lay eggs before dying. The adult moths live a few days at most, and reproduction is their sole purpose.
The moth spent its first summer as a “hickory horn devil,” one of North America’s largest caterpillars. The spines on the head supply the horn in its name. If you have never seen one, do a web search. Photographs abound.
After a few months of feeding on hickory, walnut, or pecan leaves, it descended to the ground and found soft earth. It burrowed in to spend the winter.
It is easy to see the beauty in the regal moth. Can you see beauty in the caterpillar? What of the yellow jackets who feasted on the moth turning flesh into flesh? What of the yellow jacket that stung me? If Christ is present in all things, there must be a divine hand at work in each of these, moth, caterpillar, and yellowjacket as well.

Rayz Reviewz Volume 2 Number 13
Why I Write About Nature
​
I have a friend who says that nature writing must be more than just a description; it must include a metaphor This friend is a fine human being, and I have no wish to disparage him or his excellent poetry. When I say that I respectfully disagree, please emphasize the word respectfully.

I am suspicious of anyone who only values nature for the uses we make of the natural world. I learned early on to question those who asked, “What good is a mosquito, or even a salamander?” I have sometimes responded with the answer, “What good are we?”

There was a time when I would have said that there is no difference between mining the earth for coal and mining it for metaphors. I have since changed my opinion.


​I have even come to believe that the reasons for setting land aside make no difference, so long as they preserve the intrinsic value of the land. 

Setting aside land is good, even if the land is preserved for solely utilitarian purposes, like increasing the property values of nearby real estate holdings, an idea that would have once sent me into a tirade of condemnation.

For me, nature’s value comes as solace and healing. I am willing to risk being condemned as a heretic when I say that for me, Glen Falls is a sacred space. It gets me away from the drone of highway noise from Interstate-24, thoroughly audible in my back yard, and the industrial noise of so-called civilization.

When I hear the gentle trickle of the dry weather steam or the booming choir after a heavy rain my spirit is revived. This renewal seems to be universal. It harkens to both the sacred Ganges of Hinduism and the use of running water for ritual cleansing by the Old Testament Hebrews.  The Jordan River and John the Baptizer may come to mind.

Lately, I have been reading Father Richard Rohr’s book Every Thing is Sacred and the accompanying volume, The Universal Christ. His theology is incarnational, with a belief that God loves all things by becoming them.

According to his words, the creation of the universe is an outpouring of the Divine. Women and men, fogs, snakes, and even oak trees not only reflect God but have a part of God within. His thoughts dovetail nicely with those of Annie Dillard expressed in Holy the Firm, and Terry Tempest Williams in Coyote’s Canyon.

They also reflect the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer as related in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, and especially in her essay, “Speaking of Nature,” as published in Orion magazine. She speaks of the personhood of all living things and is thoroughly offended by the use of the pronoun "it" to refer to animals, plants, and even rivers.

I believe Father Rohr would feel right at home in her world, yet I have read that the Vatican has found his works to be “free of doctrinal error,"  This surprises me, but I must confess that I have little understanding of Roman Catholic theology or internal politics. Nevertheless, Father Rohr is said to take great pride in this stamp of approval. 

I know I could feel at home in the world of any of these authors, and their works are among my favorites.

Well, time is running short for this project and there may be a crowd gathering outside my house with torches and pitchforks. Until next time, safe travels to all of you, my readers.