*I suppose there will be spoilers for these books below, so tread carefully (because, of course, “The tracks we trouble to leave behind tell a story about our character.” -Fox & I)
“Everyone’s mind plays tricks; otherwise magicians would not make a living. Nature will fool you if you let her. She’s a master magician.”
-Fox & I
Generally, I am reading more than a few books at once. This is in part because my tastes change on a kind of day-to-day basis, and because some books require more effort than others. This isn’t a direct conversation about their inherent quality, but just a statement of fact. There are fun books, light books to be read casually in between chores or in a brief wink of time caught between genuine free time and work. Other books require more intensity, more meditative time and reflection. Sometimes this is because they’re for work (wine books are thrilling reads, I promise you), or because they’re in a style or genre you seek to emulate, or just because they’re heady.
After a few headier science fiction and fantasy books (including one battling its way to being one of my favorite books of all time), I needed a kind of palate cleanser. Enter two books purchased at different times but read back-to-back, and each worthy of a brief, combined analysis for how they have helped me look at life.
Fox & I, by Catherine Raven, and The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey are the two books that were standing by ready to refresh my mind and spirit. Briefly, the prior is an account of its author observing and interacting with a wild fox in her remote cabin, the latter of its bedridden author receiving a snail as something like a pet and her study of it in relation to her own invalid condition. When linked, the two stories serve as perfect reminders of the kind of pause a whirring mind requires to center, breathe, and gather oneself for another round in the ring of life. Apart, they offer differing perspectives on nature, humanity’s role in and outside of the natural world, and the lessons learn from observing animals. It’s natural (ha) to consider first the differences between the animals in question, but as so many things in nature, it’s as interesting to look at the similarities observed.
My uncle is the man in my personal life most responsible for my interest in nature, having taught me not only the basics of fishing and hunting but also basic woodsman and survival skills. While he was showing me the points of deer hunting, including the preference of deer to keep to the edges of clearings or trails, I told him that it reminded me of bass hanging near the edge of weeds or fallen trees. He smiled then, and said I was right. Patterns are part of nature, and the lessons learned in one particular time and place can often be applied elsewhere.
What patterns link these stories of a foxes and snails, and why should they each be so pertinent to life? Why not begin with isolation, and loneliness? This remains the age of COVID, after all. Shutdowns and masks and travel restrictions over the past going-on-two years have divided and isolated us in ways we may never fully come to terms with. How else then to respond, but to glean a sense of sympathetic understanding from lines like:
“What about me? To whom was I closely hitched? No one. I wasn’t sad about that, only curious. I had been alone as far back as my memory could reach. I saw myself alone in the furthest future I could imagine. Sometimes it seemed natural to me, as if my psyche fit into only this single way of living.” -Fox & I
And:
“My bed was an island within the desolate sea of my room. Yet I knew there were other people homebound from illness or injury, scattered here and there throughout rural towns and cities around the world. And as I lay there, I felt a connection to all of them. We, too, were a colony of hermits.” -The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
Both books likewise tackle the absolute enormity and insignificance of the human condition. This is part of what happens when examining nature and our roles in it. I think these perspectives, and the necessary steps taken to pause and appreciate them, are important as both humbling moments and moments of sublime appreciation not only of life but its fragility. To the extent that we can claim that this capacity for self-reflection is uniquely human is not something that I will attempt to posit here, but it still warrants mentioning. These books together weave a message of examination and reflection of ourselves and our place in the wider worlds, uncaring as it may seem or as beautiful as it is.
“When it comes to nonhuman animals, we tend to generalize because too often they all look, sound, and act alike to us. We’re just not very empathetic towards wild animals. I’ve a notion it’s because we think we’re evolutionarily advanced and more intelligent than they are. Arrogance dissolves empathy.” -Fox & I
“If a snail can learn and remember, then it thinks, at least on some level; I was convinced of this. And until someone (preferably a snail), can prove otherwise, I will hold on to this belief. The life of a snail is as full of tasty food, comfortable beds of sorts, and a mix of pleasant and not-so-pleasant adventures as that of anyone I know.” -The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
The final similarity I will touch on is the analysis of effort and time both books seem to dwell on. I’ve written before, of course, of that constant sense of losing time, and of tying productivity to self-worth (it’s healthy, promise). Whether it be from work, from the work we tell ourselves is fun (anyone else got a fun side thing going? (I write books, by the by), and the fun we tell ourselves is work (ever hang out with a “friend” against your will?), there’s only so many things we can spend our limited time on.
The snail takes the lead here, but the fox certainly takes a bit of a more cynical view of things:
“As the snail’s world grew more familiar, my own human world became less so; my species was so large, so rushed, and so confusing. I found myself preoccupied with the energy level of my visitors, and I stared to observe them in the same detail with which I observed the snail. The random way my friends moved about the room astonished me; it was as if they didn’t know what to do with their energy. They were so careless with it.”- The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
“’But there’s the peculiarity of ‘respectable toil’’ I replied to him. ‘It’s just a tithe, isn’t it? In exchange for membership in society?’”- Fox & I
Naturally, in examining these facets of life, each must also take their chance at examining loss, an addendum to their final shared similarity. They are cutting, in their own way, and all the more beautiful for it.
“He died too young, too happy, too ambitious. How could I wallow in a shallow pool of misery when his misery was infinite? Regardless of where Fox ended up where he died, he would rather be here, pushing his nose into that blue forget-me-not, leaping on a vole, sunbathing on a boulder. He would want to be alive. I want that, too, but I won’t be so patronizing as to pretend that I want it more than he does.”-Fox & I
“The original snail and I had been fellow captives, but now we had both returned to our natural habitats. As I tried to make my new life livable within a few rooms of my house, I wondered how the snail was coping in its native woods. Though I was home, I was still not free from the boundaries of my illness. I thought to the terrarium’s limited space, and how the snail had seemed content as it ate, explored, and fulfilled its lifecycle. This gave me hope that perhaps I, too, could still fulfill dreams, even if they were changed dreams.”-The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
But to their specific lessons? Those deep insights that can only be gleaned from their specific animals? I think I will begin again with the snail, because only from the snail come lessons such as:
“…it never asked me questions I couldn’t answer, nor did it have expectations I couldn’t fulfill. Naturally solitary and slow-paced, it had entertained and taught me, and was beautiful to watch as it glided silently along, leading me through a dark time into a world beyond that of my own species.”- The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
And:
“Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard, seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of a house.”- The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
As for the fox, the animal I most share an affinity (peep my cocktail critter, and the album art from my current “theme song,” and that one guided meditation my mother had us do that one time) for? Well…:
“Like any sensible short-lived animal, the fox kept a fine tally of his time. Another day had passed with too many hard landings and too few voles. The rough-legged hawks were gone, and he’d been hunting in the alfalfa field without the juvenile to help him hustle cattle. But a curious encounter with a dog-chasing girl had given him an idea, and now he had a plan… He would have to train her slowly. Working the full moon to his advantage, he slowed when clouds covered it, ran when the moon busted loose. All while his mantra played: Time is on no one’s side.”- Fox & I
Maybe the trick is finding the balance in the lessons taught in the songs of foxes and snails. Understanding the minutiae and reveling in the grandeur. The ability to hop and skip around the fields is as important as hunkering in a shell. A couple or even a single solid companion as invaluable as the dozens we interact with only in passing. The acknowledgment of loss, and the acceptance of its pain, as key as the promise of some kind of future. Or, in the case of both stories, only the ability to stop and realize that all of this is happening at once, and that it may never happen again, and we should cherish it for the time we have it.
“What links the boy at his dinner table to the imagined foreigner who knows how to draw just the right sheep? Spirit. That’s the essential thing we see, according to the prince’s fox, ‘only with our heart.’ Blood, law, commerce, or physical proximity link us to family, neighbors, in-laws, and colleagues. But connections of the heart transcend time and space.”- Fox & I
“The snail, once again, came to my rescue. As the world fell into sleep without me, the snail awoke, as if this darkest of times were indeed the best of times in which to live.”- The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating