books, nature, philosophy
This book affected me deeply. It’s my favorite book I’ve read this year, or at least feels as important as Mary Oliver’s Upstream which I read earlier this month.
It’s a true story, told of a disaffected farmer and writer who journeys to a distant and remote island of Norway to help a Norwegian duck woman prepare the island for the arrival of the eider ducks. These ducks have been nesting on the coast of Norway for as long as any human can remember, and the island people have made nests for them to protect them and their eggs from predators, then collect the eider down left in the nests to make warm duvets. However, this age-old tradition has nearly disappeared. Where thousands of ducks used to nest on the islands, now only hundreds do.
This book is intentionally, and beautifully slow. It gives the reader an experience of life on these remote island with naught but the wind, the waves, and the sea birds. It talks of history and tradition, of how things have changed, both for islanders and the islands’ wild inhabitants. It’s a story of resilience. But it’s also a story that filled me with so much peace and quieted so many parts of me. It made me yearn to feel connected to some kind of past, wish I had a heritage I could return to, a place that felt like home like the islands do to the islanders and their birds.
I was very emotional when the book finished. I think both with gratitude for having experienced that story and that life and also from a sort of longing to have a life filled with such quiet purpose and peacefulness. I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time.