Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I will read anything this woman writes, as uneven as it might be sometimes. H is for Hawk is deservedly among the ranks of classic nature writing for its intense intelligence, close study, in-depth knowledge, and exquisite writing – and we get all of that in this new collection of essays and articles. Both Hawk and Vesper Flights are – for me – occasionally marred by some overwrought emotional spasms. The essay called “Eclipse” is occasion for an almost bizarre dissection of her emotional reaction: “The exhilaration is barely contained terror. I am tiny and huge all at once…there are no human words to express all this…a total eclipse makes history laughable,…makes the inclinations of the world incomprehensible, like someone trying to engage a stone in discussions about the price of a celebrity magazine.” Umm, really? I’ve watched a total eclipse myself, and it’s a wonderment, enchanting, fascinating, occasion for strangers to gather and marvel and share. But this is just a bit too much, and much more about Helen Macdonald than about an eclipse.
But… there is so much to admire, so much that moves here. I confess to being pleased to find I am not the only former dinosaur-mad child whose middle-aged eyes filled with tears when that apatosaurus first strolls across the screen in Jurassic Park. “Rescue” is a lovely piece in honor of those who serve up carefully carved crickets to save swifts, sleep with orphaned baby elephants, and handfeed infant hummingbirds (and please see Julie Zickefoose’s superb and poignant NPR story on this subject). Macdonald describes it perfectly as “the intoxicating process of coming to know something quite unlike you, to understand it well enough not only to keep it alive but also to put it back, like a puzzle piece, into the gap in the world it left behind.” She is also brilliant with what you might call “ordinary” science journalism, as in “Swan Upping”: the natural history of swans, their centuries-old association with English royalty, the experience of drifting down a green waterway on a hot July day, of cradling a cygnet that feels like “it had a silk wrapping on it,” craft knowledge, Brexit, and the strange and brilliant artist Stanley Spencer – all woven into a gorgeous, sensual tapestry of humans, history, and nature.
In “Wicken,” Macdonald sets out with her little niece on a walk through a preserved fen, a precious scrap remaining of original miles of marshland. They see and hear owls, snipe, cuckoos, and rails. As the little girl watches a furry caterpillar trundling across the path, she asks, “When they made this place, where did they get all the animals from?” Macdonald doesn’t quite understand what she’s asking. “There are so many animals here. Did they come from a zoo?” And Macdonald’s heart breaks a little. So did mine.
