Jargogled Impressions.

I finished Bewilderment a few days back. It’s an easy read by an author – Richard Powers – whom I have really come to like. There is an emphasis on the world beyond that of humans that his novels embody and reading his sentences seem like a meditative stance against the chaos in the world around us. 

I got hooked on him after reading The Overstory – his Pulitzer Prize winning novel that led to a similar feeling. I have been following Pulitzer winners for a number of years now and the selection never disappoints. I have not seen similar successes with other awards such as Nobel prize winners, Pen/Faulker winners, or Hugo award winners. Something about The Pulitzers seems to resonate more with me. 

The Overstory has stayed with me. Much more so because it is centered around trees – a perennial source of wonder and attraction for me. There’s something about trees and what they represent that makes me notice them more when I am out for a hike or being a flaneur in the city. Life becomes a spectacle around them, as they grow their roots, spread their branches, call out the millions of micro and macro organisms that rely on them. Trees are rooted (duh) and in the stillness that arises out of this, they become a city of their own. A city never moves. It expands, it bulges, it gets sick, it gets old, it is rejuvenated, it dies. Trees follow a similar life story, and their time horizons spread far beyond that of ordinary humans. In fact, some trees outlive cities and several generations of humans. The Overstory is magnificently crafted on this theme, trees across the elderly Chestnut, the mighty Oak, the medicinal Mulberry, the Banyan canopy maintain their presence in the novel even as the human stories around them unfold across generations.

Powers’s novels focus on the interconnectedness of life – across ecology (The Overstory), space (Bewilderment), marine life (Playground). His novels combine the darkness due to the havoc delivered during the anthropocene era with a faint light appearing through the actions of few individuals who want to maintain the connection with the non-human things around us. The conversations tend to happen in and around these ecological realms. For instance, the conversations between the astro-biologist Theo and his son Robbie on the endless possibilities of exoplanets that abound the universe is a type of cosmic sonder that you can keep going back to. 

Living in the Pacific Northwest all these years has been eye opening for me. I grew up in the state of Jharkhand in India – its name literally means The Land of Forests (Jhar==forest + khand ==land of) but I took the splendors of nature for granted, mainly because it was cordoned off for me behind the constant threats of Naxal attacks. There were little to no trails to speak of which further prohibited any incursions to speak of. The only distinct memories I have of being close to nature are the annual treks we did to visit the nearby Jain shrines that dotted the Sammed Shikharji hill about an hour drive from my hometown. The 16.7 mile hike was all on paved roads with some gravel paths mixed in. Hand pulled carriages and horse buggies communed with barefooted pilgrims chanting all kinds of Prakrit chants and the whole atmosphere was one of faith and sacrifice. These treks used to be way early in the morning, before sunrise, which made the aura all the more mystic with the morning frost and mist enveloping the soft sounds of feet. The sandalwood trees contributed to a woody milieu that made for some decent long term memory archival in my brain. 

I don’t know if opening access to the vast underbelly of wild forests is a good thing but here in Seattle, the hikes are an intrinsic part of life and these hikes can take you to the top of a ridge, to the edges of a mountain, to the peripheries of a valley, to the contours of a lake, to the foot of a waterfall. It’s a privilege to be able to soak in the fresh chilly forest air redolent with untamed fauna, or let negative ions do wonders on tired bodies, or stare up to the unique personalities of mountains and hills that stand tall as ages roll by. 

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” ~ Thoreau

Upadhi and I stayed at a hostel on the outskirts of Sequoia National Park some years back. We shared the bunk-bed room with a few wanderers, hikers, and itinerant travelers. One girl, an intrepid hiker and back-country dweller, remarked how the forest calls her, as if like an addiction, whenever she is out making a living in the city. It had grown from a curious interest to passion and to an obsession that led her to the deep crevices of the national parks. Upadhi never liked the negative association (addiction!) of this love for forests. To her, it meant something more banal and innocent, despite the lurking dangers and unknowns one could come across in the wild. 

It’s unclear now, whether we should be afraid of the wild, the untamed world or its the reverse. Bewilderment is a tragic tale of an innocence lost amidst the thoughtless endeavors humanity indulges itself with. Robbie struggles to make sense of it even as his brilliant, discerning mind attempts to restore the balance. His father, who struggles with single parenthood, is seen as a generation lost looking out versus looking in, chasing the stars while the earth burns. As an astro-biologist he runs insane simulation models to predict bizarro worlds while his son reminisces about his place in the world, about the world that stole his mother.