Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo -- and Still-Mo

Since the summer of 2009, I've keep a record of the books I've read, creatively calling my spreadsheet "Books Read List." The other day, after finishing Sam Campbell's "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo -- and Still-Mo" I opened my spreadsheet to document my completed book. The sight that greeted my eyes was dismal, to say the least. And here's why: since getting back from Tanzania at the end of April, I have only read four complete books. FOUR! In more than four months! That is disturbing, despairaging (a good word for this situation), and despicable! And you want to hear the really, really ugly news? (You probably don't, but I'm going to tell you anyway.) I read only one full book between returning from Africa and my wedding on August 1. The only other book I attempted to read before the wedding was started on May 3, but not completed until August 16. I feel like a failure of a reader...and this from a self-proclaimed readaholic!

On the brighter side of this appalling realization, since returning from my honeymoon, I've read three books and started two others (which I have yet to finish and probably won't for awhile since they belonged to someone else and I just picked them up to look at while camping -- hopefully I can get to a library sometime soon to check them out and finish them). Those statistics are starting to sound a little better, right? Phew! Can't wait to get fully back into my readaholic ways. :)

And now, after all that preamble, here's what I really meant to say about the first book I've started and completed since my wedding:
When Jonathan and I were packing to go down to New Jersey and visit his grandparents, I looked around his bookshelves for a few books to supplement my own reading materials. My eyes caught sight of the Sam Campbell series and I grabbed the first couple books in the lineup. The first time I'd heard of Sam Campbell was when my sister was in grade 5 and had a teacher who loved Sam Campbell's books and read them to the class during reading time. She would come home to repeat the stories at our dinner table. After her lavish storytelling, I noticed the series in our library, but figured I didn't need to read the books myself since I already knew most of the details from Bryn's suppertime anecdotes. Boy was I wrong! Once I opened the first book (which I only found out later was really the third book in the series - they weren't in the right order on Jonathan's shelf...), I was enthralled. Yes, Sam Campbell's writing style might be a bit old-fashioned, but the books were published in the 1940s. I actually think his writing is completely appropriate for the subject matter. His animal descriptions are so spot-on that any reader will be able to imagine the exact motions and mannerisms of each animal. Campbell's descriptions of the setting -- usually his little island Sanctuary or the lakes, rivers or forest trails surrounding it -- are vivid and beautiful, pulling the reader back into the wilderness where fascination and wonder were born. I loved reading about the "Squints," the five orphaned baby squirrels that Campbell, his wife and their young visitor raise to adolescence and release back into the wild. Probably my favourite part of the whole story about the Squints is how well the human caregivers knew their wild pets. After an initial phase of spray-paint identification, they spent so much time with the baby squirrels that once the spray paint wore off they could consistently tell the five siblings apart by their specific features, attitudes and mannerisms. I have to say, I'm quite hooked on Sam Campbell now and have already started reading the next book in the series, "A Tippy Canoe and Canada, Too."

Here are some of my favourite quotes from the book:

"Then came one of those periods of silence which are as much a part of true companionship as conversation. Sometimes I think of this as one of the tests of true friendship. With acquaintances we must always be saying something, and silence seems to be evidence of indifference or disinterest. But with a friend who is proved real and true, we are not afraid of the wordless moments. Sometimes it is then that the heart speaks plainest." (p. 142)

Campbell asks his young friend, Duke, if he has ever looked up the word alone or knows its derivative. When Duke answers no, Campbell explains:

"It is made up of two little words glued together: all and one. Our natural desire to be alone is that we instinctively want to be all one, that is, complete in ourselves, no part of our true selfhood lacking. Among people, we have so many little nips taken out of us, and we are always reacting some way or other to the opinions people hold of us. This leads us to feel incomplete, sometimes to be something other than what we are -- at least, not the complete one we have been created. Your thought is calling for you to be all one, your complete selfhood, which you can see clearest when you are alone and quiet. You are going back in the woods not to sweep up little pieces of yourself and paste them together, but to get rid of things in your mind, little illusions that say you have lost some part of your individuality. You need to be, and you are alone -- all one." (p. 147)

While Campbell and Duke watch a dragonfly in its larva stage become a full-grown insect:

"'Wouldn't it be grand if we could climb out of some of our mental shells that way?' Duke was saying. 'Boy, if we could leave our sorrows, our regrets, our envies and hatreds like that -- what a world we would see!'
'Right, Duke!' It was fine to see this boy thinking his way through. 'And experience shows that people can climb out of those old skeletons when they try. We don't have to drag along these worn-out garments of our old ways of thinking if we do not want to.'" (pp. 173-174)
"'Do you know, Duke, I wonder if it isn't that way with us,' I said. 'The insect pulled out of an old skeleton, left it behind and went flying away to a greater way of living. If nature so takes care of his future, it seems certain that it will look after us in some such manner, too.'" (pp. 175-176)

"All you birds and beasts, get busy at your woodland lives! You trees and flowers, you sunsets and dawns, you stars and rainbows that make life lovely, live on in increasing splendor! You mountains, hills, valleys, lakes and streams, get out your grandeur! Enrich all solitude, deepen all silence. It is within your sacred power to point the thoughts of tired people to God." (p. 237)