Book Review — Between Light And Storm: How We Live With Other Species, By Esther Woolfson
Sc
ala Naturae is a belief, often rooted in the Bible and other ancient texts, that humans sit at the very top of the “chain of being” of living creatures on Earth. In her book Between Light and Storm (newly published in the United States), Scottish naturalist and author Esther Woolfson takes a long and graceful look at that idea, suggesting that it sweeps humans right out of harmony with the rest of creation.
Scala Naturae may indeed be at least in part what has sanctified humans’ beastly treatment of all animals (and, not incidentally, created food shortages and soul- and world-threatening pollution). Woolfson’s book is hardly the first to question the idea that humans are entitled to treat the world in its entirety with disrespect. Thankfully, her book doesn’t just repeat arguments we’ve heard countless times. Perhaps that’s because Woolfson isn’t arguing. In writing that can be as graceful and personal as prayer, she suggests that engaging fully in the age-old human struggle to be superior leaches the livability out of life.
A good bit of the book is tiny scenes from the set of domestic habits that help her happily cohabit with animals that many people might treat as home invaders. For Woolfson, spiders and mice are but house guests. She takes her responsibility to them seriously, moving them out of traffic patterns lest they get stepped on and, in general, trying to be thoughtful about how best to share her home. She lives with an uncaged, 31-year-old rook named Chicken who calls to her when he hears her come home. (Rooks are of the crow family. Oops. Come to think of it, “she lives with” should have been written in the past tense, as the book is dedicated to Chicken, who apparently died shortly after the book was first published in England.) Woolfson has a pet crow that roams freely in her house. A dove on the roof communes with the author. And until some predator or another raided a small backyard house that she called the “Outback,” Woolfson also cared for a large group of geriatric doves.
In general, she refuses to compete with animals for space and resources.
Thankfully, this book has no artificial drama injected into it. However, as pleasurable as the prose can be, it’s sometimes a tad too restful. Unless I’m vigilant, the “at home with Woolfson” passages can put me blessedly to sleep. That is no criticism (I need more shuteye) and not all of the book is about domestic observations and chores.
Ironically, in fact, the more rousing parts seem to spring from all of Woolfson’s quiet, intentional living. My guess is that she enjoys an enormous amount of un-rushed reading time. She gives a large part of her prose over to ideas about animal and human harmony that she’s gleaned from hundreds of texts written around the world and throughout history. Her easy familiarity with a vast expanse of diverse literature is staggering.
Even so, Woolfson simplifies wonderfully as a writer, smoothly walking her readers (for example) through the timeline of evolution from the last universal common ancestor that lived 4 billion years ago through the appearance, most improbably, of the unusually smart and capable creatures that we humans are. While four billion years is a lot of time to cover, Woolfson never rushes. Between Light and Storm tells a braided story patiently. Personal observation produces insight, which meets explanations from the literary and philosophic masters of yore and the scientists of today.
The book is as impressive a memoir as it is a work of clear-headed and highly informed journalism. Without guilt or pause, humans cage and kill sentient creatures. Convinced that we are entitled, we always have. Woolfson writes without a sense of privilege. Her voice is humble, passionate, and sensitive. Perhaps it is also necessary now that we have created a time when our crimes against our fellow Earthlings threaten us and all the world.
Between Light and Storm: How We Live with Other Species
By Esther Woolfson
Pegasus
ISBN 9781639362769
368p. $28.95
December 2022.
