Scott Russell Sanders - The Way of Imagination

Contents

Advance Praise for The Way of Imagination

Scott Russell Sanders is an honest man in a time of lies, a wise man in a time of foolishness, a healer in a time of wounds, and a beautiful writer in a time of ugly rants. His new book thus offers both solace and inspiration. Like Loren Eiseley or Rachel Carson, Sanders begins with the natural world and leads readers into the moral world, where wondering love becomes an urgent call to care.

KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE, author of Great Tide Rising

Scott Russell Sanders has written a vital book for this dark moment in history, demonstrating the truth of his insight that imagination keeps us from being trapped in the present arrangement of things. His faith in the creative process as a shaping force for good is bracing, and his belief that we are called to love and compassion, notwithstanding the abundant evidence of human folly, is borne out on every page of this illuminating book.

CHRISTOPHER MERRILL, author of Self-Portrait with Dogwood

A new book from Scott Russell Sanders is always a joy, but this one goes beyond. Proving up on his title with every essay, he imagines fresh takes on responsibility for the earth and each other, beauty, meaning, truth, praise, connection, restraint, and reciprocity, all from experience close to home, wrought in his own brilliant, plain language.

ROBERT MICHAEL PYLE, author of Nature Matrix

To read Scott Russell Sanders is to be nourished by a thoughtful mind, a profoundly articulate voice, and a kind soul speaking from the American heartland. These essays praise the good long work of his life, inquiring into the sources of our destructive behaviors and the wellsprings of healing in the imagination. In speaking of both ecological and familial grief, Sanders brings to the fore his deep faith in our capacity to reimagine the human story.

ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING, author of Zoologies

ALSO BY SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS

ESSAYS

Stone Country

The Paradise of Bombs

Secrets of the Universe

Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World

Writing from the Center

Hunting for Hope: A Fathers Journeys

The Country of Language

The Force of Spirit

A Private History of Awe

A Conservationist Manifesto

Earth Works: Selected Essays

Stone Country: Then and Now

FICTION

Wilderness Plots

Fetching the Dead

Wonders Hidden: Audubons Early Years

Hear the Wind Blow: American Folk Songs Retold

Terrarium

Bad Man Ballad

The Engineer of Beasts

The Invisible Company

Divine Animal

Dancing in Dreamtime

The Way of Imagination

Copyright 2020 by Scott Russell Sanders

First paperback edition: 2020

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sanders, Scott R. (Scott Russell), 1945 author.

Title: The way of imagination : essays / Scott Russell Sanders.

Description: First paperback edition. | Berkeley, California : Counterpoint, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019053943 | ISBN 9781640093652 | ISBN 9781640093669 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Imagination.

Classification: LCC BF408 .S2228 2020 | DDC 814/.54dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053943

Cover design by Lisa Pompilio
Book design by Jordan Koluch

COUNTERPOINT

2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

Berkeley, CA 94710

www.counterpointpress.com

Printed in the United States of America

10987654321

THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER gratefully acknowledge the following publications, in which earlier versions of essays from this book first appeared: Chautauqua (A Writers Calling); Daedalus (The Infinite Extent of Our Relations, originally titled Hooks Baited with Darkness); The Georgia Review (The Way of Imagination, Near and Distant Bears, and Writing While the World Burns); Image (Immersed in Mystery); Notre Dame Magazine (Useless Beauty, Neighbors, originally titled Theyre Neighbors of Mine, and True Wealth, originally titled An Economy of False Profits); Orion (Conscience and Resistance, Kinship and Kindness, and At the Gates of Deep Darkness); and The Progressive (Language Versus Lies and The Suffering of Strangers, originally titled From Plantation to Planet).

For my guides to Alaska, and to other riches...

Kathleen Dean Moore and Frank Moore
Debbie Clarke Moderow and Mark Moderow
Carolyn Servid and Dorik Mechau
Hank Lentfer
Richard Nelson
Frank Soos

For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life...

WILLIAM BLAKE, America: A Prophecy

Old ways of seeing do not change because of evidence; they change because a new language captures the imagination.

JACK TURNER, The Abstract Wild

I know that this point of view is not terribly fashionable these days, but I think we do have a responsibility, not only to ourselves and to our own time, but to those who are coming after us. (I refuse to believe that no one is coming after us.) And I suppose that this responsibility can only be discharged by dealing as truthfully as we know how with our present fortunes, these present days.

JAMES BALDWIN,
Nobody Knows My Name:
More Notes of a Native Son

CONTENTS

In a dark time, the eye begins to see...

THEODORE ROETHKE

WE ARE IN TROUBLE. BY we, I mean all of usevery tribe, every nation, rich and poor, old and young, human and nonhuman. Every species on Earth is at risk, but only one keeps increasing the danger day by day. Humans are degrading all the systems that support life on this blue planetthe forests and fresh waters, farmlands and grasslands, atmosphere and oceans. Deserts are spreading, glaciers are melting, seas are rising, fisheries are collapsing, storms and floods and wildfires are increasing in frequency and destructiveness. While our own population keeps growing, the populations of our fellow creatures are crashing. The rate and scale of devastation are unprecedented in human history.

You know this, I suspect, even if you do not live in a place where the havoc is obvious. The damage to the natural world caused by our swelling numbers and unbridled appetites has been abundantly documented in books, films, scientific reports, and the daily news. Rather than pile on yet more daunting evidence, in these essays I seek to understand how we stumbled onto this path toward ecological ruin, and how we might change direction. Clearly, we