 Book Reviews Out Walking: Reflections on Our Place in the Natural World By John Leax Reviewed by Robert P. Mills May/June 2000 |
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Out Walking is a compilation of short essays and a dozen “psalms” drawn from Leax’s observations of and experience with nature. The opening essay, “Two Cheers for Technology,” sets the tone sustained throughout: nature is not to be idolized nor technology to be deplored; rather, creation offers opportunities to learn more about the nature of the Creator, while, for those disciplined to pursue such insights, technology can be “a way for me to know concretely a truth I might otherwise have ignored.” Leax’s garden, “my edible yard,” with its lily pond and his five-acre woodlot, Remnant Acres, are the setting for many of these miniatures. Turtles, snakes, birds and a ravenous “fat groundhog that made its home under the barnwood shed near the asparagus bed” play leading roles in skillfully drawn scenes wherein Leax is anything but a disinterested observer. Should he kill the water snake that has taken up residence in his lily pond? Was he capable of killing the snapping turtle that raced toward him as he stood waist deep in the Genesee River? Should he put netting over his blueberries “to foil the hungry birds they attract” or plant a few more bushes so that “I’ll have enough to share?” Leax resolves his dilemmas in sometimes unexpected ways. But whether his subject is Niagara Falls or water snakes, “boomerang salamanders” or snapping turtles, Leax strives to delight in what God has made. (The salamanders were so named by his six-year-old nephew who, in so doing, “followed the command given to Adam in the garden. He completed creation by articulating a relationship.”) Crafting language with a poet’s care, he helps us share in glories we are often too busy to attend to. Out Walking never lapses into mindless tree-hugging or the strident moralizing characteristic of the currently vogue “eco-theology.”As a nature writer, and as a Christian concerned to be a steward of the earth and of “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints,” Leax serves as an example for the rest of us. |
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