Now comes the voice of novelist Lauren Groff, excerpted from an excellent recent Orion interview regarding her novel, The Vaster Wilds; immediately after reading her remarks, we placed an order for the book.

At the base of the story, even in its incredibly rudimentary earliest forms, there was always this push to slowly unveil the truth (one that we, in our hubris, tend to ignore) that humankind is a very short, bright thread in the enormous weave of the history of earthly life. It was urgent in this book to decenter human dominance and allow the rest of nature to take its proper place as equal to the human experience. As the girl in her flight goes deeper into her experience of being alone in the woods, as her body begins to suffer from the cold and exertion and hunger, the forest itself becomes a companion that allows her to see past the received ideas of civilization that had held her captive to that point, and in some ways becomes her solace.

One of the texts that I read while thinking through this book was Emerson’s essay, “Nature,” especially this part, which reverberates through my book:

“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period so ever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent Eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

To which we respond: hear! hear!

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