Saturday, it was time to step out of the Valley. We had not driven down Highway #10 to Bridgewater this Winter. I wanted a change of bookstores. After a short stop in Mahone Bay, we found ourselves at Block Shop Books in Lunenburg.
Of course, we did not leave empty-handed.
I found Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise built in Hell.
Heather found Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog and Swamp.
The last Solnit book, for me, was Orwell’s Roses (see post Orwell’s Roses, and Orwell’s Roses Part 2). Here we are a few years later – still living in Paradise – seeking optimism from the “extraordinary communities that arise in disaster” – will they include rural Nova Scotia?
Heather stayed closer to her roots with “a short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis”.
From the previous two blog posts (The Question and The Secret), I am looking for The Answer. Does it lie in Paradise? Or in the words of Bill McKibbon “The freshest, deepest, most optimistic account of human nature I’ve come across in many years“.
Acknowledgements
Edward continues to step up to the challenge. Heather remains closely connected to our garden, the greenhouse and the surrounding woodlots.
References
Rebecca Solnit, 2010, A Paradise Built in Hell, PenguinRandomHouse.
Annie Proulx, 2022, Fen, Bog and Swamp, Scribner/Simon & Schuster.
Ernest Blair Experiment 