‘Intimate Nature:

The Bond Between Women and Animals’

By MARY GREENE

This book is not new—it is several years old. I don’t recall now how I got my copy of it. “Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals” (Fawcett Books, 1998) is a collection of stories, essays and poems about women and animals that has taken me the better part of two years to read.

My dawdling over this book happened not because it was dull or difficult. “Intimate Nature” is a compelling read, but I needed time to absorb and savor its insights. It is organized according to perspectives (deep science and field work, creation myths, living with domesticated animals, pondering the lessons of animals near extinction and so on) and at times it was months before I felt ready to continue on to the next section.

The encounters between women and animals recounted in “Intimate Nature” transcend science, although science and field research are often the measure—the means—by which women gain access. The deep science reported in this book is careful and painstaking, often involving years of isolation, but it no longer is based on detachment from its subject. Scientists in the field are now recognizing a kinship with the whales, wolves, sharks, elephants, horses, dogs and monkeys that they are living near. If this sounds like new age flooey, it’s not. It’s simply that scientists (men as well as women) no longer pretend detachment from their subjects, as though they were somehow “apart”—robotic in their objectivity. This was, of course, a basic tenet of scientific research and thought until Jane Goodall came along, the young, untrained researcher who went into the wilds of Gambe to study chimpanzees, who named her beloved chimps, made a case for their emotional and spiritual existence and claimed a connection to them. Research methodology has also grown more respectful of the culture and habitat of the animal, recognizing and curbing the human compulsion toward intrusion.

A story I find particularly powerful is “Goat’s Milk,” which recounts the experience of Cecilia, a woman who survived torture and imprisonment in a Latin country to move north and walk “in the meadow near her cabin,” followed by goats and “a big, bear-like white dog.” Her solitude is disturbed when she is called upon to provide refuge for Rosa, a fellow prisoner, and Rosa’s son, the product of a prison rape. It takes all of Cecilia’s fortitude to give up her newfound sanctuary and provide a place for Rosa and Jesus, the young son who resembles his sadistic father and sets off a disturbing reaction in Cecilia. Through the metaphor of making the boy strong on goat’s milk, Cecilia is able to overcome her fear and revulsion and come to a place of acceptance and strength.

“Fear in the Shape of a Fish” explores Pamela Frierson’s crusade to confront her life-long fear of sharks.

“Coyote” explores man’s need to destroy what is wild, and “Shades of Gray” explores our kinship with wolves and wildness. “Friends, Foes and Working Animals” by Gretel Erlich explores what animals have to teach us (“Animals give us their constant, unjaded faces and we burden them with our bodies and civilized ordeals”) in a domesticated setting. Several of the articles present a case for a form of spirituality or worship among animals, as did Alexandra Morton in her observations of two captured killer whales living in a tank in California. Every morning the pair would gently spray water and lick a certain spot of their cement tank which, unerringly, was the spot the sun reached first.

This is no lightweight book. It is edited by Linda Hogan, Deena Metzer and Brenda Peterson, and contains the writings of Diane Ackerman, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Cynthia Moss, as well as such literary giants as Alice Walker, Marge Piercy, Ursula le Guin, Susan Griffin and Tess Ghallagher. The book is 441 delightful pages long. It’s a perfect long, leisurely summer read—a book that will change your thinking and maybe even your heart.

If you love what is wild,in nature and in yourself, don’t miss this book.