from Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
Then, after a day of looking at spiderwebs, at the small jewel-like beetles that roamed the blackberries, at minnows in the stream, and at water striders on its surface, a day of wading knee-deep in cool water and picking mint and watercress and red-orange lilies along with berries, I went home with my bounty.
In this excerpt from Solnit’s memoir, luscious winding rhythm and accumulating detail build and swell until they leave no doubt that Solnit has indeed returned home with a marvelous bounty. And yet how unimportant the sentence makes the material abundance that Solnit gathers, deflating the visceral and sensual memory of looking, wading, and foraging with a flat statement: “I went home with my bounty.” Bounty seems the far lesser gift when compared to the pleasures in the flowing incantation of lived experience and observation, a day when one has simply lived, enjoying other living things. “I went home with my bounty.” Do the words, delayed and coming at the end of a series of clauses, almost drag, as if the speaker is reluctant for the day to end, reluctant to return home? And Solnit’s choice of the poetic “bounty,” does it feel abstract? Distancing, as if the writer is pulling away, closing the door on a wonderful day, insisting that her readers come along too? But of course, such plans are foiled. Readers go back and reread the words just for their pleasure, and perhaps a lucky few even grab walking shoes and head outdoors to look, touch, or gather a bounty of their own.
Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby, Penguin, 2014.