News Speaking with Sy
Speaking with Sy
| March 21 2010
It was February. I hesitated to call, as I had yet to read a single book by Sy Montgomery. But call her I did. “I’m embarrassed about it, and I promise I’m going to read your books,” I said, “but I really need to talk with you right now, and I hope that’s okay.”
Sy laughed. “Let’s talk!” she said, and she proceeded to tell me about the “vortex of excitement” that was this spring for her, with the Guild’s Nonfiction Award to collect in April, and two new books appearing as well. Then she launched into stories. Imagine the following story, told in Sy’s all-over-the-place, excited voice, about her newest book, Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World’s Strangest Parrot (Houghton Mifflin, May 2010).
“It’s the most dramatic kids’ book I’ve ever done! These birds used to be so common, they’d fall out of trees! Now they are almost extinct. They live on a remote, windswept island, Codfish Island, off the coast of southern New Zealand, and they can’t fly – they waddle everywhere.
“Photographer Nic Bishop – did you know he is Kiwi and speaks Papua New Guinea? – proposed this story to me. He had known about the Kakapo for years, and I was inspired by this most adamant effort to save a bird. In order to write the story, we waited five years for the Kakapo to nest. Nic called me one early morning and yelled, ‘Get on a plane! It’s happening! They’re nesting!” and I ran out in my bathrobe and hopped on a plane!”
Such joy and amazement! I wanted to hop a plane with Sy. “When you observe something like this,” she says, “you realize, you are really on the razor’s edge of life on this planet. Each egg that hatches is like a new Taj Mahal, or a new Hope Diamond… there are so few of their kind. In that moment, it seems there is nothing more important. I wanted to take kids on this journey. Conservation welcomes everyone’s skills.”
How so? I wedged in my question and got my pen ready. “You don’t bring just science to field work,” said Sy. “You bring your heart and your head. You bring physical fitness, foreign language, what you learned in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, even sewing and cooking techniques. I might swim for hours, bike for days, ride a camel – I have even used make-up skills as I pulled hairs out a bear to test its DNA! You learn nothing in vain if you’re doing field science!”
I was going to say something in agreement here, about how we learn, but Sy was light years ahead of me. My job was to capture her enthusiasm.
“You want a lot of skills to do fieldwork, or just to live your life – so learn a lot of things! Play the piano, embroider, sing, kick a ball, get outdoors – kids naturally love nature and they are getting estranged from it. I want to help bridge the gap, for adults and kids, to make sure they get out into this glorious, green world.”
At this point, I was breathlessly keeping up. And I could feel Sy smiling, as she shared what she believed.
“Growing up, I never felt restricted to one species,” she told me, in a joyful rush. “If you restrict yourself to one song, one food, one color, one species… you miss out on a awful lot of teaching. You have to pay attention! Our job is to recognize our teachers. I always had friends and teachers that were not two legged…. if your dog is going to pull on the leash and pull your attention to something you’d never otherwise have seen or heard or smelled... well, you’re expanding your range. That’s what happens when you are friends with an animal.”
I had never thought of it like that, I told her.
“That’s what happens when you are friends with an animal,” she said. “If you are privileged enough to watch their lives, it’s like a fantastic opening into another world, but really, is it our own sweet, green, breathing world.”
Oh, I loved that, I told her.
“Human beings are naturally attracted to the natural world. Our kind lives and dies by its knowledge of the natural world. It’s important that we don’t lose touch.”
I have now read Sy’s books and can attest to how her sparkle translates to the page. Come hear the compelling, high-spirited Sy on April 17 at 2:00pm, at the National Geographic auditorium in D.C., as she accepts the Guild Nonfiction Award and tells us about her work. I promise a rush of words, a press of emotion, a rasher of enthusiasm, photographs to take your breath away, and an afternoon you won’t forget.
Please bring guests, my friends. Let’s fill the auditorium. Let us recognize one of our teachers… and perhaps be touched by a bit of genius.
