Sy Montgomery: Animals are our teachers
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October 3, 2018
"The Soul of an Octopus"
Sy Montgomery took this call on her friend’s cell phone in a car somewhere in the San Francisco Bay area. She is on a book tour promoting “How to Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals,” her twenty-first.
Her favorite animal is Thurber, her border collie “with a big stripe down his face like a lightning bolt down in front of his nose and a blind eye,” she says. Why? “He has taught me that no matter how hopeless things look there could be a miracle around the corner,” she said.
Montgomery was in a horrible depression after her dog Sallie died of a brain tumor. Thurber proved to Montgomery the AA saying “don’t give up before the miracle. That is exactly what happened to me. There was a miracle around the corner,” Montgomery said. His name is Thurber. That was a lesson that Thurber taught her. “He is the happiest guy that you ever saw.”
Montgomery’s message is “There are so many teachers around us. There are so many great creatures that we can learn from, that we can draw inspiration from, that we can draw joy from. It is a bottomless well. We have to learn to listen.”
Her theme for the tour: “When the student is ready the teacher will appear. We have to learn to recognize those teachers. They are there. We have to learn to trust the universe. They are there. We have to learn to trust them.”
Montgomery insists, from the decades of her experience as a journalist and naturalist in many locales around the world, that “sometimes it’s someone with two legs or four legs or six legs or eight legs or none.”
Those creatures, and the lessons for us can be anywhere. They can be orcas speaking to us from the Salish Sea. About Tahlequah and her calf, she said, “I am hoping that the tragedy that happened … and the sorrow that our nation felt for the baby’s mother will translate to taking better care of the sea and allowing the orcas access to the fish they need. Their babies aren’t surviving. We can make choices that can let them live. It is our power that will let them live.”
About her talk in Maple Hall: “I am thrilled to speak with folks in La Conner and share how excited I am about the new library and I just can’t wait to get there.”
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