Hunting for Hope: A Father's Journeys (review)

Reviews Full-Length Reviews Hunting for Hope: A Father's Journeys by Scott Russell Sanders Beacon Books, 1998 200 pages, cloth, $23.00 Seasoned nonfiction readers know that it's not always subject matter that drives an essay; often, it's the mind at work and the commonality of the writer's thoughts, worries, and joys that connect author with reader. In his book Huntingfor Hope, Scott Sanders is challenged by an argument with his son to explore ways in which fatherhood is a metaphor for establishing a bond with and protecting the natural world. No small assignment for an essay collection of only two hundred pages. Though this is an essay collection, all ofthe pieces are skillfully woven into a seamless narrative, an extended meditation on the author's struggles to resolve a generational dispute withJesse, his teen-age son. Throughout a weeklong father and son hiking trip in the Rockies, Sanders alternately reflects on both personal and cultural issues ofdespair and hope. And by the book's end, father and son manage to reach a tentative understanding and reconciliation. Upon reading the subtitle, "A Father's Journeys," I questioned how I would be served by the subject matter. Nonetheless, Sanders's worries and hopes were quite similar to mine, even though demographically we shared nothing other than the Midwest. Throughout Huntingfor Hope, Sanders experiences the healing touch of the natural world. In "Wildness," he explains that nature, unlike humans who hold back forgiveness from each other, heals those who care for it. While walking at dusk, considering the eerie aftermath ofa blizzard that has knocked out electrical power, Sanders hears the "shivering" sound of an owl. He finds hope in that lonely pitch, comforted that even if man didn't exist, the owl would pay no difference and still limn its call. He further considers the possible absence of humans in the return of Hyakutake comet, 159 160Fourth Genre which joins the earth's orbit every 18,000 years. "Whatever our fate, Hyakutake will sweep its appointed rounds indifferent, as the blizzard, and that indifference like the owl's yearning, is a true face of wildness." Sanders, along with other essayists such as Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder, have praised the movement toward ecological restoration. They are the generation after Aldo Leopold that has urged people to clean rivers, replant wildlife, collect rare seeds and help endangered species stage a comeback . Sanders claims that by restoring land and wildlife, we restore ourselves and that the only thing holding us back is either habit, haste, or lack offaith. He argues, like Robinson Jeffers before him, that the earth will go on with or without us. But ifwe align ourselves with the wild instead of disregarding it, the earth will heal itself. Unlike humans, who seethe with resentment over past wrongs, the whales and wolves and rivers and woods hold no grudges. They answer our love with healing. This healing, Sanders believes, extends to those who aid in its creation. Just as we can help restore endangered flora and fauna and allow the land to heal, we can clean up these rivers that flow into us. In "Body Bright," Sanders notices that everything in the London subway is manmade. The Underground gives no clue to the weather or location above. Apart from a toddler interacting with passengers and reveling in its discovery ofthe senses, the subway remains cold and stale. Sanders realizes that we were once like that toddler: exploring, touching, and tasting to understand. But as we "grow older, the rivers may be dammed, diked, silted up, or diverted, but so long as we live they still run. We are still curious and marveling animals. Our bodies remain wild, perfectly made for savoring and exploring this sensuous planet." We starve our natural senses by insulating ourselves from wildness. We try to fill the vacuum with "manufactured senses"—shopping, gambling, drugs, and activities that distract us from realizing what we don't have. These manufactured senses will not satisfy our hunger; we need to escape the artificial world we have created and reconnect with actual dirt and rock and open ourselves to the world we have not made. With a...