The Eye In The Thicket

The term "natural history" often makes people think of the sections in local museums that feature stuffed wildlife and various artefacts used by Natives or early pioneers.

The Eye in the Thicket, edited by Seán Virgo, is a collection of essays about Canada's natural history from some of the country's most respected writers, as well as naturalists, philosophers, and poets such as Patrick Lane, Don McKay, and Barry Callaghan. All of the authors contribute unique observations about Canada's environment and history, and the contributions are literary in feel and focus, not the dry stuff of history textbooks like one might expect.

Virgo, an accomplished writer and poet in his own right, became involved in this project at the request of the publisher. "The publishers asked me if I'd compile a collection of 'natural history essays,' Virgo explains. "I agreed to do this if I could choose the contributors; if they would get adequately paid for original work and have a 'writer's contract' for it; and if the definition of 'essay' could be unrestrictive. Thistledown Press agreed happily to those terms."

As a result, all of the essays included in the collection were commissioned. Virgo contacted writers who, as he explains in his introduction, he felt were "from people whose minds and language I admired and whose experience of the natural world intrigued me."

"Shaping the book," is what Virgo says was his biggest challenge when putting it all together. "It needed to have a structure that showed to their [the author's] best advantage the range and variety, but also the common themes, in this wonderful writing," he explains.

Virgo was enthusiastic about this project, as he himself has a strong interest in natural history. "I'm sure I'd have been a naturalist (as in fact I am, in an amateur way) if literature hadn't seduced me. I once worked for the Scottish Nature Conservancy on the Hebriddean island of Rhum, and I have lived all my life, in various parts of the world, in places where the wild things still survive. I need them (don't we all?)."

While not a comprehensive or encyclopaedic volume by any means, Virgo successfully worked towards his goals of editing a collection that contains "great writing, original thought, and evocative and provocative approaches to the natural world."

In fact, The Eye in the Thicket is the first in a series on natural history by Thistledown. "It's possible I'll do the second volume, too," Virgo says. "I'd like to think this series will go on well into the future and become the 'cumulative archive' I speak of in my introduction. And I think it would be good to have other editors, with different interests and contacts, down the road."

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