Signature - Barbara Kingsolver: BK in Downey Woods

I guess that is fair enough. OK. This is the woods behind my my. Parents house where I grew up. We called it the downy woods because of the downy woodpeckers. And this is my my playground and my education and my religion I guess. My brother and I would about ever week run away from home you know and now that home with anything to run away from but we just love coming out here and we dig while Dianas and catch a crowd as

we knew which mushrooms were OK to eat and but sooner or later you know about dinner time we go home. I've always but. I'm. I feel so lucky. OK. Oh yeah. Not a problem. Now. OK. This is the woods behind my parents house where I spent the better part of my childhood.

It was it was our recreation and our education and I would say My religion is just the place where I spent as much time as I could in these under these trees. These are oaks and maples and we are watching seasons change. Do you know Banyan Scn. Mushrooms which mushroom. Finally my dad taught us which mushrooms we could be. And. I loved it. Golden Rod was always my favorite flower and I was. Dismayed to grow up and learn that goldenrod is a weed. It's a it's an incredibly lucky thing I think to have a rural childhood.

To watch watch seasons turn watch seeds grow into plants and. Watch watch everything receive it south and die and come back again it gives you hope. I think that I would say my my most resilient feature is optimism and I think I got it from growing up here in in in an alfalfa field you know in these hedgerows. There's a character in one of my books who says she loves the sunrise because no matter what kind of a night you're having There's always going to be a morning and a rural childhood gives you that no matter what no matter how terrible a drought there is there will always be rain you know no matter how bad the summer there will always be a fall

there will always be another spring. There's a kind of resiliency that you you come to trust in when you grow up in a place like this. I don't think it's so easy to get to get that from an urban childhood. I you know I just I read that this summer the summer of 1996 we passed a really interesting marker in the history of human life on Earth. More than 50 percent of people on the planet now live in cities. So we're losing and we're losing what I what I got here what so many of us got to have which is the privilege of growing up as a species among many other species you know a species among goldenrod than had graven maples and that of just

a human among humans. It's a very different way of looking at the world. And I think a safer one I think a more resilient one to understand that you're part of you're part of a planet that has its own agenda. Your fear and your neighbors are trees that leave lose their leaves and get them back again in the spring. It makes me really sad to think of losing that. We called this the Danny woods my brother and I made up names for everything this was a dead horse creek because we found a dead horse up there one time and didn't tell anybody that was it was a big secret. It was.

It was a place we loved to come. We'd run away from home about every week. The home was wonderful not that there was anything at all to run away from but we just like that better here you know we've come down here and catch crawdads and boil them and. Throw in some wild onions and we pop pas their pop pop trees up and down the draw and it was just wonderful. We were living off the land now and then. But about dinnertime we'd always reconcile ourselves to going home again. But it was always here you know it would always be here. I still think of these woods in. In times of trouble. You know when I need to close my eyes and go home this is the place I think of it seems very sure I'm very lucky it's still here. I mean it really is still here. Here I am

all grown up and I can still come and stand in the downy woods and it's the same I mean. Same trees. Maybe these are not the same trees or maybe the trees I knew have died and new ones have grown but it has renewed itself and it's been it's the Littlewoods has had the privilege of remaining on Earth unlike most and I count that as an incredible blessing in my life. There goes a night where you think catch everything we could and take it home and watch it and you know maybe torment of the little bit. See what it would do. You know we we were good to our animals. The alfalfa field all around would be mowed Jackie shepherd would mow them twice a summer and it was kind of the animal hold cost you know all the things would come running out and he had a heart of gold he'd bring us the little bunny rabbits that you know were left homeless from the

mowing and we would feed him with little baby bottles and raise them up and I learned so much about the world. I learned that so much of the world is not about me it's not about people. It's about how I how wild things fit together how they adapt how they have their own life histories that all interconnect and depend on each other how they have their own kinds of community and. And I can still come back here. That's what I was starting to say before the snake. A lot of my friends I'd say most of my friends tell me they can't go home again and they don't mean just you can't step in the same river twice. They

mean that the town they grew up in like Redlands California isn't there anymore. There is no evidence that was ever there it has been absorbed into exile. It's been leveled and covered over with the city. I'm very lucky that that hasn't happened here not just me. I mean I think the world is lucky that this place is still here. And I think it it's important to me as a as a as a human that my my Safe Childhood place is still here and it's important to me as a writer that this place is still here not just this woods but this county these people these are good people and doing what they do. Because they're still here. I can't go making up some bright lights

big city story because this county here keeping me honest. Yeah. When I was lucky enough to go to college and learn a trade you know I began as a musician thinking that that would be my trade. Two years into it I discovered that there may be 11 people in the nation get to make their living as a concert pianist than everybody else and that playing the

shadow of your smile in a hotel lobby and I realized I hadn't chosen a very practical. Line of employment there. And so I needed to learn something else I always expected to support myself and I always wanted to do something useful. And. It was a completely natural thing for me to turn to to biology. It was it was nothing new. It was always the thing that I loved it was always the thing that I trusted in and I found I had. A kind of knowledge in my bones of that I don't I mean to this day you know we'll we'll go on a hike and I'll say Will that take tree for oil or that's that Murdoch and I don't I don't remember learning the things I think that I learned them before I could talk. My parents taught me the names of plants and and animals and they also taught me.

To celebrate every one of these these events and these these creatures as as as wonderful as our community as as. As the as our our fellow species. And so in in grade school this was always my resource you know in a city I might have had a better library or or museums but I had this I had the down the woods wind when it came time to have a science fair. I came out here and I dug up 14 wildflowers 14 different kinds of wildflowers Jack in the pulpit Solomon's Seal Trillium. And I put them in a flower box and I wrote their names and and their entire life history is on a poster and that was my entry in the science fair and now that I remember it it might have seemed kind of peculiar among all those

volcanoes made out of oatmeal. But it's what I knew the best and I didn't have to look those things up. I knew their life histories because I was out here in the spring waiting for those jack in the pulpits to pop up when I found one of those I'd found treasure. That was. That was the wonder and the glory of my childhood. We have one other. Factor. OK. OK. Lester downie would relate. Can't think of anything. Back to the night when it was. Gone. I don't know what it was.

Thanks. That's right. OK. That's right. Like I can't walk back away I can walk away. Oh you mean up there in that off. OK here yeah. Anything like this not like this but equivalent. Yeah I know that the method would work. Yeah they could be. They could be gone if we had heard. By now. If anyone noticed it had begun. OK.

Oh thank you. Well.

All right. Oh of course. Yeah. You know what. Ever read. Oh OK. The Blue Jay. Is a metal Lark's. A mist metal arcs in Tucson. That's the sound I woke up to every. Morning of my childhood. I didn't.

Imagine it's anything I'd ever met. But I know. There's a redwing blackbirds. Down by the creek. In the summertime at night Miss is brilliant with lightning bugs fireflies. I suppose as the highfalutin term and we don't have those in Tucson and I miss them when the first time I brought Camille back here she rubbed her eyes and. Thought. There was something wrong with her vision because the light was all sparkly and now she looks forward to coming back and catching jars full of them and. Keeping them overnight in her bedroom the way I used to do. There are a million things here that. I took for granted. The honey bees in the clover that we step on every day. I don't know what that last. Do you want.

Probably a tricky. One. Would you like someone know you're not a resident. Yeah I haven't. I haven't lived here for 20 years so. I guess. I can't claim this place anymore really. In all fairness but it claims me I guess you know you can't take the Kentucky out of the girl when I come back. My. Syllables lengthen and I want to go pick goldenrod and asters and store up a million little things that. That I don't have at home. Moving to Tucson was a remarkable adventure that that stuck. In the United States I couldn't have moved to a place that

is more different in terms of natural history. I suppose unless I moved to the naval base on Walmer something. Tucson is a different. Place. In terms of the biota in terms of the plants and animals as there is. The life history strategies that I grew up knowing of as second nature. You know the competition with between species the adaptations to cold. All of those things are are moot in Tucson. The life history the life history strategies of animals and plants are all different it's all about conserving moisture and avoiding heat. So. It was like a second childhood really to walk in the desert and in the skeet woods and learn everything over again. And now I have and I feel really at home there too. But it

doesn't make this feel any less like home when I come back. Thank you. I missed the curry. Dead Horse notwithstanding I missed. Mohs of the inferno. That. Verdant. Richness you know in summer looking out and. Seeing a whole spectrum. In which every color is green. That's all different where I live now. I don't like go there. It's just different. It's colorful. It's. It's intense. There are seasons. You know people say Don't you miss the seasons well. To some has seasons and they're extreme there. They're dramatic. They're exciting and

wonderful and I love being able to have a garden all year round it's September now. Here everybody is kind of cold in that shop and in turning all colors and Fixin to Die for a while and at home I'm putting me in snap peas and and broccoli and things are kind of waking up the winter is a time of growth and. And a kind of fresh vigor in Tucson. So it's opposite. It's it's kind of like a an alternate universe. And I love both of them so much. Come to see your family. You bring your children. During which you connect them with you. I can give my children what I had as a girl in the mail. They'll sort it out for themselves. They'll they'll have their own experience.

And because we live in a rural place in the Southwest they'll find their own downy woods they already are. But I suppose. For sentimental reasons and because I have respect for history I bring my kids to the downy woods. I bring them back to see family the family that lives in the House and the family that's out here. It's all really important I can't let go of it or anything. When you go into the West. I was out of college I had been home I was in my early 20s I had. Finished my education I thought for the time being and I was ready to. What is it they say seek my fortune. I've been living in France for a while actually seeking my fortune they are living on a shoestring from one job to the

next and I've actually. It was in the late 70s and it was getting difficult to keep a work for a foreigner to keep a work visa in France so I had to come back to the United States and I had. I've always. Had a longer left. And. I've I've always been drawn to the southwest I'll tell you right behind our house runs the railroad track and every day we hear that whistle blow and it was the train carrying coal from the mountains to Maysville to loaded on to. Barges. And they say that coal goes to Italy and somehow for a brief part of my childhood I understood that those trains went to Italy and I wanted to get on that train and see Italy I'll tell you and eventually I saw maps and thought what would be involved in a train trip to Italy and I kind of figured

it out but. That. Road Track. With the call of the wild we'd hear that whistle and my brother and I would go down and walk the tracks imagining the places it led. And it goes through these you know these wonderful Kentucky limestone railroad cuts we like to play on those one of those is up scrub grass road in one day. I found the cactus. It was a prickly pear that had been planted by the train I suppose it stuck somehow in Texas and fell off in Nicholas County and there it grew and it was just about this big but. It wasn't. It was I found treasure I was so excited and it was winter time I had my mittens on and I thought well I'm safe I have my mittens on so I dug it up and I didn't realize what I know. I know a lot more about cactus now. They have Glock kids these tiny little evil spines that. Get in your mittens and so those were my best mittens and I ruined them I filled them with tiny

spines but. And so I couldn't tell my mother for years every time I put on those mittens that my fingers burned. From the lure of the exotic that cactus I had dug up and brought home to grow in my window sill. And. I had always wanted to see the the great the water rose and I began collecting. Cactus when we would go to the city. I didn't want to buy shoes or clothes I wanted to go to the WA greens and get a little. Cactus you know with my hard earned 79 cents. I had a whole window sill full of them which my mother hated because she said they would stick her when she went to close my window bit. I. I. I wanted to follow that train to Italy or or someplace. So. It was a natural thing in my early 20s when I had to choose somewhere to live

that I packed up my little tiny yellow car and. Drove to the nearest cactus which was Tucson Arizona. I had no better reasoning than that. You have to go. I thought I'd spend the weekend or something in Tucson. And. That was 19 years ago. Well it was better than France U.S.. And my parents opinion it was better than France. Let me know if you want to go ride. There is no way to bag. Oh yeah here's another one. It will break your. Heart.

OK. OK. OK. Yeah sounds good but you got that little That's fine if you get no what you want to hear and you know sound bites but good like Goldsman guy's got a big Yeah yeah yeah. Because I had more time this is not a three minute news piece or eight minute news right. No. Thank

you.