Coda Brian Doyle
THE GREATEST NATURE ESSAY EVER
. . . would begin with an image
so startling and lovely and wondrous
that you would stop ri<ing through the
rest of the mail, take your jacket o=, sit
down at the table, adjust your spectacles, tell the dog to lie down, tell the
kids to make their own sandwiches for
heavenssake, that’s why god gave you
hands, and read straight through the
piece, marveling that you had indeed
seen or smelled or heard exactly that,
but never quite articulated it that way,
or seen or heard it articulated that way,
and you think, man, this is why I read
nature essays, to be startled and moved like
that, wow.
The next two paragraphs would
smoothly and gently move you into a
story, seemingly a small story, a light
tale, easily accessed, something personal but not self-indulgent or self-absorbed on the writer’s part, just sort of
a cheerful nutty everyday story maybe
starring an elk or a mink or a child, but
then there would suddenly be a sharp
sentence where the dagger enters your
heart and the essay spins on a dime like
a skater, and you are plunged into waaay
deeper water, you didn’t see it coming at
all, and you actually shiver, your whole
body shimmers, and much later, maybe
when you are in bed with someone you
love and you are trying to evade his or
her icy feet, you think, my god, stories do
have roaring power, stories are the most
crucial and necessary food, how come we
never hardly say that out loud?
The next three paragraphs then walk
inexorably toward a line of explosive
Conclusions on the horizon like inky
alps. Probably the sentences get shorter,
more staccato. Terser. Blunter. Shards of
sentences. But there’s no opinion or commentary, just one line >tting into another,
each one making plain inarguable sense,
a goat or even a senator could easily
understand the sentences and their
implications, and there’s no shouting, no
persuasion, no eloquent pirouetting, no
pronouncements and accusations, no sermons or homilies, just calm clean clear
statements one after another, >tting
together like people holding hands.
Then an odd paragraph, this is a most
unusual and peculiar essay, for right
here where you would normally expect
those alpine Conclusions, some Advice,
some Stern Instructions & Directions,
there’s only the quiet murmur of the
writer tiptoeing back to the story he or
she was telling you in the second and
third paragraphs. The story slips back
into view gently, a little shy, holding its
hat, nothing melodramatic, in fact it
o=ers a few gnomic questions without
answers, and then it gently slides away
o= the page and o= the stage, it almost
evanesces or dissolves, and it’s only later
after you have read the essay three times
with mounting amazement that you see
quite how the writer managed the stagecraft there, but that’s the stu= of another
essay for another time.
And >nally the last paragraph. It turns
out that the perfect nature essay is quite
short, it’s a lean taut thing, an arrow and
not a cannon, and here at the end there’s
a ?ash of humor, and a hint or tone or
subtext of sadness, a touch of rue, you
can’t quite put your >nger on it but it’s
there, a dark thread in the fabric, and
there’s also a shot of espresso hope, hope
against all odds and sense, but rivetingly
there’s no call to arms, no clarion brassy
trumpet blast, no website to which you
are directed, no hint that you, yes you,
should be ashamed of how much water
you use or the car you drive or the fact
that you just turned the thermostat up to
seventy, or that you actually have not
voted in the past two elections despite
what you told the kids and the goat. Nor
is there a rimshot ending, a bang, a last
twist of the dagger. Oddly, sweetly, the
essay just ends with a feeling eerily like a
warm hand brushed against your cheek,
and you sit there, near tears, smiling, and
then you stand up. Changed. a
