This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
Intermingling with Beauty
by Mildred Rugger
Hi, everyone. This is Mildred Rugger from Canyon, Texas, for the 2025 Fall Read of HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.
If you heard my first book byte on Late Migrations: A Natural History of Loss and Love by Margaret Renkl, you may not be surprised to find that the ideas I will examine in this second book byte involve the natural world and the human world. Some of Margaret’s neighbors on the outer edge of suburban Nashville seem to see these two worlds, ideally, as separate. They actively try to keep nature at a distance.
On the surface, it might seem that Late Migrations also separates humans and nature by its very structure. Chronological essays focused on family history are interspersed with undated essays focused on observations of nature. But the reality is more complicated.
In the chronological essays, we can frequently see a connection between the human world and the natural world. For instance, the last one, dated 2018 and entitled “Separation Anxiety” (pp. 209-211), is about Margaret’s sense of loss and grief as she prepares to take her two younger sons back to college across the state.
Throughout the essay, she draws our attention to how her experience echoes experiences in the natural world. Robins spent that summer building nests, protecting eggs, feeding nestlings, and teaching fledglings. At dusk, Margaret hears the robins’ mournful song that seems to lament that the young are no longer dependent. Both Margaret and the adult robins in her neighborhood face empty nests. Humans and nature are part of the same world, where change often means loss.
The connection between the human world and the natural world also holds true in the undated essays. Immediately after “Separation Anxiety,” dated 2018, comes an undated essay entitled “Farewell.” It’s a very short essay and illustrates well how Margaret weaves humans and nature into one connected world. It’s relevant that these observations of nature take place in her backyard and her house. Here’s the whole essay (p. 212):
| Again and again, I have to teach myself the splendor of decay. The cerulean feathers drifting beneath the pine where the bluebird met the Cooper’s hawk for the last time. The muddle of spent spikes on the butterfly bush, winter-dried to the palest rustle. The blighted rose, its tangled canes gone black and monstrous in death, baring now the fine architecture of the cardinal’s nest it sheltered last summer. The gathered dust on the living room piano throwing off light like sparks in the waning day, and the cut lilies’ petals, released in one long sigh. |
Again, humans and nature are part of the same world, where decay and death intermingle with beauty.
This is Mildred Rugger for HPPR Radio Readers Book Club, wishing us all a growing awareness of the beauty of life, even in the midst of grief.
