Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 122
A Nature Book Reader
SARAH THOMAS
Writer, film maker and former Penguin Summer Wayfarer
The Spell Of The Sensuous
by David Abram
I think The Spell of The
Sensuous would have made
me expand into the world
around me wherever and
whenever I had read it, but
a particular coming together
of events lent my reading
of it a potency which has
been far reaching. I was in
the final stages of making a
documentary about natural
burial, and had talked openly
with many people about
death, and what it means
to be and remain part of
something greater in life
and in death. I had also,
after a short spell working in
London, moved to Iceland
to a small house two degrees
below the Arctic Circle in a
village of 250 people because
it had enchanted me. The
chimes and echoes of Abram’s
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words were a constant
walking companion in this
new world in which I found
myself. They gave credence
to the depth of my looking,
listening, and being in this
place, while deepening it still
further, and helped me to
discover it anew and anew.
Ultimately, Abrams’
words help us remember
what we can know so many
times and still ignore: that
we are nature, not separate
from it, and our attempts to
pretend otherwise is what
makes us societally unwell.
Most memorable was his
story about travelling in
a Landrover across the
Australian outback with an
Aboriginal elder. As they
traversed his ancestral land
and his Dreaming, the elder
