Need a break from politics? Marvel at the ‘Wedding Treasures’ of nature

If you, too, have been focusing too much on the presidential election, you may be ready for a change of heart. Complete AssetsKatherine Rundell’s rare book (originally published under the title The Golden Mole UK) lifts readers out of the here and now and invites us to train our eyes on wider horizons.

Rundell is a press event. His 2013 book for middle grade children The roof he was inspired by his adventures as a first-grader in Oxford, where he climbed brick walls and lowered water pumps to see views of the “city of dreams” from above. Recently, Rundell wrote Super-Infinite, the autobiography of the metaphysical poet John Donne, as well as the best-selling fantasy novel, titled Impossible creatures.

In short, Rundell is something of a Renaissance woman who writes with the elegance and learning that characterizes the era. Complete Assets it’s a zoo, a collection of creatures, rare and unusual – all of them more amazing than you would expect; all of whom, as Rundell tells us are “at risk or [contain] endangered subspecies – because there is almost no creature on earth, right now, that isn’t.”

Rundell begins his book with an epigraph from a writer whose reputation is about to die: the British essayist and mystery writer GK Chesterton: “The world will not starve for want of miracles; but only because of the want of a miracle.”

The following are 23 very short essays on creatures from womb to womb; raccoon to tuna. For anyone whose capacity for wonder could use a start, Rundell’s writings are essential reading. For example, listen to these sentences from the opening paragraph of his essay on the swift – a common creature so named because it is the fastest bird that flies:

The swift ones are more like the sky than any other bird. Weighing less than a hen’s egg, with sickle-like wings and a forked tail, it eats and sleeps on the wing. … [Swifts] The only birds that do that, when they bump into each other for a short time, and in order to bathe, hunt for clouds and fly in the rain, slowly, the wings are straight.

As you can hear, Rundell’s articles are not just Wikipedia articles about nature; instead, they are deeply emotional, lyrical, often witty, and sometimes produce the living wonders they explore. Her essay “Hermit Crab,” for example, begins with a shudder: “Maybe, it was a hermit crab that ate Amelia Earhart.”

Rundell continues to explain: It appears that on the uninhabited island in the Western Pacific where Earhart’s plane may have gone down and where 13 human bones (but, only 13) were found of the same size Earhart’s to this day is a “colonial home.” of the coconut hermit crab: the largest crab in the world… The oldest [crabs] it lives more than a hundred, and grows up to 40 inches in diameter: too big to fit in a bathtub, just the right size for a nightmare.”

The relationship, both cruel and beautiful, of the animal world and humans, is the message that emerges from these essays. Earhart’s fate, however, is, of course, the non-human beings who suffer most from contact with us. “The biggest lie that people have ever told is that the Earth is ours, and we can give it to us. … We have to stop telling that lie because the world is not normal, and you are well.”

Complete Assets makes readers see, see wellsome of the magical creatures with whom we share this perishable world. Like any smart environmentalist, Rundell can also cause panic with an opportunity. I leave you, then, with Rundell’s tribute to the Greenland shark, “the planet’s oldest vertebrate backbone”; an animal that lives more than 500 years. Rundell says:

… I find their idea very hopeful. They will see us through whatever chaos we may be living through now, … and they will live through the unimaginable things that will come next: changes, disclosures, potential release. I see their beauty and it pleases me: they go on. These slow, smelly, half-blind animals are probably the closest thing to eternity on this planet.