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Go Wild
Chaos Reigns
GEORGIA NATURALIST JANISSE RAY DISCUSSES HER NEW BOOK
GEORGIA IS THE PLAYOFF FAVORITE AFTER A WILD RIVALRY WEEK
By Rebecca McCarthy news@flagpole.com
By Cy Brown news@flagpole.com
fter her first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, garnered an American Book Award in 2000, the recognition catapulted Appling County native Janisse Ray onto the national stage as a lyrical environmental writer and helped her create a career of writing, teaching and activism. Ray comes to the UGA School of Environmental Design, in room 130 of the Jackson Street building, at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 2 to read from and discuss her eighth book, Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans. It’s her only stop in Athens on a whirlwind book tour, and it promises to be as enjoyable as Ray herself. If John McPhee can compile his various New Yorker pieces into a book, Ray thought, why couldn’t she do the same? So she gathered essays she had already written. In collecting her work, she looked for common threads and themes and settled on the pursuit of wildness. CHRISTOPHER IAN SMITH
The book is divided into three parts: “Meridian,” “Migration” and “Magnitude.” In “Meridian,” Ray takes us to Montana, where she earned an MFA in environmental writing from the University of Montana. She ventures into the Bob Marshall Wilderness; to Wild Horse Island in Flathead Lake; into the Yaak, an area in the extreme Northwest corner of Montana, where her friend and fellow writer Rick Bass has lived and fought for wilderness for decades; and to an isolated cabin in Helena National Forest. Having lived in Montana and trekked into the Bob Marshall, I found her story about encountering a herd of elk there during a rainstorm—the animals didn’t smell or really see Ray and her husband—both mystical and moving.
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She writes: “Looking back, I remember those moments as hypnosis. I was under the spell of wilderness and under the power spell of the elk. If the cow had asked me to go with her, I would have. For this one fleeting interlude, I belonged to her world.” I won’t talk about the other Montana stories Ray shares, but trust me, after reading them, you’ll want to visit, as I do most every day. Please refrain from doing so. Confine your Montana visits to Internet searches—the state is being loved to death. In the “Migration” section, we accompany Ray to the Nicoya Peninsula in western Costa Rica; to the avian and aquatic life of Belize; to the desert Southwest; to Michoacán in southern Mexico to see monarch butterflies; and to a dinner party with friends in Sitka, AK, where almost everything served is locally sourced. The people Ray introduces us to are as memorable as the environment she shows us. I really wish I could have been on these trips with her, but in reading her account, you can almost feel you were. The last section, “Magnitude,” has several stories from the South, close to Ray’s home in Tatnall County, about 50 miles west of Savannah. We see her paddling a kayak through Okefenokee and towing behind her a sick child in another kayak. “Okefenokee Swamp is a large bog, a depression, a peat-maker, a mosaic of peat batteries—a saucer, not a cup. There is very little solid ground, only floating sod. The sphagnum that defines the bog is so thick it appears weight-bearing, but when you step onto it, you sink.” On the Appalachian Trail near Springer Mountain, darkness overtakes her, unprepared, and she removes her shoes to feel the trail on the earth. She muses about darkness, writing, “I have found out that what we miss, in our love for daylight and things of day, is a nocturnal natural history of fabulous proportion, Spring and fall, birds fill the night sky, mostly unseen. High in the universe yellow-billed cuckoos migrate, their bodies silhouetted against harvest moons.” No matter where she travels, Ray finds wildness. Or maybe she travels to places renowned for wildness. In Crystal Springs, FL, we meet manatees. In an Oxford, MS cemetery, Ray goes spider hunting with two women who love all varieties of arachnids. “My favorite parts of nature writing are moments of reflection, when I get to philosophize a little and think ‘Why did it happen?’” Ray says. “I feel really grateful that I get to answer that question, ‘What does it mean?’ For me, that’s the best part of being a writer.” f
FLAGPOLE.COM | DECEMBER 1, 2021
In the final week of the 2021 regular season, the gods of the sport saw fit to bless us with great rivalry game after great rivalry game, many of which had College Football Playoff implications. To start off the day, Michigan pulled the old switcheroo on Ohio State. The Wolverines defeated the Buckeyes for the first time since 2011, eliminating OSU from playoff contention and catapulting themselves into that spot. Then Auburn took Alabama the distance in the Iron Bowl. The Tide needed a 97-yard drive and four overtimes to overcome the Tigers. Finally, Bedlam lived up to the name as Oklahoma State beat Oklahoma to keep the Pokes in the playoff hunt.
accomplishments in the regular season stand above and beyond every other team. Which isn’t to say there isn’t a whole lot to play for. Of course, there is the prize of being crowned SEC champs for the 14th time in program history. But there is also the more tangible reward of slaying Nick Saban and his Crimson Dragon once and for all, likely keeping them out of the playoff in the process. I’m going to say something that is incontrovertibly true but is still difficult to get out because of the deep psychological scarring that has been inflicted on me by the Alabama Crimson Tide: Georgia should win this game. I won’t say Georgia will win this game. But Georgia should win this game. TONY WALSH
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Georgia is running away from the college football pack like Brock Bowers ran away from Georgia Tech.
Thanks to the chaos wrought this weekend and throughout the season, Ohio State, Oklahoma and Clemson—with 14 playoff appearances among them—will miss the College Football Playoff. There’s a chance Alabama, with six playoff appearances, might miss out, too. In their place, we could be looking at new blood, such as Cincinnati, Michigan and Oklahoma State. Meanwhile, the Georgia Damn Bulldogs stand above the fray. While other teams have bloodied and broken themselves on the regular season battlefield, the Dawgs strolled through it, picking off stragglers as they went, trampling the weak and hurdling the dead. Georgia went undefeated in the regular season for the first time since 1980, and the Dawgs were every bit as dominant as their record indicates. They have outscored opponents 443–83, and rank first nationally in defensive points per play and third in offensive points per play. The defense is one of the greatest in college football history, and the offense is one of the best in the country this year, once you get past the 5’11” former walk-on starting under center. Now only a game stands between the Dawgs and the College Football Playoff. Notice I said “game” and not “win.” Barring a cataclysm heretofore not beheld by human eyes, we’re in, baby. Georgia’s
Based on everything we’ve seen this season, Georgia enters the game as the better team and the favorite. The Dawgs have fared better against common opponents, crushing Arkansas, Tennessee and Auburn, while each of them tested Bama to varying degrees. Georgia is better in both trenches. Alabama just went to war with Auburn for a full game plus four overtimes while Georgia was sitting its starters by the third quarter against Georgia Tech. Every sign points to a Georgia win. But that aforementioned deep psychological scarring has led me to doubt any matchup with Saban and the Tide. I don’t care about the stats or matchups, a team with that much talent coached by that dude can beat any team in the country in any given week. But that doesn’t mean they will. And that doesn’t mean we don’t have an advantage. We can play loose because we can lose and keep on trucking. Our consolation prize is another chance to beat the Tide down the road. Bama has to win or its season is finished. Maybe that gives them the extra edge they need to be at their best. Or maybe it causes them to play a little too tight and try to force a little too much against a defense that’ll take several miles should you give it an inch. All signs point to Georgia. Stay above the fray, and let’s finish this off. f