I really enjoyed this essay. I thought it cropped up quite a few thoughts and questions for me and was written beautifully.
The writing- that was phenomenal. The way she described any given thing was exceptional. Occasionally I find a writer that puts emotions and thoughts parallel to mine in writing and I am pleasantly stunned. Her description of the young boars was probably my favorite: "The young skittered along, lumps of muscled fat on tiny hooves. They reminded me of snowsuited toddlers on new skates." That's just awesome.
A major theme in this essay was death. Her thoughts are quite similar to mine. I find myself constantly wishing there was something after death, as she described in the essay, but my reason stops me at the door, so to speak. I always come up undecided. Anyway, I found her excerpts on death pretty interesting, and identified with her longing to be a skunk, weirdly enough. Or at least someone who lives in total confidence and "serene belligerence--past hunters, past death overhead, past death all around."
Another section of writing brought up some thoughts in me. Erdrich writes about not knowing what the skunk snuggled up to her was dreaming about... I mean, what does anyone dream? We can never really know. Not any other species, not any other human, not our best friends, family members, not anyone. You never know what's going on with anyone but yourself. There's always more to the story than you see or could ever see. Not really an important theme throughout, but it just sent me on a wave of thought that I guess is worth mentioning.
I really enjoyed the bit about obstacles and how they relate to life and our dreams. I won't elaborate too much, as I'd just be reiterating was was written. But I will say they were a couple of cool thoughts: "The obstacles that we overcome define us," and "A good question to ask of a dream is: What are the obstacles that have been removed to make this extraordinary scene possible?"
On a lighter note... I would choose to be a lion if I had to be a different animal than a human. They are way cool!
I agree with you that she explained things very well in her essay, and while she did have some good thoughts on some things, I felt that it was all lost in mounds of useless descriptions. There is too much of a good thing. I like your connection about death in the article. It was an interesting anecdote in the whole sea of her thoughts. I just think that article would have been better if it was better organized and more precise on the important thoughts.
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