What can turtles teach us about time, patience, and wisdom? What can we learn about the mysteries of consciousness by observing animals? How can we open our senses and embrace the interconnectedness of all life on Earth?
Author Sy Montgomery and illustrator Matt Patterson are naturalists, adventurers, and creative collaborators. Montgomery has published over thirty acclaimed nonfiction books for adults and children and received numerous honors, including lifetime achievement awards from the Humane Society and the New England Booksellers Association.
Patterson’s illustrations have been featured in several books and magazines, such as Yankee Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur. He is the recipient of Roger Tory Peterson Wild American Art Award, National Outdoor Book Award for Nature and the Environment, and other honors. Most recently, Patterson provided illustrations for Freshwater Fish of the Northeast.
Their joint books are Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell and The Book of the Turtle. Montgomery’s other books include The Soul of an Octopus, The Hawk’s Way and The Secrets of the Octopus (published in conjunction with a National Geographic TV series).
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
How did you come to write about turtles? And how did the project evolve during COVID while we were all in isolation?
SY MONTGOMERY
I did know that I wanted this book about turtles to also be about time. It's one of two big questions in philosophy. The one big mystery that I had tackled in a previous book, Soul of an Octopus, was the mystery of consciousness. The other big hard problem in philosophy is time. And I felt, you know, who better to lead me in this exploration than turtles, who live in some cases for centuries, who've been around...they arose with dinosaurs, yet they survived the asteroid impact. They are the embodiment of patience and wisdom.
MATT PATTERSON
I love animals and spending time with animals. My dad was a biology teacher, so I grew up around animals and constantly learning about them, and I've just been fascinated my whole life with animals, especially turtles and fish. There's so much we can learn and observe when you spend time and open your mind to new things.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
What for you is the importance of the environmental humanities?
MONTGOMERY
I mean, your mother, your concept of God, all of this I feel for our Earth. More than if Earth were a person. And I grew up Christian, I grew up Methodist, and I still pray and read the Bible. If you believe that there is any Creator, what better thing can you do with your life than honor the creation? And if you don't believe in that, but you understand the facts of evolution – which I also understand – again, what better use of a life than to honor the Big Life with a capital L? And what better way to enjoy it? There's so much that we can each do, and it is a joy for me.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
What are your thoughts on the idea that non-human animals might possess a more advanced form of intuitive and collective intelligence, enabling them to communicate over distances and suggesting consciousness might extend beyond the individual?
MONTGOMERY
I think that animals certainly don't have all these widgets demanding their attention like we do. Their spirits are just not as atomized as ours are. We have so many little things flickering at the edge of our consciousness. When we pay attention to anything, we're not paying that deep attention, but animals are. And they have senses that we do not. I mean, they're aware of chemical cues that we completely miss. They can hear sounds we don't hear. They see colors and kinds of light we can't perceive, etc. But we all share a common ancestor. We share 90 percent of our genetic material with all placental mammals. So we really are all family. So, seeing how animals do things, I think we have more access to that kind of consciousness than we allow ourselves to understand.
It makes a human feel less lonely. So many humans I know, they're just suffering terribly from loneliness even though they're in a sea of other humans. Well, I never feel lonely. And I can be alone, so-called, in a landscape with no other human anywhere, and I feel nested and safe and at home. And I know you do, too, because there are all these other lives around us. And when you think of, as Mary Oliver said, "our wild and precious life," I mean, I certainly cherish my one precious single life. But the life with a capital L all around me is so much more precious and so much more glorious, and being part of that just opens up my soul and frees me from everything.
PATTERSON
I just want to inspire people to look and see what's out there and be in awe. This planet is precious and we need to protect it and not just destroy it like we're doing right now. So, my art is to shine a spotlight on certain species of animals and introduce them to those who maybe don't know them and don't get to see them in the wild.
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When you listen to your instincts, it's the voices of your ancestors guiding you. The narration of your ancestors and not just your human ancestors going all the way back to when everybody was just one cell. And being connected to your origin in that way is very different from the Western world in which you're off like an arrow, and you've left all that behind.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
People feel that perhaps AI will help us bridge that barrier of animal communication. What are your hopes for that?
MONTGOMERY
I would love it if AI could decode some animal languages that humans have not been able to do, like the whistles and clicks of whales and dolphins. Our human limit limitations have blinded us to so much of what animals are saying and telling us.
More than anything, though, and I don't know if AI can do this, but we need something to talk our leaders into having some sense about preserving our world. Anything that AI can bring to ameliorate global climate change, to catch the poachers who are killing turtles and other wildlife, and anything AI can teach us about how not to consume the entire world like some horrible fire...let's leave some space for the animals.
Maybe, I mean, who knows? As a writer, you know, AI also makes me nervous because I could be replaced by some program that just studies my 38 books and maybe can write the 39th one instead of me. That makes me a bit nervous. But that cat is out of the bag. That horse is out of the barn, and AI is with us. And I think the thing that needs doing in this world by humanity, more than anything else, is to stop the wholesale destruction of our planet. Let's use everything in our arsenal to do that, to stop that.
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I had a good friend in college who was from Kuwait, and I loved learning about her culture. If all your friends are just your same age, your same sex, your same socioeconomic group, your same race, and your same language, that's not going to broaden you very well. I feel that way when I cross species divides, too, and just start to learn, well, what's it like to be you?
Unlocking Your Curiosity for Other Animals
A friend had asthma as a child, and she couldn't have a pet, but she loved animals. So she watched the ants crawl on the asphalt roof of her apartment when she was a kid. And she is a biologist now who studies tree kangaroos in Papua New Guinea, but it all started with watching ants. So there is wildness and wonder all around us and we can all help preserve that wildness and wonder.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS · ONE PLANET PODCAST
You really impart a sense of joy and wonder in your writing and art. Tell us about the teachers who inspired you on your path?
MONTGOMERY
Mine were almost all animals, starting with my dog, Molly. She was a Scottish Terrier, and she was like the sister, the teacher, the angel I never had. And she was the one that showed me how to survive my childhood. In Australia, three wild emus showed me the path that I needed to take to not work in an office. And to work on my own. I had worked at a newspaper for five years, had an opportunity to go to Australia, joined Earthwatch, and had some field experience during a two-week vacation in the Australian Outback. And the principal investigator at the end of those two weeks says, "I can see on fire, you're just on fire to do field research. If you ever wanted to do it, I can't hire you, and I can't give you any money, but if you ever wanted to research wild animals in Australia, you could stay at my camp, and I'd give you food."
So I quit my job, and I moved to a tent in the Outback. And I ended up following these three emus around, just seeing what they did all day. No one really had ever done that before. And they showed me, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And animals have always been my teachers, my healers, my mentors.
A great big fat pig, Christopher Hogwood, 750 pound pig with razor sharp tusks. He showed me what family really was about because my family, my human family, disowned me when I married my husband. So that was the end of them, and I did not want to have children because of human overpopulation, but I had lots of children in my life. And still do, and I learned how much fun they were from Christopher Hogwood, our pig, because they would come over and pet him and feed him and do pig spa. And until then, having grown up as an only child on an army base, I had no idea how much fun kids were.
I didn't really like children when I was a child. So at every turn, there were animals helping me and guiding me. I also did have some great human teachers. One in particular, Mr. Clarkson, who was my journalism teacher at my second high school. He was fantastic, and he ended up moving to New Hampshire and I got to see him later in life. I've had a mixed species family and my teachers have had claws and scales and fur and tails. My husband is a writer as well, a better one than me, and we have wonderful children in our lives, but they're ones that we chose, not ones that just got randomly assigned to us genetically.
PATTERSON
Now and in the future, young people are important, and I would want them to know you're not separate from the natural world or the planet. You're part of it, and you don't have to go far places to see amazing things. You can live in a city, and you can see ants crawling on the roof or pigeons or squirrels. There's stuff to see everywhere.
MONTGOMERY
I would like them to know young people. You are not the leaders of tomorrow. You are the leaders of today. Children have more power than they realize. Even though you may not be able to vote, you have enormous influence in your family, and you can have enormous influence in your community. So no matter what your talent, no matter what your interest, no matter what your age, you can make a difference in this world, and make a difference for animals, for plants, and for people.
