Wandering Time was a gift from a friend of mine, and it couldn’t have arrived at a more necessary time. I’m not generally known as a nature loving sort of guy. Quite the opposite, actually. I’m known as a nature hating kind of guy. That’s not strictly true, it’s just the reputation I’ve acquired over the years by doing things like not wanting to go camping, preferring to do indoor things like read books and watch films, and leaving my rural logging town for the big scary city of Toronto. The truth is, I love nature in small doses. When I lived in Waterloo I’d go to the park to watch the ducks when I wanted to relax, and here in Toronto I go out and watch the squirrels as they frolic. They’re very calming. During the winter months, I was going through a personal crisis that was particularly bitter and troubling. I needed a way to de-stress, and the usual methods weren’t working. I couldn’t even go out to look at the squirrels, because it was winter. It was then that this book, an upbeat collection of journal entries and meditations on nature, arrived in my mailbox. If I couldn’t go out and explore what passes for nature in downtown Toronto (there’s some lovely little nooks full of trees and bushes and squirrels and birds, actually), I could at least read about somebody else exploring a more rugged landscape.
I don’t know anything about Urrea, except that he’s a Latin American writer who grew up in the inner city and moved eventually to a more rural lifestyle. Wandering Time is essentially a much-edited journal of his encounters with man and (mostly) nature over the course of a full year, divided by seasons rather than more precise chronological measurements. It was a soothing book. Some of Urrea’s observations were a little trite, but that’s part of the charm. Wandering Time is gentle, meandering, and fun in the same way that many of the most simple pleasures left over from childhood can be fun. Urrea may be a great poet, an author of strong literature, but it doesn’t really show through in this book. There was very little sophisticated or challenging about it; it’s more like a cool bath on a hot day. I wouldn’t recommend this book to everyone, but it made me feel good at a time when I needed cheering up.
Next up, The Steve Machine, by Mike Hoolboom.
