Ruth feels trapped by the natural world, “But here, on the sparsely populated island, human culture barely existed and then only as the thinnest veneer. Engulfed by the thorny roses and massing bamboo, she stared out the window and felt like she’d stepped into a malevolent fairy tale “(61). Oliver seems to heal and thrive living in the forest, but Ruth is estranged by the world around her, unable to read or feel connected to her environment. She obsessively scours the internet, looking for Nao in the names of the dead from the recent tsunami that devastated Japan. In From Kung Fu To Hip Hop, Kato describes Nature as the ultimate Other of capitalism,  “An awestricken reminder of this has been mercilessly destructive and erratic tendency of Mother Nature, caused by the overdevelopment that impaired the ecological equilibrium of the planet to a catastrophic degree” (Kato 111). Ruth feels caged by the entities around her, yet it is the circuit of the oceanic gyre that carries Nao’s diary to her. It is Nature itself that breaks down the boundaries between these two women.

To Nao the natural world is an escape from the cruelty of her classmates and her sense of isolation. Every morning before school she stops at a temple, “We were right in the middle of Tokyo, but when you got close to the temple, it was like stepping into a pocket of ancient humid air, which had somehow gotten preserved like a bubble in ice, with all the sounds and smells still trapped inside it” (46). There is a sense of calm, of ancientness and connection to ancestors. Nao describes the temple, especially the spot on the bench in front of the stunted maple tree as being “safe”.

Our reading from A Tale For the Time Being inspired me to think about my own connection to the Pacific Northwest:

I have come to crave the tang of salt in the air, the loamy scent of wet soil. Every summer we swim in the bioluminescence, the hoarse barking of bull seals echo menacingly as blue light blooms and swirls around us. The plankton cling to our damp bodies like otherworldly LEDs, looking strikingly similar to pinpricks of starlight. When I was 19, I swore I’d never seen anything more beautiful. I think about how in many ways I have grown up in this place. The woods behind my house a refuge. The sharp scent of cedar tugging at my clothes as wind howls through the canopy. I feel calm here, back pressed up against the roots of Grandma Maple, the oldest tree. Green helicopter seeds spiral in gentle arcs around my head, and in winter it is so quiet. The bare branches look like the sprawled legs of monstrous insects, hanging heavy with moss and lichen. Blackberry twines itself around the spokes of my ribcage, the dark succulent berries are a dizzying rise, a pull.