12/06/2024
Move Over Ed Abby, Sy Montgomery’s Newest Book Exercises her Story-telling Chops and Her Inner Philosopher in a Big Way.
“(To) Wait . . . an ironic verb, an action word, used to describe inaction. Derived from the French “to wake, to become alert to” To wait and to wake are not opposites but twins. We love NOW because it IS now. “Now” holds at once all of time in its fullness” ~ Sy Montgomery, “Of Time and Turtles”
Turtles have been around since the time of the dinosaurs, more than 200 million years ago. Even then they may have been subject to the whims of “traffic” but they have, nonetheless, withstood the test of time.
To many Native American nations, from the Navajo of the southwestern US to the Abenaki and Iroquois in my own northeast lineage, North America’s indigenous people are tied to turtles. The continent itself is often referred to as Turtle Island based on various legends that Turtle delivered North America to earth upon its back.
So you may presume, rightly, that I would eagerly anticipate this latest book by New Hampshire’s own Sy Montgomery.
After having read, listened to, and reread Sy Montgomery’s newest book, “Of Time and Turtles - Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell,” I am thoroughly convinced that had she been born into the Iroquois Nation, a matrilinial society, she would have been seen as a mystic and given a fitting honorific, something akin to “Speaks with Turtles.”
Of Time and Turtles - Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell
Written by Sy Montgomery, Illustrated by Matt Patterson
It's Turtle Time! Watch for them on the roads and help them out.
