Helen MacDonald. Vesper Flights. Grove Press, 2020.

I had read good things about the writing of Helen MacDonald. I was happy to receive a copy of Vesper Flights as a serendipitous gift. I can see why her writing has received such positive accolades.

Vesper Flights is a collection of essays. Most of them are about nature in some way. One somewhat humorous essay describes how the author as an idealistic recent college graduate got a job with a falcon captive breeding program. It was hard work and everyone who worked there drove one another crazy, but she lasted four years and learned a lot about hawks—and ostriches and cattle. The experience also reintroduced her to the real world after her time in the ivory tower.

A theme in many of the essays is how people relate to nature, especially to animals. She clearly has a love for birds, but she also emphasizes that if we attempt to anthropomorphize them or try to explain their behavior in human terms, we miss things. For example, traditionally, displays of male birds were seen as a means to attract females. Yet in many cases we have realized that they have more to do with setting up territories than mating.

A few different essays remind us that animals sense things differently. Migrating birds, for example, can sense the earth’s magnetic field to help guide them. They also seem to have an almost instinctive memory of constellations and certain landmarks. We understand how bats use echolocation, but it would be impossible for humans to blindfold themselves and then squeak or holler and expect to learn what objects surround us. These essays often get us to reconsider our perceptions.

MacDonald’s control of language and use of metaphor and simile is exquisite. She is a true prose stylist. For example, as she observes a fledgling swift hesitantly taking a flight for the first time, she writes that it reminds her of an insect emerging from a pupa. There is a struggle, there is flight, and in both cases they have been transformed.

The title essay “Vesper Flights” may be the best in the collection. Here she also describes the flights of swifts at night. It seems that near dusk and dawn they fly low but as the night advances, they go higher and higher into the atmosphere to chase the insects at the higher levels. And then they come down around midnight and rise up again until daybreak approaches. Even here discussing birds, she makes connections with her own childhood fascination with the different levels or “spheres” in the earth’s atmosphere.

One of the most moving essays has nothing to do with nature. It is the story of a young man in Iran who converted to Christianity. He literally was escaping from the back door of his home while the security forces were at the front door. “Through many dangers, toils, and snares” he eventually made it to England. Even the relative safety of that land he has to be alert for gangs connected to Shi’ite Islamists.

I confess that there might be a few duds. One essay, for example, is a kind of speculation on extraterrestrial life in the universe, but there are only two or three of those. Overall, this is a feast for anyone interested in nature or who wants to read good writing. I can easily imagine a few of these ending up in anthologies of rhetoric or literary nonfiction. I cannot help but think of the lines from Joni Mitchell’s “Clouds”:

Something’s lost and something’s gained by living every day.

Sometimes even loss brings growth and understanding.