Louise Erdrich - "Skunk Dreams"

I've always had mixed feelings about nature. I really do enjoy the outdoors; I love the breathtaking feeling of being in the mountains and peering over vast, immeasurable landscapes, the soft feel of grass seeping between my bare toes, the unmatchable beauty of the daily sun-rise and sun-set.

But I've never been a very big fan of sharing it. I understand the importance of maintaining wild ecosystems, but it's kinda inconvenient that some of the most amazing natural places also happen to house an abundance of pesky and potentially dangerous critters.

Nature plays a big role in "Skunk Dreams," where Louise Erdrich expresses herself as someone reformed by years of urban living, overcome with the desire to escape the bonds of this world, both physical and metaphorical. This, combined with an epiphany reached about life, gained through the unforgettable experience of sleeping in a football field and suddenly having a skunk curl up next to her, fuel her to write this winding essay that covers aspects of her life to explain this desire, while branching off at several points to cover various psychological concepts. Concepts like how a skunk proudly and carelessly wanders through suburban neighborhoods in simple, unafraid search of its next meal, or how dreams may be us traveling into another world entirely, or how our entire lives might be a dream. (in which case, would waking up be the afterlife?)

After moving to New England, where grasslands, streams, and trees surrounded her, even though she greatly enjoyed them, Louise felt the unshakeable urge to tear them down. To reach out and touch the horizon, to see the great vastness that lay beyond, where perhaps she might gain the answer to all her questions about life, the universe, and what lies beyond.

But, accepting the reality that she may never know such a wonder, she found solace in trees and nature. Walking through some local woods, she stumbled upon a fence that changed her entire outlook in life. A fence that gave her a new purpose, a new obsession, a new desire.

Years ago, in a cheap motel that she was staying in while she was traveling around, teaching poetry to delinquents for a living, in what was surely an attempt to keep her thoughts off of the freezing cold night and disproportionately low thickness of sheets, coats, and blankets insulating her from the frigid air, her mind dreamed of a fence. A patchwork quilt of various wires, barbed and chain-linked, beyond it lay miles of trees, and magnificent elk that took one look at her before fleeing into the vast woods.

Now, standing there with an overwhelming sensation of déjà vu, she stared at the same exact scene replaying itself like a rewound VHS tape, like the whole situation was just another dream that she still lives today. With newfound purpose, she truly felt at home, and now spends her free time exploring this nature reserve. While she expresses slight disapproval of how the animals are nearly domesticated in the safe areas while they are hunted in the rest of the 750-acre forest, she still finds comfort in such nearby nature for its supply of such great variations of living creatures, and how her old friend the skunk still just wanders freely like it owns the place, without a care or fear in the world. Louise truly longs to be a skunk, and that's the biggest, most simple point of this essay. The combination of uselessness and repulsing skunk perfume mean that nobody except for other skunks would even dare mess with her, and that's just the way she likes it.