1

Overall Winning Essay, 2013 Essay Competition

INSPIRATIONS FROM A TOAD

By Isaac Yuen Writer from Vancouver, Canada.

Its horse, I think.

As if knowing makes a difference.

The trim man next to me paces around the mound of manure, wearing a mask of horror

and dismay. I cant help but grin, not being the one with low bike shoes, white sport socks, and

exposed calves. Theres no way this will end well. I run up to the top of the wet pile and start

shoveling, feeling my boots sink and stick into mud that isnt mud. Below me, the man sighs.

Splatter ensues.

Sunday morning, and were volunteering to ready a local high schools half-acre vegetable

garden for winter planting. Moving manure happens to be the task that needs doing. Its not so

bad. After a few minutes, my eyes stop watering, and only a sort of sour tang lingers in the

nose. The work does me good, unravels hidden knots, and keeps the urge to stare at screens all

day at bay. Cheered on by the steady warmth of the waning summer sun, I heave heaps of

partially digested grass and straw into waiting wheelbarrows. Other volunteers dump the

2

amendment on long beds to be planted later with a crop of overwintering garlic. The manure

will have the winter to break down into compost.

Thoughts of the changing seasons bring to mind the image of a particular animal. Nothing

fantastical or overly grotesque, just a common toad, the ordinary, stubby, bumpy sort with its

one curious trait being that it is in deep sleep, balled up inside a frozen pocket of mud, chilled

down into inertia. Its eyes are shuttered secrets, only to be revealed upon springs arrival. I

think of this toad because I have been reading Orwell.

Not George Orwell the novelist, immortalized in canon for his grim dystopia and porcine

despot, but the prolific essayist who wrote out of personal experience on everything from

shooting an elephant to brewing a proper pot of tea. There is an air of quiet authority to his

voice, one that conveys easy strength in service of hard truth, is plainspoken yet unforgettable,

and as clear as an unhurried mountain stream. As I carve small hollows in the dark steaming

pile on which I stand, passages from one of my favorite pieces, Some Thoughts on the Common

Toad, awaken from slumber to fill my drifting mind.

Great essayists are masters at the opener, usually in the form of an uncannily accurate

observation or an impossible statement that dares the readers to read on. Orwell begins Toad

with a combination of both, first likening the common toad emerging from hibernation to a

fasting Anglo-Catholic, then by declaring that the groggy amphibian has just about the most

beautiful eye of any living creature.

While I feel unqualified to speak about the former claim, the latter has strong merit. Ever

a champion for the neglected and downtrodden, Orwell manages to find awesome beauty in a

3

creature synonymous with ugliness, likening its golden eyes to chrysoberyl gemstones. In one of

most unusual and memorable introductions I have ever come across, Orwell reminds me that

natures splendors exist everywhere, even in one who will never become prince, if only I have

the presence of mind to see.

After a brief snack break, I trade in my shovel for a pair of gloves and help weed the

garden perimeter. Stretching out my back, I decide to heed Orwells suggestion and take a few

minutes to hone my skills of observation. Settling into a relaxed focus, I catch the blur of a

squirrel by the borders between garden and lawn, jet-black and glossy-coated. It bounds from

ten-foot shadows of towering sunflowers to the dappled shade of its oaken abode, stopping

momentarily to gnaw on one of hundreds of acorns strewn about the school grounds, feasting

on summers decadence in preparation for winters privations.

Closer by, the drunken veers of a bumblebee attracts my eye. I follow her as she touches

down on the delicate lip of a pink thimble, one of a dozen foxglove flowers vertically arranged

on the spike of a stalk. Up close, she looks both fearsome and absurd, shocks of blacks and

yellows blurred together by a fuzziness of body. Unsatisfied with her dining choice, she takes

off to dance awhile on the spiny-urchin centre of a purple coneflower before moving on,

disappearing into the gleam of high-rise glass on the horizon.

Closer still, behind the broad furry leaves of a comfrey bush, a constellation of cocooned

flies on a gossamer galaxy. A garden spider sits at the centre, practicing the unflappable

stillness spiders do even as my breath sways her universe. On her mottled back, five creamy

4

white dots form a sort of raised cross. Are others of her kind so anointed, or is this a

serendipitous encounter, never to be repeated?

Enough daydreams. Encroaching patches of morning glory and thistles await, and I settle

into the weeding. The intimate solitude afforded by the task soothes. Down low and up close, a

scoop of soil I excavate gains resolution, turning into a textured terrain of cracks and clumps

held loose together by a weave of root hairs. I sense the soft tremors of an annoyed earthworm

through the fabric of my glove, the lone visible representative of a community of creatures that

call this handful of earth home.

The lactic burn in my thighs causes me to sit back from my crouch and feel the cool damp

of the grass. All at once my observations catches up with me, and I am overwhelmed by the

multitude of worlds both wild and grand that exists unnoticed in the heart of my city. There are

stories everywhere.

After going in detail the mating habits of his beloved amphibian, Orwell steps back to

muse on natures influence on the bruised London cityscape during World War II. Ignorant of

suffering and despair, he notes, spring arrives as it always does, free for all to enjoy, bringing

about a measure of comfort to those made prisoners by the collective madness that is war. He

tells of the seasons transformative power on the citys people and creatures, describing green

elders sprouting from bombed husks, hues freshening on ashen sparrows, even blues

brightening on policemens uniforms. Each image is exact and rendered without flourish;

together they combine to evoke an indelible impression of natures ability to bring about

renewal and hope, even to the heart of a war-weary city.

5

I weed on. A keen gust knocks dried leaves off the bigleaf maples overhead. It is the first

chill of fall I can recall, and as I listen to the clatter of papery rain, like echoes of waves breaking

against hard cliffs heard from afar, my mind returns to toads unseen, and I wonder if they are

sensing what I am feeling, that tinge of ennui that accompanies shortening days and changing

shadows. Does the soft buzz of instinct beckon them to leave their puddles and ponds and

return to accept earths dark embrace? Only they know.

The fact that Orwell felt it necessary to defend his foray into nature in the middle of Toad

speaks to the general mentality of his time. This was an era where nature appreciation was

dismissed as sentimental tripe, only uttered by urban sophisticates who had never suffered the

backbreaking work of tilling the fields. To wax nonsense about toads and kestrels and daffodils

when humanity was about to embark on a golden age of atomics and possibilities, critics

argued, was at best backwards thinking, and at worst, politically dangerous. Having just beaten

back the specter of Fascism, humanity could not afford to be nostalgic. Social and technological

progress should be, must be made.

Yet Orwell saw the potential peril of this line of thinking when taken to its logical extreme.

A utopia in which one cannot stop to admire natures simple pleasures, he notes, is not one

worth pursuing. In what is arguably the climax of Toad, Orwell pens a statement that is part

personal conviction and part prescient warning, cutting hard against the grain of the prevailing

narrative of his time. To lose ones childhood love for the natural world, he cautions, is to

succumb to our own hubris and be left with nothing to invest our energies in but ego worship

and hatred. To forego appreciation for mysteries and wonders beyond our control, he

6

contends, is to let slip the chance for a more peaceful and content future. Seven decades later, I

find his message to have lost none of its potency.

There is always more work to be done in a garden. After weeding, I help others work ripe

compost into the vegetable beds with rakes and trenching shovels. It is a messy menial affair,

but I am grateful for the chance to, at least for a few hours, toil in soil instead of romanticizing

connecting to nature in abstract, from afar. A woman walks by with a tub filled with round and

misshapen squash large and small. I look not to her face but at her hands. Etched onto

blackened, beautiful palms: Twin networks of dark highways fanning out into thin lanes and

dead ends. There are no sophisticates here.

As we work, I glance over at the results of prior labor done on nearby beds: Rows of

paddle-sized leaves of curly kale and crinkled chard; cherry tomato vines twisting on wire cages,

heavy with bunches of red and green marbles; vivid beet greens nourished by their blood-red

stalks. Three months ago, this was a turf desert bereft of diversity and purpose; today, it is a

verdant, fertile, intricately interwoven web of life. My shoulders ache and my back throbs, but

my heart soars. People did this. We are doing it.

As we finish for the day, the event organizer thanks us for spending our Sunday to help

bring her vision to fruition. She explains that this half-acre half-farm, half-garden is the

culmination of a partnership between her non-profit organization and the local school board.

Before departing, she asks us to envision the space, one day, next spring, when classes will

stroll through to learn about biology, poetry, and the industrial revolution, when people in the

community will buy fresh vegetables from the on-site farmstand, and when first generation

7

immigrants who speak no English will share their farming knowhow with practicing urban

farmers. She asks us to imagine a future where these market gardens will exist at schools across

North America, reconnecting people and communities to the processes and relationships that

sustain us all.

It is possible, she says. We are doing it, right now.

Back home and freshly showered, I scan the days news: A potential airstrike on a foreign

country. Dismissal of concerns around a major oil pipeline. Revelations of government

partnerships with industry to circumvent privacy safeguards. Shaken, I walk over to my

bookshelf, flip open the well-thumbed collection, and read the last line of Toad to myself,

aloud:

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling

through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is

still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as

they disapprove of the process are able to prevent it.

I consider this passage to be Orwell at his finest: An unflinching harbinger of abhorrent

truths, but one who speaks with a quiet, unshakeable defiance. Some Thoughts on the Common

Toad is not merely a meditation on toads and spring, but is also one mans emphatic assertion

of natures immunity in the face of human folly and tyranny. Abuses of power, horrors of war,

and the calls of propaganda come round and round again, but the earth and sunlight, the leaves

of chestnuts, and the toads golden gaze will endure, undiminished. From Orwells words I

8

derive an insuperable hope and the courage to strive for a better future, one shovel of dirt, one

pulled weed, one planted seed at a time.

Isaac Yuen is an environmental essayist interested in exploring connections between nature, culture, and identity. Specializing in deep, green longform writing, he is especially interested in the power of stories to promote personal, social, and environmental sustainability. You can follow Isaac on Twitter @ekostories or read his essays at Ekostories.com.