This is a beautiful little book about the importance of simply paying attention. Even as a nature lover, I’ve read very few books like *The Comfort of Crows*, which is at once poetic and educational, urgent yet tranquil. Renkl writes 52 essays, one for each week of the year, focusing on the wildlife in her backyard, the changing seasons of her life, and our evolving world. Throughout each chapter, Renkl stresses the importance of paying attention to the natural world and all it’s beauty, embodying the old adage ‘stop and smell the roses’. I know this sounds cheesy, but oftentimes everyone is so busy; it feels like no one has time to stop and appreciate how awe-inspiring natural life can be. As Renkl points out, “The world will always be beautiful to those who look for beauty.”

Something that really resonated with me about Renkl’s approach is how she does not ignore the way the world feels as though it is burning every which way you turn, but rather holds that two truths can be acknowledged at once - that there is beauty, comfort, and peace in nature alongside climate change, political unrest, and pain. Renkl provides a framework for setting aside news and the weight it brings to those who pay attention, just for a moment, just long enough to stop and come back to what is still good, whole, and wondrous in the seemingly mundane world of our own backyards.

“The world is burning, and there is no time to put down the water buckets. For just an hour, put down the water buckets anyway. Take your cue from the bluebirds, who have no faith in the future but who build the future nevertheless, leaf by leaf and straw by straw, shaping them into the roundness of the world. Turn your face up to the sky. Listen. The world is trembling into possibility. The world is reminding us that this is what the world does best. New life. Rebirth. The greenness that rises out of ashes.”

This quote perfectly sums up Renkl’s overarching theme of this book - pay attention, there is so much to see if only you take the time to look. This lesson is hard to learn, and it is one I struggle with personally on a consistent basis. There are days where it feels like my personal responsibility to be bogged down by the news, to listen and hear the atrocities that are happening around the world, if only so that those suffering these atrocities in real-time know that someone is listening. Most days, listening to their stories is as much a part of me as I can play, however small; their stories are being heard. What Renkl proposes is not to set aside all that is going wrong to look at a butterfly, but simply that all things are a balance.

Aside from the more philosophical aspects of this work, Renkl provided me personally with a lot of great ideas for my own backyard, a space I have been trying to cultivate since we moved in. She teaches the reader much about what is lurking in our own backyards, from the declining monarch population to the young rearing habits of bluebirds, the types of bird feed for attracting different species, and much more. She validated my desire to “leave the leaves,” a topic of much debate in my household come autumn. Every living thing relies on some other previously or currently living thing; the earth knows what she is about, if only we leave her be to do it. Even as someone who spends a lot of time outside in my yard, this book made me wonder what kinds of things I’d see if only I knew to look or would take a moment to pay closer attention to the minutia of my yard.

*The Comfort of Crows* is about to send me on my Walden journey, and I’m not mad about it.