Response to Barbara Gowdy's The White Bone by Linda Tiessen Wiebe. In the bathtub, as I washed soap from my face, I suddenly imagined throwing back my trunk and spraying water on my grey wrinkled back. I had spent the morning finishing Barbara Gowdy's book The White Bone; it wasn't hard imagining myself an elephant. And I think Gowdy would be pleased. In the tradition of Watership Down, she takes you to the alien plains of Africa through the eyes of elephants. To enter the elephants' world was a privilege. I've been fascinated by elephants for a while; they're so big and lumbering, homely yet majestic. Their sad eyes draw me. In The White Bone, they and their world came alive and I fell in love with them. God is referred to as The She, themselves as she-ones. Matriarchal and communal, the elephants live a rhythmed life between the rainy and dry seasons. They form a society together with other elephant families and other creatures. They have their own language (we are ignomiously referred to as hindleggers). Their keen intellect shows in their visionary ability; most herds have at least one "mind talker". They sing constantly, hymns praising the rains or bolstering courage. The life of one particular family, the She-S's, is revealed through the eyes of Mud and two of her friends. Mud, a twelve-year-old female who has just mated for the first time, is being honored for this event by receiving her adult name from her adoptive family. But she isn't quite ready to leave her adolescence and refuses to acknowledge her new name. Mud and her best friend Date Bed devise plots to outwit the intolerable old cows by starting their own herd. Date Bed is the true offspring of Mud's adoptive mother; they have been inseparable since childhood. Date Bed is a gatherer of knowledge, curious and always observing. Tall Time is an older male, who periodically visits the family because he has had a crush on Mud since she was two. He can't help his unnatural devotion and desire for Mud. He wants to mate for life with her because he feels she carries the image of the Divine She. He is called the Link Bull because he knows all the omens and hidden meanings to coincidences. These three are cast together with their families in the struggle between nature and culture. Faced with the worst drought in 65 years, the elephants are unprepared for the ivory hunters that ambush them at one of the last remaining water holes. Against this backdrop of betrayal and despair, the surviving elephants begin their exile. All three are separated by the chaos following the slaughter, but are connected like strands in a web through love, hope and desperation. Each hears rumours of a Safe Place, where humans have been redeemed to their former elephant-loving nature, and elephants are no longer hunted. A mysterious White Bone is said to appear in times of need to point the way. Against all odds, they begin to search for this White Bone, and the hope of survival it holds out. A slow change comes over them. Tall Time begins a struggle of faith and doubt in the synchronistic events he had previously taken for granted. Date Bed's scientific nature helps her discover her spirit twin and her courage to act for the benefit for the whole herd. And Mud discovers compassion for the older elephants, as her visions reveal their vulnerability. The Safe Place promises not just physical survival, but calls to the essence of their identity. Struggles with collectivity, with outworn tradition, with petty jealousies begin to threaten the herd as much as hunger. The she-one's are pushed to their limits and beyond. This is a story of exile. Of being cast out from the familiar into alien and hostile environments. It reminds me of The Grapes of Wrath in describing a journey that is both physical and spiritual. In struggles like these, against impossible odds, people either discover themselves or are broken forever. In these time you discover what you hope in, and what really matters. Mud, Date Bed and Tall Time are all faced with their own limitations in exile. That each of them finds their way to love strikes a deep chord. If Gowdy is writing a polemic for animal rights, she doesn't betray good story-telling to get there. Her characters are vivid but not sentimental. The dialogue is full of humour and wit. And her thorough research reveals itself in the minutae of daily elephant existence that is interspersed throughout. All these elements work artfully to blur the lines between elephant and human. This story got me thinking of how often we see animals as objects. Gowdy's story seems a very plausible depiction of the consciousness elephants might have. She might be continuing the thoughts of Emerson and Thoreau in suggesting that consciousness exists on a continuum. Perhaps Gowdy is trying to call us to compassion through imagination. We too need a Safe Place. It's sad that we slaughter such noble creatures for fashion. Even sadder that such callousness could be avoided if humans recovered their imagination. We too need to be freed from living by rote and out-dated precepts to be our full selves. Only through imagination and hope can humans bridge the chasm between themselves and the rest of nature. We are alienated from our home and from ourselves until we remember that consciousness flows through the whole universe. Gowdy makes me think that to become concerned for the environment is a much more whole task than merely activism. It involves awakening to the consciousness that is within and around us. Like Mud's fleeting vision of benevolent humans enjoying the freedom of animals, this consciousness seeks to reconcile and to heal. Perhaps our current exile from the environment, brought on by our own greed, can become a time when we are stripped of superficiality so that we can hear this reconciling voice. Thank you Barbara Gowdy, for allowing it to speak to humans through the lives of the elephants. You can respond to the reviewer here (responses may be posted) or on our messageboard.