Point of View by Margaret Atwood

The “ant” section of Anthill has been written as if ants have not only emotions but some sort of narrative memory. Do they have such things in any way that would be understandable to us if we could for a moment share them?

There have been other attempts to write from the POV of ants… I’m thinking of the Ant section in T.H. White’s The Sword In The Stone, in which the ants are used as an anti-fascist allegory…  Is it possible to write from the POV of another species, really? Is that question by its nature uanswerable?

(I have a stake in this matter, as my first novel (age 7) was about an ant.)

Religion and Nature by Margaret Atwood

In Anthill, the protagonist is almost murdered by a fanatical Christian religious group that also has an interest in turning the natural area he champions into an intensive housing development.

1.    Financial self-interest aside, is the role of religion vis a vis respect for the natural world always this negative?  (I’m thinking for instance of the Green Bible, and the many groups who view the natural world as a sacred trust or something in relation to which mankind is a “steward.”)

2.     To what can we attribute the extreme anti-nature stance taken by some religious groups?

3.     Are there not other religions for whom all life is sacred?

4.     Are we as a species hard-wired to always pick the low-hanging fruit, and thereby anti-conservationist by our very nature?

Storytelling as Teaching by Drew Bell

One of the goals that Wilson had in mind with writing the Anthill Chronicles section was to introduce readers to the realm of ant biology without overwhelming them with scientific or technical writing. In a way, it is stealth teaching. How many of you learned things about ants that you never knew or that you found to be surprising? How many of you enjoyed learning these things by reading a story? Do these new pieces of knowledge stick with you better than if you had learned them in a more traditional fashion?

Do you think that the book would have been better or worse if this section had been left out and ant biology had been included in the book in the form of footnotes or an appendix?

Finally, since this is my final day as moderator, I wanted to be certain that I put forward the offer to answer any questions you may have about ants or ant biology.

I have enjoyed my time with you and look forward to reading your comments. Thanks for allowing me to share!

Natural Cycles, Ants and Humans by Drew Bell

In the comments to my last post, several of you have picked up themes about natural cycles in The Anthill Chronicles. Wilson has traced the "history" of several ant colonies and their interactions with each other and the environment. Many of you have also pointed out parallels between ant behaviors and human behaviors.

What points do you think Wilson is trying to make about natural cycles? In particular, what do you think Wilson might be trying to teach us about the human place in and impact on nature? Even though this section of the book is written from the ant perspective, is it about ants alone? How does Wilson weave these lessons together with the other sections of the book?

The Ant Point of View by Drew Bell

The Anthill Chronicles section of the book is unusual in that it is written from the point of view of the ants. Wilson has done this to accomplish several tasks, and I would like to take the next several posts examining those different reasons.

When we study animal behavior, one of the things we must do is try to put ourselves in the mind of the creature we are studying. If the animal we are studying is one of the higher vertebrates, for example a wolf, this may be easier because it shares more in common with our own mentality and means of perceiving the environment. However, if the animal we are studying is very different from us, for example an ant, its psychology and sensory perceptions will be alien to us. This can be a challenge for the researcher, as we may have difficulty understanding the motivations that drive the animal.

How did you feel about seeing things from the ant perspective? Did you find the point of view alien? Has your understanding of the motivations of the ant changed? What similarities and differences are there compared to humans?

The Importance of Outdoor Mentors by Danielle Brigida

One of the themes in Anthill that resonated with me is the importance of an outdoor mentor.


In the section of The Launch, we see that Raff gets financial support from his Uncle Cyrus to attend college. He chooses Florida State University, where his longtime family friend and mentor, Dr. Norville, teaches.


While at FSU, Raff also meets Dr. Needham, who serves as yet another mentor in Raff’s life and even points him in the direction of studying the anthill at Nokobee.


Who was your outdoor mentor? If you’re like me, you’ve been fortunate to have many. My father was one of mine, along with my college entomology professor, Dr. Michael Meyer (pictured with me on the right) . His enthusiasm for the subject was contagious and his passion and wonder was something I'll never forget.


I think an outdoor mentor is an essential piece to loving the outdoors. Aside from being a helpful person to run ideas by, they can inspire us to learn more and share their love and knowledge for the topic.


Who was an important mentor in your life?
I’d love to hear about a few of them.

Fostering Outdoor Mentors
Outdoor Mentors is a program that does just that, inspiring people to pass on and share their love for nature. There are also organizations like Children and Nature Network and my own, National Wildlife Federation, that are working to empower parents, teachers and other leaders to help get kids to connect to nature and have a passion for the outdoors.

What Needham gave Raff, was not only a professional opinion but also the space to safely grow in his knowledge of entomology. Needham was so passionate about the subject that he even opened up his office to let the students partake in a group called the Bug Bash, where they drank tea, talked about timely topics and always brought the discussion back around to the world of entomology.


Needham was a great listener. When he suggested Raff study the anthill, he didn’t do so forcefully, but merely pointed out that it was an option. I think this is a great example of how a mentor gives you enough space to explore and learn on your own, while listening when you have questions and offering open-ended advice. Raff is a lucky character to have two!


"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." - Rachel Carson

Is Nokobee really worth saving? by Bill Finch

Nokobee, it seems, is meant to be a portrait of the natural world of south Alabama and adjacent areas of northwest Florida. That’s not a part of the country people visit often, and except for some moderate-sized cities, much of it is rather thinly populated.

But when someone says “Alabama” to you, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Come on, give me your first impression. Even your second one will do.

Maybe you remember hearing about Alabama from the recent news accounts of tornadoes. If you follow football, you may recognize the name of the college team. Many people’s first lessons about Alabama, I expect, involved stories about racial conflict or stories about Alabama’s importance to the civil rights movement. These are important stories to tell, but if it’s not a disaster or a conflict or a national championship football team, you don’t seem to hear much from this part of the world.

If I asked most people to name a plant most associated with Alabama, I suspect their first inclination would be to name an agricultural crop like cotton, since farming cotton was once so important to the history and the legends of Alabama and the Deep South. Some might think of kudzu, that legendary vine introduced from Asia that supposedly grows a mile a minute.

But racial conflict, cotton, kudzu — these are all things we humans have recently introduced to Alabama. They are some of the more conspicuous things we've done TO Alabama.

Anthill, in its description of Nokobee, begins to reveal a part of Alabama we’re not used to thinking about, the Alabama that existed before humans started scribbling their stories across it.

If you peel away our initial impressions of Alabama, we can discover some surprising facts:
— Alabama, according to a seminal report by NatureServe, is rated as having the greatest biological diversity — the greatest diversity of native plant and animal species — of any Eastern state. That means Alabama has more species of plants and animals than places like Florida, which has a long leg dipping down into the tropics, and North Carolina and Virginia, which are famous for their central Appalachian forests. Only two or three states nationally have significantly more diversity than Alabama. One of those is California, which is more than three times larger than Alabama. The other is Texas, which is about 6 times larger. (No, neither Hawaii nor Alaska come close to Alabama in total biological diversity.)
— If you’ve always suspected there must be something in the water that causes Alabama to be like Alabama, you know, you’re right. A significant portion of Alabama’s exceptional biological diversity is the result of the richness of its stream systems and wetlands. Alabama has more species of fish than any other state, and a single small river in Alabama can have more than twice the number of fish species as the entire state of California.
— Scientists have recently calculated that the greatest concentration of turtle species in the world is centered on southwest Alabama, the area celebrated in this novel. (A river drainage basin below the Himalayas in northern India has a comparable number of species, but spread out over a much larger area.)
— The diversity of oaks, hickories, magnolias and other broadleaf trees is much higher in Alabama and immediately surrounding states than it is in the central Appalachians. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina, often considered one of the country’s most diverse national parks, has 12 species of oaks on some 500,000 acres. A 100-acre patch of the Red Hills of southern Alabama may have 15 to 20 species! And yet, Alabama’s most diverse forest is the longleaf pine forest, a forest dominated by only one species of tree, but with a forest floor that can support one of the richest assortments of wildflowers anywhere in the temperate world. Some people have counted 60 or more plant species in a single square meter (about one square yard) of Alabama longleaf forest.
— Amazingly, Alabama’s diversity is hanging on even though it has one of the lowest percentages of conservation land of any large eastern state, and only a tiny fraction of the publicly held lands that exist in places like the central Appalachians, California or Montana.

Does any of this surprise you? Why would Alabama be so much more biologically diverse than many other states? Why do you think people aren’t aware of this part of Alabama? As you read the rest of the book, consider how preconceptions about Alabama will present challenges to Raff as he goes away to school, and then returns to protect the place he loves.

Nokobee: The Character and Characters of a Landscape (Chapters 2-14) by Bill Finch

We are introduced to many new characters in Section II of Anthill. But two of the most important aren’t formally introduced until the last half of this section. The first of those “characters” is the landscape of Nokobee, along with the plants and animals it supports. That swirl of wild creatures, that neighborhood of trees and meadows and lakes, seems at times to be an odd mirror of the communities of people Raff grew up with.

The second important character we’re introduced to here is “ a kind of ant” whose anthill colonies are “special to the history” being related in this novel.

Raff, at a young age, begins learning from his encounters with these characters. His attempt to shake hands with a cottonmouth leaves a deep impression on him, and the description of that meeting with the cottonmouth recalls his search for the Chicobee Serpent and his run-in with the Frogman. As Raff explores this world of Nokobee and its many characters, in particular the creatures of the anthill, it seems they’re already influencing how he sees the world of people he grew up with.

But at this point in the book, it might be just as interesting to ask whether Raff’s circle of human acquaintances, his experiences with people, may have influenced how he sees the wild world of Nokobee. How much of what he sees in ants is colored by the people and social circumstances he grew up with? How much of what you see of nature is affected by your dealings with people?

Is it useful to see the people and the wild species of Nokobee as similar, so that the actions of one can illuminate the actions of the other? Are there limits and cautions if we try to make these comparisons?

Making a Mountain Out of an Anthill - E.O. Wilson's Anthill Discussion - Chapter One: "Frogman" led by Anne Post, Chief Librarian, NCTC

"What to make of Anthill? Part epic-inspired adventure story, part philosophy-of-life, part many-layered mid-century Alabama viewed in finely observed detail, part ant life up close, part lyrical hymn to the wonders of earth, part contribution to the growing genre of eco-lit..." (Margaret Atwood's review - "Homer of the Ants" in the NY Review of Books)

Why spend eight weeks discussing E.O. Wilson's Anthill (see schedule)? We knew the book would appeal to young adults. We knew the story would resonate with both the Aldo Leopold essay and the Curt Meine essay and further enrich the WILD READ discussions so nobly led by Curt Meine and Will Stolzenburg here these last two weeks. We knew Anthill had the potential to shed light on the visioning process to discover bold ideas and ask deep questions about the future of conservation and with a focus on our beloved wildlife refuges. However, Anthill was chosen first and foremost because it is a story and as Jimmy Fox with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Fairbanks, Alaska, so eloquently commented via this discussion blog, "Humans are deeply influenced by stories...If we conservationists want a land ethic to flourish, we must tell stories that convey what we know and feel in our hearts - a noble, unselfish concern for others and this planet we call home. If we can't tell these stories, then we must find those who will tell them for us." The power of the story can really stir our imaginations even as we look hard science in the eye and envision our conservation future.

Anthill is about the life and times of Raff Cody growing up in the last of the longleaf pine-filled Alabama wildlands, his education, the mentors who inspire him, the ant colonies that connect him to a better understanding of the natural world and the magnifying glass view of human nature too. We are along for the ride through his many rites of passage and epic encounters - from his exquisite connection to the Noxubee Tract (see Noxubee NWR), his career choice and a climactic ending with the Frogman, the Cyclopean character who vigorously defends his property, a dark and iconic creature from the woods, of the woods. There is even Frogman’s Chickopee Serpent that asserts its epic head into the story (“gnashing his terrible teeth” – remember that childhood quote?) Raff is a young Ed Wilson in a way and clearly has caught the "bug" literally and figuratively. The nature "bug" meant Raff left no anthill unturned in his exploration of the natural world which lead to his scientific focus on ants and ultimately the interesting career choice made to effect the change and exert the most power to protect the places he loved.

This week we focus on Chapter One “Frogman.” We are introduced to 15-year old Raff and cousin Junior. They are rough and tumble young people who know the Alabaman "back forty" like the back of their hand and Wilson in his own autobiographical way sets the stage for the young men’s clear and deep connection to the land. The plot immediately thickens however as Frogman is introduced into the landscape and his presence carries that seminal moment in the wild outdoors that carves a deep niche in our life – that fear-ridden, but enchanting archetypal figure that emerges from the swamp of our greatest fears. Many of us experienced that vicariously through fairy tales when fear wore wolf clothes, or the trickster fox, or many ogre-like, extinct perhaps creatures of the wild. That archetypal figure is wildness gone wild, fear incarnate, primordial and always nagging and sometimes dangerous.

Our WILD READ questions for you:

What happens when we look our fear of the unknown, the wild in ourselves, directly in the eye?

Is there any relationship between that “Green Fire” referenced in “Thinking Like a Mountain” and the predatory nature of the “Frogman” character in Anthill? Does overcoming fear have a place in establishing our sense of connection and purpose or does it inspire supremacy?

How critical is the connection between a child and a natural place to ultimately incite action to protect that land and build a strong environmental ethic?

See also our Anthill Discussion Guide.

Note: I will respond through our comments but our WILD READ team members will continue to post here this week to tease out more questions. Check out our Schedule including the grand finale week July 3-9 when Margaret Atwood, Canadian novelist, poet and essayist, will join our discussions. These discussions all lead up to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's wildlife refuge visioning conference July 10-14 in Madison, WI.

*Photo image used by permission of Associated Press