As Dunne so well repeatedly depicts, our modern interpretations of time are not appropriately applied to the Arctic. Autumn does not begin with the turning of the leaves; it begins – biologically as well as metaphorically – at the first second following the Summer Solstice.
As short a book as it is, Life Everlasting is a lively collection of stories, investigations, reflections, and musings all joined together by a central theme – that of not just how the remains of the dead are reincorporated into the cycle of life but, perhaps more importantly, why they are.
Try to think of a bird and not imagine feathers. It’s impossible. Even a a plucked chicken in a supermarket shows evidence of it once having been surrounded in feathers. And this is as it should be; for as Hanson clearly (and most entertainingly) explains, the very evolution of birds as a Class is inextricably interwoven with the evolution of the feather itself.
Calpurnia Tate is the child all naturalists wish they were as children: endlessly curious, possessing of boundless energy, and most important of all, beginning their explorations of the natural world at an age when the mind has not yet been conditioned to repress questions because they might seem silly or pointless to others.