Forty Formative Books: The Wind in the Willows

It's a companion in my search for home.

Some books lie in wait on my bookshelves for years, waiting for the right moment to enter my life. The Wind in the Willows was one of those books. I never read it as a child (though I enjoyed the Disney feature), I purchased it in High School since it was a classic, and then I proceeded to move it half a dozen times before sitting down to read it. I could not have picked a better season of life than I did.

The first time I read the novel was with my three boys on our first trip to Maine. It was our first trip to Maine, our first locums job, my first time homeschooling on the road. What had started off as an eight week stay had expanded to three months then five and half months. Each extension meant that we had to move out of one rental house and into another. By the time I snuggled up with my boys to read The Wind in the Willows, we were in the third house and the fifth month of our stay. It did not take me long to see the parallels between our life and the story in the book.

Just like Mole, we had set out on a warm summer day with a desire for adventure and ended up surrounded by water, boats, picnics, and excitement. We were definitely enjoying ourselves, and yet a yearning was building under the surface. For me, I didn’t realize fully how deep that longing was until I read the chapter Dulce Domum. I felt Mole’s tension and conflict immediately. I felt his desperation when he sensed that his home was near, but his reluctance to delay Rat in finding it. I could have hugged Rat when he insisted on going there because he could see what it truly meant to Mole. What it truly meant to me.

I read the whole chapter with tears in my eyes, but by the end of the chapter I broke down:

“He saw clearly how plain and simple-how narrow, even-it all was; but clearly , too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there… But it was good to think that he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

Here was a story tailor made for me. So many heroes in books go on quests and journeys out of necessity or duty. We all understand why Frodo yearns to go home and why Odysseus wants to return. They did not want to go in the first place. We also have characters fleeing from bad situations who do not plan on returning like Huckleberry Finn. Mole is the only character that I have come across who chose to leave home on an adventure, was enjoying his new life, AND yearned for home. He wants both. Just like I want both.

In honor of my first read of The Wind in the Willows five years ago, I read it again during this stay in Maine. That stay is coming to an end and I find myself unready to leave the coast of Maine and yearning for my forest home in Colorado. I am reminded that a place cannot fill all of the yearnings of my heart. That brings me to the books that I chose to read alongside The Wind in the Willows.

Knowing that the primary theme for me is the question of home, I brought This Homeward Ache: How Our Yearning for the Life to Come Spurs on Our Life Today by Amy Baik Lee and Nostalgia by Anthony Esolen along with me on this trip. I was delighted to see that Amy Baik Lee references both The Wind in the Willows and Nostalgia in her work, so I suppose I chose my book flight well. I had a chance to meet Amy Baik Lee at a writing conference this spring and as I greatly enjoyed her talks, I had high expectations for her book. Those expectations paid off.

In her book, Lee shares about a mysterious yearning that has been with her all her life. It finds her on different continents, in a field of flowers, and in the pages of books. After years of tracing it and contemplating its meaning, she found that it was rooted in her desire for Heaven. She then explores how living Heavenward has shaped how she lives day to day. I found the book to be very enjoyable. In some ways her childhood reminded me of my own though in other ways they were very different. In that tension was an intimacy that was refreshing and brave. It also fueled my yearning for my physical home since she also lives in Colorado Springs, so all of her descriptions brought to mind ponderosa pine trees and Pike’s Peak.

In my attempt to keep up with multiple reading groups, I have not started Esolen’s Nostalgia quite yet. I have told myself that I can’t start it until I finish two other books on my nightstand. I hold out hope that I will be able to crack the cover before we hit the road. If not, there is nothing to fear since my nostalgia comes with me wherever I go.