Opening
Hidden lives flicker at the edges of summer: a rabbit nest tucked beneath a maple, a single red leaf blazing in a sea of green, birds sharpening themselves for flight through molt and conflict. Across these chapters, Margaret Renkl learns to see what others miss and to accept change—domestic, seasonal, and emotional—as both ache and promise.
What Happens
Chapter 51: Praise Song for What Hides in Plain Sight
A “scruffy” ring of weeds at the base of the sugar maple invites competing interpretations: a tidy person sees disorder, an environmentalist sees biodiversity, her children remember a rope swing, a dog spots a bathroom. Renkl sees something else: a cottontail nest pressed into the earth, nearly invisible.
She discovers it by accident while watching the bluebirds from the storm door, a vantage that lets her witness the mother rabbit slipping in at dusk to nurse. She keeps her distance, wary of leaving a human scent that might guide a rat snake to the nest. The scene reframes the “mess” as sanctuary, proof that patient watching reveals a world humming just beneath our feet—the heart of The Human-Nature Connection.
Chapter 52: My Life in Rabbits
Summer Week 10 unfolds in three vignettes that chart Renkl’s changing relationship with wildness. In “Anna’s Rabbit (1975),” her family fosters an enormous white pet rabbit. After a weekend away, they return at night to a yard that looks dusted with snow. It isn’t. The “snow” is white fur, scattered after a predator’s kill—her first blunt lesson in the Cycles of Life, Death, and Renewal.
In “Alabama Wildlife Rescue (1981),” teenage Renkl volunteers to care for orphaned cottontails. Worried about night dangers, she closes the lid of their box. Morning brings a silent line of tiny bodies. Protection becomes harm, and her good intentions harden into guilt.
“Next to the Maple Tree” finds her in the present: her husband, Haywood, accidentally mows over a hidden nest; their dog, likely Rascal, noses the kits until one screams. She discovers a dead baby the next day and fears the rest are doomed. Following wildlife helpline advice, she checks the remaining kits and recognizes one tight, full belly—a sign the mother returned to nurse. This time, she neither intervenes too much nor too little; she steadies herself between care and trust.
Chapter 53: Praise Song for the First Red Leaf of the Black Gum Tree
August runs “impossibly, ridiculously green.” Cicadas drone, heat presses, and winter feels like a myth. Then, on the forest floor, a single black gum leaf lies blazing red.
She calls it a “paradigm of redness,” a vessel holding the hummingbird’s throat, the cardinal’s crest, the skink’s courting flare. The leaf is not an ending but a “prophesy,” the first unequivocal signal that autumn already stirs inside summer—an image that echoes the intimate turns of Aging, Family, and the Passage of Time.
Chapter 54: Dislocation
Summer Week 11 brings the ache of in-betweenness. Heat still shimmers, but chipmunks hoard seeds and winter-flocking birds such as the crows and robins begin to reconvene. The household mirrors the yard’s shift: with the sons gone, Renkl and Haywood unpack their handmade wedding dishes—“irreplaceable” plates hidden for decades from small hands—and begin again as two.
The yard is lavish yet combative: a mast year loads the maples with seed; hummingbirds, though surrounded by plenty, fight over nectar. “Wild creatures have no interest in sharing,” Renkl notes, and recognizes change as disorienting even when abundance surrounds it. She closes with Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” hearing not only observation but pledge.
Chapter 55: Praise Song for the Ragged Season
With school resumed and the house quiet, she feels “a little bit lost and a little bit ragged.” From her window she rehearses nature’s lessons: time keeps moving; pain and joy travel together; belonging arrives with breath.
The cardinals, mid-molt, look rough—bald patches, scraggly edges. She recognizes their discomfort as her own. Yet they are not failing; they are preparing. She resolves that “raggedness is just the first step toward a new season of flight,” turning private unrest into a credo of renewal that aligns with the arc of Grief, Hope, and Environmental Change.
Key Events
- A rabbit nest hides at the maple’s base; the mother returns nightly to nurse.
- Three rabbit memories trace Renkl’s growth: a childhood predator kill, a fatal rescue mistake, and a present-day balance of intervention and trust.
- A single fallen black gum leaf heralds autumn within peak summer.
- With their sons gone, Renkl and Haywood revive their wedding dishes and relearn life for two.
- Cardinals molt into awkwardness; Renkl sees her own transition in their ragged plumage.
Character Development
Renkl moves from innocence to humility to steadier wisdom. Early encounters with rabbits teach her that love can harm when it ignores wildness; later, she learns to watch without control and act without overreach. As the empty nest settles in, she chooses to interpret discomfort as metamorphosis rather than loss.
- Childhood: Misreads the aftermath of predation; meets death as sudden revelation.
- Adolescence: Overprotects orphaned kits; learns how care can become danger.
- Adulthood: Checks the mowed-over nest, then steps back; trusts nature’s rhythms.
- Domestic life: Unboxes wedding dishes; begins a quieter, two-person ritual.
- Emotional stance: Claims “raggedness” as preparatory, not terminal.
Themes & Symbols
Renkl’s backyard becomes a mirror for inner weather. Close looking turns a weed ring into a nursery and a red leaf into a calendar page that flips itself. Seasonal thresholds illuminate personal ones: abundance can feel lonely; molt can look like ruin; both are passages, not endpoints. Through the human-nature continuum, she practices a form of ethical seeing—care that resists possession and panic.
Key symbols:
- Rabbits: Fragile, hidden life; a measure of her evolving ethics from harm to guardianship.
- The single red leaf: Time’s advance inscribed in color; change inside abundance.
- Wedding dishes: Domestic seasons; love protected, stored, then used again.
- Ragged molt: Transitional awkwardness as the necessary prelude to flight.
Key Quotes
“A paradigm of redness.”
- The black gum leaf concentrates the season’s reds into one emblem, turning a small found object into a theory of change: the many inside the one, autumn inside summer.
“Wild creatures have no interest in sharing.”
- The hummingbirds’ quarrels reframe abundance as competition in the wild economy. The line also names a human truth: change often feels scarce even amid plenty.
“A Change Is Gonna Come.”
- Invoked as pledge, the song recasts inevitability as comfort. The future isn’t optional; the work is in consenting to it.
“Raggedness is just the first step toward a new season of flight.”
- Molt becomes method. The quote converts embarrassment and loss into structure and timing—the body’s way of making future wings.
The “irreplaceable” plates.
- Naming the dishes this way acknowledges risk and value, turning everyday meals into a ritual of continuity after the children’s departure.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence marks the book’s emotional hinge: the full house of earlier chapters gives way to the unsettled quiet of two. By mapping domestic change onto seasonal thresholds, Renkl aligns private loss with ecological pattern. The result is not consolation by denial but by recognition: the world is always making and unmaking; we are part of that cadence.
The “ragged season” becomes the master metaphor for what follows. Hidden nests, first leaves, and molting birds teach a practice of attention that steadies grief and trains hope. These chapters move from observation to identification, arguing that careful looking is not passive—it is how care, humility, and renewal take form.