Virginia Eifert: Nature, Spirituality, and Community

John Hallwas

            In late autumn, when the natural world seems everywhere diminished, I sometimes recall the essays and books of Virginia Eifert, the Springfield nature writer whose life and work I was immersed in during the mid-1970s. She had an incredible sensitivity to the sights and sounds of nature, and she loved to chronicle the passing of the seasons, as in this section from an essay that finds her alone in the dark on the shore of Lake Springfield:

            “It is November, and the moon puts a dead-white brilliance upon hill and lake, makes the frost more tangible, makes the approach of winter more assured. Behind the black branches of bare trees the stars glitter, and the dry pods on a locust tree, for no reason at all, beat a sudden sharp tattoo that is loud in the silence. Now against the stars there is the sound of flying ducks. It is a thin whistling of wings. . . a brief procession across the moon.”

            Virginia was born a hundred years ago, early in 1911, and spent her entire life in her home town. Half a century ago, in the 1960s, she became the most well-known nature writer from Illinois, the author of “River World” (1959), “Land of the Snowshoe Hare” (1960), “Journeys in Green Places” (1963), and other books. I never met her, for she died suddenly in 1966, when I was still in college, but I later knew her husband, her son, and her best friend.

            With their help, I wrote her life story for “The Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society” (May 1978), and honestly, I don’t recall getting more public response to an article about someone during my career-long effort to write about scores of Illinois literary and historical figures. She had fans across the country who learned of the article, read it, passed it along to others, and sometimes wrote or called to say how much they enjoyed knowing about Virginia.

            Even as a youngster in Springfield, she had an enormous love for wild things. She took very seriously the job of feeding and protecting the birds near her home, and like many children, she sometimes brought home “pets”—frogs, toads, snakes, turtles, a lizard, and even a bat. In my long article on her life, I printed a photo of little Virginia at age five, sitting thoughtfully with a pencil in her hand, already writing.

           She seemed born to become what she later was. During her high school years Virginia’s main interests were nature study, writing, and art, and she wrote essays on nature for the student newspaper. In 1930, at age 19, she launched her own mimeographed weekly publication called “Nature News,” which she sold and delivered for a nickel. In that same year, she was also invited to write a nature column for the Springfield newspaper.

          All of that later led to articles for national publications like “Audubon Magazine,” “Nature,” and “Natural History,” and to the editing of a periodical called “The Living Museum,” for the Illinois State Museum—and eventually to her books, published in New York.

          Despite the popularity of some of her books, her most poetic prose often appeared in her essays for “The Living Museum,” where she helped her readers appreciate the sights, sounds, and mysteries of nature. For Virginia herself, with her incredibly heightened perception of the natural world, the most dazzling experiences often came when she “stepped for a moment inside the enchanted circle of the wild”—when she became enraptured through sensitive participation.

          As was true for so many American nature writers—Thoreau, Burroughs, and Muir among them—Virginia’s experience of the natural world came to have a spiritual dimension. At the close of “River World,” she says, “I stand on the shore and know that it was here yesterday, and will be here tomorrow, and . . . since I am part of its pattern today, I also belong to all its yesterdays and will be part of all its tomorrows. This is a kind of earthly immortality, a kinship . .      . with all things and all creatures that have ever lived or have their being on the earth.” As that statement reveals, Virginia prompted thousands of people to be aware of the deep connection between humans and the natural world, a connection that that is now often referred to, by advocates of eco-spirituality, with the concept of “sacred community.”

         That is, much in human culture encourages a sense of separation from, and hence disregard for, the natural world, and since Virginia Eifert’s time, there has been a huge development that focuses instead on realizing our profound interconnection with living things—and the responsibility that demands of us. As the noted advocate of eco-spirituality Thomas Berry has put it, “The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited.” That was precisely Virginia’s view, performed in her many essays and books.

         And speaking of connections, after my life story of Virginia Eifert appeared, her appreciative family and friends donated all of her books, manuscripts, and art works to the Archives at Western Illinois University Library, where I worked for 25 years. So, the records of her achievement as a writer, and her sensitive response to the natural world in Illinois and the Midwest, are in Macomb to stay.