Summary

Part 2, October, cont’d – Badgers – The author considers how badgers, unlike bears or deer or other animals, have been generally absent from folklore, myth, and the human process of thinking of animals in human terms. He describes their characteristics – burrowing, hibernation, living close to the ground – and describes regular, teenaged encounters with what he believes to have been the same badger whom he saw while traveling to and from work. He then comments on how angry he feels when he sees badgers killed by highway traffic, adding that he himself is part of the problem – a large mass of problems, he suggests, caused by humanity that he himself, acting as an individual, cannot really change.

Infants – The author contemplates the nature of being an infant – how the slightest change, or hint of discomfort, in its environment can bring on upset; how its interactions with...