Infinite Paradise
Witnessing the Wild
Accessing the universal through the specific, Infinite Paradise is a poetic memoir that exalts a cherished homestead.
Celebrating the complex, startling beauty of a singular place, Dianne Ebertt Beeaff’s memoir Infinite Paradise is about a year spent on the edge of the Canadian wilderness.
Paradise, the name of a family homestead, began with Ebertt Beeaff’s parents’ purchase of the property in 1957. Its two cottages became a beloved family escape for three generations. This text lauds the landscape, its flora, and its fauna. Its reflections focus on single days and begin in wintry March, musing on the theater of nature. In one entry, Rufus the ruffled grouse gets into tussles; elsewhere, Winston the raccoon makes a play for food. At another point, a “kingfisher executes a string of back-to-back dives off a riverside cedar limb.” At each moment, the woods seem to teeter on the precipice of arresting events. Throughout, Ebertt Beeaff acts as a joyous witness, recording the news of the day.
As the book moves through the seasons, it notes changes in the landscape, including avian migrations, hibernation, and signs of climate change. Family members arrive and leave, too, reflecting the evolution of place: People who first came to Paradise as children now bring their own children to the homestead. Shared meals, grounded in gratitude, illuminate such scenes further.
In addition to its daily observations, notes about history, mythology, etymology, and biology weave into the book’s portrait of the land. As it works to access the universal through the specific, the history of gemstones, flower names, meteor showers, holidays, and month names factor in too. The integration of that knowledge is adept and expansive, suggesting that a whole world might be discovered in a simple backyard if it’s given careful consideration. Photographs throughout the book bring additional life to the cottages, views, animal species, fight-prone birds, and flowers discussed.
Lyrical lines make the memoir meditative and contemplative, as with a July entry:
Cardinals pipe in from every direction. Last year, rose-breasted grosbeaks dominated. Today, starlings and red-winged blackbirds amass in the bare elms, parents perched beside buzzing babes who demand food with gaping maws and flailing wings. Trying to ignore the fuss, parents who flutter off are pursued relentlessly.
Sundown leaves us with a parade of high-piled clouds along the southern horizon, billows of bleached alabaster and ash topped with pale gold, coral, and pink cream.
A master class in the art of close observation of a known landscape in search of something new, the book reflects the practices of both living and writing well, finding connections between the selection of a step and of a word. It honors a long tradition of going to the woods in a deliberate manner and finding new awe in old rhythms. Indeed, homage is paid throughout to those who have done such work before. Still, Ebertt Beeaff’s passion for Paradise and its continued existence as a refuge for family members, wild creatures, and plants is the book’s most illuminating quality.
Infinite Paradise is a gorgeous lyric memoir about nature and a particular place.
Reviewed by
Camille-Yvette Welsch
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
