“‘Why,’ he wondered aloud, ‘is the tiger so angry at him?’”
The second of John Vaillant’s works, The Tiger focuses on just that, a tiger. The story unfolds with Yuri Trush and his team investigating a crime in Russia’s boreal forest. Usually the team spends their time investigating crimes committed by humans against tigers. This time it was different. This time the tiger had done the killing.
Trush and his team assess the situation and determine that this tiger had been stalking Markov, the deceased, for days. The novel then goes on to examine the events leading up to the death of Markov as well as going into the reasons behind tiger poaching.
Throughout the novel the reader is enlightened into what life is like in this remote part of Russia that the world has forgotten. This really is a great book and I would encourage anyone to read it, and Vaillant’s other novel for that matter, The Golden Spruce. The way he turns seemingly boring subjects into full fledged novels is brilliant.
In terms of my feelings toward this tiger, I have only feelings of gratitude, and I will explain why: if a person goes through a tough ordeal in his life, he either breaks fown or becomes stronger than he used to be. In my case, it was the latter. After this incident, I became stronger—not physically, of course, but spiritually.
— John Vaillant - The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
Thus, what the bulldozer is to communal trail breaking, the tiger is to the food chain: among animals in the taiga, there is no more efficient or bountiful provider. By regularly bringing down large prey like elk, moose, boar, and deer, the tiger feeds countless smaller animals, birds, and insects, not to mention the soil.
— John Vaillant - The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
Many people reach a point where they realize that the shape their life has taken does not square with the ambitions they once had for it.
— John Vaillant - The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
If Russia is what we think it is, then tigers should not be possible there. After all, how could a creature so closely associated with stealth and grace and heat survive in a country so heavy-handed, damaged, and cold?
— John Vaillant - The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
It is not in a language like Russian or Chinese, but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men—some more fluently than others. That single blast of breath contained a message lethal in its eloquence. But what does one do with such inforamtion so far from on’es home ground?
— John Vaillant - The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
Then there is a sound: a brief, rushing exhale—the kind one would use to extinguish a candle. But there is something different about the volume of air being moved, and the force behind it—something bigger and deeper: this is not a human sound.
— John Vaillant - The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
“In the end, it would be the sun that exposed the tree’s secret for all to see, and by the middle of the 1700s it would have been abundantly clear that something extraordinary was growing on the banks of the Yakoun. It was a creature that seemed more at home in a myth or a fairy-tale: a spruce tree with golden needles.”
This is a book about a tree. I never thought that a book about a tree could be so interesting. Really, I never thought a book about a tree (in this sense) could exist. But exist it does, and it was an excellent book.
The Golden Spruce is the story of, well, of the Golden Spruce; a tree that happened by chance. It was a normal Sitka Spruce, but with one genetic mutation, this tree had golden needles. It was revered by the Haida people of Haida Gwaai on the northwest coast of British Columbia, and it was respected by loggers.
The Golden Spruce is also the story of Grant Hadwin. Hadwin was a logger turned environmentalist. He was enraged with the clear-cutting practices occurring in Northwest BC, and decided to take action. Instead of organizing protests, or anything of that sort, he made an example of the Golden Spruce. In a showing of how people care more about one tree than they do the whole forest, he destroyed the tree.
Vaillant’s description of both Hadwin and the Golden Spruce are interwoven with information about the logging industry, both in the past and present, as well as information about the Haida people. He tells so many stories at one time while still managing to keep them separate. A very interesting and compelling book, I look forward to reading The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival.
According to Haida legend, the golden spruce represented a good but defiant young boy who had been transformed, and because of this, some among the Haida saw the crime not as an act of vandalism or protest, but as a kind of murder.
— John Vaillant - The Golden Spruce
