The Soul of an Octopus: Sy Montgomery's Latest Masterpiece

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Simon & Schuster video with Sy Montgomery
Though I’ve never known an octopus, every encounter I’ve had with animals has been a testament to the existence of their emotional lives. And now, here was a writer brave enough to explore their soulfulness. The title of Sy Montgomery’s latest book hooked me, and I was thrilled to be turning its pages. 

Every chapter took me either into the nooks and crannies of the aquariums where Athena, Kali, Octavia, and Karma lived, or to the depths of the sea from whence they had come. What surprised me, and Sy Montgomery when researching The Soul of an Octopus, wasn’t how different these creatures were, but rather the level of intimacy she felt with them after they met.
Sy’s use of the word “met” implies an underlying premise that guides her through the writing of all her books about animals. We meet them, we don’t merely observe them.  

To Sy, animals are somebodies, not somethings.* Even octopuses (yes, the Greek plural). “Each one of them changed my life and made me a more compassionate person,” she tells us in her talk with her editors at Simon & Schuster. “Oh, I love them all so much.” 

Not surprising language coming from a writer whom The New York Times calls both poet and scientist.  

Octavio, the cephalopod molluscs Sy met right after the octopus came to a New England aquarium, is the octopus that, even now, inhabits her heart.

“I saw her transformation from a shy animal who had been living in the wild as an adult and who was nervous around people to somebody who really relished interactions with people. And then, of course, I got see her lay eggs and tend to those eggs. That was an amazing thing to watch.”

If ever I have coveted another writer’s career, it is the career of Sy Montgomery. Small wonder that The Boston Globe calls Sy “Part Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson.” 

In addition to her meet-ups with octopuses and gorillas, vampire bats and tarantulas, she has been “deftly undressed by an orangutan in Borneo, hunted by a tiger in India, and swum with piranhas, electric eels and dolphins in the Amazon. She has searched the Altai Mountains of Mongolia’s Gobi for snow leopards, hiked into the trackless cloud forest of Papua New Guinea to radiocollar tree kangaroos, and learned to SCUBA dive in order to commune with octopuses.” (More About Sy)

“When I saw Octavia again,” she writes in The Soul of an Octopus, “she held on to me, gently but firmly, for an hour and fifteen minutes.  I stroked her head, her arms, her webbing, absorbed in her presence. She seemed equally attentive to me. Clearly, each of us wanted the other’s company, just as human friends are excited to reunite with each other. With each touch and each taste, we seemed to reiterate, almost like a mantra: “It’s you! It’s you! It’s you!”

Photo Credit: David Scheel
If only this could be the rallying call heard in the halls of congress, and heard around the world—a call that recognizes all that we share, a call that unites us because of our commonalities, not despite our differences. 

It’s you! It’s you! It's you!

*Note for Writers: A helpful article on 
“How to Handle Animal Pronouns: He, She or It?” (dimatrichino, Writers Digest, August 24, 2010) 
An advisor for the Rocky Mountain Land Library and member of the International League of Conservation Writers, Page Lambert has been writing about the western landscape and leading nature retreats in the West for twenty years. Founding member of Women Writing the West, member of Wyoming Writers and Colorado Authors’ League, Lambert’s writing can be found inside monumental sculptures at the Denver Art Museum, online at Huffington Post, and inside the pages of dozens of anthologies. Page designs and teaches graduate writing courses for the University of Denver’s University College. Recent published works include “Not for Sale” (Langscape Magazine and “The Rural West,” included in Fulcrum’s new book, The Light Shines from the West. Forthcoming are 3 poems in DoveTails: Writing for Peace. Page writes All Things Literary/All Things Natural from her mountain home west of Denver.

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