A History Of Wild Places

Dirt is a symbol throughout the novel that represents a connection to earth, what is buried when we disconnect from society, and life and death. In the delivery of Colette’s baby, Bee thinks about how “Babies always remind me of something forged up from the garden, the mothers like the tender soil” (108). Ernshaw uses dirt to symbolize human origins. Both Calla and Bee interact with dirt on an intimate and frequent basis: Calla with her gardening, and Bee after she retreats into the woods and spends time sleeping on the ground. Calla finds both the charm and the book in the dirt, and the process of unearthing contributes to its function in symbolizing buried memories. The fact that she digs up the clues to her identity alludes to a metaphorical and literal process of self-discovery.

Dirt’s role in the novel is also particularly significant in the ritual of burying Ash and Turk alive. The purpose is described as the hope that the “mineral-rich soil” will “leech the illness from the bones, draw it clean out, like a sponge to water” (199). While dirt is ostensibly healing in this description, the ritual is false. The role of earth in the ritual is therefore a suffocating force when Ash experiences “the weight of too much soil bearing down on his chest” (205).