Walk Two Moons

Walk Two Moons

by

Sharon Creech

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Nature Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Judgment, Perspective, and Storytelling Theme Icon
Parents, Children, and Growing Up Theme Icon
Grief Theme Icon
Nature Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Walk Two Moons, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nature Theme Icon

Sal is, according to her Gramps, “a country girl at heart.” So, over the course of Sal’s cross-country road trip with her grandparents, as she tells them a story about her friend Phoebe, Sal is always attuned to the natural world around her. She describes the farm where she grew up; the tiny yards in Euclid, Ohio, where she and Dad live for a year after Momma leaves; and the landmarks, such as the Black Hills and Old Faithful, that she sees along her trip with Gram and Gramps. Nature is, for Sal, something that makes her feel safe and comfortable—and most importantly, it connects her to Momma, whom readers eventually learn is deceased. Through Sal’s reverence for the natural world, and the way that nature helps Sal connect with Momma and with her Native American heritage, the novel positions nature as a healing force—one that’s capable of connecting people across time and space.

As a “country girl,” Sal sees the natural world as a powerful (even magical) force that connects her to her family. In flashbacks, Sal explains that she was extremely happy when she, Momma, and Dad lived on the farm together. Living on the farm, Sal could spend her days at the swimming hole, climbing trees, and caring for the farm animals—activities that made her feel alive and fulfilled. Similarly, Sal shows how both Momma and Dad loved and felt connected to the natural world. Dad loved working on the farm and refused to wear gloves in the course of his work because he needed to touch things that were “real,” like the dirt and the animals. And Momma regularly ate blackberries fresh from the vine and kissed trees—something that shows how much she loved the natural world. Sal implies that her and her parents’ shared love of their land is what kept the family content, and this deep connection with and reverence for nature imbued the farm with an almost magical quality in Sal’s mind. This is why, when Momma leaves the farm and dies in a bus accident, Sal doesn’t want to leave the farm. She believes so fully in Momma’s emotional and spiritual connection to the farm and the natural world that she thinks Momma will come back to it. And while it’s impossible for Momma to come back, Dad nevertheless echoes the idea that Momma is spiritually connected to their land: in justifying the move to Euclid, Dad explains that Momma is “haunting” the farm. Sal’s connection to and love of the natural world is why moving to Euclid, a suburb without much natural beauty, is traumatic for Sal. Not only is it painful to be away from the specific landscape and animals she loves, but it’s also painful to feel distant from the natural world in general, because this makes her feel distant from Momma.

Nature also connects Sal to her Native American heritage. Both Sal and Momma’s names are nods to the natural world and to their heritage. Momma’s full first name is Chanhassen, a Native American name that means “tree sweet juice,” or maple sugar. Sal’s full name is Salamanca Tree Hiddle; Salamanca is the tribe her parents (incorrectly) believed an ancestor was a part of, and Tree as a nod to Momma’s name and Momma’s love of trees. In this sense, Sal’s connection to nature and her heritage is evident in her name and therefore in her identity. Sal gets to engage with her Native American heritage over the course of her road trip with her grandparents, another aspect of her identity that’s tied to the natural world. Every place Gram and Gramps stop at along the way is a site of spiritual significance for Native Americans: for instance, the Black Hills are sacred to the Sioux tribe. At several points, Sal also recalls Momma’s favorite “Indian stories” that explain why the world is the way it is—and those stories overwhelmingly try to explain human phenomena, like death, using the natural world. Nature, this suggests, can help people understand where they come from, how the world works, and why things are the way they are.

As Sal embarks on the road trip, reconnects with nature, and connects with her Native American heritage in the process, she begins to heal from the trauma of losing Momma. Gram and Gramps very purposefully stop at all the same places Momma did when she traveled west just over a year ago. This serves two purposes: first, Sal thinks about Momma and what Momma saw or thought at each stop. By engaging in these thought exercises, Sal develops empathy for Momma and begins to heal from her grief and trauma. And second, as Sal also thinks about Momma’s “Indian stories,” particularly the ones that deal with death, she’s finally able to come to the conclusion that death is both “normal and terrible.” In this way, nature helps Sal to find closure after Momma’s death. This becomes clear when Sal acknowledges that Dad was right about not needing to bring Momma’s body back to Bybanks to bury her. It’s fine that Momma’s body rests in Lewiston, since Momma’s spirit is everywhere. And this is also why Dad and Sal are able to move back to the farm in Bybanks after Sal’s road trip: because Sal and Dad now realize that they can connect to Momma anywhere in the natural world, the farm is no longer as significant and no longer has the painful associations it once did. Through Sal and Dad’s transformations, Walk Two Moons shows that nature, and the stories people tell about it, can be uniquely healing.

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Nature Quotes in Walk Two Moons

Below you will find the important quotes in Walk Two Moons related to the theme of Nature.
Chapter 3 Quotes

Tiny, squirt trees. Little birdhouses in a row—and one of those birdhouses was ours. No swimming hole, no barn, no cows, no chickens, no pigs. Instead, a little white house with a miniature patch of green grass in front of it. It wasn’t enough grass to keep a cow alive for five minutes.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Just then, she came in from the back porch. My father put his arms around her and they smooched and it was all tremendously romantic, and I started to turn away, but my mother caught my arm. She pulled me to her and said to me—though it was meant for my father, I think—“See, I’m almost as good as your father!” She said it in a shy way, laughing a little. I felt betrayed, but I didn’t know why.

It is surprising all the things you remember just by eating a blackberry pie.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Mrs. Winterbottom
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 32
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

One day, about two weeks after she had left, I was standing against the fence watching a newborn calf wobble on its thin legs. It tripped and wobbled and swung its big head in my direction and gave me a sweet, loving look. “Oh!” I thought. “I am happy at this moment in time.” I was surprised that I knew this all by myself, without my mother there. And that night in bed, I did not cry. I said to myself, “Salamanca Tree Hiddle, you can be happy without her.” It seemed a mean thought and I was sorry for it, but it felt true.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Page Number: 35
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

The morning after my father learned that my mother was not coming back, he left for Lewiston, Idaho. Gram and Gramps came to stay with me. I had pleaded to go along, but my father said he didn’t think I should have to go through that. That day I climbed up into the maple and watched the singing tree, waiting for it to sing. I stayed there all day and on into the early evening. It did not sing.

At dusk, Gramps placed three sleeping bags at the foot of the tree, and he, Gram, and I slept there all night. The tree did not sing.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Dad, Gram, Gramps
Related Symbols: The Singing Tree
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“But for now,” he said, “we have to leave because your mother is haunting me day and night. She’s in the fields, the air, the barn, the walls, the trees.”

Related Characters: Dad (speaker), Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle, Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 104-05
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 20 Quotes

In my mini journal, I confessed that I had since kissed all different kinds of trees, and each family of trees—oaks, maples, elms, birches—had a special flavor all its own. Mixed which each tree’s taste was the slight taste of blackberries, and why this was so, I could not explain.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mr. Birkway
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 113-14
Explanation and Analysis:

“He probably never took English,” Phoebe said.

To me that Y looked like the newly born horse standing up on his thin legs.

The poem was about a newlY born horse who doesn’t know anything but feels everything. He lives in a “smoothbeautifully folded” world. I liked that. I was not sure what it was, but I liked it. Everything sounded soft and safe.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Phoebe Winterbottom (speaker), Mr. Birkway
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

Instead, I lay there thinking of the poem about the traveler, and I could see the tide rising and falling, and those horrid white hands snatching the traveler. How could it be normal, that traveler dying? And how could such a thing be normal and terrible both at the same time?

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, The Lunatic/Mike Bickle, Mr. Birkway
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

If there had been a vase, would have squashed it, because our heads moved completely together and our lips landed in the right place, which was on the other person’s lips. It was a real kiss, and it did not taste like chicken.

And then our heads moved slowly backward and we stared out across the lawn, and I felt like the newlY born horse who knows nothing but feels everything.

Ben touched his lips. “Did it taste a little like blackberries to you?” He said.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Ben Finney (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle, Mr. Birkway, Ben’s Mother
Related Symbols: Blackberries
Page Number: 225
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 42 Quotes

In the midst of the still morning, with only the sound of the river gurgling by, I heard a bird. It was singing a birdsong, a true, sweet birdsong. I looked all around and then up into the willow that leaned toward the river. The birdsong came from the top of the willow and I did not want to look too closely, because I wanted it to be the tree that was singing.

Related Characters: Salamanca “Sal” Tree Hiddle (speaker), Momma/Chanhassen “Sugar” Hiddle
Related Symbols: The Singing Tree
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis: