Author Sy Montgomery reveals her soul as well as octopuses'

Not only do octopuses have souls, author Sy Montgomery told her Maple Hall audience of 120 October 8, but humanity’s successful future lies in realizing “how great the world is and how lucky we are to be alive on this planet.” The mid-career author ended her talk on the note of a minister rather than the slight librarian she appears to be.

She was a natural historian and philosopher throughout, challenging the group to consider that only in science fiction or outer space would we find “someone as different from us as an octopus.” Her interest was in consciousness: “What is it? Are we the only ones with it? What are the ramifications of animals possessing it?” These issues expanded her “ability to love and wonder,” including about octopuses having compassion.

Starting at the New England Aquarium in March 2011, she pursued octopus relationships, first with Athena, a 40 pound giant Pacific octopus that was four feet tall. She plunged right in, her arms elbow deep in the 47 degree water.

The octopus got her. Recognizing a kindred spirit, she gently grasped the writer with at least two arms and dozens of “soft, questing suckers.”

Montgomery was on her way. Her research took her took to a Seattle Aquarium’s Feb. 14 Octopus Wine Date Night to watch octopuses mate, and to Pacific Ocean diving expeditions with researchers.

Sharing what she learned, she had the audience laughing more than once. But as interesting as the facts were, Montgomery’s philosophizing and hypothesizing were more complex. “What octopuses did for me was expand my understanding of what the world is,” she said and quoted an ancient Greek: “‘The universe is alive and has fire in it and is full of gods.’” For her that fire is love and “full of gods” means the “world is holy. Honor, rejoice, revere, all those lives,” she said. “That is why I wrote this book.”

Asked about eating meat, she offered that she has been a vegetarian for 40 years and explained, “we make choices every time we buy something, when we vote or take public transit.” She suggested “we’re the enemies. It is definitely humans and how we are changing the planet and the sea.”

She again said, “by making friends with animals that have super powers that we lack we get to touch that reality.”

Montgomery’s “Soul of an Octopus” is this year’s Skagit Reads, the common title championed by the County’s libraries. The Anacortes and La Conner Regional libraries brought her to the Valley. To her Maple Hall audience she plugged the planned new building: “La Conner is going to have a bigger, better library very soon. Thank you, librarians, everywhere.”