highly sensitive power

When a friend recommended John Allen Boone’s Kinship with All Life to me fifteen years ago, I was intrigued enough to track it down. First published in 1954, this odd treasure was a revelation to read, not because Boone’s ideas about the ability of animals to communicate with us are new at the concept level, but because of the genuinely interested and loving way he details and validates our connection with animals.

The first part of Boone’s book chronicles his initial journey of discovery, which begins when he takes on the role of caretaker to Strongheart, a famous dog screen star. Using what he learns through his progressively closer and more communicative relationship with Strongheart, Boone goes on to discover connections with other species, from rattlesnakes to flies. His enthusiasm and great willingness to open up to other ways of understanding are instructive in themselves, and through his stories of the non-human lives that impact him, Boone shines as a learner who’s also a humble teacher.

“When we first began living together, my attitude toward Strongheart had been the conventional one. I assigned myself a place high in the scale of values because I was ‘a human,’ and gave him a place far below because he happened to be ‘a dog.’ I did this regardless of his unusual accomplishments, his world-wide fame and the large sums of money that he could earn for others. I had long been under the impression that while I lived in the upper levels of existence, all animals, not even excluding Strongheart, had to do their living on much lower and relatively unimportant mental and physical levels; and that between them and myself there could be certain rather limited service ties, but not much else. These ideas were to be radically changed.”

By the end of the book, Boone is helping a friend of his try to understand a fly that Boone has befriended and learned from, and which Boone calls Freddie.

“Thinking back over our friendship I could not recall a single instance in which the little fly had done even one of the antisocial things for which his kind are so ruthlessly hunted down and slaughtered. His character and behaviour patterns would have been commendable in a human.”

Although I feel as though my high sensitivity allows me to tune in on a deep level to animals as well as humans, Boone’s tales of cross-species communication took the possibilities of that tuning to a whole new realm.

John Allen Boone has also written other books on this topic, including Letters to Strongheart and Adventures in Kinship With All Life.