Botany as the Path to Awareness, or the Flower as Grail in Thomas Wharton’s Icefields

In the novel Icefields by Canadian novelist Thomas Wharton, plants are more thanincidental elements. Vegetation appears as a living form of writing in nature that enablesmen and women to understand life and their relationship to the world. It can also beseen as the Grail that the alpinist sets out to find and that reveals the need to leaveplants in place and not destroy the environment for motives of profit. This paper aimsto show that the imagination may convey an ecological message and that ecologicalconsciousness may lead to metaphysical awareness.