BookLovers: A few of Daley’s favorite nature books to think about earth
“Oh, Mother Earth/ With your fields of green/ Once more laid down/ By the hungry hand.” — Neil Young
Each April 22, we go crazy on social media posting Earth Day messages.
Every brand suddenly has a sustainability message. We post fitting photos and quotes all over Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. Some of us might even pick up litter that day.
But what do we do on April 23? Or May 1? Or October 20?
The earth is, quite literally, our mother. We’re like kids who think of her on Mother’s Day, make our once-a-year phone call: “How’s Sharon and Rob? Good, good… How’s the ozone doing? And the polar bears? Oh, too bad…Well, ok, yup, love ya. Bye bye.”
The earth is not only our mother, but our home — the last house available in the entire milky way, at that. (No matter how many times we go house-hunting on Mars.)
This house can be gorgeous. Breathtakingly so, if you stop to notice.
But we’re all roommates here. The messy rooms, the broken thermostats, the flooding basement — once we break it, we can’t move. This is it.
When a living thing is both your sick mom and your only home, it deserves more than one day of thought. And yet we tend to only post “Earth Day is Every Day!” on Earth Day.
With that in mind, I have some inspirational food for thought. These books will have you thinking deeply about the beauty of the earth — and why she’s worth saving — year-round.
Everyone should read Aldo Leopold’s classic “A Sand County Almanac” at least once. I first read the nature writer/professor in college, for nature writer/professor Chet Raymo’s class. I recently reread it, because it’s just that kind of book.
Born in Iowa in 1887, it’s eye-opening what Leopold observed about our damaged earth, and the need for conservation and “land ethic” in the 1940s while living in Wisconsin.
According to his Foundation’s website, he developed an interest in the natural world at an early age. He graduated from Yale Forest School in 1909 and by 1922, was instrumental in developing the proposal to manage the Gila National Forest as a wilderness area.
But just a week after learning “A Sand County Almanac,” would be published, Leopold died of a heart attack at age 61. The naturalist/ecologist/forester/ conservationist University of Wisconsin professor’s now-classic collection — which takes us on a journey with him through all four seasons— released in ’49 and only gets more timely with each passing year.
John Muir, “Wilderness Essays.” If you read any nature writing at all, you’ll eventually come across references to Sierra Club co-founder Muir. Go straight to the source. His name is intertwined with ecology and environmental philosophy for a reason.
Born in Scotland in 1838, his family immigrated to Wisconsin, starting a farm in 1849. The botanist/zoologist/glaciologist/advocate for the preservation is the archetype pioneersman/explorer: He walked some 1,000 miles from Kentucky to Florida, recounted in his book “A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf.” Built a cabin along Yosemite Creek, and wrote about it in “First Summer in the Sierra.” Trekked to Alaska to explore Glacier Bay. Start with a collection like “Wilderness Essays,” where you can find his thoughts from Alaska to the High Sierras.
Annie Dillard has so many hits, but start with her Pulitzer Prize-winning “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” We follow her year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, as she chronicles incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence.”
Anyone who walks on a favorite beach, or by a river, or through a patch of wood will relate to this. Dillard walks by Tinker Creek every day, and with her careful eye, sees the world. As the synopsis reads:
In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She examines pond water under a microscope. Unties a snakeskin, witnesses a flood, and plays with a field of grasshoppers.
Ecology and biology through a poet’s eyes. I’d also recommend “Teach a Stone to Talk,” and “The Abundance,” an essay collection curated by Dillard.
I’m almost out of room, but a few more before I go:
The obvious Earth Day books: Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” and Thoreau’s “Walden” — if you haven’t read either in a while, reread ‘em.
“Desert Solitaire,” by Edward Abbey
“Finding Beauty in a Broken World,” by Terry Tempest Williams
“The Path,” by Chet Raymo
“The Living Mountain,” by Nan Shepherd
The American Seasons series by Edwin Way Teale
“The Wild Places,” by Robert Macfarlane
Lauren Daley is a freelance writer. She tweets @laurendaley1. Read more at https://www.facebook.com/daley.writer.
This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: BookLovers: A few of Daley’s favorite nature books to think about earth
