NATURE'S JOURNAL

These books are natural choices for reading through the long, gray winter

SHARON WOOTTON

Originally published September 25, 2001

Imagine millions of Monarch butterflies, their wings creating a soundscape, their colors blanketing trees and rocks, settling into their wintering roosts.

Sue Halpern did more than imagine, following the monarch trail through two countries and countless articles before writing "Four Wings and a Prayer: Caught in the Mystery of the Monarch Butterfly" ($23, Pantheon).

If you're stocking up on nature books for those long, gray days ahead, "Four Wings" is one I recommend.

Monarchs are the largest of the black-and-orange butterflies; their caterpillars feed on milkweed. Monarchs that live in the Midwest migrate up to 2,000 miles to Mexico; West Coast monarchs head to California.

Fascinated by the toughness and fragility of these butterflies, Halpern tells their tale through the many people who care about them, whether it's equally fascinated scientists or Mexican peasants who stand to lose if the butterflies' wintering grounds are saved.

Nature provides plenty of material for other authors as well. Consider also adding some of these books to your winter reading list.

- Don't be bugged: John Acorn and artist Ian Sheldon have teamed for the delightfully written and illustrated "Bugs of Washington and Oregon" ($11.95, Lone Pine).

Acorn writes with humor, and Sheldon's art will lead readers to identification nirvana.

A six-page key to insects offers a quickie ID with page reference. Each bug gets a page for a large illustration and facts packaged in a must-read fashion.

Among the 125 coolest bugs are hornet moths, black witch, burying beetle, big dingy ground beetle, Western-eyed click beetle, stump stabber, cow killer, ant lion and garden harvestman.

- Take off your shoes: Save some shelf space for "Barefoot Hearted: A Wild Life Among Wildlife" ($24.95, Villard, 313 pages).

That Kathleen Meyer can devote one-eighth of a book to a chapter on skunks (Bouquet of Musk, With Chocolates) says volumes about her writing skills. Meyer, once involved in rowing big rapids and driving draft horses in a covered wagon, has moved to the country to settle down in a barn-turned-home with her husband.

Meyer juggles nature stories, personal relationships, research, spiritual guidance from a bear, vanishing species, the interconnectedness of species and critter tales in a delightful read.

- Fast-flying jewels: Hummingbirds are a photographer's dream, all colors and fascinating angles, softness and hard beaks.

Backed by outstanding photographs from many sources, Robert Burton's "The World of the Hummingbird" ($40, Firefly) captures the art and the science of these record-setting fliers.

Revered by many cultures throughout history, the hummingbirds are again honored in Burton's excellent work.

- A rare author: Terry Tempest Williams is one of those special people who can change your life because she sees the world and captures it in words in ways most people cannot.

The author of "Refuge" has done it again with "Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert" ($23, Pantheon).

Williams pulls layers of meaning out of minimalist landscape, creating compositions that are short in length and long on meaning, powerful messages in gentle prose, reminding us how important wild landscapes are to our collective psychology.

- Classic back: "Wintergreen: Rambles in a Ravaged Land" ($16.95) by Robert Michael Pyle owns the honor of being the first in a new Library of the West series from Sasquatch Books.

First published in 1986, it is Pyle's personal yet timeless experiences of Southwest Washington's Willapa Hills. The author of the delightful "Chasing Monarchs" lets us see through his eyes into the importance and resilience of an ecosystem hard-used by logging.

Sharon Wootton is a free-lance writer from the San Juan Islands. E-mail questions, suggestions or comments about nature, or Nature's Journal, to songandword@rockisland.com.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

back to main Outdoors: Wildlife index