paper 0-8165-1881-5 A slow-starting but ultimately intriguing collection of natural history essays written over two decades. Zwinger (who won a Western States Book Award for Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, 1995) attributes her “nose-to-nose” interaction with nature to nearsightedness, which leaves her dependent on a hand lens. This approach lends itself well to an exhaustive exploration of her home base near Colorado’s Pikes Peak, where she lovingly records the land’s changing science and aesthetics in the drift of seasons. The first essays detail small wonders, and though she makes a case for the importance of invertebrates (which comprise almost 99 percent of all living species, she points out), it’s hard to share her excitement for the complex, tedious process for determining moth gender. The book takes off when Zwinger broadens her focus, exploring a coastal Chilean island that sheltered the real-life Robinson Crusoe, traveling to Baja to retrace the steps of 19th-century naturalist Xantu, one of the first to document the natural science of the newly opened west, and tagging along with researchers in the world’s most densely populated raptor breeding ground, Idaho’s Snake River Canyon. Whether thrusting a bare hand in a January stream to discover nymphs or shooting summer rapids on the San Juan River, she’s an intrepid explorer whose enthusiasm for travel off the beaten path is inspiring. Zwinger is at her best interpreting the rigors of serious science for the casual naturalist. Explaining the immense pleasure she derives from the meticulousness and order of collecting insects, she documents the copious note-taking and fastidious preparation required, then nails the intangible appeal of it all with an apt analogy: “I feel about insect collecting the way a trout fisherman feels about fly-fishing: it is the thereness that is important.” Lyrical, astute, passionate—an altogether charming look at the natural world. (illustrations by the author, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 1998
ISBN: 0-8165-1880-7
Page Count: 294
Publisher: Univ. of Arizona
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
After a session with this lyrical book, the reader will understand, too.
A capable guided tour of a landscape unlike almost any other.
Nostalgia for lost places—mostly dammed or developed or 'dozed—drives much modern nature writing. First-time author Colasurdo indulges in nostalgia aplenty, and sometimes in purplish prose, but the lost places about which she writes are gone, not through human malfeasance, but through a not-unexpected show of natural force. Spirit Lake, the venue of many of Colasurdo's memories, is located below Mount St. Helen's, or Loowit, its Native-American name, which blew its top in 1980. The resulting "dreamscape of our childhood,'' as Colasurdo calls the mountain, for years resembled the surface of the moon. But then, faster than anyone expected, life began to return to the volcanic landscape: Trees grew, flowers bloomed, and the dead lake filled anew with water, fish, and beavers. People returned, too; a hundred visitors now ascend the volcano every day. Colasurdo, writing with a solid grasp of science lightly worn, looks at volcanology and what might be called salvage ecology to account for this renaissance, noting that "the volcano had not so much deforested its foothills as rearranged the trees'' and that most plant and animal species are, all in all, a hardy and resilient lot. The author has a grand time presenting and interpreting her arguments of how the mountain works, and she's done her homework well. After much time walking its remnants, she writes, "I understood how volcanoes bloom on the Earth's crust like so many branches of scarlet paintbrush.''
After a session with this lyrical book, the reader will understand, too.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-57061-081-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
An uninspired argument for the natural place of hunting in human society and the human psyche. Environmental psychologist Swan (Nature as Teacher and Healer, not reviewed) has written a thorough response to those who denounce hunting as cruelty to animals. Growing up in rural Michigan, he learned the excitement and responsibilities of the hunt from the time he was old enough to handle a BB gun. Animal- rights groups who harass hunters, Swan says, should remember that hunters are frequently the staunchest supporters of conservation and wildlife management. Far from being sadists, he adds, they have experienced the moment when they hold in the sight of their gun the life that will provide their dinner; this awakes in them an awe of the delicate balances that make up the web of nature. He argues that humans are, after all, carnivorous animals, a truth that the buffers of our ``civilized'' world have enabled us to forget. In an age when inner-city children are being slaughtered by predators with AK-47s, the author finds painful irony in activists' frenzied protests against licensed hunting. Swan hurts his strong case with an undisguised contempt for his ideological opponents. Calling animal-rights activists a ``new subspecies of human,'' he never lets a rational voice from the other side balance his position, and he often strays from his subjeect into the ethical questions of vegetarianism and animal testing. He also has an unfortunate tendency to rhapsodize about nature with a hackneyed, fuzzy mysticism that makes him sound like a New Age guru. He would win more converts if he cut out some of the sermons on spirituality and stuck to his lyrical hunting tales. Swan ultimately tells too much and shows too little in his prosaic defense of the elemental necessity of hunting.
Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-251029-0
Page Count: 282
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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