EARTH'S WILD MUSIC

A heartfelt plea to save nature's cacophony.

In a series of essays, many previously published, nature writer and environmentalist Moore offers an ardent warning against the perils of climate change and species endangerment. Writing mostly from Alaska and the Sonoran Desert, the author focuses on sound, which she evokes in sensuous prose that reflects her “deep love for the world’s music—the birdsong, the frog song, the crickets and toads, the whales and wolves, even old hymns and Girl Scout songs.” The peril of extinction means that “each time a creature dies, a song dies.” Moore hears sonority throughout nature, from the operatic plaints of humpback whales to the relentless drumbeat of sapsuckers. Even the saguaro cactus emits music: “When the wind blows across the spines, they sing like violin strings.” Dinosaurs, too, the author speculates, sang, much like their descendants, the birds. Each essay ends with a sidebar detailing threats to creatures such as grizzly bears, red-legged frogs, and monarch butterflies; providing evidence of pollution; and noting the rise of eco-anxiety. Although Moore shares that anxiety, she also encourages “active hope” that comes from listening to nature “with thoughtful attention” and making a decision to change the course of natural degradation by taking three steps: “Stop the killing. Defend everything that is left. Create new lifeways in harmony with the Earth.” She regrets that during the pandemic, humans have been forced to live like birds: “we flutter across the street or around bushes to avoid people, knowing that we are vulnerable to every miasmic wind, that a human touch could kill us. Now and then, we sing from high or hidden places, but mostly we are quiet.” That silence is dangerous. “What we need,” she writes, “is strength—strength in numbers and strength in moral conviction. What we need is shrieking, roaring courage.” The author’s passion is evident, though the prose sometimes ascends into rapture.

An enthusiastic argument that love, care, and defiance may still save the Earth.