The best observations on nature by the finest essayist of our time.

"The Thoreau of our time, an essayist so intensely personal, so sharp-eyed and deep-sighted, so tender and tough, lyrical and elegiac, as to transmute a simple stroll into a full-blown mystical experience."--The Washington Post

"Hoagland's writing is provocative, direct, raw, sometimes painful, and always full of his passion for life and living things. Highly recommended for nature and travel collections."--Library Journal

"Hoagland is surely one of our most truthful writers about nature . . ."--The New York Times Book Review

"A powerful writer with an invaluable perspective, Hoagland belongs in every American literature collection.--Booklist

"It's an adventure reading an Edward Hoagland essay because you don't really know where you're going or what's going to happen along the way...this collection makes it obvious to any “The Thoreau of our time, an essayist so intensely personal,
so sharp-eyed and deep-sighted, so tender and tough, lyrical and
elegiac, as to transmute a simple stroll into a full-blown mystical
experience.” —The Washington Post
“Hoagland’s writing is provocative, direct, raw, sometimes
painful, and always full of his passion for life and living things.
Highly recommended for nature and travel collections.”
—Library Journal
“Hoagland is surely one of our most truthful writers about
nature . . .” —The New York Times, Book Reviewreader that Hoagland is a superbly gifted writer."--Northern Woodlands Magazine
"One of the best celebrants of the natural world."--The Atlantic

EDWARD HOAGLAND, one of America’s most distinguished writers, is the author
of seventeen books, including Walking the Dead Diamond River, The Courage of
Turtles, Red Wolves and Black Bears, African Calliope, Tugman’s Passage, Balancing
Acts, and Tigers & Ice. He lives in Vermont and teaches in the English Department
at Bennington College.

Excerpt from pg. 21:
On the first hunt, we went to the Duck Pond Road in the township of Glover. It's a defunct jigsaw road, scarcely navigable, that twists past abandoned farmsteads and log houses for a dozen miles, with the acres of overgrown red clover and alfalfa fields and orchards everywhere that attract bears, mile after mile of new-fledged wilderness that has not been bulldozed because a strip through the middle of it is slated to become a superhighway. Tuffy, Doyle's strike dog, trotted ahead, urinating repeatedly as he warmed to the occasion. He was butter-footed in the beginning, as stiff as if he were walking on ice, having hunted in Holland, Vt., the day before and treed a yearling, which the hosts and landowners there shot. He has grasshopper legs, a long gazelle waist and a broad face for a dog, providing plenty of space for his teeth and for his smelling-chambers. He's even blacker than a bear, and doesn't lope or pace the way a wolf does, for instance; his gait is gimpier, pointier, pumpier, dancier; his legs seem to dangle--long girlish legs--and there's a trotting-horse quality to him--he has a thin tail and shaky, mile-jigging legs. His ears flop incongruously, like a cartoon puppy's, and yet he sniffed like a jackhammer as he started hunting more smoothy, after relieving his bowels and getting the excess of high spirits out of his system. The start, gaunt persona of a working dog, whether a sled, hound or attack dog, emerged--the scarred face flattening likea janissary's, the eyes going gaily daft. His tail swung with the degree of interest the smells he encountered aroused.

Edward Hoagland is not only one of the best writers of our time; he is also one of the keenest observers of nature and one of the most celebrated essayists. His subjects range from the natural history of owls to the delicious mystery of wolves ("Howling Back at the Wolves"), the demise of the red wolf ("Lament the Red Wolves"), our relationship with dogs ("Dogs, and the Tug of Life"), the nature of a bear-stalker ("Bears, Bears, Bears"), and the intricate workings of an old farm's ecosystem. Hoagland's exploration, from the boreal forests of Maine to the brawny Belize River, illuminates both the exotic and the wilds of our own backyards.
Hoagland reports from the front lines of life. He recounts fascinating detail with exacting prose. He's irascible, brilliant, probing, sharp-witted, and brutally honest about himself and the state of the natural world. No one who admires John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, and Edward Abbey should miss this definitive collection. It will forever change the way you view the natural world.

Imprint: The Lyons Press
Distributor: The Globe Pequot Press
Publication Date: 08-01-2005
Pages: 512
Measurements: 9.00in X 6.50in