The eminent biologist reflects on his own response to nature and the aesthetic aspects of his exploration of natural systems in an intensely personal essay that examines the essential links between mankind and the rest of the living world.

    A Simon & Schuster eBook

    His explication of the fundamental powers of the cosmos is mystical and ecstatic and points directly to the need to activate one’s own creative powers.

    Despite the author's criticisms of Thoreau, it is more like Walden than any other book I have read. . . . The book makes great strides toward bringing the best insights from medieval philosophy and from contemporary environmental ethics together. Anyone interested in both of these areas must read this book."—Daniel A. Dombrowski, The Thomist"Those who share Kohák's concern to understand nature as other than a mere resource or matter in motion will find his temporally oriented interpretation of nature instructive. It is here in particular that Kohák turns moments of experience to account philosophically, turning what we habitually overlook or avoid into an opportunity and basis for self-knowledge. This is an impassioned attempt to see the vital order of nature and the moral order of our humanity as one."—Ethics

    Agriculture/Ecology

    This wide-ranging handbook provides us with the absolute necessities for long-term living, the ancient secrets of adaptation (the single most important environmental skill), and the keys to a deeper awareness and harmony with the earth.

    Bernd Heinrich says--because it's fun.Heinrich, author of the much acclaimed Bumblebee Economics, has been playing in the wilds of one continent or another all his life. In the process, he has become one of the world's foremost physiological ecologists. With In a Patch of Fireweed, he will undoubtedly become one of our foremost writers of popular science.Part autobiography, part case study in the ways of field biology, In a Patch of Fireweed is an endlessly fascinating account of a scientist's life and work. For the author, it is an opportunity to report not just his results but the curiosity, humor, error, passion, and competitiveness that feed into the process of discovery. For the reader, it is simply a delight, a rare chance to share the perceptions of an unusual mind fully in tune with the inner workings of nature. Before his years of research in the woodlands and deserts of North America, the New Guinea highlands, and the plains of East Africa, Heinrich had a sense of the wild that few people in this century can know. He tells the whole story, from his refugee childhood hidden in a German forest, eating mice fried in boar fat, to his ongoing research in the woods surrounding his cabin in Maine.

    For the first time since its publication in l984, a completely updated and revised edition of this best-selling atlas which brings it into the 1990s, incorporating the new events, issues, and statistics of the past decade.

    Offers an account of his exploration of the Amazon, tracing the river from its mouth to its source, detailing the ecology, wildlife and etc.

    

    Usually experienced only during ancient dances or rituals, this escape from time is the theme of this book, which traces the life on a single spot in New England from the last ice age through years of Indians, shamans, and bears, to the colonists, witches and farmers, and now the encroaching parks.

    Answers questions about the physical world, its plants and animals, and the adaptations and interactions of plants and animals in various environments such as deserts, mountains, and seashores.

    Then it will be possible again to unite something spiritual with the cycle of sense phenomena" (Rudolf Steiner).These five lectures were given at Easter, 1923. Rudolf Steiner, in a fully conscious way, laid a foundation for celebrating the Christian festivals--Christmas, Easter, St. John's, and Michaelmas. This is begun with a description of how the festival year evolved over long ages from the Earth's cycle of inbreathing and outbreathing. These forces are the Earth's soul activities in relation to the cosmos.Rudolf Steiner reveals the deep relationship between humanity and the seasons of the Earth, the solstices, and the equinoxes. And through the festivals of the seasons, he reveals humanity's relationship to the Christ Being The esoteric realities behind the festivals are also discussed in relation to sub-earthly and supra-earthly forces, the ancient Mysteries, the activity of the Archangel Michael, morality, and the arts.This book is a translation from German of Der Jahreskreislauf als Atmungsvorgang der Erde und die vier gro�en Festeszeiten. Die Anthroposophie und das menschliche Gem�t (GA 223).