Book picks similar to
On the Spine of Time: A Flyfisher's Journey Among Mountain People, Streams & Trout by Harry Middleton
fishing
fly-fishing
nature
outdoors
Country Matters: The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving from a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse
Michael Korda - 2001
This witty memoir, replete with Korda's own line drawings, reads like a novel, as it chronicles the author's transformation from city slicker to full-time country gentleman, complete with tractors, horses, and a leaking roof.When he decides to take up residence in an eighteenth-century farmhouse in Dutchess County, ninety miles north of New York City, Korda discovers what country life is really like:Owning pigs, more than owning horses, even more than owning the actual house, firmly anchored the Kordas as residents in the eyes of their Pleasant Valley neighbors.You may own your land, but without concertina barbed wire, or the 82nd Airborne on patrol, it's impossible to keep people off it!It's possible to line up major household repairs over a tuna melt sandwich.And everyone in the area is fully aware that Michael "don't know shit about septics."The locals are not particularly quick to accept these outsiders, and the couple's earliest interactions with their new neighbors provide constant entertainment, particularly when the Kordas discover that hunting season is a year-round event -- right on their own land! From their closest neighbors, mostly dairy farmers, to their unforgettable caretaker Harold Roe -- whose motto regarding the local flora is "Whack it all back! " -- the residents of Pleasant Valley eventually come to realize that the Kordas are more than mere weekenders.Sure to have readers in stitches, this is a book that has universal appeal for all who have ever dreamed of owning that perfect little place to escape to up in the country, or, more boldly, have done it.
The Plant Messiah: Adventures in Search of the World’s Rarest Species
Carlos Magdalena - 2017
He's a man on a mission to save the world's most endangered plants from destruction and thieves hunting for wealthy collectors. He is a plant messiah.From the planet's tiniest waterlily - the Nymphaea thermarum - to Huarango trees with roots over 50 metres long, Carlos has a miraculous ability to bring breathtakingly beautiful plants back from the brink of extinction. He has travelled to the most remote and dangerous parts of the world - from the mountains of Peru to isolated Indian Ocean islands to the deepest Australian outback - in search of the rarest exotic species. Then, back in the Tropical Nursery at Kew, he uses pioneering, left-field techniques to help them grow.Now he's here to spread the gospel. The Plant Messiah is the inspirational story of a man who has devoted - and risked - his life to save incredible species, all in the name of making this Earth a greener and happier place. Amen to that.
Wildwood: A Journey through Trees
Roger Deakin - 2007
In Deakin's glorious meditation on wood, the "fifth element"as it exists in nature, in our culture, and in our souls the reader accompanies Deakin through the woods of Britain, Europe, Kazakhstan, and Australia in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with trees.Deakin lives in forest shacks, goes "coppicing" in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts bushplums with Aboriginal women in the outback. Along the way, he ferrets out the mysteries of woods, detailing the life stories of the timber beams composing his Elizabethan house and searching for the origin of the apple.As the world's forests are whittled away, Deakin's sparkling prose evokes woodlands anarchic with life, rendering each tree as an individual, living being. At once a traveler's tale and a splendid work of natural history, Wildwood reveals, amid the world's marvelous diversity, that which is universal in human experience.
The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky
Ellen Meloy - 2002
From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and deep canyons of the Southwest, we journey with Meloy through vistas of both great beauty and great desecration. Her keen vision makes us look anew at ancestral mountains, turquoise seas, and even motel swimming pools. She introduces us to Navajo “velvet grandmothers” whose attire and aesthetics absorb the vivid palette of their homeland, as well as to Persians who consider turquoise the life-saving equivalent of a bullet-proof vest. Throughout, Meloy invites us to appreciate along with her the endless surprises in all of life and celebrates the seduction to be found in our visual surroundings.
Yellowstone Has Teeth: A Memoir of Living in Yellowstone
Marjane Ambler - 2013
She and her husband lived in a tiny community near the shores of Yellowstone Lake, deep in the park’s interior. The natural beauty was magnificent, but Ambler and her neighbors discovered that Yellowstone “had teeth.” It could be an unforgiving place where mistakes mattered.In this well-constructed narrative, Ambler reveals a hidden Yellowstone, a place where delight and danger are separated by the slimmest of margins: a degree of pitch on an avalanche slope, a few inches of a buffalo’s horn, a moment during a deadly wildfire. She also tells about:• The rangers and maintenance workers who handled everything from thundering avalanches to man-eating grizzly bears• The mothers who carried their babies inside their snowmobile suits and prayed their machines would not fail on the long ride home•The old-timers who forged communities despite the odds against them.With insight, love, and humor, Yellowstone Has Teeth paints a never-before-seen portrait of an iconic American landscape and the people who live there.
Curtis Creek Manifesto
Sheridan Anderson - 1978
It is laced with outstanding humor provided in its hundreds of illustrations. All the practical information you need to know is presented in an extremely delightful way such as rod, reel, fly line and fly selection, casting, reading water, insect knowledge to determine which fly pattern to use, striking and playing fish, leaders and knot tying, fly tying, rod repairs, and many helpful tips. A great, easy-to-understand book.
Horizon
Barry Lopez - 2019
As he takes us on these myriad travels, Lopez also probes the long history of humanity's quests and explorations, including the prehistoric peoples who trekked across Skraeling Island in northern Canada, the colonialists who plundered Central Africa, an enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific, a Native American emissary who found his way into isolationist Japan, and today's ecotourists in the tropics. Throughout his journeys--to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on the globe--and via friendships he forges along the way with scientists, archaeologists, artists and local residents, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world. Horizon is a revelatory, epic work that voices concern and frustration along with humanity and hope--a book that makes you see the world differently, and that is the crowning achievement by one of America's great thinkers and most humane voices.
Walks in the Wild: A Guide Through the Forest
Peter Wohlleben - 2017
He invites you on an atmospheric journey of discovery. Learn to find your way around the woods without a compass or GPS, which berries and mushrooms are good to eat, how to read animal tracks and what it’s like to spend a night alone in a forest.Walks in the Wild has everything you need to make a woodland walk – be it spring, summer, autumn or winter – into a very special experience.
The Total Outdoorsman Manual (Field Stream)
T. Edward Nickens - 2011
Edward Nickens and the experts at Field & Stream magazine, that is guaranteed to improve your hunting, fishing, camping and survival skills.With practical information for both the beginner and advanced outdoorsman, the book is an authoritative, comprehensive, and entertaining guide that will enable anyone to master the outdoors and hunt, fish, and camp like an expert.HUNT BETTER How to track a buck, make the toughest shots, master bowhunting and knife skills, and haul, butcher, and cook wild game.FISH SMARTER Advice on the best techniques for flyfishing, baitcasting, and spinning, as well as surefire ways to get the most out of your motorboat, canoe, or kayak. SURVIVE ANYTHING Whether you fall through thick ice, are swept away by a raging river, or have a stare down with an angry bear, these skills means the difference between life and death.CAMP ANYWHERE Tested and proven expert tips to help you stay warm, eat well, and build a fire in any situation in record time.Field & Stream For more than 100 years, Field & Stream magazine has provided expert advice on every aspect of the outdoor life, including hunting, fishing, conservation, and wilderness survival. The magazine's annual Total Outdoorsman issue is one of its most popular, read by over nine million sporting enthusiasts. The Total Outdoorsman Challenge brings together avid hunters and anglers from around the country to demonstrate their skills and compete for big bucks and bigger glory. Winners are all-around hunters, fishermen, and survivors with a flair for problem-solving and the skills to prevail.
The Wild Truth: A Memoir
Carine McCandless - 2014
Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris's life and his journey has not yet been told—until now. The missing pieces are finally revealed in The Wild Truth, written by Carine McCandless, Chris's beloved and trusted sister. Featured in both the book and film, Carine has wrestled for more than twenty years with the legacy of her brother's journey to self-discovery, and now tells her own story while filling in the blanks of his. Carine was Chris's best friend, the person with whom he had the closest bond, and who witnessed firsthand the dysfunctional and violent family dynamic that made Chris willing to embrace the harsh wilderness of Alaska. Growing up in the same troubled household, Carine speaks candidly about the deeper reality of life in the McCandless family. In the many years since the tragedy of Chris's death, Carine has searched for some kind of redemption. In this touching and deeply personal memoir, she reveals how she has learned that real redemption can only come from speaking the truth.
Running with Champions: A Midlife Journey on the Iditarod Trail
Lisa Frederic - 2006
Lisa Frederic didn't set out to run the Iditarod. She just fell in love with the event and wanted to help. She ended up working as a volunteer for the Trail Committee at various checkpoints. Then she helped Iditarod champion Jeff King train his puppies. She had never mushed before. She was a rookie, but a rookie with heart and drive. She started out with short races and eventually raced the 1,049 miles from Anchorage to Nome in the Iditarod. Her story speaks to everyone who has ever followed a dream and found that the dream realized is even bigger than the imagined one.
Baja Oklahoma
Dan Jenkins - 1981
Still convincingly female, though in no way dumb and girly, fortyish Juanita serves drinks to the colorful crew patronizing Herb's Cafe in South Fort Worth, worries herself sick over a hot-to-trot daughter proving too fond of drugs and the dealers who sell them, endures a hypochondriac mother whose whinings would justify murder, dates a fellow middle-ager whose connections with the oil industry are limited to dipstick duty at his filling station—and, by the way, she also hopes to become a singer-songwriter in the real country tradition of Bob Wills and Willie Nelson. That Juanita is way too old to remain a kid with a crazy dream doesn't matter much to her. In between handing out longneck beers to customer-acquaintances battling hot flashes and deciding when boyfriend Slick is finally going to get lucky, Juanita keeps jotting down lyrics reflective of hard-won wisdom and setting them to music composed on her beloved Martin guitar. Too many of her early songwriting results are one-dimensional or derivative, but finally she hits on something both original and heartfelt: a tribute to her beloved home state, warts and all.
The Sense of Wonder
Rachel Carson - 1965
Stunning new photographs by Nick Kelsh beautifully complement Carson's intimate account of adventures with her young nephew, Roger, as they enjoy walks along the rocky coast of Maine and through dense forests and open fields, observing wildlife, strange plants, moonlight and storm clouds, and listening to the "living music" of insects in the underbrush. "If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder." Writes Carson, "he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." The Sense of Wonder is a refreshing antidote to indifference and a guide to capturing the simple power of discovery that Carson views as essential to life.In her insightful new introduction, Linda Lear remembers Rachel Carson's groundbreaking achievements in the context of the legendary environmentalist's personal commitment to introducing young and old to the miracles of nature.Kelsh's lush photographs inspire sensual, tactile reactions: masses of leaves floating in a puddle are just waiting to be scooped up and examined more closely. An image of a narrow path through the trees evokes the earthy scent of the woods after a summer rain. Close-ups of mosses and miniature lichen fantasy-lands will spark innocent'as well as more jaded'imaginations. Like a curious child studying things underfoot and within reach, Kelsh's camera is drawn to patterns in nature that too often elude hurried adults'a stand of beech trees in the springtime, patches of melting snow and the ripples from a pebble tossed into a slow-moving stream.The Sense of Wonder is a timeless volume that will be passed on from children to grandchildren, as treasured as the memory of an early-morning walk when the song of a whippoorwill was heard as if for the first time.
Stronghold: One Man's Quest to Save the World's Wild Salmon
Tucker Malarkey - 2019
Guido Rahr’s mission to save the wild Pacific salmon leads him into adventures that make for a breathtakingly exciting read.”—Ian Frazier, author of Travels in SiberiaIn the tradition of Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Orchid Thief, Stronghold is Tucker Malarkey’s gripping chronicle of an unlikely visionary and his crusade to protect the world’s last bastion for wild salmon. From a young age, Guido Rahr was a misfit among his family and classmates, preferring to spend his time in the natural world. An obsessive fly-fisherman, Rahr noticed when the salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest began to decline—and was one of the few who understood why. As dams, industry, and climate change degraded the homes of these magnificent fish, Rahr saw that the salmon of the Pacific Rim were destined to go the way of their Atlantic brethren: near extinction.An improbable and inspiring story, Stronghold takes us on a wild adventure, from Oregon to Alaska to one of the world’s last remaining salmon strongholds in the Russian Far East, a landscape of ecological richness and diversity that is rapidly being developed for oil, gas, minerals, and timber. And along the way Rahr must navigate a tangled web of scientists, conservationists, Russian oligarchs, corrupt officials, impenetrable bureaucracies, and unexpected allies in order to set into motion a plan to secure the survival of the endangered salmon, an extraordinary keystone species whose demise would reverberate across the planet. Tucker Malarkey, who accompanies Rahr to the Russian wilderness and reports on events from up close, has written a clarion call for a sustainable future, a remarkable work of natural history, and a riveting account of a species whose future is closely linked to that of our own.“All fishermen know that we have to fight to save the waters we love. Stronghold tells a captivating story of the struggle to save the last great salmon rivers.”—Johnny Morris, founder/owner of Bass Pro shops, owner of Cabela’s