Some of the natural history lore is antiquated, but keen intelligence and good humor express themselves in a readable and enjoyable manner.

    Join the Horn family on the adventure of a lifetime. Learn how a couple from the city moved to the wilderness with three small boys and carved out a life in the middle of nowhere that has endured for nearly 50 years. With nearly 400 pages and over 100 photos, Impossible Beyond This Point is a compelling must-read for anyone interested in (or contemplating) getting away from it all.Excerpt1-A New BeginningA cool breeze drifted through tall Douglas fir and ponderosa pine and fluttered the leaves in clumps of black oak as they sat on rocks amongst their scattered possessions on the red clay dust of Backbone Ridge in the far Northern California wilds of Trinity County. The blue Ford station wagon would go no further, for from this point on, two miles of treacherous trail picked its way down to a lonesome canyon where a shell of a shack stood waiting. This would be their home. Virgil and Marcy, along with their three young sons, came to this juncture through an untamed notion to find a way of life that would give them independence, dignity and contentment.Virgil sat across from Marcy and his blue eyes twinkled. “I hope we made the right move, Ma. There’s no returning now.” “Yes,” she whispered. “We made the right move.”It was the beginning of June and the year was 1967.......ExcerptThe sun had gone down and heavy clouds were piling up in the west. If it snowed now and turned cold, Virgil doubted they could get out in time to finish the school year. A purple haze settled in the gulches, making it difficult to distinguish objects like trees or rocks that they were beginning to find hard to avoid.By the time they passed Wind Dance Lookout, it was dark. Below Wind Dance Lookout lay deep unbroken drifts and the dropping temperature formed a crust that supported them all. Partway down Marcy suddenly broke the crust and fell through to her hips in the snow. Exhausted, she struggled to get the leverage to free her legs. “I can't pull my legs out! I’m going to freeze to death!” she sobbed. Seeing his mother crying put Gaines in a panic and he frantically dug the hard corn snow away from her legs with his bare fingers until she managed to climb free.....ExcerptDarkness fell and they heard the rain pound the roof over the roar of the river. The boys had a hard time concentrating on their schoolwork and it was just as well because about eight that evening the incandescent light started dimming. “Power’s going out,” Kelly announced.Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at the light. “Yep,” Gaines confirmed. “Can’t be from lack of water!” he laughed. “The creek must be really roaring up there and I bet it tore out the intake.”As the light faded to yellow and then orange, Virgil got up and took a book of matches from his front pocket and lit a candle bug. “I’ll go turn the valve off so it doesn’t drag crap down the line,” he said as he headed out the door.The family fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof. The first few times the river had come up in the early years, Virgil and Marcy had nervously gotten up every few hours to check the water level but they never got up to check anymore.Marcy awoke around midnight and listened to the rain. The river was quieter and she sleepily turned over, drifting back to sleep. Suddenly she remembered something Red had told them. “As long as the river is roaring, it isn't so dangerous, but beware if it gets quiet," he’d warned.She looked at the phosphorescent face of her Big Ben clock. Noting it was a quarter to one in the morning, she concentrated on the sound of the river again. The hushed river was no longer relaxing, but foreboding. Unable to go to sleep, she got up and put on a coat, lit her candle bug and stepped out on the porch. Tom, his fur glistening with drops of water, yowled loudly and she let him in the house.Crystal water ran from the eves and splattered in a puddle in the pathway leading from the porch. She walked to the summer kitchen area and down to the gravel bar where the sawmill was located. At the edge of this bar, she came to a sudden stop. Right in front of her, muddy waves of debris-laden water slammed against the gravel only two inches from the top. The river was three feet higher than she’d ever seen it, which was a huge difference considering that the three additional feet of depth was spread across 300 feet of width and moving at a greatly increased speed. Apprehension overcame her.Though a candle bug is great for casting a soft diffused light for walking, it’s impossible to see beyond eight feet when using one, and in the streaming rain the visibility was even less. Marcy could only listen to what was going on beyond the cone of yellow light. Rumbles, hissing, sucking, splashing and surging, all in varying levels, met her ears. Quickly she headed back to the cabin. Virgil was asleep and she gently shook his shoulder. “The river’s real high, Virg,” Marcy whispered so as not to awaken the boys....

    She sees the footprints of early humans fossilised in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man who, despite having lain in a peat bog since the start of the Bronze Age, seems to be about to wake from a dream...'This book is a wonder' Adam Nicolson, Spectator'A clairvoyant and poetic conversation with the past' Antony Gormley

    This major literary event contains a hitherto unpublished work--The Dispersion of Seeds--one of Thoreau's last important research and writing projects, and places him among the first American scientists to understand the significance of Darwin's theory of Natural Selection.

    Her father was deeply conservative, with romantic, old-fashioned views about England. After his death, wanting to understand him better, Bunting began to explore his passionate, lifelong attachment to a small plot of land in North Yorkshire. Delving deep into the rich history of this acre, she uncovers traces of its Neolithic inhabitants and of the Cistercian monks; she learns of the medieval battles and considers the changing face of agriculture and leisure. The result sheds a fascinating light on what a contested, layered place England is, and on what belonging to a place might mean to all of us. "The Plot" is an original, heartfelt, and deeply political book.

    We're forgetting it. We're no longer noticing it. We've lost the habit of looking and seeing and listening and hearing.But we can make hidden things visible, and this book features 23 spellbinding ways to bring the magic of nature much closer to home.Mammals you never knew existed will enter your world. Birds hidden in treetops will shed their cloak of anonymity. With a single movement of your hand you can make reptiles appear before you. Butterflies you never saw before will bring joy to every sunny day. Creatures of the darkness will enter your consciousness. And as you take on new techniques and a little new equipment, you will discover new creatures and, with them, new areas of yourself that had gone dormant. Once put to use, they wake up and start working again. You become wilder in your mind and in your heart. Once you know the tricks, the wild world begins to appear before you. For anyone who wants to get closer to the nature all around them and bring it back into focus, this is the perfect read.

    Tarka the otter pursues an active life, sometimes playful and sometimes dangerous, in the Devonshire countryside.Tarka the Otter relates the adventures of a wild otter, his narrow escapes from Deadlock, the hound, and their final confrontation in the Torridge River

    Much of it is drawn from the oral testimony of countrymen (including poachers) still living when the book was written.'Here, from stubble to stewing pot, are all the facts that can be assembled; science, literature, mythology, superstition, semantics, venery, and a rich swathe of countryman's talk . . . This delightful book.' Observer

    Now All Roads Lead to France is an account of his final five years, centred on his extraordinary friendship with Robert Frost and Thomas's fatal decision to fight in the war.The book also evokes an astonishingly creative moment in English literature, when London was a battleground for new, ambitious kinds of writing. A generation that included W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost and Rupert Brooke were 'making it new' - vehemently and pugnaciously.These larger-than-life characters surround a central figure, tormented by his work and his marriage. But as his friendship with Frost blossomed, Thomas wrote poem after poem, and his emotional affliction began to lift. In 1914 the two friends formed the ideas that would produce some of the most remarkable verse of the twentieth century. But the War put an ocean between them: Frost returned to the safety of New England while Thomas stayed to fight for the Old. It is these roads taken - and those not taken - that are at the heart of this remarkable book, which culminates in Thomas's tragic death on Easter Monday 1917.

    With a tragedy in his past that looms over his future, he faces a long, hard apprenticeship to the foul-tempered scholar Everard, before he can have any chance of becoming a Knight. As he struggles to survive in the harsh discipline of the Temple, Will must try to make sense of many things: his own past, the dangerous mystery that surrounds Everard, and his confused feelings for Elwen, the strong-willed young woman whose path seems always to cross his own.Meanwhile, a new star is rising in the East. A ruthless fighter and brilliant tactician, the former slave Baybars has become one of the greatest generals and rulers of his time. Haunted by his early life, he is driven by an unquenchable desire to free his people from the European invaders of his homeland.With page-turning suspense and thrilling action, the Brethren trilogy brilliantly evokes that extraordinary clash of civilizations known in the West as the Crusades. Robyn Young portrays a rich cast of characters, reflecting on each side greed, ambition and religious fanaticism, as well as courage, love and faith.

    While considering the direction of his own life, he began to contemplate the existence of this colossal tree. Standing in England for centuries, the oak would have been a sapling when the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.Canton examines our long-standing dependency on the oak, and how that has developed and morphed into myth and legend. We no longer need these sturdy trees to build our houses and boats, to fuel our fires, or to grind their acorns into flour in times of famine. What purpose, then, do they serve in our world today? Are these miracles of nature no longer necessary to our lives? What can they offer us? Canton tells the story of this tree in its ecological, spiritual, literary, and historical contexts, using it as a prism to see his own life and human history. The Oak Papers is a reflection on change and transformation, and the role nature has played in sustaining and redeeming us.

    It led him to begin exploring these questions, prompting a journey westwards to Land's End through one of the most fascinating regions of Europe.From the Neolithic ritual landscape of Bodmin Moor to the Arthurian traditions of Tintagel, from the mysterious china-clay country to the granite tors and tombs of the far south-west, Marsden assembles a chronology of our shifting attitudes to place. In archives, he uncovers the life and work of other 'topophiles' before him - medieval chroniclers and Tudor topographers, eighteenth-century eighteenth-century antiquarians, post-industrial poets and abstract painters. Drawing also on his own travels overseas, Marsden reveals that the shape of the land lies not just at the heart of our history but of man's perennial struggle to belong on this earth.

    The first ever collection of contemporary Scottish writing on nature and landscape, Antlers of Water showcases the diversity and radicalism of new Scottish nature writing today.Edited, curated and introduced by the award-winning Kathleen Jamie, and featuring prose, poetry and photography, this inspiring collection takes us from walking to wild swimming, from red deer to pigeons and wasps, from remote islands to back gardens.With contributions from Amy Liptrot, Malachy Tallack, Chitra Ramaswamy, Jim Crumley, Amanda Thomson, Karine Polwart and many more, Antlers of Water urges us to renegotiate our relationship with the more-than-human world, in writing which is by turns celebratory, radical and political.

    Thanks to the introduction of free-roaming cattle, ponies, pigs and deer – proxies of the large animals that once roamed Britain – the 3,500 acre project has seen extraordinary increases in wildlife numbers and diversity in little over a decade.Once-common species, including turtle doves, nightingales, peregrine falcons, lesser spotted woodpeckers and purple emperor butterflies, are now breeding at Knepp, and populations of other species are rocketing. The Burrells’ degraded agricultural land has become a functioning ecosystem again, heaving with life – all by itself.This recovery has taken place against a backdrop of catastrophic loss elsewhere. According to the 2016 ‘State of Nature’ report, the UK is ranked 29th in the world for biodiversity loss: 56% of species in the UK are in decline and 15% are threatened with extinction. We are living in a desert, compared with our gloriously wild past.In Wilding, Isabella Tree tells the story of the ‘Knepp experiment’ and what it reveals of the ways in which we might regain that wilder, richer country. It shows how rewilding works across Europe; that it has multiple benefits for the land; that it can generate economic activity and employment; how it can benefit both nature and us – and that all of this can happen astonishingly quickly. Part gripping memoir, part fascinating account of the ecology of our countryside, Wilding is, above all, an inspiring story of hope.

    In a beautifully written sequence of essays, anecdotes, and profiles of species from yew to scots pine, Max Adams explores both the amazing biology of trees and humanity’s relationship with wood and forest across the centuries. Embellished with images from John Evelyn’s classic Sylva (1664), this beautifully designed gift book offers both a natural and a cultural history of trees, and will delight anyone who cares about the natural world and our interaction with it.