. . . In glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance. At once a celebration and a warning, Earth Keeper is an impassioned defense of all that our endangered planet stands to lose."  — EsquireA magnificent testament to the earth, from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday. One of the most distinguished voices in American letters, N. Scott Momaday has devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially its oral tradition. A member of the Kiowa tribe who was born and grew up on Indian reservations throughout the Southwest, Momaday has an intimate connection to the land he knows well and loves deeply. In Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land, he reflects on his native ground and its influence on his people. “When I think about my life and the lives of my ancestors, I am inevitably led to the conviction that I, and they, belong to the American land. This is a declaration of belonging. And it is an offering to the earth.” he writes.Momaday recalls stories of his childhood, stories that have been passed down through generations, stories that reveal a profound and sacred connection to the American landscape and a reverence for the natural world. In this moving and lyrical book, which includes original artwork by the author, Momaday offers an homage and a warning. He reminds us that the Earth is a sacred place of wonder and beauty; a source of strength and healing that must be protected before it’s too late. As he so eloquently yet simply expresses, we must all be keepers of the earth.

    This exquisite book, now in softcover, is the result of that bold and immensely personal project. Through the accompanying essay, Brandenburg shares his innermost thoughts and passions as he witnesses the cycle of nature near his home in the northwoods of Minnesota.Brandenburg also contributes new photos and an Epilog that illustrates and discusses the devastating summer wind storm that wreaked havoc on the locations photographed for the original project.

    One midsummer week over sixty years later, Olivia Laing walked Woolf's river from source to sea. The result is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love. Along the way, Laing explores the roles rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature and mythology alike. To the River excavates all sorts of stories from the Ouse's marshy banks, from the brutal Barons' War of the thirteenth century to the 'Dinosaur Hunters', the nineteenth-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code. Central among these ghosts is, of course, Virginia Woolf herself: her life, her writing and her watery death. Woolf is the most constant companion on Laing's journey, and To the River can be read in part as a biography of this extraordinary English writer, refracted back through the river she loved. But other writers float through these pages too - among them Iris Murdoch, Shakespeare, Homer and Kenneth Grahame, author of the riverside classic The Wind in the Willows. The result is a wonderfully discursive read - which interweaves biography, history, nature writing and memoir, driven by Laing's deep understanding of science and cultural history. It's a beautiful, lyrical work that marks the arrival of a major new writer.

    In this thought-provoking, vivid, and entertaining essay, Carrión meditates on the importance of the bookshop as a cultural and intellectual space. Filled with anecdotes from the histories of some of the famous (and not-so-famous) shops he visits on his travels, thoughtful considerations of challenges faced by bookstores, and fascinating digressions on their political and social impact, Bookshops is both a manifesto and a love letter to these spaces that transform readers’ lives.

    With the exhilarating insight his readers have come to expect, Rick Bass describes the dangers and clues on the trail of the grizzly, the mystery and beauty of the animal, and the courage, hope, and friendships at the heart of the search. The Lost Grizzlies is more than a foray into deep wilderness. It is, ultimately, as much about humans as it is about bears.

    He captures the essence of Kashmir in all its tragic beauty.

    And I have nothing against my dad, given the same set of conditions. In a fit of questionable judgment, consummate indoorsman John Sellers tags along on a journey to search for snakes with his eccentric, aging father—an obsessive fan of Bob Dylan, a giver of terrible gifts, a drinker of boxed wine, a minister- turned-heretic, and, most importantly, the self-designated guardian of the threatened copperbelly water snake.The quest is their fumbling attempt to reconnect. Decades of bitterness, substance abuse, acrimonious divorce, and divergent opinions about personal hygiene have conspired to make the two estranged. Sellers has just begun to develop a new appreciation for the American wilderness, and all the slithering creatures that populate it, when his father’s deteriorating health thwarts their mission and disturbs their tentative peace. Determined to finish what they started, he ventures back into the swamp— alone, but more connected to his dad than ever. With big-hearted humor and irreverence, The Old Man and the Swamp tells the story of a father who always lived on his own terms and the son who struggled to make sense of it all.

    What time is the 3:00 parade? Why does a child need to be 40 inches tall to ride a roller coaster? What happens when the president of France gets lost inside Pirates of the Caribbean? A former employee, or "cast member", at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom answers these and other questions while sharing humorous stories about working inside the world's most popular theme park."Stories from a Theme Park Insider" takes you inside the park's famous tunnels and backstage for a look at how theme parks really work, and the funny moments and embarrassments that can happen when your work is someone else's vacation.

    As the Vietnam war took more and more of his friends, and many of those who returned sank further into drugs and despair, Stan looked for meaning and found nothing. His life's purpose lay thirty-three hundred miles northwest, deep in the Tozitna River Valley in the heart of Alaska's frozen interior. Deadly cold, famine, grizzly bears, and one unruly sled dog with a grudge kept Stan on the knife's edge between survival and death. Humbled by the power of nature, the Boston greaser who was destined for prison found a new life in the wild, where one mistake can prove fatal. This is the true story of Stan Zuray's incredible journey; the reformation of a man's heart and mind in the forbidding darkness of Alaska's endless winter.

    But that may be misleading; there’s more to it than that.

    There they began a strenuous and thrilling hundred-day field trip around the edge of the continent. Part travelogue, part epic natural adventure, their richly illustrated record is "the superlatively good product of ideal circumstances" (Chicago Sunday Tribune).

    . .'A lyrical and life-affirming book that teaches us as much about birds as it does ourselves - a balm for the soul' Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path'Charlie has opened my eyes to the constant joy of the sights and sounds of the birds that surround us. It is a book that really will save lives' Dr Richard Shepherd, author of Unnatural Causes'An enchanting book. I knew at once this was something special' Lady Glenconner'This is no ordinary ornithology, but one that portrays the very essence of each bird through a very human lens and shows us that both solace and joy can be ours by merely observing with an open eye and an open heart' John Wright, author of The Forager's Calendar'A wonderful blend of the lyrical and practical. Charlie shows us that our relationship with birds and the natural world is not only healing, but an important part of our cultural heritage worth protecting' Adam Henson_________ Can you recognise the cheerful chirrups of the house sparrow? A song thrush singing out at winter's darkest hour? Or the beautiful haunting call of the curlew? At a time of great anxiety and uncertainty, while coping with the untimely death of his mother, Charlie Corbett realised his perspective on life was slipping. In a moment of despair, he found himself lying on the side of a hill in the rain, alone with his thoughts.Suddenly he hears the song of a skylark - that soaring, tinkling, joyous sound echoing through the air above - and he is transported away from his dark thoughts. Grounded by the beauty of nature, perspective dawns. No longer the leading role in his own private melodrama, merely a bit part in nature's great epic.Through twelve characterful birds, Charlie shows us there is joy to be found if we know where to look, and how to listen. From solitary skylarks to squabbling sparrows, he explores the place of these birds in our history, culture and landscape, noting what they look like and where you're most likely to meet them.By reconnecting with the wildlife all around him and learning to move with the rhythms of the natural world, Charlie discovered nature's powerful ability to heal.In this life-affirming and joyful guide to the birds living all around us, it might just heal you too.

    Robert Michael Pyle trekked into the Dark Divide, where he discovered a giant fossil footprint; searched out Indians who told him of an outcast tribe that had not fully evolved into humans; and attended the convocation in British Columbia called Sasquatch Daze, where he realized that "these guys don't want to find Bigfoot-they want to be Bigfoot." Ultimately Pyle discovers a few things about Bigfoot - and a lot about the human need for something to believe in and the need for wilderness in our lives.

    Passed through, negotiated, unnamed, ignored, the edgelands have become the great wild places on our doorsteps, places so difficult to acknowledge they barely exist. Edgelands forms a critique of what we value as 'wild', and allows our allotments, railways, motorways, wasteland and water a presence in the world, and a strange beauty all of their own.Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts - both well-known poets - have lived and worked and known these places all their lives, and in Edgelands their journeying prose fuses, in the anonymous tradition, to allow this in-between world to speak up for itself. They write about mobile masts and gravel pits, business parks and landfill sites in the same way the Romantic writers forged a way of looking at an overlooked - but now familiar - landscape of hills and lakes and rivers. England, the first country to industrialise, now offers the world's most mature post-industrial terrain, and is still in a state of flux: Edgelands takes the reader on a journey through its forgotten spaces so that we can marvel at this richly mysterious, cheek-by-jowl region in our midst.

     You'll love seeing Kim and a fellow ranger tested as they bravely take on the task of relocating 77 live skunks by sedating them with darts from homemade blowguns, especially when the pickup truck load of stinkers wakes up while still in transit. An hilarious, heartwarming, and heartbreaking memoir by the chief wildlife ranger in the #1 most popular family vacation destination in the USA, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For over thirty years, Kim DeLozier acted as a referee in the wild, trying to protect millions of park visitors from one of the densest populations of wild black bears in America -- and the bears from tourists who get too close. Written with bestselling author Carolyn Jourdan who has several highly-regarded #1 Amazon bestsellers about the Smoky Mountains.