Although no one had ever followed North American monarch butterflies on their annual southward journey to Mexico and California, in the 1990s there were well-accepted assumptions about the nature and form of the migration. But to Robert Michael Pyle, a naturalist with long experience in monarch conservation, the received wisdom about the butterflies' long journey just didn't make sense. In the autumn of 1996 he set out to uncover the facts, to pursue the tide of "cinnamon sailors" on their...

Nature Matrix is a gathering of some of Robert Michael Pyle’s most significant, original, and timely expressions of a life immersed in the natural world, in all its splendor, power, and perilNature Matrix: New and Selected Essays contains sixteen pieces that encompass the philosophy, ethic, and aesthetic of Robert Michael Pyle. The essays range from Pyle’s experience as a young national park ranger in the Sierra Nevada to the streets of Manhattan;...

**One of America’s most esteemed natural history writers takes to the hills of the Pacific Northwest in search of Bigfoot—and finds the wildness within ourselves.“A unique book in the bigfoot literature . . . that understands what most lifetime bigfooters eventually come to know: that bigfooting is about the journey more than the destination.” —Cliff Barackman, field researcher and star of Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot**Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to investig...

An ecologist reflects on the natural wonders of the Pacific Northwest as he describes the lives of plants, animals, and humans through every season of the year during his thirty years in the village of Gray's River, near the mouth of the Columbia River--long out of print, this classic of nature writing is being given a new life in trade paperback with a new afterword by the author.Sky Time in Gray's River is an elegant meditation on life in the rural North...

In the Willapa Hills of southwest Washington, both the human community and the forest community are threatened with extinction. Virtually every acre of the hills has been logged, often repeatedly, in the past hundred years, endangering both the land and the people, leaving dying towns as well as a devastated ecosystem. Weaving vivid portraits of the place and its inhabitants—animal, plant, and human—with the story of his own love affair with the hills, Robert Michael Pyle has written a boo...

"An elegant, eccentric novel of love, loneliness, and lepidoptera . . . Worthy company for work by other naturalist/novelists: Nabokov, Matthiessen, Kingsolver." —Kirkus ReviewsIn Magdalena Mountain, Robert Michael Pyle's first and long–awaited novel, the award–winning naturalist proves he is as at home in an imagined landscape as he is in the natural one. At the center of this story of majesty and high mountain magic are three Magdalenas—Mary, a ...

An Island in the Stream, a collaboration between Cuban and American writers and scholars, is a diverse collection of ecocritical and literary responses to the natural environment in Cuba and to Cuban environmental culture. The chapters explore Cuba’s vibrant cultural history with particular attention to literature and the visual and performing arts, which are viewed through such lenses as ecofeminism, postcolonial ecocriticism, multiculturalism, and the nuclear imaginary, among others. Ame...

Ideal for birders, hikers, and foragers, the Timber Press Field Guides are the perfect tools for loving where you live.Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest is a comprehensive field guide to the region’s most common and distinctive butterflies. Profiles include preferred common name for both genus and species, conservation status, the look and distinguishing traits of each butterfly, habitat, and range, and much more. Additional information includes a brief...

A brilliant evocation of one of America's most beautiful desert landscapes. Award-winning author Stewart Aitchison reveals the fascinating truths and debunks the countless myths surrounding this magic landscape. In depth information assists the reader in planning and preparing for the trip of a lifetime.

Every writer comes to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with a unique point of view. Ann Zwinger's is that of a naturalist, an "observer at the river's brim."Teamed with scientists and other volunteer naturalists, Zwinger was part of an ongoing study of change along the Colorado. In all seasons and all weathers, in almost every kind of craft that goes down the waves, she returned to the Grand Canyon again and again to explore, look, and listen. From the thrill of running the r...

From the host of the Travel Channel’s “The Wild Within.”A hunt for the American buffalo—an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination.In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds—there’s only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful—Rinella managed to kill a buf...

Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver's American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for the finest book of poetry published in 1983 by an American poet. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness—so steadfast and radiant in *American Primitive—*continue in Dream Work. She has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the spirit—to accepting the ...