Get back to nature with these summer reading options
As we swelter this summer on our rapidly warming planet, many of us retreat to beaches or cabins in the woods to escape the heat, work, politics, etc.
This is a great time to unplug and dive into a good book. As we are communing with nature, let me suggest a few classic texts and one modern text destined to join our conservation canon:
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)
By Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau was the original urban escapee to a little cabin in the woods to refresh himself.
Thoreau ventured to beautiful Walden Pond in a wooded area outside of Concord, Mass., to escape civilization and its many stresses and noises. He built his vacation cabin and grew his own food while writing what is often considered the first great American conservation book.
Thoreau was a gifted writer, and his opening lines suggest this is not merely a guide to nature but also a guide to living:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Thoreau’s vacation was on the longish side of two years, and his sojourn continues to inspire and nourish readers 170 years later.
The Sea Around Us (1951)
By Rachel Carson
Today Carson is best known for her classic "Silent Spring" (1962), which was the impetus for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Endangered Species Act and much of the modern environmental movement. But Carson’s first love was the oceans, and "The Sea Around Us" was the middle book in her marine biology trilogy.
Written while she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Carson’s poetic prose introduced the watery kingdom to the American public. Carson reminds us, as we sit on the beach, we are island dwellers in what is a watery planet — and wonders lie just beyond our familiar terrestrial habitat.
In an era of rising sea levels, melting ice caps, and dangerous changes in ocean currents all due to climate change, Carson was also prescient noting:
It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (2023)
By Ed Yong
Pulitzer Prize-winner Yong is an eloquent and witty guide to the world of animal senses. Yong reminds us that the wildlife we enjoy on vacation occupy a sensory ecosystem foreign to ours. His book delivers on his promise that:
When we pay attention to other animals, our own world expands and deepens.
After you read Yong’s book, you can join our online book club and meet other bibliophiles virtually at 3 p.m. Aug. 15 at fws.gov/education-programs/americas-wild-read
Great Danes: They're leading the future of energy, and we could learn from them
Mark Madison will be going to the beach soon to find new column content.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Read conservation classics by Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Ed Yong