Tappan’s Burro – Zane Grey, 1923 ★★

Nature Gives and Takes

Nature writing has been with us longer than the printing press; whether it be by poets or philosophers it is one of the taproots of literary expression. Sometimes a nature book like The Hidden Life Of Trees will even sneak into the best-seller lists.

Zane Grey leveraged his popularity as a western writer to indulge his love for nature writing. His books teem with descriptions of natural wonder; he traveled the world seeking places unspoiled by men and considered the sea and the desert his religion.

If you follow the popular view, Grey was all about shootouts and dry gulching and riders of the purple sage. But read him and his true passion becomes clear. He was into rivers and mesas first, stories second, if that.

Kon-Tiki – Thor Heyerdahl, 1948 ★★★

Riding the Pacific

In 1947, five Norwegians and a Swede cast themselves 4,300 miles into the world’s largest, stormiest ocean on a raft of wood and hemp to prove a scorned ethnographic theory. Never mind about the theory; their resulting adventure would inspire generations.

For 101 days the Kon-Tiki risked storms, sharks, and ill-advised dingy excursions to make a point. Not about whether ancient Peruvians settled in Polynesia many centuries ago, as Kon-Tiki’s leader Thor Heyerdahl believed, but about the nature of life and man’s place in the world.

Life On Earth – David Attenborough, 1979 ★★★★

Mother Nature Displays Her Charms

Phylum-hopping from microbes to coral reefs to orangutans, David Attenborough offers what may well be one of the most engaging tours ever taken of the natural world in this, a companion volume to his celebrated BBC series. The book details the evolutionary path of all earthly life, from prehistoric plants to present-day man.

Do you know that orchids may attract pollen-carrying insects by impersonating sex partners, or even carrion?

That a frog chorus can fill a swamp with a greater diversity of sound than one would get in a concert hall?

That a shearwater bird was taken from Wales to Boston and managed to fly itself back home?

Into The Wild – Jon Krakauer, 1996 ★★½

Act Naturally

Escaping from civilization is a time-honored fantasy most of us manage to shake off somewhere between the television set and the refrigerator. But for some, the fantasy of chucking it all and living on one's own terms in the Great Outdoors dies harder than for others.

In the case of Christopher McCandless, subject of Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild, it was to prove fatal.