This book rests between books for animal lovers that feature animals in relationships with people in the world of people) and books for nature lovers that feature observations of animals in nature apart from people. This book includes some of each, but is perhaps most unusual in its accounts of animals in nature and in relationships with a person.
... Read moreJoan Carey, Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center, Brattleboro, Vermont Where has she been, this shining wonderment Patti Smith? She has been befriending a colony of beavers on Poppell's Pond and apprenticing herself to the marvelous creatures of the world. Here Smith tells her beguiling story with an uncommon wit, whimsicality, and devotion. I cannot say enough good things about this volume. It is heart-warming. It is magical, even spell-binding. It is beautifully written. This is a triumph of a book.

Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood and The Seed Underground, among others Nature writing at its best. In this first widely available collection of essays, readers have the chance to experience the blend of scientific expertise and deep affection for nature that have long made Patti Smith regionally famous. To enter the pages of this book is to go deeper into the woods than most of us could go without her guidance
not because the woods are inaccessible, but because Smith leads us into a new way of experiencing them. Not only do her careful observations of beavers, porcupines, and other creatures offer both beginners and experts a wealth of information
the way that she experiences nature demonstrates an approach that can improve anybody's understanding and enjoyment of the world around them. In each successively absorbing chapter we are drawn deeper into the natural world and into Smith's world, until, when at last we lay the book aside, we look upon nature with new eyes, as something that can be at once more familiar and more wonderful. The illustrations and the prose are nothing short of masterful, and with this first collection Smith emerges fully formed and ready to join the pantheon of great American nature writers.
Matthew D. Hoffman
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