This marvelous anthology provides the best collection of North American nature writing. This is a vast canvas, from Pehr Kalm’s “Travels in North America” (1753) to Gretel Ehrlich’s moving essay about her encounters with seals in the frozen wastelands of the Arctic Circle (1992). It combines pieces by well-known and much beloved writers (Audubon, Seton, Mowat, Thoreau, Matthiessen, and Peterson among them) with lesser known texts by writers whose work will come as revelations.
Here is a geographic diversity that ranges from Henry Beston’s lyrical description of bird life on the St. Lawrence to Barry Lopez’s account of Banks Island in the Arctic. These are writers who all felt the call of the wild, and who wrote about their experiences with passion for the land, compassion for its inhabitants, and a genuine sense of wonder—and often humor—that make for hours of fascinating reading.