Recommended Reading

“Inside Passage: Row north along the Pacific coastline. Start early spring. Pat must finish boats. Scoters feed on the herring spawn. Hummingbirds cruise north… Brooks Range: 1,000 mile traverse. Maps hang crooked on the wall—Pat claims he’s not going crazy.” Caroline Van Hemert’s gentle observations can lead you to forget she and her husband are backcountry badasses, up until they’re struggling against a wild river current and you remember they’re venturing 4,000 miles from Bellingham, Washington, to Kotzebue, Alaska, by way of foot, rowboat, ski, and packraft. Van Hemert, a bird biologist, reminds us that big, epic treks are an elemental part of nature: for many species, there is no question of migration—it is instinct, and to journey is to survive. Saturated in hues of saltwater, caribou hoof prints, and alpine heather, The Sun Is a Compass is a story the spirits of Margaret Murie and Rachel Carson would read to one another, two warblers sharing birdsong.

Muir, Thoreau, Oliver—you probably know several of their lines by heart, and maybe like my friend, Michelle, you even have a tattoo of their words (Muir, on her shoulder). Yet to know only a handful of outdoor writers is like relying on one well-worn section of a folded map: Imagine all the places you might go if you open it up, crease by crease until your arms are fully stretched. That’s how it feels to explore the pages of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Arranged by award-winning author Camille T. Dungy, this collection features 93 writers ranging from celebrated artists, like novelist Richard Wright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lucille Clifton, to 8-year-old El’Jay Johnson. Together, it’s several thousand fresh tracks of wildflowers, moonlight, inner-city river banks, and human experience.

Beneath a jagged mountain kingdom of whitebark pines, larches, and red cedar, where nature remains nearly the same as when Lewis and Clark wandered west, lies Montana’s Mission Valley. Home to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and snowbirds and hippies and farmers, the flats are thick with apple trees and hayfields, all walking distance from a large population of grizzly bears. And walk those grizzlies do, one padded foot in front of the other, because it’s a lot easier to fatten up on corn than on army cutworm moths. In his eloquent investigation of people and predator coexistence, former ranch hand Bryce Andrews examines all sides of the fence, down to the details of a high-tensile three-wire. Down from the Mountain, like any western Montana sunset, will break your heart, and more than twice. But as Andrews dedicates his book—“for two exceptional animals”—this deeply felt account of big-hearted creatures flares with hope.