I’ve spent a career as an educator and writer exploring how it is that we humans are a part of the natural world in which we live. We are all interconnected with each other and with the ecosystem in which we live, be it a “pristine” wilderness or a concreted-over metropolis. This is wisdom that of course has been long known by many peoples throughout history, though something that seems easily forgotten as we bustle our way through life. Through these books, maybe we can begin to remember that interconnectedness.
I wrote...
Within These Woods
By
Timothy Goodwin
What is my book about?
With the eye of a biologist and the soul of an artist, Goodwin guides the reader on a personal and educational journey through the Northwoods of the Great Lakes Region. He reflects on the elegance of the evolutionary process and the interconnectedness of all living things. At times a microscopic examination of the forest floor, and at others a far-reaching gaze into the wonders of a night sky. Goodwin explores this enhanced place and the delicate dance its history, geology, and organisms have performed since before recorded time. Along the way, he asks the difficult questions about stewardship and spirituality that only connecting to nature and understanding our place in it can begin to answer.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Braiding Sweetgrass
By
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Why this book?
I have given away many copies of this book and like to keep an extra copy handy so that I can give it to a friend or even a stranger when I sense they are seeking something that helps them understand how they are connected to the natural world. The first time I finished this book, I immediately began reading it again—it’s that important and that beautifully written. If I was to only have one book that I could keep and read this would be it.
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Ishmael
By
Daniel Quinn
Why this book?
This book taught me how to look at the world I lived in and the history I come from in a different way. After reading this book I questioned everything I was doing as a teacher and began to see my role as a teacher, as a father, as a citizen concerned about my ecological impact in a different way. And it’s written as an immensely compelling and engaging conversation between a man and a gorilla. I mean, what more could you want?
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Prodigal Summer
By
Barbara Kingsolver
Why this book?
Barbara Kingsolver writes what I think is some of the most beautiful prose of any American novelist. She immediately sucks you in with interesting characters interacting in a complex and rich interconnected world. With this book, she sets these characters within the complex web of understanding and exploring the interconnections of the natural world and we begin with one central character and experience an outward spiral of interpersonal, social, and ecological interweaving.
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The Things They Carried
By
Tim O'Brien
Why this book?
This is a collection of (probably) semi-autobiographical stories about the author’s experience in the Vietnam War (and some childhood thrown in for good measure) utilizes tremendous craft of efficient prose. The author opens up the world and characters in it for us to crawl inside and root around and explore. In so doing we can see common threads of humanity emerge throughout these stories and characters in an otherwise completely inhospitable and inhuman environment.
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Reflections from the North Country
By
Sigurd F. Olson,
Leslie Kouba
Why this book?
I began reading Sig Olson books when I was in high school, prompted by a biology teacher. Olson uses eloquent prose and emotional description to describe the wilderness lake country of Northern Minnesota and Southern Ontario. Over a career of decades he wrote about his experiences in the wilderness and easily brings the reader into his world, allowing them to see it through his eyes and experiences. Reflectionsis his last book, and is truly just that, reflections of a life lived on the edge of wilderness and the struggles of balancing desires for preservation of wilderness with encroachment of the modern world.
