Nature

Naturalist John Muir Laws has adapted his painted-from-life flower illustrations from The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada into a lightweight yet durable guidebook to the area's florae.

From sprawling fields of showy hillside poppies, lupines, and paintbrushes in the foothills to orchids, lilies, and primroses in the higher meadows of our national parks, the Sierra Nevada is one of the premier wildflower destinations in California. Sierra Wildflowers includes the most common species that you will encounter, with fully updated common and scientific names. Flowers are organized by color and shape, making identification easy for flower enthusiasts of all experience levels.

"A glittering gem of a book!"—Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus

Following dragonflies into the territory between nature and the human psyche

Two decades ago, naturalist and environmental writer Brooke Williams had a powerful dream about a dragonfly, a dream that cracked open his world by giving rise to a steady stream of dragonfly encounters in his waking life.

In the years since, he has delved deeply into the fascinating biology and natural history of dragonflies and made pilgrimages to see them (he now has 38 species on his life list) while also exploring their symbolic meaning and cross-cultural significance.

Encountering Dragonfly is his account—related in a series of odonate encounters—of being drawn into a different kind of relationship with the natural world.  By opening himself to the personal and mytho-poetic meanings of dragonfly, and patiently courting an understanding of these creatures that is built upon, but also transcends, a naturalist’s observation, Brooke has come to believe in the importance of ‘re-enchantment.’

Many scholars believe that for most of human history, we lived in an enchanted world in which myth and magic, ritual and stories and spirits informed every aspect of our lives. The enchantment ended with the Enlightenment and modernity, when reason and scientific discovery explained away the magic, commencing a commodification of nature that has flourished ever since.

Brooke’s personal re-enchantment has required of him a faith that material, biological reality isn’t the only reality; it recognizes symbols and archetypes as remnants of a different understanding, which may—as perhaps they always have—play a role in our long-term survival.

In many cultures, the dragonfly carries messages between the inner and outer world. For Brooke Williams the message of the dragonfly is to ask questions about synchronicity, awe and the collective unconscious, and how to engage with a world increasingly out of balance. What are the implications of following a path toward greater enchantment? In a time where engagement with the political and social realities of climate change and environmental degradation can’t possibly be valued highly enough, can we afford to choose such a path? Perhaps more to the point, can we afford not to?

Nothing fills us with a sense of wonder like fossils. What looks at first like a simple rock is in fact a clue that reveals the staggering diversity of ancient environments, the winding pathways of evolution, and the majesty of a vanished earth. But as much as one might daydream of digging a hole in the backyard and finding a Tyrannosaurus, only a few places contain these buried treasures, and when a scientist comes across a remnant of prehistoric life, great care must be taken. What do budding paleontologists need to know before starting their search?

In Fantastic Fossils, Donald R. Prothero offers an accessible, entertaining, and richly illustrated guide to the paleontologist’s journey. He details the best places to look for fossils, the art of how to find them, and how to classify the major types. Prothero provides expert wisdom about typical fossils that an average person can hope to collect and how to hunt fossils responsibly and ethically. He also explores the lessons that both common and rarer discoveries offer about paleontology and its history, as well as what fossils can tell us about past climates and present climate change. Captivating illustrations by the paleoartist Mary Persis Williams bring to life hundreds of important specimens. Offering valuable lessons for armchair enthusiasts and paleontology students alike, Fantastic Fossils is an essential companion for all readers who have ever dreamed of going in search of traces of a lost world.

An Indies Introduce Selection for Winter/Spring 2022

Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town—although for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year, they were forced out of two homes. When she was eleven, a homemade bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like ní Dochartaigh’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape.

In Thin Places, a luminous blend of memoir, history, and nature writing, ní Dochartaigh explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone’s throw from beauty and hope, and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard and terror to creep back in. Ní Dochartaigh asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study, and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. It will always be ours, but—at the same time—it never really was.

Examines how cultural narratives of time are intimately connected to the challenges and disruptions of ecological time

The environmental crisis is, in many ways, a crisis of time. From the distress cries of birds that no longer know when to migrate, to the rapid dying of coral reefs, to the quickening pace of extreme weather events, the patterns and timekeeping of the natural world are falling apart. We have broken nature’s clocks.

Lying hidden at the root of this problem are the cultural narratives that shape our actions and horizons of thought, but as Paul Huebener shows, we can bring about change by developing a critical literacy of time. Moving from circadian rhythms and the revival of ancient frozen bacteria to camping advertisements and the politics of oil pipelines, Nature’s Broken Clocks turns to works of fiction and poetry, examining how cultural narratives of time are connected to the problems of ecological collapse and what we might do to fix them.

"Urgent and profound, Nature's Broken Clocks is essential reading for anyone interested in time and the environment." —Nicholas Bradley, author of Rain Shadow

“Nature's Broken Clocks will inspire readers to reflect deeply on our manipulations of time, and on the impact of our shifting temporal imaginations and practices on the ecosphere.” —Sarah Wylie Krotz, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta

Lauded essayist takes to the high seas in hot pursuit of elusive birds, artistic ghosts, fathers and their memories, and above all, safe harbor.

"Among nature writers now working, Charles Hood is my favorite." —Jonathan Franzen

Charles Hood is on a boat, wearing at least two life jackets as he scans the sky for seabirds and plumbs the depths of his—and our—relationship with the vast Pacific Ocean. Winner of the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year for his collection of essays A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat: The Joys of Ugly Nature, Hood now brings his irrepressible curiosity to the lives of petrels, frigate birds, sea snakes, and flying fish. During our voyage, he resurrects Melville's journey on tempestuous seas to San Francisco, takes us into the storm-tossed minds and paintings of J. M. W. Turner and Winslow Homer, and surfaces the trauma—still reverberating—to ocean and family ecologies alike from World War II. As sharp and witty as ever, Hood also turns his scrutiny on a more personal history, navigating murky waters of harm and forgiveness, love and entrapment. Full of wonder, joy, and terror at the shared capacity of the ocean and the humans on its edges to nurture life and damage it irreparably, this book is a vessel, seaworthy and transportive.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE AND THE BOARDMAN TASKER AWARD FOR MOUNTAIN LITERATURE

With great lyricism, Anna Fleming charts two parallel journeys: learning the craft of traditional rock climbing and the developing appreciation of the natural world it brings her. Through the story of her progress from terrified beginner to confident lead climber, she shows us how placing hand and foot on rock becomes a profound new way into the landscape.

Anna takes us from the gritstone rocks of the Peak District and Yorkshire to the gabbro pinnacles of the Cuillin, the slate of North Wales and the high plateau of the Cairngorms. Each landscape, and each type of rock, brings its own challenges and invites us into the history of a place.

An expert on the buffalo tells the history of this keystone species through extensive research and beautiful photographs.

The mere mention of the buffalo instantly brings to mind the vast herds that once roamed the North American continent, and few wild animals captivate our imaginations as much as the buffalo do. Once numbering in the tens of millions, these magnificent creatures played a significant role in structuring the varied ecosystems they occupied. For at least 24,000 years, North American Indigenous Peoples depended upon them, and it was the abundance of buffalo that initially facilitated the dispersal of humankind across the continent.

With the arrival of Europeans and their rapacious capacity for wildlife destruction, the buffalo was all but exterminated. In a span of just thirty years during the mid-1800s, buffalo populations plummeted from more than 30 million to just twenty-three. And with them went all of the intricate food webs, the trophic cascades, and the inter-species relationships that had evolved over thousands of years.

Despite this brush with extinction, the buffalo survived, and isolated populations are slowly recovering. As this recovery proceeds, the relationships the animals once had with thousands of species are being re-established in a remarkable process of ecological healing. The intricacy of those restored relationships is the subject of this book.

Based on author Wes Olson’s thirty-five years of working intimately with bison—and featuring Johane Janelle’s stunning photography—The Ecological Buffalo is a story that takes the reader on a journey to understand the myriad connections this keystone species has with the Great Plains.

Argues for the cause of protecting native grasslands and reconciliation on the Great Plains

Towards a Prairie Atonement addresses the question of our relationship with the land by enlisting the help of a Metis Elder and revisiting the history of one corner of the Great Plains.

This book's lyrical blend of personal narrative, prairie history, imagery, and argument begins with the cause of protecting native grasslands on community pastures. As the narrative unfolds, however, Trevor Herriot, the award-winning author of Grass, Sky, Song and River in a Dry Land, finds himself recruited into the work of reconciliation.

Facing his own responsibility as a descendent of settlers, he connects today's ecological disarray to the legacy of Metis dispossession and the loss of their community lands. With Indigenous and settler people alienated from one another and from the grassland itself, hope and courage are in short supply. This book offers both by proposing an atonement that could again bring people and prairie together.

Turning a blind eye to the dangers of the wild can have deadly consequences.

Growing up on a northern trap line, Harold Johnson was taught to keep his distance from wolves. For decades, wolves did the same for humans. But now this seems to be changing.

In 2005, twenty-two-year-old Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack near his work camp. Part story, part forensic analysis, Cry Wolf examines this and other attacks, showing how we fail to take this apex predator seriously at our own peril.

An immersive blend of chicken-keeping memoir and culture reporting by a journalist who accidentally became obsessed with her flock.

Since first domesticating the chicken thousands of years ago, humans have become exceptionally adept at raising them for food. Yet most people rarely interact with chickens or know much about them. In Under the Henfluence, culture reporter Tove Danovich explores the lives of these quirky, mysterious birds who stole her heart the moment her first box of chicks arrived at the post office.

From a hatchery in Iowa to a chicken show in Ohio to a rooster rescue in Minnesota, Danovich interviews the people breeding, training, healing, and, most importantly, adoring chickens. With more than 26 billion chickens living on industrial farms around the world, they’re easy to dismiss as just another dinner ingredient. Yet Danovich’s reporting reveals the hidden cleverness, quiet sweetness, and irresistible personalities of these birds, as well as the complex human-chicken relationship that has evolved over centuries. This glimpse into the lives of backyard chickens doesn’t just help us to understand chickens better—it also casts light back on ourselves and what we’ve ignored throughout the explosive growth of industrial agriculture. Woven with delightful and sometimes heartbreaking anecdotes from Danovich’s own henhouse, Under the Henfluence proves that chickens are so much more than what they bring to the table.

Questions the treatment of laboratory animals in biomedical research

Laboratory animals are often used to develop medical treatments: vaccines, antibiotics, and organ transplants have all relied upon animal testing to ensure safety and success for human benefit. Yet the relationship between the scientific community's dependence on laboratory animals and the recognition of the need to treat these animals with respect and compassion has given rise to a profound tension.
As animals are increasingly understood to have rights and autonomy, Carrie Friese posits that, while care and compassion for a distant other who suffers are central to humanitarianism, the idea of a distant other itself, which has shaped work with laboratory animals both historically and today, has enacted forms of highly problematic paternalism, creating a double bind. Focusing on the lives of laboratory mice and rats in the United Kingdom, and on the people who take care of, and often kill, these animals, Friese gives the name of “more-than-human humanitarianism” to contradictory practices of suffering and compassion, killing and sacrifice, and compassion and consent that she witnessed in a variety of animal facilities and laboratories.

Friese proposes a new approach to the treatment of laboratory animals that recognizes the interconnectedness of all species and how human actions impact the welfare of other species and the planet as a whole. A Mouse in a Cage is an essential contribution to the ongoing conversation about the ethical treatment of animals.

Interspecies Ethics explores animals' vast capacity for agency, justice, solidarity, humor, and communication across species. The social bonds diverse animals form provide a remarkable model for communitarian justice and cosmopolitan peace, challenging the human exceptionalism that drives modern moral theory. Situating biosocial ethics firmly within coevolutionary processes, this volume has profound implications for work in social and political thought, contemporary pragmatism, Africana thought, and continental philosophy.

Interspecies Ethics develops a communitarian model for multispecies ethics, rebalancing the overemphasis on competition in the original Darwinian paradigm by drawing out and stressing the cooperationist aspects of evolutionary theory through mutual aid. The book's ethical vision offers an alternative to utilitarian, deontological, and virtue ethics, building its argument through rich anecdotes and clear explanations of recent scientific discoveries regarding animals and their agency. Geared toward a general as well as a philosophical audience, the text illuminates a variety of theories and contrasting approaches, tracing the contours of a postmoral ethics.

In this original and provocative book, Colin Dayan tackles head-on the inexhaustible world, at once tender and fierce, of dogs and humans. We follow the tracks of dogs in the bayous of Louisiana, the streets of Istanbul, and the humane societies of the United States, and in the memories and myths of the humans who love them. Dayan reorients our ethical and political assumptions through a trans-species engagement that risks as much as it promises. She makes a powerful case for questioning what we think of as our deepest-held beliefs and, with dogs in the lead, unsettles the dubious promises of liberal humanism.

Moving seamlessly between memoir, case law, and film, Dayan takes politics and animal studies in a new direction—one that gives us glimpses of how we can think beyond ourselves and with other beings. Her unconventional perspective raises hard questions and renews what it means for any animal or human to live in the twenty-first century. Nothing less than a challenge for us to confront violence and suffering even in the privileged precincts of modernity, this searing and lyrical book calls for another way to think the world. Theoretically sophisticated yet aimed at a broad readership, With Dogs at the Edge of Life illuminates how dogs—and their struggles—take us beyond sentimentality and into a form of thought that can make a difference to our lives.

The mighty dinosaurs were the dominant life form on earth for millions of years. But catastrophe awaited. In what amounts to a geological blink of an eye, the dinosaurs disappeared. This fun-filled fact-book takes you deep into the world of dinosaurs!

From Tyrannosaurs to Stegosaurs, The Handy Dinosaur Answer Book profiles numerous species, chronicling their time on Earth and exploring their roles in archaeological expeditions and museums today. It covers the latest, greatest findings along with the accompanying shifts in dinosaur theory. Because of recent discoveries, there are some great debates: Are birds really dinosaurs? Were any dinosaurs warm blooded? What caused their extinction? Unearth answers to over 800 commonly asked (and just plain interesting) dinosaur questions such as . . .

The go-to guide to California’s natural history, now updated with fresh insights on stewardship for a changing climate and diverse naturalist perspectives.

The California Naturalist Handbook offers a fun, science-based introduction to California’s natural history, emphasizing observation, discovery, communication, and stewardship. This accessible guidebook explores geology, native plants and animals, freshwater resources, forest and rangeland resources, conservation biology, and the effects of pressing environmental issues. Aspiring naturalists will learn how to keep a nature journal, practice participatory science, and restore ecosystem resilience.

Used statewide for the California Naturalist Program, this updated edition includes:

• Updated overview of California’s unique ecosystems and plant and animal communities
• Expanded discussions of Indigenous knowledge and stewardship
• Greater focus on diverse naturalist leaders including women, Indigenous peoples, and naturalists of color
• A deeper dive into southern California’s urban and desert ecologies
• Current climate change information, including fire and forest management, drought, flooding and groundwater issues, and recognition of climate grief
• Higher quality images showing a more diverse range of habitats

Winner, 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

The world’s oceans are changing at a drastic pace. Beneath the waves and along the coasts, climate change and environmental degradation have spurred the most radical transformations in human history. In response, the people who know the ocean most intimately are taking action for the sake of our shared future. Community scientists track species in California tidepools. Researchers dive into the waters around Sydney to replant kelp forests. Scientists and First Nations communities collaborate to restore clam gardens in the Pacific Northwest.

In At Every Depth, the oceanographer Tessa Hill and the science journalist Eric Simons profile these and other efforts to understand and protect marine environments, taking readers to habitats from shallow tidepools to the deep sea. They delve into the many human connections to the ocean—how people live with and make their living from the waters—journeying to places as far-flung as coral reefs, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the Arctic and Antarctic poles. At Every Depth shares the stories of people from all walks of life, including scientists, coastal community members, Indigenous people, shellfish farmers, and fisheries workers. It brings together varied viewpoints, showing how scientists’ research and local and Indigenous knowledge can complement each other to inform a more sustainable future. Poignantly written and grounded in science, this book offers a narrative perspective on the changing oceans, letting us see how our relationships to the oceans are changing too.

When the cold months make you hunker down and hide, how do you teach your soul to open up instead—to new rhythms and unlikely beauty—and begin participating in the unique joy of winter?

Helen Moat used to dread winter. When it approached, she would hunker down inside, yearn for the sun, and wait it out. Then, determined to overcome this anxiety, she vowed to set out into the darkness in search of ways to embrace it.

Beginning her discoveries at home in Scotland, she moves on across the world through the Arctic Circle to Asia. Along the way, she finds beauty in the small things that only winter can offer. Helen’s quest to dispel her seasonal blues has its ups and downs; slowly, though, she learns not only to accept the darkness of winter, but to welcome it. When she travels to Lapland and Japan, their cultural and philosophical attitude to the season is a revelation.

While the Earth Holds Its Breath nurtures resilience and determination, finding a joyous positivity that does not ignore the darkness, but finds something to love there.

Explore the Brightest Stars in the Night Sky

Explore the 25 brightest stars in the night sky and discover their unique characteristics, life cycles, and star categories, offering readers an in-depth understanding of astronomy objects and the universe.

Delve into the captivating world of stars. This star gazing book takes you on a cosmic journey, unveiling the secrets of the brightest star in the sky and the fascinating star systems that have intrigued humanity for millennia. Dive deep into the fascinating details of each star system, including their size, color, temperature, distance from Earth, and the presence of exoplanets. 

Explore the universe like never before. Thanks to advanced observational astronomy, we can look further and more clearly than ever before. You'll discover unique and exceptional stars, from the largest star in the universe to variable stars that change brightness, and even a star composed of diamonds. From the majestic Sirius star system to distant constellations like Ursa Major, this book offers a detailed journey through these celestial wonders, making it an ideal astronomy gift or star gazing gift for kids.

Inside, you’ll find:

• A deep dive into the characteristics of the 25 brightest stars in the night sky.

• Fundamental stargazing principles, teaching you how to identify constellations, locate celestial objects, and appreciate the night sky.

• Insights into the life cycle and classification of stars, alongside fascinating examples of unique stars, such as the largest star in the universe and a star composed of diamonds, capturing the diverse nature of star categories.           

If you liked Star Finder!, National Geographic Stargazer's Atlas, or Space Explorers, you’ll love Starry Wonders.

New from the popular In the Moment series—in search of the darkest night skies, Anna Levin uncovers a sense of wonder about the universe that will help you to understand more about our own pale blue dot.

The darkness of the night represents something unknowable and mysterious. But when we look up, we can find celestial light shows, whole galaxies, and even a new perspective on our Earthly concerns. The night sky offers us an essential connection to something bigger than ourselves, a vast, timeless expanse that extinguishes our individual concerns.

Humans have tried to make sense of the night sky since ancient times. From physicists and meteorologists to astrologists, artists, philosophers and poets, it has been a source of inspiration, wonder, and exploration. Now, our access to darkness is under threat, and many of us are flocking to see the stars while we can—in a new wave of ‘astrotourism’.

In this concise volume, Anna Levin looks at how we can learn from and nurture our relationship with the night sky, even—especially—in the context of our changing world.

A beautiful book dedicated to southern hemisphere astronomy

Few books are devoted entirely to the rich skies of the southern hemisphere. Stars of the Southern Skies draws on the knowledge of South African experts to offer stargazers some unique insights into the night skies in their half of the world. A practical chapter is devoted to choosing an instrument - from binoculars to telescopes - with which to view the moon, the planets and the stars. The beauty and romance of the worlds around our world and the myths that have been created around them are described in one chapter; comets and meteors are detailed in another. A chapter is devoted to the Sun and Moon, a chapter to the planets. A useful appendix details observatories, societies and planetariums where star-lovers can pursue their interest.
The text is complemented by superb illustrations - star charts, photographs and graphics - making it a visual delight. This is a book for anybody who has ever gazed in wonder at the glory of a star-filled sky, and a must for all budding amateur astronomers.

In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the 'essential nature' of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty years before it was finally published.

More tales of family fun and run-ins with nature at the cottage.

In the sequel to Cottage Daze, James Ross is back with more tales from the family cottage. Organized by nature’s changing seasons and containing sections covering nature, family, activity, and the cottage, Ross combines wry humour with a genuine love for adventure and respect for the natural world — although the local wild animal population can try his patience.



Ross’s anecdotes are full of good spirits and sound advice, whether he is describing a visit from his daughter’s special friend ("The Boyfriend Cometh"), the tricky practices of boating ("Dressing Up for Kayaking"), or encounters with wildlife both big and small ("The Frog Whisperer"). This book is the perfect companion to the time-honoured tradition of wilderness family getaways.

As well as fun and relaxation, cottage living throughout the seasons is a reminder that all of us, even the most urbanized individual, are part of the natural world.

Listen carefully and you will hear cottage country whispering lessons that can make our lives less frenetic, less complicated. The mournful call of the loon, the wind sighing in the trees, the hammering of the pileated woodpecker remind us that we are a part of a more natural world too often lost in our urban societies.

Reflections from a still lake and a flickering campfire help us to realize that things might go easier for humankind if more issues were examined in softer, reflective light and without heated debate. People gathered at campfires, soothed by nature’s tranquility, tend to listen and be more thoughtful before they speak.

This book will bring you on a journey through four seasons of cottaging and show you that nature has a remarkable power to heal – it just needs the human race to give it a helping hand. Along the way it will introduce you to some tips and tricks for making cottage life more comfortable and enjoyable.

The comfort food of cottage life books — satisfying, unforgettable, and inevitably nostalgic.

Cottage Daze celebrates life at the cottage where the cottage is the main character, and family, friends, pets, and fellow cottagers are the supporting cast. Whether writing about cottage routine ("First Ski," "Of Mice and Men," "Cottage Guests"), cottage tasks ("Splitting Wood," "Boat Launch"), nature ("A Gathering of Loons," "The Sting," "Autumn Spell"), cottage fun ("The Cottage Duel"), or cottage touchstones ("Start the Day," "Bonfire," "The Perfect Storm"), the stories are told with humour, compassion, insight, and nostalgia.

Who doesn’t remember sitting in a frigid lake, trying to help a youngster get up on water skis for the first time, launching a boat while the whole world seems to be watching, or getting caught up in a nest of wasps? This collection of stories, elegantly organized into four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, and winter), will make readers laugh, cry, and long to be at the cottage a "must have" for every cottage bookshelf.

Explore the connection between people and places on the rugged shore of Lake Superior, the world’s largest freshwater lake.

Conor Mihell offers a compelling image of Lake Superior’s Canadian shore through colourful personality sketches, adventure stories, and environmental accounts. Admire the kitschy decor of lighthouse cottager Maureen Robertson, a 76-year-old who spends six months of the year alone on a remote island; enter the debate over a controversial aggregate quarry in Wawa, Ontario; and learn how the author’s love affair with the world’s largest freshwater lake began on quests for a near-mystical, glacier-dropped monolith.

Mihell’s stories build on Lake Superior’s rich and varied history and support its critical place in Canadian culture. Since the beginning, Lake Superior has been revered for its God-like qualities of power, unpredictability, and a seemingly endless expanse of life-sustaining freshwater. The lake’s rugged yet fragile nature and hardscrabble characters and outpost communities define rural northwestern Canada. Experience it for yourself in this first collection of stories by one of the region’s most acclaimed journalists.

The Mazinaw, a place of striking natural beauty, is famous for Bon Echo Rock, a massive sheer cliff, dropping into one of Ontario's deepest lakes. The Mazinaw Experience traces the presence of human habitation on the shores of the Mazinaw from its earliest beginnings to the present, from the nomadic Aboriginal people who believed the cliff top to be a sacred place and the rugged lumbermen whose entrepreneurial zeal cleared out the mighty pine, to the settlers who struggled to create new lives for their families. Mini-profiles of personalities such as Johnny Bey and Billa Flint, along with stories involving colonization roads, the settlement towns, the mining and the coming of the railway, provide insights into the Mazinaw area of today. The memory of Bon Echo Inn lives on in Bon Echo Park, as does the legacy of Flora MacDonald and her son Merrill Denison.

Today, the Mazinaw area continues to grow in popularity.

Nature's Year in the Kawarthas is an almanac of key events occurring in the natural world over the course of a year in the Kawartha Lakes district -- and in cottage country in general. Covering all areas of our flora and fauna as well as weather and the night sky, the book is a month-by-month chronicle of the mileposts of the passing seasons. From the raucous Spring Peeper chorus of April ... through the sweet scent of milkweed blossoms in July ... and the early-morning mists of September ... to the arrival of the first eagles in December -- all are noted for your interest.

Whenever you head out on your next walk or look up at the stars, Nature's Year will be your informative guide. For each month, an introductory essay captures the spirit of the season, while an "at a glance" summary lists the key natural events occurring. Each category in the natural world -- from birds to the night sky -- is then covered in more detail. Finely detailed drawings complement the text.

Author Drew Monkman is a teacher in Peterborough, Ontario. An avid naturalist in the Kawartha Lakes area, he is past president of the Peterborough Field Naturalists.

From prospectors to politicians, promoters to profiteers, New Westminster's known them all. It is Western Canada's oldest city, aptly named by Queen Victoria as the first capital of the new colony of British Columbia. On the mighty Fraser River, it has survived gold rushes, loss of capital status, fire, flood, the Depression, and two world wars.

This collection of illuminating black and white photographs, artwork, and text shows how its tenacious citizens have thrived. It follows the city's festivals, traditions, organizations, people, and neighbourhoods. The city has both witnessed and been the centre of the fascinating events that shaped B.C. This multifaceted photographic history album depicts almost 150 years of the City of New Westminster.

Before becoming the oil capital of the nation, Calgary was a nineteenth-century boomtown in the heart of Alberta. The roots of great prosperity were growing, despite the fact that politicians and the general public believed the West was best left to the trapper and trader.

In this third edition of his classic photography/ hiking guide, Adams showcases his own beautiful color photographs. This complete compendium lists 1,000 waterfalls, and Adams specifically highlights more than 300 of the best waterfalls found in North Carolina with full descriptions, comprehensive directions, and four-color photographs. Since the first edition of Kevin Adams’s North Carolina Waterfalls in 1994, this book has sold almost 65,000 copies. In that time, Adams has established a widespread and well-respected reputation as a photographer, naturalist, writer, and teacher.

From its comprehensive coverage and detailed trail directions, to its helpful photography tips and beauty ratings, the new North Carolina Waterfalls remains the definitive guide to its subject.

In addition to North Carolina Waterfalls, Kevin Adams is the author of seven additional books and their numerous revisions. He has taught nature photography seminars since the early 1990s and leads popular tours in the N.C. mountains to photograph waterfalls. He is the man behind Digital After Dark blog and the free Night Photography News e-newsletter. He lives in the mountains of North Carolina.

"Readers will appreciate Adams’ comprehensive coverage, his concise driving and hiking directions, his helpful photography tips, and his emphasis on stewardship of natural resources. North Carolina Waterfalls remains the definitive guide for its subject and a must-have for nature loving natives and visitors."—Internet Brothers: Meanderthals Hiking Blog

Naturalist and environmental educator Mary Holland’s visually astounding book Naturally Curious promises a walk in the woods (or a field or wetland) will never be the same. With boundless enthusiasm and a lifetime’s-worth of natural history knowledge, Holland escorts you through the New England seasons, month by month—in sun, rain, and snow; along roadsides and riverbanks; above burrows and under treetop nesting sites. By deftly melding the practical field guide we all need with the kind of book we all want to sit back and read, Holland does New England—and those who live in it, visit it, and love it—an immense service. Adults and children alike are sure to be fascinated by the natural world in this book, in their backyard, and even further afield. Naturally Curious is truly an “into this world” experience.

• Take a guided tour through the seasons a month at a time: begin with March and its early stirrings of life "awakening" after a long cold winter, and end in February as survival becomes the sole focus of all plants and creatures, great and small.
• Dive into hundreds of fascinating “Nature Notes” along the way: bite-size nuggets of fact-based information about a species’ actions in a particular month—whether courting, breeding, singing, burrowing, migrating, or caching food.
• In addition, find pertinent lists of the amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, insects and arachnids, and plants and fungi you might expect to see or hear from as the weeks go by.
• Each month culminates in specially chosen essays, where Holland gets up-close-and-personal with New England plant and animal life and some of their more intriguing peculiarities.
• See the many exciting and varied "worlds" of the Northeast explode on the page, in an unmatched visual display of full-color photographs. This is the region and its inhabitants like you've never seen them before!

Explore the gentle unfurling of spring and reflect on how nature celebrates birth and renewal—in this collection of reflections by our greatest writers.

As winter's austere power begins to fade, we notice the first signs of vigor and life returning to the world: delicate crocuses pushing through the damp earth; frogs croaking in the barely thawed ponds; the year's first warm breeze on our faces.

These first sure signs of spring bolster our spirits and remind us of the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, and also—more poignantly—of the steady march of time and our own advancing years. With each successive spring, it seems, we cherish the promise of renewed life more and more.

These thoughtfully chosen writings, poems and meditations—from Robert Frost, Lisa Couturier, William Blake and Lady Sarashina to the eighth-century Chinese poet Tu Fu and many others—both celebrate spring's re-emergence of life and evoke the season's delicate balance of growth and decay, youth and maturity, innocence and experience.

Updated 6th edition with new sites & museums!
Learn Where & How to Dig, Pan and Mine Your Own Gems & Minerals

NORTHEAST

Connecticut • Delaware • District of Columbia • Indiana • Illinois • Maine
Massachusetts • Maryland • Michigan • New Hampshire • New Jersey
New York • Ohio • Pennsylvania • Rhode Island • Vermont • Wisconsin

Whether you're digging for the first time or are an experienced rockhound or "prospector," with a simple rock hammer and a little luck, you too can strike it rich ... or at the very least, have fun trying.

This guide offers you easy-to-use information on the ins and outs of "fee dig" mining, complete with locations, costs, tips on technique, entertaining legends and important information on everything from safety kits to the location of the nearest restrooms.

Included are resources for use in identifying your finds, exploring the lapidary arts, and further pursuing an exciting—and possibly profitable—hobby.

• Equipment and Clothing: What you need and where to find it (or how to make it yourself).
• Mining Techniques: Step-by-step instructions on panning for gold, sluicing for gems and other methods.
• Gem and Mineral Sites: Directions and maps, hours, fees and equipment needed. Also includes info on guide services, local camping facilities and more.
• Museums and Mine Tours: Where to visit commercial and historical mines, as well as museums with exhibits of gems and minerals (for help in learning what to look for).
• Special Events and Tourist Information: Listings of regional events involving gems and minerals, and sources of general travel and tourism information for every state.
• Other Features: Where to find your birthstone, your anniversary stone or your zodiac stone; Index by State; Index by Gem/Mineral; U.S. State Gems & Minerals Chart; and more!

The Treasure Hunter's Gem & Mineral Guides to the U.S.A. in 4 regional volumes:

Northeast ISBN: 978-0-9970145-0-1

Northwest ISBN: 978-0-9904152-8-2

Southeast ISBN: 978-0-9970145-1-8

Southwest ISBN: 978-0-9904152-9-9

Explore the rich vibrancy of summer and reflect on how nature teaches us to value time—in this collection of reflections by our greatest writers.

A season of both growth and of stillness, of hard work in the garden and of relaxing in the cool of the mountains, summer is a celebratory time. Every day matters, says summer. Look around you. Life is starting up again after a long winter and spring, and we find ourselves in a world filled with creatures and plants and shimmers of heat on the subway, with backyard cookouts and ice cream trucks jingling through the neighborhood.

This collection of powerful, stirring pieces from a wealth of sources—ranging from poems composed in eighth-century China to letters from a pioneer woman in the American West, from the Declaration of Independence to Ray Bradbury’s musings on childhood summers—invites us all to fully experience the rich and bountiful spirituality of summer.

Updated 6th edition with new sites & museums!
Learn Where & How to Dig, Pan and Mine Your Own Gems & Minerals

SOUTHWEST

Arizona • California • Colorado • Hawaii • Kansas
Nevada • New Mexico • Oklahoma • Texas • Utah

Whether you're digging for the first time or are an experienced rockhound or "prospector," with a simple rock hammer and a little luck, you too can strike it rich ... or at the very least, have fun trying.

This guide offers you easy-to-use information on the ins and outs of "fee dig" mining, complete with locations, costs, tips on technique, entertaining legends and important information on everything from safety kits to the location of the nearest restrooms.

Included are resources for use in identifying your finds, exploring the lapidary arts, and further pursuing an exciting—and possibly profitable—hobby.

• Equipment and Clothing: What you need and where to find it (or how to make it yourself).
• Mining Techniques: Step-by-step instructions on panning for gold, sluicing for gems and other methods.
• Gem and Mineral Sites: Directions and maps, hours, fees and equipment needed. Also includes info on guide services, local camping facilities and more.
• Museums and Mine Tours: Where to visit commercial and historical mines, as well as museums with exhibits of gems and minerals (for help in learning what to look for).
• Special Events and Tourist Information: Listings of regional events involving gems and minerals, and sources of general travel and tourism information for every state.
• Other Features: Where to find your birthstone, your anniversary stone or your zodiac stone; Index by State; Index by Gem/Mineral; U.S. State Gems & Minerals Chart; and more!

The Treasure Hunter's Gem & Mineral Guides to the U.S.A. in 4 regional volumes:

Northeast ISBN: 978-0-9970145-0-1

Northwest ISBN: 978-0-9904152-8-2

Southeast ISBN: 978-0-9970145-1-8

Southwest ISBN: 978-0-9904152-9-9

Updated 6th edition with new sites & museums!
Learn Where & How to Dig, Pan and Mine Your Own Gems & Minerals 

NORTHWEST 

Alaska • Idaho • Iowa • Minnesota • Montana • Nebraska
North Dakota • Oregon • South Dakota • Washington • Wyoming 

Whether you're digging for the first time or are an experienced rockhound or "prospector," with a simple rock hammer and a little luck, you too can strike it rich ... or at the very least, have fun trying.

This guide offers you easy-to-use information on the ins and outs of “fee dig” mining, complete with locations, costs, tips on technique, entertaining legends and important information on everything from safety kits to the location of the nearest restrooms.

Included are resources for use in identifying your finds, exploring the lapidary arts, and further pursuing an exciting—and possibly profitable—hobby.

• Equipment and Clothing: What you need and where to find it (or how to make it yourself).
• Mining Techniques: Step-by-step instructions on panning for gold, sluicing for gems and other methods.
• Gem and Mineral Sites: Directions and maps, hours, fees and equipment needed. Also includes info on guide services, local camping facilities and more.
• Museums and Mine Tours: Where to visit commercial and historical mines, as well as museums with exhibits of gems and minerals (for help in learning what to look for).
• Special Events and Tourist Information: Listings of regional events involving gems and minerals, and sources of general travel and tourism information for every state.
• Other Features: Where to find your birthstone, your anniversary stone or your zodiac stone; Index by State; Index by Gem/Mineral; U.S. State Gems & Minerals Chart; and more!

The Treasure Hunter’s Gem & Mineral Guides to the U.S.A. in 4 regional volumes:

Northeast ISBN: 978-0-9970145-0-1

Northwest ISBN: 978-0-9904152-8-2

Southeast ISBN: 978-0-9970145-1-8

Southwest ISBN: 978-0-9904152-9-9

Compiled from writing, poetry, and illustrations created by young Nunavummiut, this anthology explores diverse aspects of the theme of weather from Inuit mythology to traditional knowledge, climate change, and daily survival.
These creative works, created as part of an Arctic Weather Centre contest in the mid-1990s, are gathered here for the first time, and are accompanied by helpful information about each community represented.
Through full-colour illustrations and engaging poetry and stories written both in Inuktitut and English, learn more about the vital force of Arctic weather as seen through the eyes of children.

Explore the fascinating world of Nunavutís diverse rocks and minerals in this richly visual, informative book.
Through beautiful photographs and a broad range of information with absorbing Did You Know? facts to accompany every account, readers will learn about the appearances, traditional and modern uses, and environments of eastern Arctic rocks and minerals. Covered in this book is everything from diamond to granite, from the most precious to the most common stone.
Far from a barren land of ice and snow, this book will introduce readers to the vibrant natural life of Nunavut through its distinct geology.

• What can you learn by following the spread of a root, by tasting the tip of a branch, by searching out that bitter almond smell?
• What creatures can be found in a stream if you turn over a rock—and what is the best way to cross a forest stream, anyway?
• How can you understand a forest’s history by the feel of the path underfoot, the scars on the trees along the trail, or the play of sunlight through the branches?
• How can we safely explore the forest at night?
• What activities can we use to engage children with the forest?

Modern Forests is an environmental, institutional, and cultural history of forestry in colonial eastern India. By carefully examining the influence of regional political formations and biogeographic processes on land and forest management, this book offers an analysis of the interrelated social and biophysical factors that influenced landscape change. Through a cultural analysis of powerful landscape representations, Modern Forests reveals the contention, debates, and uncertainty that persisted for two hundred years of colonial rule as forests were identified, classified, and brought under different regimes of control and were transformed to serve a variety of imperial and local interests.

The author examines the regionally varied conditions that generated widely different kinds of forest management systems, and the ways in which certain ideas and forces became dominant at various times. Through this emphasis on regional socio-political processes and ecologies, the author offers a new way to write environmental history. Instead of making a sharp distinction between third-world and first-world experiences in forest management, the book suggests a potential for cross-continental comparative studies through regional analyses.

The book also offers an approach to historical anthropology that does not make apolitical separations between foreign and indigenous views of the world of nature, insisting instead that different cultural repertoires for discerning the natural, and using it, can be fashioned out of shared concerns within and across social groups. The politics of such cultural construction, the book argues, must be studied through institutional histories and ethnographies of statemaking. In conclusion, the author offers a genealogy of development as it can be traced from forest conservation in colonial eastern India.

At the time of his death in 1907, John Waldie, founder of the Victoria Harbour Lumber Company, was identified as "the second largest lumber operator in Canada." A young Scottish immigrant who came to Wellington Square (now Burlington, Ontario) in 1842, he rose to prominence as a wealthy merchant and ship owner. In 1885 he entered the lumber business. Active in local and federal politics, and a friend of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, he invested capital in mills, people and forests.

Local history and genealogical connections are part of the Waldie story, headquartered at Victoria Harbour in Simcoe County. Documentation of the forest that the company logged, their nature, amount and sizes of logs harvested with the descriptions of the forests as they are now, throws new light and shatters some of the current myths.

This little-known story provides insights into days of rampant entrepreneurialism, the world of the lumber barons and the overall impact on our Ontario forests.

The 19th century spawned a unique breed of men who took pride in their woodsmen skills and rough codes of conduct. They called themselves lumberers, shantymen, timber beasts, les bucherron – and, more recently, lumberjacks, working in the vast forests of eastern Canada and British Columbia.

Across the country, farm boys would go to the woods, lumbering being the only winter work available. Immigrants – Swedes and Finns more often than not – resumed the trades they had learned so well in the forests of northern Europe. They broke the cold, hard monotony of camp life with songs, tall tales and card games.

Within these pages, author Donald MacKay allows us a glimpse into that moment in our heritage when men entered the virgin forest to carve out an industry from the seemingly endless array of pine, spruce, maple and balsam fir found there.

"[Donald] MacKay's book has many virtues. His prose is clean. He lets the surviving pioneers talk for themselves when they have something to say, but never allows them to get too windy. He separates legends and half-truths from facts ..."
– The Montreal Star

"... a superb marriage of text and pictures, a nostalgic but not sentimental discussion of one of Canada's primary industries, logging."
– The Globe and Mail

"It's marvellous material of a type often ignored by historians ... Such books may do more to help us understand ourselves than all the academic tomes together."
– Atlantic Insight

Quetico Park in northwestern Ontario celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2009. Long-recognized as a gem among parks, Quetico contains some of the largest stands of old-growth red and white pine in Canada , as well as a diversity of fascinating lichens, carnivorous plants in specialized habitats.

The author presents an insightful look into Quetico's natural history as he examines the adapations that have allowed moose, white-tailed deer, wolves and other mammals to survive. The human history of the park is also explored, beginning with the Objiwa living there when the area was designated as a park, followed by accounts of trappers, loggers, miners, park rangers, and poachers.

Beginning with the retreat of the glaciers, the author combines his thorough research into Quetico's long and varied history with the threads of his own extensive involvement with the park. The result is a splendid tribute to a very special place.