is there a burzum of nature's geat cathedrals?

I've been reading a lot of naturalist/conservationist writing over the past several months, trying to get a jump on the greats - it's related to my field of study. However, I hate how religious most of it is, and how purple and overdone. I am not ready to give up on the genre by a longshot, and I know there must be stuff out there more suited to me. I do not want to hear flowery talk about nature's cathedrals and god's artistic hand. I want beautiful, simple writing about nature. Is it out there?

Title is a joke, btw. I do not support forest fires (lol), but I do not want to ever EVER hear or read the term "nature's cathedral" again.

i jacked up the other thread.

what i have read:

aldo leopold - a sand county almanac
john muir (complete)
thoreau (complete)
gp marsh - man and nature
rachel carson, but she's a bit different

this quote has been in my fb profile forever because i can't find anything i like more:

"A few miles down the lake and across from the cliffs, we found a waterfall tumbling down a smooth shelf covered with shimmering moss. We sat beside it and marveled at the lacework of white and translucent green against the rocks. Never for a moment was the color the same, never for an instant unchanging."
--Sigurd F. Olson, "Runes of the North"

I like that. Will read Olson

Do you recommend one to start with?

# The Singing Wilderness (1956)
# Listening Point (1958)
# The Lonely Land (1961)
# Runes of the North (1963)
# Open Horizons (1969)
# The Hidden Forest (1969)
# Wilderness Days (1972)
# Reflections From the North Country (1976)
# Of Time and Place (1982)

the only one i actually have is runes of the north--i've always meant to get more. this is pretty far from my areas of expertise but i found runes in a used bookstore and was stuck by his writing--dude was just a natural.

it's actually boxed up right now, need to do something about that.

I'll read it. Thanks, cad!

I have no idea what this thread is about but desert solitude is a pretty good book about nature

do you mean desert solitaire by edward abbey?

the perigrine by la baker is supposed to be good, I haven't read it tho, its about some crazy guy

With no prior knowledge of birds, the author is seized with an unexplained longing to track the peregrine falcons that hunt in the river valley behind his home each winter. Though his subjects are far more elusive than the pigeons and gulls on which they prey, on rare occasions he sees a peregrine roosting or bathing, or spots a fresh kill in the grass. He outlines their strict hunting ethos: take other birds only in flight, and spare only the leg and back meat for scavengers. As winter approaches, he resolves to shun the world of men in fierce pursuit of the falcon's inner life. As the landscape thaws, Baker shares the hawk's absolute terror in the face of the stumbling, erratic human beings encroaching on its territory. Veering swiftly from the mundane to the miraculous, Baker's self-effacing diary of a long winter in the wild is a triumph of pure and immediate description.

lol that is what I mean

im reading that now

peregrine sounds interesting, im interested in peregrines

monkey wrench gang imo

perigrine is an nyrb book, apparently the nyrb publishes a number of books on crazy old men who grow beards and follow birds? I thought rich people loved horses most of all, never knew about birds

rich people have always been crazy about birds

also cheese apparently I just got a job working for some rich ppl and I've never bought so much cheese in my life

tbh I'm rich too in a way

thank you for being h

Beautiful simple writing about nature, eh? Let me go rummage around in my book and see what I can scrounge up. Back here in three shakes of a lamb's tail, roxy.

john mcphee? wendell berry?

Real mountains just squat there, as enormous and undeniable piles of rock. If they are picturesque, it is through no fault of their own. They bear no mark of purpose or forethought. They are mere lumps, raised by pressures that emanate from the greatest depths of the earth and then shaped by forces as crude and impersonal as can be imagined – by the wind that bloweth as it listeth – by the rain that falls on the just and unjust alike – by frosts that crack and rend the rock – by roots that probe and push like blind worms. There is no plan to them, no artful shaping eye. Yet, I don’t think we are deceived when we sense in them a sort of grandeur that is more cohesive, more balanced and more harmonious than any raw heap of accidents should be able to achieve.

Out here alone in the wild places, away from people, the natural things that surround me seem to fall into step with each other in ways I seldom notice in the city. The rock bows before gravity. The wind bows before the rock. The seedpod bows before the wind. Every item fits its place, moving or staying put, just as it ‘ought’, and it does so without taking thought for the morrow, as simply and as elegantly as water flowing to a low place or grasses dying with the winter snow. They invite me to fall into step with them. On some days, in some hours, I can – and it is wonderful.

There is a profound sanity in these natural arrangements that goes bone-marrow deep, deeper by far than the postcard beauty we all love to look at. When I am able to rest my thoughts on these things, I am calmer and happier and truer than I am in less tranquil circumstances. You will often hear longtime hikers say that, if they die out here, then so be it. I often feel the same. This sentiment has nothing to do with wanting to die. It has everything to do with acknowledging the eminent sanity and justice that encompasses everything that happens out here. A sane death, a just death, is by rights a good death – just like the grasses that die with the winter snow.

I’m wrapped in a comfortable indolence. A raven flaps its way across an azure sky, croaking in its deep, harshly musical voice. Each call hangs in the air as a distinct object, set like a jewel against the stillness. In the quiet instant just after the raven speaks, I can hear the vast depth of the sky, where the sound runs off and is lost. This is the life, I think.

After a mile or so, the trail comes down to yet another small meadow in another hanging valley. Of course, a creek runs down its middle. Of course, the creek meanders, burbles and glistens in the sun. Of course the water is as clear as crystal and reveals a bottom of gorgeous multi-colored stones. Of course, the banks of the creek are filled with stunning greenery, all set to burst forth in a delicate show of color and beauty as their buds open and drink the sun. When you get right down to it, it’s the same story everywhere you go in these little gemlike valleys. One is much like another, if you consider them statistically. Once you’ve seen this one and that one, it seems as if only some minor variations remain to be played on the dominant themes.

One can get used to anything, I guess. The Inuit yawns and goes to work spearing dark-eyed seals at their breathing holes in the arctic ice, while jockeying with polar bears for the best position. The Polynesian yawns and goes to work, wading into a limpid blue lagoon and casting his net to haul in shoals of fish the color of a Mardi Gras parade, just so he can gut and eat them. I get up, yawn and go for a stroll in paradise. I suppose even souls who go to heaven might get quite calloused to it after several eons – what with the grandeur on every hand, the majesty piled up in glutting heaps until your head hurts, the opulence and sublimity constantly underfoot, and limitless awe for breakfast, lunch and dinner. At last one might be moved to shrug and ask, “So what else is new?”

But all this isn’t to say I am bored with being here. No – not after a mere week of sampling the local delights. It has just become difficult to find new words to describe this scene once more. All words aside, in reality this alpine meadow is as fresh and newly minted as a shiny dime or a newborn infant. These glowing green plants may go by the same names and repeat the same forms as all the other plants in all those other meadows, but they are blissfully unaware that they are merely the copies of copies, the shadows of originals lost and forgotten – and so they live and grow with a zest that fairly vibrates with gladness. They aren’t jaded or tired of life.

This creek may obey the same physical laws that govern all other creeks, but that doesn’t prevent it from burbling and bounding down its bed with a creative force that defies all measurement or comparison. This sunlight may be no different than the sunlight elsewhere, but here it illuminates each individual and unnamable detail it falls upon, each tiny leaf and bug’s ear, showing up each and every one as uniquely itself and nothing else – an irreducible this which is thus. However, if you try putting it all into words you’ll soon see how hard it is not to stumble into clichés.

So, roxy, if you want something particular in the line of beautiful, simple writing about nature, I say roll up your sleeves, spit on your hands and get down to work.

haha I was gonna start with 'Exxon'

well shit i put a rec in the other thread but i am too lazy to go through it again - annie dillard pilgrim at tinkers creek tho

rachel carson, but she's a bit different

― O⎠o⎠O⎠o⎠O (roxymuzak), Friday, November 26, 2010 3:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

I tried reading Silent Spring once and after 3 or 4 pages I was like whoahhh, what a SNOOZE! I got the gist by then anyway.

Roxy, there are a few really great British nature writers at the moment:

Robert Macfarlane (Mountains of the Mind, The Wild Places)
Roger Deakin (Waterlog: A Swimmer's Journey Through Britain, Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees)
Richard Mabey (The Unofficial Countryside, Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees)
Mark Cocker (Crow Country)
Jay Griffiths (Wild: An Elemental Journey)
Kathleen Jamie (Findings)

Would also recommend Barry Lopez (Arctic Dreams)

Oh good thread idea. I'm pretty interested in this as well.

I read Silent Spring for an environmental health class and I found it so boring that I struggled to finish it but I'm sure I've mentioned here before that I have a really hard time finishing books that I'm not really into.

THANKS for those recommendations, Nick!

Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire sounds like it would fit in here.

Can't beat the Wainwright guides to the Lakes imo.

Several letters, and even petitions, from Great Gable enthusiasts have been sent in asking me to do Book Seven next after Book Four, and Book Five last. What a frightfully untidy suggestion! It springs from a generally accepted view, of course, that there is nothing 'back o'Skiddaw' worth exploring. I want to go and find out. There is a big tract of lonely fells here, wild and desolate; but this is immortal ground, the John Peel country, and I rely further on a centuries-old saying that 'Calabeck Fells are worth all England else.' A land rich with promise, surely!"

One more good one, more along the lines of Rachael Carson, but totally readable:

David Quammen - The Song Of The Dodo: Island Biogeography In An Age Of Extinctions

lol. we already talked about it, sleeve

how did i not mention that i love william bartram

wallace stegner?
page stegner?