is there a burzum of nature's geat cathedrals?

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?