High Desert Author Reading Tonight

Did you happen to catch the great article in yesterday's Oregonian about Ellen Waterston and her new collection of essays, Where the Crooked River Rises? We're so excited that Ellen will be reading at the store tonight at 7 from her new book, published by Oregon State University Press. The essays in this new book reveal the blessings and challenges of decades spent as a rancher and town resident in a place that has been, and remains, her touchstone and crucible. The high desert is Ellen's teacher, and she describes its lessons with grace and care, inviting readers to look at their own lives through a lens of wide-open spaces, sagebrush and juniper, pumice and rabbit brush.

Ellen began her writing career while at Harvard University as a stringer for Time magazine, a New Englander who married and moved to the ranching West. She has written two collections of poetry, Between Desert Seasons and I Am Madagascar, both of which won recognition from WILLA, Women in Letters & Literary Arts.

In 2003, her memoir Then There Was No Mountain was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of the year and was a finalist for Foreward Book-of-the-Year.

In June 2010, her poem "Designed to Fly" was read by Garrison Keillor on "Writer's Almanac." She is the 2008 winner of the Oregon Quarterly Essay Competition, the 2007 recipient of the national Obsidian Prize in Poetry awarded by the High Desert Journal and in 2007 was named an Honorary Distinguished Professor of Humane Letters by Oregon State University/Cascades Campus for her accomplishments in the literary arts.


Ellen is the founder and president of the Writing Ranch, offering workshops and retreats for emerging writers and the founder and director of The Nature of Words, an annual literary event that brings nationally recognized authors and poets for four days of readings, panel discussions, and workshops to Bend the first weekend of November.

She received her Bachelor's degree from Harvard University and her Master's degree from the University of Madagascar. She ranched in Oregon's high desert before moving to Bend, where she currently lives.

We hope you can join us tonight, in our cozy, warm little store.

National Outdoor Book Awards

The winners of the 2010 National Outdoor Book Awards have just been announced. These are books about things that actually take place in the outdoors, as opposed to books that are good to read in the outdoors. The purpose of the awards is to recognize and encourage outstanding writing and publishing.

The National Outdoor Book Awards (NOBA) is the outdoor world's largest and most prestigious book award program. It is a non-profit, educational program, sponsored by the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation, Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education, and Idaho State University.

 The Outdoor Classic Award is given annually to books of unusual and lasting significance in the outdoor field. Books nominated for the Classic Award must have been copyrighted prior to 2000 and still be in print. Books are judged on the quality of writing and their merit and not by the author's or publisher's reputation. To remove regional bias, judges serving on the panel come from throughout the country. Additionally, the make-up of the panel is balanced as much as possible between men and women. The backgrounds of the judges -- twenty on this year's panel -- are diverse. Included on the panel are educators, academics, trade representatives, authors, book reviewers, and outdoor columnists. All of the judges serve without pay.

 

Here are this year's winners. Some of them are perhaps a little obscure for our readers, but one in particular has caught my eye previously: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Bedridden after being stricken with a mysterious virus, the author is brought some violets in a pot by a friend, and accompanying the violets is a small snail. In her newly quiet world, Bailey begins to observe the snail and it provides her with an oasis of calm from her frustrated thoughts. This slim tome can help readers appreciate the beauty of slower paces and smaller things in one's life. I've reprinted most of the winners here; you can find the rest, as well as descriptions of all of the titles, at the NOBA website.

• Nature and the Environment. Winner. Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari With a Cast of Trillions. By Mark W. Moffett. University of California Press, Berkeley. 
• Natural History Literature. Winner. An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World. By Anders Halverson. Yale University Press, New Haven. 
• Natural History Literature. Winner. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. By Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC.
• Outdoor Literature. Winner. Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life and Catching the Perfect Wave. By Peter Heller. Free Press, New York.
• Outdoor Literature. Honorable Mention. Just Passin’ Thru. By Winton Porter. Menasha Ridge Press, Birmingham, AL.
• History/Biography. Winner. Pilgrims of the Vertical: Yosemite Rock Climbers & Nature at Risk. By Joseph E. Taylor III. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
•  History/Biography. Honorable Mention. The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2. By Jennifer Jordan. W. W. Norton & Company, New York. 
• History Biography. Honorable Mention. Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage. By Glyn Williams. Viking Canada, Toronto.
• Classic. Winner. Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8,000-meter Peak. By Maurice Herzog. Lyon Press, Guilford, CT.  
• Design and Artistic Merit. Winner. Freshwater Fish of the Northeast. Illustrated by Matt Patterson. Text by David A. Patterson. University Press of New England, Hanover, NH.  
• Nature Guidebooks. Winner. Tracks and Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates: A Guide to North American Species. By Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney. Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA.
• Nature Guidebooks. Honorable Mention. Night Sky: A Field Guide to the Constellations. By Jonathan Poppele. Adventure Publications, Cambridge, MN. 
• Nature Guidebooks. Honorable Mention. Molt in North American Birds. By Steven N. G. Howell. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston. 
• Outdoor Adventure Guidebooks. Winner. Exploring Havasupai: A Guide to the Heart of the Grand Canyon. By Greg Witt. Menasha Ridge Press, Birmingham, AL.  
• Instructional Category. Winner. Sport Climbing: From Top Rope to Redpoint, Techniques for Climbing Success. By Andrew Bisharat. The Mountaineers Books, Seattle.

Previous winners of NOBA awards include Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, by Douglas Brinkley; Halfway to Heaven, by Mark Obmascik; Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-Fishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska, by Lou Ureneck; Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place, by Robert Michael Pyle; and Peak, by Roland Smith.

 

 

 

 

 

Local Educator Tim Gillespie to Speak

We hope you can join us on Wednesday, November 10, for a somewhat unusual event, as local teacher and author Tim Gillespie presents a book designed to coach English language arts teachers on engaging students in more complex texts. In his new book, Doing Literary Criticism: Helping Students Engage with Challenging Texts, Tim sets out three principles: students should be doing (and not just reading) literary criticism; they should be exposed to a variety of critical perspectives; and nothing should be done to smother the pleasure of reading. He then presents a rigorous curriculum featuring eleven critical approaches, each with an overview of benefits and limitations, teaching suggestions, and practical activities. The book comes with a CD that provides reproducible overviews for students, essay exam questions, a bonus chapter on postmodern criticism, and more.

Tim Gillespie is a 37-year veteran of teaching in public schools. A winner of a National High School English Teacher of Excellence Award from NCTE, he has written regularly about his classroom experiences over the years. He earned his bachelor's degree in English from Stanford University and his master's degree in teaching from Lewis & Clark University. He also holds a master's degree in English from the University of New Hampshire.


Tim began his teaching career as an aide in an inner-city elementary school, teaching writing in grades 1-5. "That experience cemented my decision to get my certificate and make teaching my profession," Tim says. Over the years he team-taught a first-grade writing class, a fifth-grade writing class, and an eighth-grade language arts/social studies block, as well as middle school. He also served as the K-12 district writing coordinator for the Parkrose School District in Portland, Oregon, and later he worked as the K-12 language arts specialist for the Multnomah County Education Service District. He taught reading and journalism, served as adviser for the school newspaper and multicultural club, and taught summer school for eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who failed their senior English classes.


In addition, Tim regularly taught evening classes for teachers when he served as an adjunct faculty member in the Graduate School of Professional Education at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. For several summers he was the codirector of the Oregon Writing Project.

Tim says he loves his job because of all the things he gets to learn while teaching. "Teaching gives me a shot at living a seamless life, linking my enthusiasm for reading with the opportunity to get my students enthused about reading; binding my efforts to help students master the writing craft with my efforts to master the writing craft.... I love teaching because it's consequential; it means something. The stakes are high. When it is successful and when it is unsuccessful, teaching changes lives."

Tim is an avid walker, hiker, and traveler. He is also a bookworm who has been known to merge reading and walking, though he warns, "I do not recommend this practice." A longtime harmonica player, he has been a member of a professional blues rock band.

The reading will start about 7 pm. Come early for a good seat -- and for the rumored treats that will be served and the prizes to be won.

Could You Live in the Woods with No "Conveniences"?

This morning I listened to David and Evelyn Hess being interviewed on OPB's "Think Out Loud," as they talked about living in harmony with nature. Unfortunately, I missed some of what they said because at the same time I was dealing with the guy from the environmentally sounding pest solution company who had come to help me get rid of my infestation of sugar ants. Made me feel a little guilty, I must confess. Then again, not many people I know could have chosen the same path as the Hess's and done it so successfully and gracefully.

Seventeen years ago, while in their late 50s, they made the decision to leave their home in Eugene with all of its comfort and modern conveniences and live full-time on their twenty-one acres in the foothills of the Coast Range, near the community of Lorane. While they now have a real house nearing completion, they have lived the majority of the time in a one-time storage trailer ("2-1/2 good paces across and less than 5 times that long") with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Now, more than seventeen years later, they can't really think of anything they would do differently in the move.

Tonight Evelyn Searle Hess joins us at 7 pm to read from her memoir about the decision and the experience, To the Woods: Sinking Roots, Living Lightly, and Finding True Home, published by Oregon State University Press.

They were excited when they first decided to make the move, knowing that it would provide not only a solution to their financial woes but also "a great adventure," " a tantalizing challenge," and "a respite from the noise and pace" of city living. But it turns out there was more: "We didn't guess what it would teach us about ourselves and our relationships, not only with each other but with the whole world."

While the trailer provided some basic shelter, their lives were really lived outdoors. They shared their land with voles, rabbits, chipmunks, crickets, bullfrogs, blue herons, hawks, ants (!!!), millipedes, slugs, worms, ducks, bats, raccoons, coyotes, deer, turkey vultures, porcupines (not seen but the evidence brought home by the dogs in their noses), mice, snakes, hummingbirds, and bugs of all sorts -- and even bear!

Without plumbing, they carried their water as they needed it: "I loved the inconvenience of having to carry water. It was a constant reminder to use as little as possible...and to appreciate water as not only vital, but as a blessing." Although Evelyn did acknowledge that the inconvenience was made a little easier to love by the fact that David did most of the carrying of water.

They lived without a telephone for years as well, until David suffered a brain hemorrhage that led to a long hospital stay and a couple of years of recovery out on the property. Now they have a cell phone that enables them to check messages and to make calls in the event of an emergency. David later told Evelyn that the main thing he learned from his hemorrhage was not to fear death. "The main thing I learned is that life is precarious and brief; and all the more precious on that account."

Now in their 70s -- they met in 1954 as college freshman -- David and Evelyn are preparing to move into the house they mostly built themselves, after many frustrating years of trying to satisfy land-use building plans, fire-break requirements, and other necessary approvals.

Before making this move, Evelyn managed the University of Oregon's greenhouse for ten years, taught native-plant gardening classes, established an operated a plant nursery, and served as a gardening consultant. "I had many years of gardening, schooling in horticulture and landscape architecture, respect for ecology, a life-time love of nature -- I thought I knew what I was doing." "I had always considered myself a student of nature, but it turned out I was a very young student -- a kindergartener."  Later, Evelyn notes that "I slowly and erratically began to accept the creatures that ate my garden, which pointed the way also to respect for the humanity of people I didn't agree with or understand."

Both David and Evelyn have learned a lot through this on-going experience and have reestablished a deeper communication and stronger bond with each other. It has also enabled them to see more clearly the differences between wants and needs. Most of all, "Living out in the woods we learned to see life as it is, not as we might dream it or see it on T.V. We became less caught up in ourselves and more tuned into the world. We began to see each other, along with the bugs and flowers and voles, as what we each were, our contributions, habits, needs -- not good or bad, just there. Pieces of life. Part of the whole."

Please join us tonight at 7 to hear more from Evelyn about why they made this move and what they have learned thus far along the way. It is a story both thought-provoking and engaging.

How are YOU Celebrating Earth Day?

Happy Earth Day!! What are you doing to commemorate and celebrate this day? Better yet, what are you doing to help nurture and appreciate this wonderful planet?

Here's a thought: how about walking or bicycling down to Broadway Books and picking up some inspirational reading material? Need some ideas? Here are some relatively new books that might inspire you to take action to save the planet:

• Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, Bill McKibben. The bestselling author of Deep Economy shows that we're living on a fundamentally altered planet and opens our eyes to the kind of change we'll need in order to make our civilization endure.
• Ecological Intelligence: The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy, Daniel Goleman. The bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence reveals the hidden environmental consequences of our decisions as consumers and explores changes we must make to save our planet and ourselves.
• Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town, Susan Hand Shetterly. The author takes us into the woods and along the shorelines, mudflats, and paths of rural Maine, focusing her attention on the ways humans and animals share the land, especially as our mutual habitat is changing.
• In the Empire of Ice: Encounters in a Changing Landscape, Gretel Ehrlich. By the author of one of my all-time favorite books, The Solace of Open Spaces, this book presents a vivid portrait of the indigenous cultures that inhabit the Arctic and the challenges to those cultures as a result of the unimaginable changes taking place on Earth from a warming climate.
• Lives of the Trees: An Uncommon History, Diana Wells. This sweet book is all about trees, from the origins of their names to their use in sacred rituals, from their medicinal properties to their place in art and literature -- an exploration of our deep-rooted connection to trees.
• For the kiddies: The Earth Book, by Todd Parr. This kid-friendly, eco-friendly picture book explores the importance of environmental protection and conservation on a level kids will enjoy.

And how about some books by Northwest authors to get you excited about the natural world:

• Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature, Kathleen Dean Moore.This book offers a collection of accounts of carefully observed excursions into the wild, as well as a profound meditation on the healing power of nature.
• The Far Corner: On Land, Life, and Literature, John Daniel. The essays in this book take readers to beaches, old-growth forests, sagebrush steppe-lands, and deep-river canyons -- wild places and places scarred by human uses -- as well as through inner terrains exploring mortality, creativity, and spirituality.
• Wild Things: Adventures of a Grassroots Environmentalist, Donna Matrazzo. This book tells the story of the author's environmental activism in the Portland area and provides information on how each of us can get more involved in saving the places we love.
• Another Way the River Has: Taut True Tales from the Northwest, Robin Cody. In this collection of essays, the author brings the ear of a novelist and the eye of a reporter to the people and places that make the Northwest distinctive -- from the streams to the woods, his prose rings with a sense of place.

We've got lots more books along these lines; these are just some of the newer ones. Come see for yourself and find just the right one(s!) for you. And for goodness sake, bring your own bag!

Donna Matrazzo to Read Tonight

Donna Matrazzo was an unlikely candidate to become a grassroots environmentalist. She grew up in the steel town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, in a neighborhood choked by railroad tracks and the steel mill, with no connection to the natural world. Books became her only window into nature and the outdoors, and she embraced them with a passion.

She moved to Portland with her husband, living in the Laurelhurst neighborhood for five years. While living there, they began kayaking around the Sauvie Island area and decided that's where they wanted to live. Now they've lived on Sauvie Island for more than twenty years, in a house on an acre and a half, with a 75-acre state natural area across the road.

Donna is a writer by trade, writing and editing books, articles, film scripts, and other documents in the areas of science, health, history, and nature. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, on PBS and The Discovery Channel, and in national park visitor centers and museums around the country. She has also written a writing textbook and a feature film screenplay, The Evening Land.

When Donna first moved to Sauvie Island, she began keeping a journal, something she thought might someday become a book of serene nature observations. Four months after they moved to the island, they heard about a farmer who wanted to sell his land to a Japanese developer to build a tournament-level golf course, and Donna's career in environmental activism and stewardship of the land began and the journal evolved to incorporate discussions of conservation battles. After taking an essay-writing class from John Daniel -- one of Broadway Books' favorite authors -- the journal began to gel into the book she published last year: Wild Things: Adventures of a Grassroots Environmentalist. The book was a finalist for the Frances Fuller Victor Award for General Nonfiction in the 2009 Oregon Book Awards.

Typically when you write film scripts, Donna says, you have two or three stories woven together. And that's what happened in writing this book, as multiple stories wound around each other.

Barbara J. Scot, a neighbor on the island and an author herself, has this to say about the book: "Donna Matrazzo's writing reflects a rare sensitivity to the complexity of environmental activism and the special courage needed to stand up within one's immediate community. Wild Things is both poignant and practical, a personal journal through familiar land-use battles."

Bill McKibben, educator, environmentalist, and the author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy, among other books, says, "The planet needs more friends like Donna Matrazzo -- and it needs more books like this one, which remind us that we're all quite capable of making big and useful changes."

Sauvie Island, about ten miles north of downtown Portland, is an island that is about the same size and shape as Manhattan Island, yet it is home to only about 500-600 households, about 1000-1200 people, and more than 300 species of wildlife. The first inhabitants of the island were the Multnomah tribe of the Chinook Indians. Sadly their population was decimated in the fever epidemic in 1829. The island was named Wappatoe Island by Lewis and Clark when they explored the area in 1805-06. The island's modern name comes from Laurent Sauve, a French dairyman who was sent to the island by the Hudson Bay Company to raise cattle.

Donna is one of the founding members of the Sauvie Island Conservancy and of the Oregon Ocean Paddling Society (also known as "OOPS"). She serves on the advisory board for the Columbia River Water Trail, is a Certified Schoolyard Wildlife Steward, and has worked part-time for Audubon and as a sea kayak guide.

The majority of environmental activists are ordinary people, says Donna, like-minded people who come together to work intensely on an issue they feel passionate about, often leading to the development of strong and lasting friendships. She describes environmental activism as being to a great extent about "fun, friendship, and food," although one suspects it's more work than that description sounds. In the prologue to her book, Donna writes about the development of grassroots environmentalists: "First comes a deep passion of place. Then the courage to speak up when that place becomes threatened. Then change, and all that change enables."

We hope you will join us at Broadway Books tonight at 7 pm to hear Donna Matrazzo read from her book, Wild Things: Adventures of a Grassroots Environmentalist, and discuss her adventures.

2009 National Outdoor Book Awards

Here are the just-announced winners of the 2009 National Outdoor Book Awards:

• History-Biography: Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley (Harper).
• Nature and the Environment: Our Living Earth by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
• Design & Artistic Merit: Lars Jonsson's Birds illustrated by Lars Jonsson (Princeton University Press)
• Outdoor Literature: Halfway to Heaven by Mark Obmascik (Free Press)
• Natural History Literature: Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys by Rob Dunn (Smithsonian Books)
• Instructional: Girl on the Rocks: A Woman's Guide to Climbing with Strength, Grace and Courage by Katie Brown, photographs by Ben Moon (Globe Pequot Press/Falcon Guides)
• Outdoor Adventure: Guide to the Green and Yampa Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument by Duwain Whitis and Barbara Vinson (RiverMaps)
• Nature: Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America by Roger Tory Peterson (Houghton Mifflin)
• Children's: Whistling Wings by Laura Goering, illustrated by Laura Jacques (Sylvan Dell Publishing)

Agree? Disagree? Others you would recommend?

The National Outdoor Book Awards (NOBA) is the outdoor world's largest and most prestigious book award program. It is a non-profit, educational program, sponsored by the National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation, Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education, and Idaho State University. The purpose of the awards is to recognize and encourage outstanding writing and publishing. Reviews of these titles and a list of the honorable mentions can be found at the NOBA Website.

PBS Series and Book on National Parks

I'm so excited to watch the PBS series on America's National Parks, which begins Sunday night on OPB -- especially having just finished reading Timothy Egan's terrific book (The Big Burn) about America's largest-ever forest fire, and the establishment of the National Forest Service.

The National Parks: America's Best Idea, an Illustrated History, by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, is the official compaion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series, and it is spectacular! At $50 it isn't cheap, but it is almost 400 pages of incredible history and illustration -- both historical photos and contemporary, some in lucious two-page spreads. This book will make a wonderful keepsake that can be returned to over and over again. What a great gift!

The authors recount the adventures, mythmaking, and intense political battles behind the evolution of the park system, and the enduring ideals that fostered its growth. And they introduce us to a diverse cast of compelling characters -- both unsung heroes and famous figures such as John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ansel Adams -- who have been transformed by these special places and committed themselves to saving them from destruction so the rest of us could be transformed as well.

The world's first national park was Yellowstone, established in 1872; the US system now encompasses nearly four hundred sites and 84 million acres -- including Crater Lake in Oregon, established in 1902.

Dayton Duncan, writer and producer of The National Parks, is an award-winning author and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of nine other books and has collaborated on all of Ken Burn's films for twenty years as a writer, producer, and consultant. Ken Burns, director and producer of The National Parks, has won numerous prizes for his work, including the Emmy and Peabody Awards and two Academy Award nominations. His previous films incluce The War, Jazz, Baseball, and The Civil War, which was the highest-rated series in the history of American public television.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is both fascinating and gorgeous. Come check it out for youself -- and be sure to catch the first segment of the series Sunday night!

Stone Offerings in Machu Picchu

In June of 2007, Mike Torrey, an accomplished architectural photographer, received an offer that would fulfill a life-long-dream: to travel to Machu Picchu at the solstice. Torry processed this life-affecting experience through the lens of his camera. The result is a collection of breathtaking photographs that capture at once the wonder and the universal and timeless significance of this enchanted and inspirational place. That collection of photographs, along with a passionate and sweeping introduction in both English and Spanish by Peruvian-born author Maria Arana, constitutes the book Stone Offerings: Machu Picchu's Terraces of Enlightment.

On Monday, June 22nd, at 7 pm, Mike Torrey and his Portland-based photo editor, Kirsten Rian, will be at Broadway Books to talk about his experience, the place, and the making of this gorgeous coffee-table book. And of course to sign books and answer questions. According to one reviewer, "The pages of Stone Offerings flow like an Incan pathway, images splicing together this most evocative of ancient wonders." Another concludes that "the poetic lens of Mike Torrey is an inspiration for us to make our own offerings for a better and more beautiful world." What a great gift this book would make -- we hope you can join us!

The Best Nature has to Offer

A small but enthusiastic audience joined us last night to hear local author and naturalist James L. Davis talk about the creation of his book The Northwest Nature Guide and to hear about some of the best nature-viewing opportunities in the Northwest. The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Vancouver Island, and the Columbia River Gorge were some of the highlighted places. We also heard an amusing passage from the book about pelagic birding off the coast of Oregon. (Pelagic, from the Greek word for "open sea," as opposed to shore birds.) We now have signed copies of The Northwest Nature Guide at Broadway Books -- what a great gift for both visitors to the Northwest and Northwesterners keen to explore all that nature has to offer us.

In his book Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv talks about nature-deficit disorder afflicting our children, and James -- being a teacher himself -- talked about the challenging of keeping younger people connected to nature. What great family outings could be created using this book as a guide! James' knowledge of the natural world around us and his passion and enthusiasm for sharing it with others shone brightly. What a great night!

NW Nature Reading Tuesday Night

James Luther Davis will read at the store Tuesday night (May 19th) at 7 from his newly published book The Northwest Nature Guide: Where to Go and What to See Month by Month in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia (published by Timber Press).

I wrote a little about this book earlier in the year on our blog. If you want to know what to see when in the natural world in the exceptional paradise that is the Pacific Northwest, this is your book! Since timing is so important in nature, the book takes you through the year month by month and, for each month, describes four wildlife attractions or natural events that are exceptional during that month. Each chapter also offers a "closer look" section about a general topic pertinent to that month, as well as "nature nuggets," which are briefer mentions of other natural happenings for that month.

The author urges you to be "patient, flexible, and observant" and to remember that nature is not particularly predictable. He adds, "Make each trip an adventure." Davis also provides wildlife-watching secrets and etiquette to enhance your experience. A beautiful 31-page four-color insert provides gorgeous photographs of bald eagles, frozen waterfalls, great blue herons, baby harbor seals, cobra lilies, sandhill cranes, bighorned sheep, and the "booming of a sage-grouse on a lek" (covered in detail in the April chapter).

James Davis has been a naturalist for Metro Parks and Natural Areas since 1998. He began his naturalist career as a young lad chasing lizards in Tucson, Arizona. After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees, he taught junior and senior high school science classes in California for several years and worked in two zoos as the "Zoo Mobile Guy." In 1981 he moved to Portland and created a job for himself as the first education director of the Audubon Society of Portland.

After nine years at Audubon, he began teaching science at Marylhurst University, where he was instrumental in starting the university's "Head Start Summer Science Institute," the only science training program for Head Start teachers in the country.

Davis lives in Portland with his wife Sally (what a great name!). When not pursuing his natural history interests, he plays guitar in rock and roll bands -- although, he says, not nearly enough these days.

He has been described as having contagious enthusiasm and laugh-out-loud humor. Mike Houck, the executive director of the Urban Greenspaces Institute, says "I've never met a better all-around naturalist or teller of nature tales than James Davis."

We hope you can join us for what is sure to be an entertaining and informative evening. After the rain returns following our glorious weekend of sunshine, hanging out in a bookstore on a Tuesday evening is a grand idea, while you make plans for what to do when you next venture out into the great Pacific Northwest world of nature.

Nature Writing at its Finest

Much like Mary Oliver, Craig Childs is a keen observer of nature. Instead of writing poetry, however, Childs is a storyteller in essays. Naturalist, adventurer, desert ecologist, and frequent contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition, Childs gives us some of his best observations in The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild. I ate this book up when it was first published, and I'm happy to report that it's now available in paperback. Bear, Bald Eagle, Broad-Tailed Hummingbird, Bighorn Sheep, and Blue Shark are just some of the chapter titles. I was particularly taken with the vignette on a misplaced raccoon.

The essays need not be read in any particular order; the book is meant to be dipped in and out of. Here's what Childs has to say in his Author's Note: "This is how each story came to me: unexpectedly, halting my breath before I could draw it in. If you are one of those people who insist on reading books from left to right, I recommend a sip of clear water before starting each new chapter. Even better, I suggest that before you read the next story, you open your door and walk into the woods where only birds and spying raccoons might see you, or into a desert of lizards and jackrabbits, if that is what is at hand. Paw up the dirt and taste it on your lips. Drink out of a stream or from the lucid depths of a bedrock water hole. Return to your house, where this book waits on a table. Pull up a chair and see what other wild creature comes to speak with you."

One reviewer said of this book: "He reminds us why we fell in love with the wild in the first place." I couldn't agree more. Come check it out. You're in for some first-class nature writing, sort of Mary Oliver meets Jon Krakauer.

Finalists for the 2009 Orion Book Award

Next month the winner of The Orion Book Award will be announced in New York City. The Orion Book Award is given annually to a book that has achieved excellence in addressing a growing ecological awareness and the need for a healthier relationship between humans and the natural world. Nominations for the award are made by advisors, writers, editors, and contributing editors of Orion. Selection of the winning book and four finalists are made by a five-person selection committee, which changes annually.

Here are the finalists for the 2009 award:

• Trespass, by Amy Irvine (North Point Press) 

• The Wild Places, by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Books)

• The Bridge at the Edge of the World, by James Gustave Speth (Yale)

• Inventing Niagara, by Ginger Strand (Simon & Schuster)

• Finding Beauty in a Broken World, by Terry Tempest Williams (Pantheon Books)

[Fortunately for us, Terry Tempest Williams will be speaking this week in a special event by Literary Arts. The event takes place at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, March 25th, at the Newmark Theater.]

Previous winners of The Orion Book Award include The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, by Diane Ackerman (WW Norton) and Wild: An Elemental Journey, by Jay Griffiths (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin)

The first issue of Orion Nature Quarterly was published in June, 1982, and in its first-page editorial, George Russell, the publication’s first Editor-in-Chief, boldly stated Orion’s values:

“It is Orion‘s fundamental conviction that humans are morally responsible for the world in which we live, and that the individual comes to sense this responsibility as he or she develops a personal bond with nature.”

In the intervening twenty-five years, Orion has been a focal point in an extraordinarily rich period of nature writing, and it has remained true to that core conviction, though the magazine has evolved into a bimonthly, in larger format, and the range of its interests has broadened to include not only environmental but cultural concerns.

New Book from Favorite Writer

One of my all-time favorite writers -- and all-around great guy -- is John Daniel: poet and writer of essays and memoirs. Two of his books I'm particularly fond of are Rogue River Journal: A Winter Alone, which blends the story of his 4-1/2 month experiment in solitude in a remote Rogue River cabin with a memoir of his father (an early labor union organizer) and their relationship and his own growing up and coming of age, and Looking After: A Son's Memoir, which tells this story of his caring for his mother in the last years of her life as she declined with Alzheimer's. In both of these terrific books I love both his writing style -- the way he strings words together with nary a wasted word -- and his ability to lay himself open and explore feelings and behaviors even if doing so don't always portray him in the most positive light.

Now I -- and all the other John Daniel fans out there -- will soon have a new book to treasure. The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature, a collection of personal essays, will be published by Counterpoint Press later this spring. And I'm happy to announce that John will be doing a reading at Broadway Books (watch this blog for details to come). The Far Corner extends the work he collected in a book of essays, The Trail Home, published in 1992 and winner of the 1993 Oregon Book Award for literary nonfiction. The essays in the new collection are diverse in focus, various in length, and inventive in form, spinning narratives that seek to define how he belongs to the land and to the wholeness of life itself, exploring both external and internal landscapes.

John was born in South Carolina and raised in the suburbs of Washington, DC, but he moved to the Northwest in 1966 and instantly realized he was home. As he says in this new collection, "I never considered living in the East again. I didn't know much for sure in my early twenties, but I knew I had corrected the mistake of having been born and raised on the wrong coast." He originally came to Portland to attend Reed College, but the beauty of our state soon derailed that intent: "It was Oregon, wild and lovely and violent Oregon, that ruined my academic career. How could I keep my nose in Herodotus, my ears in windy seminars, my spirit in dolorous, fluourescent classrooms, while outside swarmed a green paradise of mountains and rivers and seacoast and forests of gargantuan trees?" Home for John now is in the Coast Range foothills west of Eugene.

His essays hit such topics as becoming a writer, clear-cutting, the mythic resonance of rivers, the writers Ken Kesey and Wallace Stegner, the literary genre of creative nonfiction, and even the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. In his introduction, John acknowledges that some people might be reluctant to tackle a book of essays: "The reputation of essay has been more or less ruined by dry exercises of that label assigned too often over the years in schools...but the contemporary personal essay is not the trussed and embalmed critter you have rightly learned to despise." Rather, he says, "to find an essayist who interests you is to go for a walk with a friendly (if sometimes contentious) stranger with whom you enjoy conversing on a variety of subjects, sometimes debating, sometimes agreeing, a companion whose reflections may stir you to reflect on your own experience and the questions most important to you and to your place on Earth."

I can't wait to go for a walk with John again! We'd be happy to hold a copy of The Far Corner for you -- just give us a holler.

Where to Go When in the Great Northwest

Wouldn't it be great if you could know exactly where and when to go if you want to see migrating whales, nesting puffins, soaring raptors, tidepool treasures, frozen waterfalls, nesting great blue herons, wintering waterfowl, blooming mountain wildflowers, and more great experiences of the natural world of the Pacific Northwest? Well, now you can! Just published by Timber Press is The Northwest Nature Guide: Where to Go and What to See Month by Month in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, by James Luther Davis. The book presents 150 best bets for wildlife adventures throughout the Northwest and even in your own backyard! With contagious enthusiasm and laugh-out-loud humor, popular Oregon naturalist Davis gets you where you need to go to see nature at its peak every month of the year. As the author says in his introduction: "Ahh, another day in paradise. If you've lived in the Pacific Northwest for long you've probably figured out that you reside in one of the greatest places on Earth. Yet, like urbanites in any developed country, we Northwesterners spend so much of our time in environments of our own creation and on schedules of our own design that we are out of touch with the natural world and its rhythms." This book is the cure for that, enabling you to have "outdoor adventures that leave you feeling revitalized and inspired, with a renewed sense of wonder and appreciation for nature. You may even have some experiences that can best be described as spiritual." What are you waiting for? There's no better way to push through the winter doldrums than to explore the natural treasures of the Northwest.