THE POWER TO TRANSFORM

Nature has the power to grab hold of you, give you a good shake, and leave you transformed. These books, whose authors felt that power, clue us in to the secret of finding light in a long, dark winter, or in the eyes of an elephant; to discovering freedom in the fight of birds; to learning how to see abundance in the desert; and to honoring the sacredness of home over twelve thousand years of history.

Living in an almost nature-avoidant culture, it’s easy to forget that we are part of the natural world, and can’t really be whole without it. These books can help us find our way back home—to nature.

THE NATURE OF DESERT NATURE

Gary Paul Nabhan (Editor), University of Arizona Press (NOV 3) Softcover $16.95 (192pp) 978-0-8165-4028-0, ESSAYS

Some consider deserts vast expanses of barren wasteland; a politician once called them “kitty litter.” If anything can transform such opinions toward respect and appreciation, this multicultural collection of essays by desert-loving artists, Indigenous people, environmentalists, and contemplatives may.

Generally thought of in terms of what they lack rather than what marvels they hold, deserts have long drawn seekers to explore and be transformed by their harsh, spare beauty. Dangerous for the uninformed and ill prepared, desert environments host all manner of discomforts: spiny plants, stinging creatures, and temperatures that can bake or freeze. But for those who know their ways, deserts can aid, nurture, and inspire. In the book’s opening essay, editor Gary Paul Nabhan shares that “The Comcáac, Pima, Tohono O’odham, and Yaqui people who first introduced me to desert living left me with a sense that a desert is an enchanted place.” In “Indigenous Ways of Envisioning Deserts,” Ofelia Zepeda writes that in the language of the Tohono O’odham, the term most akin to “desert” is “a bright and shining place.” For them, deserts are places of power and dreams “for those who must dream those kinds of dreams,” as well as places of nightmares.

Desert dwellers find that their need for food, drink, and shelter can be met, sometimes in abundance; but the desert is a strict, unrelenting teacher, demanding self-reliance, cooperation, compassion, patience, and respect in order to survive. Deserts have taught contemplatives about love that’s “born of solitude, silence, and darkness;” artists, to see the world anew in bright, clear light; and visionaries, to reach for a limitless horizon.

The writings in this collection echo, each in their own ways, the surprising declaration made by contributor Paul Mirocha in “Staring at the Walls,” an essay on Southern Arizona public art: “The desert is succulent—it’s downright juicy out there.”

THE LIGHT IN THE DARK A Winter Journal

Horatio Clare, Elliott and Thompson (OCT 1) Softcover $16.95 (208pp) 978-1-78396-462-8, AUTOBIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

“If it were followed by spring or summer, I would love autumn unreservedly,” writes Horatio Clare. Instead, autumn, for all its glory, warns the Welsh-born writer that winter will soon engulf Britain and Wales in gales, sleet, and unrelenting gloom.

In winter, Clare writes, a kind of madness descends upon him. Incapable of writing, he fears being unable to support his family, becoming derelict, and losing the house. Swearing to make one year different, Clare, who commuted twice a week from St. David’s, Britain’s smallest city, to Liverpool to teach creative writing, decided to keep a journal—a torch raised against the darkness, his commitment to pay attention and embrace winter’s gifts.

Still, the combination of isolation, cold, and country rigors in a sunless land almost felled him. “Depression kills your power of vision, turning you fatally towards yourself,” and this turning, difficult as it was, brought truth and personal salvation.

With poetic turns and unforgettable images, as of “pigeons riding the gales like fat darts” and “bracken-red ridges … surfac[ing] through pearlescent cloud, heaving up like whales,” the book is sensitive and deep, heart-rending and comforting, like hearth-warmed woolens. Stories of welcoming pubs that serve up “battered fish that looks like you could club a cat with it,” local wildlife, and Clare’s mother’s hilly Welsh farm where the sheep frost in place are shared. And then, in the heart of the winter, Clare finds that “Of all the seasons, winter draws us together … Its legacy will not be a shadow, but a flame.” His inspired journal is a testament to the challenges of the season and a declaration of hope that people are made better for having learned winter’s hard, but necessary, lessons.

THIRTY-THREE WAYS OF LOOKING AT AN ELEPHANT

Dale Peterson (Editor), Trinity University Press (OCT 20) Softcover $24.95 (320pp) 978-1-59534-866-1 ESSAYS

Collection editor Dale Peterson calls his experiences with elephants in Asia and Africa “among the most transformative” of his life. The heartwarming, heartrending essays of Thirty-three Ways of Looking at an Elephant reveal the minds, emotions, and social behaviors of the magnificent animals, according them the respect and admiration they merit and advocating for their care.

The conflicted relationship between elephants and humans goes back thousands of years; its story can be found in African myths and folk tales, Hindu theology, and ancient Greek texts, including the writings of Aristotle. It was war that first brought elephants to Europe; Macedonian soldiers in Alexander the Great’s army used them as “living battle tanks,” trained to kill humans without hesitation. In the colonial era, they were brutally slaughtered to near extinction for their ivory, a practice which, though forbidden, continues to this day. Elephants were captured and forced to work in teak harvests, trained to perform in circuses, and even assisted in retaking Burma from the Japanese in WWII. Most were abused and suffered horribly in captivity. A warning for sensitive souls: some of these accounts are disturbing.

Challenging Descartes’s assertion that “animals are merely naturally occurring machines,” the essays are rich with insights into elephants and their matriarchal societies, showing them to be fierce in their devotion to their children, intelligent, sensitive, and playful. They are creative problem solvers, adept at learning complex tasks, and endowed with phenomenal memories. Astonishing facts about their sex lives, their surprising agility, and their ability to use infrasonic sounds to communicate over long distances evoke awe and admiration for the endangered animals.

Elephants recognize the bones and tusks of family members and honor them with grieving rituals. These moving rituals are reserved for their own kind and for one other creature: humans.

BEHIND THE BEARS EARS Exploring the Cultural and Natural Histories of a Sacred Landscape

R. E. Burrillo, Torrey House Press (OCT 27) Softcover $19.95 (401pp) 978-1-948814-30-0 ECOLOGY & ENVIRONMENT

Challenging dominant narratives, R. E. Burrillo’s playful, fierce, reverent, and sarcastic book covers twelve thousand years of the history of the Bears Ears area, revealing why it has been so important to so many for so long, and why it remains so today. When asked why the Bears Ears—named for mountains that resemble the tops of bears’ heads, with rounded ears pointing skyward—a Native man replied, “Because it is ‘The Place.’” For him and his people, nothing more needs to be said. It is home, as it has been to many different tribes, each calling the area “Bears Ears” in their own tongue. They came, left, and came home again time after time, long before boundaries and fences were ever thought of, not imagining that one day their homecomings would be threatened.

The book reflects a deep respect for Native people and their ties to the land, and brings to light the degree to which the attitudes and worldviews of the Bears Ears’ Indigenous occupants and those of Anglo Europeans conflict. For Indigenous people, it’s about reverence for, and cooperation with, the land; for those who came later, it’s all about domination, money, and exploitation.

The narrative is powerful in bringing that difference to the fore, asking those who loot Native graves (yes, archaeologists included) how they would feel if someone ran off with their grandfather’s skull. It questions the motivations of those who examine the remains of once thriving ancient cities and wonder where the people went without ever looking at their descendants, now forced to live in deplorable conditions on reservations.

Behind the Bears Ears is an epic story of endurance that reaches back into prehistory and casts a line into the future with the hope that all people can come to know and love this sacred land, and work together to preserve it.

FIELD NOTES FROM AN UNINTENTIONAL BIRDER

Julia Zarankin, Douglas & Mcintyre (OCT 13) Softcover $18.95 (256pp) 978-1-77162-248-6 AUTOBIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

Julia Zarankin’s memoir is a moving, and often hilarious, account of how she—a type A, perfectionistic, and nature-avoidant novice—became a bona fide “bird nerd,” transforming her life in the process.

Zarankin’s story begins from a dark place. Her marriage had fallen apart; she’d left a tenure-track position teaching Russian literature at a Missouri university; and, as a childless woman reaching her forties, thoughts of her own mortality were taking up altogether too much space on her radar. Moving back to Toronto, she was desperate to find something that would bring her a sense of peace. A few internet searches led her to birds.

At first, “birding”—not to be confused with “bird-watching”—seemed altogether too static a hobby for Zarankin’s goal-oriented, approval-seeking nature. She writes that there was “something suspect” about people, mostly older and dressed in funny clothes, standing around for hours with binoculars glued to their eyes. Her initial birding experiences were less than stellar: a tower on the other side of the lake was all that she could identify. But finally, the sight of a red-winged blackbird astounded her, bringing her “as close as I’d ever stand to dinosaurs.”

Zarankin thought about that bird for a whole year before plunging into birding, which turned out to be both exhilarating and humbling. Her initial ineptness made her confront her past, her failings, and her poor self-image. Comradeship with other birders brought permission, and freedom, to fail. She learned she didn’t need to be the best or the fastest; got “warbler neck” and needed emergency massage therapy; and even felt drawn to acquire weird birder clothing.

The book reveals that it was the wonder of the birds themselves that helped Zarankin heal, opening her eyes and her heart to a whole new way of being in the world.