In this Book
- Through a Green Lens: Fifty Years of Writing for Nature
- Book
- 2016
- Published by: Oregon State University Press
summary
By an early age, Bob Pyle discovered that he had a greater facility with words than with numbers. In school, he found he could get good grades and win essay contests by relying on those words alone. But he wasn't really moved to write until a powerful experience in the summer he graduated brought his pen together with his passion for the natural world, and his first heartfelt essay came out as a revelation.
Thus began a life path devoted to natural history, nature conservation, and the language, and how they all meet in the literature of the land. Working in a succession of far-flung jobs in biological conservation, teaching, and field research, Pyle eventually threw in a regular paycheck in favor of a freelance existence devoted to his mutual passions for nature study and writing.
All along, he wrote, and wrote: to date, twenty books and hundreds of essays, stories, papers, and poems. But it is the occasional prose--the deeply personal essays that explored and indulged his immediate fascinations--that make up this selection of never-before-collected testimonies. Beginning with that 1965 cri de coeur written on mountain motel stationery, Through a Green Lens ranges across broad territory of topic, vehicle, geography, populace, and politics, concluding with powerful forewords for two 2015 books, Earth and Eros and Nerves and Numbers. Pyle's half-century long view, acute and uncommonly attuned to the physical world, gives readers a remarkable window on the natural setting of our life and times.
Thus began a life path devoted to natural history, nature conservation, and the language, and how they all meet in the literature of the land. Working in a succession of far-flung jobs in biological conservation, teaching, and field research, Pyle eventually threw in a regular paycheck in favor of a freelance existence devoted to his mutual passions for nature study and writing.
All along, he wrote, and wrote: to date, twenty books and hundreds of essays, stories, papers, and poems. But it is the occasional prose--the deeply personal essays that explored and indulged his immediate fascinations--that make up this selection of never-before-collected testimonies. Beginning with that 1965 cri de coeur written on mountain motel stationery, Through a Green Lens ranges across broad territory of topic, vehicle, geography, populace, and politics, concluding with powerful forewords for two 2015 books, Earth and Eros and Nerves and Numbers. Pyle's half-century long view, acute and uncommonly attuned to the physical world, gives readers a remarkable window on the natural setting of our life and times.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Our Wilderness Anniversary (1968)
- pp. 14-19
- On Immensity and Usufruct (1968)
- pp. 20-24
- Willapa Bay (1970)
- pp. 30-32
- The Bramble Patch Trap (1976)
- pp. 46-52
- The Extinction of Experience (1978)
- pp. 53-58
- The Niche of a Naturalist (1982)
- pp. 70-73
- No Soil Required (1993)
- pp. 78-80
- Receding from Grief (1994)
- pp. 81-83
- In Praise of the Tangled Bank (1994)
- pp. 84-88
- Damning the Sacred (1994)
- pp. 89-94
- Ditch, Creek, River (1995)
- pp. 95-99
- Elegy Written in a Country Farmyard (1995)
- pp. 100-102
- I Was a Teenage Lepidopterist (1996)
- pp. 103-105
- On the Outside (1998)
- pp. 106-109
- The Earth Turns, and We Go On (2000)
- pp. 110-112
- Reflections in a Golden Eye (2000)
- pp. 121-125
- Las Monarcas: Butterflies on Thin Ice (2001)
- pp. 126-136
- The Journey Home (2001)
- pp. 137-140
- Reincorporation (2001)
- pp. 141-142
- The Rise and Fall of Natural History (2001)
- pp. 143-153
- Fat with Frits (2002)
- pp. 154-157
- How to Love a River (2005)
- pp. 164-168
- The Beauty of Butterfly Nets (2006)
- pp. 169-172
- Always a Naturalist (2007)
- pp. 173-182
- World without Violets (2009)
- pp. 189-190
- Evening Falls on the Maladaptive Ape (2010)
- pp. 191-195
- Two Essays from Billy Meadows (2011)
- pp. 205-208
- My Heresy (2013)
- pp. 221-225
- Of Owls and Angels (2015)
- pp. 235-239
- The Earth Whispers and Croons (2015)
- pp. 240-241
- Headbone and Hormone (2015)
- pp. 242-250
- Acknowledgments
- p. 251
Additional Information
ISBN
9780870718823
Related ISBN(s)
9780870718816
MARC Record
OCLC
956530138
Pages
263
Launched on MUSE
2016-11-24
Language
English
Open Access
No