Appalachian Spring (Regional) - Softcover

Bonta, Marcia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822954427 ISBN 13: 9780822954422

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991

Synopsis

Marcia Bonta is a naturalist-writer who has lived for decades on a five-hundred-acre mountaintop farm in Central Pennsylvania. In Appalachian Spring, the intricacies of the season unravel day by day in journal entries that combine Bonta’s own meticulous observations with the research reported by botanists, entomologists, and other natural scientists.
Every aspect of the natural world catches her eye, from the life cycle of a tent caterpillar to the sex life of jack-in-the pulpit. She hopes, by recounting such wonders, to convert others to what she calls the “third stage” in humanity’s relationship with nature, that of empathy with all of nature for its own sake: “To know the earth better, to grasp a little of its workings, to look on it with awe and wonder as well as with respect, is to want to save it from destruction.”

About this title

About the Author

Marcia Bonta is a freelance nature writer and the author of, in addition to her Appalachian seasons books, Outbound Journeys in Pennsylvania, More Outbound Journeys in Pennsylvania, Women in the Field, and Escape to the Mountain, and the editor of American Women Afield. She has written more than three hundred magazine articles for publications such as Birder’s World, Bird Watcher’s Digest, Living Bird, and Hawk Mountain News. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, and she is a popular lecturer on nature and nature writing.

Reviews

This finely written journal details the natural history of the four months of ``a typical Appalachian mountain spring'' in the author's central Pennsylvania home. Naturalist Bonta ( Outbound Journeys in Pennsylvania ) combines scientific accuracy with a lyrical sense of wonder and excitement as she describes her daily explorations around her 500-acre hillside home. Exhorting those who would preserve nature to ``watch rather than manage the land,'' she observes and meticulously limns the mating rituals of all kinds of creatures, from earthworms to grouse; the activites of a myriad of birds, including American pipits and phoebes; and the blossoming of plants and shrubs such as trailing arbutus and Dane's rocket. We feel her awe when she comes upon 100 wood frogs crammed into a tiny pond: ``In the intense, prehistoric silence that settled over the pond, the first amphibian head appeared, its eyes just above water level and turned purposefully in my direction. I sat ramrod still as head after head emerged.'' This is a lively introduction to the pleasures and rituals of nature study.

Copyright 1991 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822954427
• ISBN 13: 9780822954422
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208