Measure of the Year

The most memorable of Haig-Brown's reflections on life and nature.

Roderick L. Haig-Brown (1908-1976), one of Canada's best-known nature writers, took up subsistence gardening on a patch of land on Vancouver Island in the days before widespread development and logging scarred the place. In Measure of the Year, first published in 1950, the British expatriate describes his then-eccentric escape to the woods, undertaken long before back-to-the-land ideas had much currency. He writes lovingly of bringing order to his tiny farm, setting out plant rows and nurturing seedlings, naming the streams and orchards he and his family worked each day, and getting to know his little corner of the universe. His wise book, with its asides on hermetic neighbors, his vast library, and the changing seasons, makes for delightful reading.