Hoagland on Nature: Essays

Rating:
Summary: THE FRUIT OF A LIFETIME WELL SPENT
Review: Although HOAGLAND ON NATURE has a magisteral ring to it -- like an arcane treatise on the law -- it is, in fact, a collection of graceful personal essays written over a span of four decades by the man John Updike calls "the best essayist of my generation". Joyce Carol Oates has included Hoagland's "Heaven and Nature" in her collection of the 55 best essays of the 20th century. It is a sad commentary on American reading habits that this wonderful book languishes, unreviewed until now, in 1.2 millionth place on the Amazon popularity chart, while readers throng to read and review books about vampires, crooked lawyers, and pre-pubescent wizards. The unnatural novel triumphs over essays about nature.

The "nature" explored and described in these essays is neither cute and disneyesque, nor is it merely the pristine wilderness of the grizzly and the caribou. Hoagland's nature is messier, more frightening, more antic, and altogether more fascinating than that. He has roamed all seven continents, employing a discerning eye and stylish pen to capture for his readers the minute, the majestic, and the human he encounters along the way. Titles like "The Courage of Turtles", "O Wyoming", "Wowlas and Coral", and "Up the Black to Chalkyitsik" only hint at the breadth of his experience and interests.

Hoagland's companions of choice are "bedroll scientists", government trappers, and people who live in remote wild places all year round. He admires woodsmen but not outdoorsmen, and has little use for armchair scientists (busy "shining their epaulets") or amateur conservationists (obsessing on "showy predators and hearty herd beasts"). He is a spiritual heir of Henry David Thoreau, holding the Transcendentalist view that man is part of nature, rather than standing apart from it. Hoagland writes about the garter snakes that live under his cabin in northern Vermont and about the seasonal changes in the woods nearby. He describes the struggle of native Alaskans and the Todas of the Madras highlands in trying to adapt to a changing world. He chronicles the tragi-comic history of the inept red wolf of east Texas. The collection ends with several short appreciations of other nature writers: Gilbert White of the 18th century, Thoreau and John Muir of the 19th century, and Edward Abbey of the 20th century.

One of the pleasures of reading this book is Hoagland's supple use of language. He can, by turn, be pithy and epigrammatic: "Geography has glamour in America." and "Henry Thoreau lived to write, but Muir lived to hike."; or poetic: [about a pond] "Amber or pewter-colored, it's a drinking fountain for scurrying raccoons and mincing deer, a waterbugs' and minnows' arena for hunting insect larvae, a holding pen for rain that may coalesce into ocean waves next year."; or apocalyptic: "No permission is given in Isaiah, Job, or Genesis for the holcaust mankind has visited upon the natural world, whereby the rhinoceros may soon be as scarce as the unicorn. No stretch of grief or the imagination, no precedent in science or logic can get a handle on this catastrophe -- half of creation extinguished in a single life span."

What Hoagland on Nature never is is dull!

Rating:
Summary: Great Literature of Nature & Travel
Review: I was looking to read some Hoagland & stumbled across this collection of essays. A great & enjoyable read. He reminds me of a combination of David Quammen & Peter Matthessien.

My one complaint is that several of the essay are on similar topics & at times parts of certain essay resonate closely with others in the book - giving a sense of repetition.

But over all, highly recommended - you won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Great Literature of Nature & Travel
Review: I was looking to read some Hoagland & stumbled across this collection of essays. A great & enjoyable read. He reminds me of a combination of David Quammen & Peter Matthessien.

My one complaint is that several of the essay are on similar topics & at times parts of certain essay resonate closely with others in the book - giving a sense of repetition.

But over all, highly recommended - you won't be disappointed.