THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD: A Journey Into Wonder <i> by Ken Wolgemuth (Zoland: $9.95, illustrated).</i>

A Pennsylvania naturalist, Wolgemuth reflects on the boyhood fascination he never outgrew with the wonders of the nearby wood lots. Wolgemuth fondly recounts his continuing predilection for turning over logs to discover hidden insects, exploring bogs for salamanders and poking amid fallen leaves for cocoons and chrysalises (a sort of “All Things Creepy and Crawly”). But he remains frustrated by his inability to recapture the sense of wonder he once felt in the presence of nature. “The trouble with the Real World, I decided, was that it had become entirely too real . . . The world had been explored and mapped to within an inch of its life. the white spaces had been filled in. Lands of magic and monsters gave way to quite ordinary mountains, plains, and deserts.” A rock formation he explored as boy becomes a symbol of the taming of the realm of the imagination: He revisits it and discovers the small cliff has been fenced and posted with warning signs.