BELOVED OF THE SKY: Essays and Photographs...

BELOVED OF THE SKY: Essays and Photographs on Clearcutting edited by John Ellison (Broken Moon Press: $14.95; 262 pp., illustrated, paperback original). Michael Frome, Edward C. Fritz and Catherine Caufield cite statistics and court cases as they denounce the practice of stripping entire hillsides of complex forests and replacing them with artificial, monoculture plantations. C. L. Rawlins, John Daniel and Richard Nelson offer personal reflections on the denuded slopes they’ve visited in the wilderness. Refusing to accept a facile assignment of guilt for this destruction, Nelson asserts, “There is no refuge in blaming only the loggers or their industry or the government that consigned the forest to them. The entire society--one in which I take active membership--holds responsibility for laying this valley bare.” The real weakness of this often provocative anthology is the failure to include counter-arguments from the timber industry, reducing the book to a prolonged sermon to the choir.