SEASON’S READINGS : Good News About the Earth

The mind, with its desire to understand and to organize, meets nature: canyons, leopards, insects, forms of all sorts and forces of all kinds, laws and inter-relationships invisible and unbendable, thickets, sequoias, turtles that swim and turtles that trudge--in other words, all our bountiful and astonishing world.

J. Henri Fabre, as a young boy, happens upon a bird’s nest in a field; he is amazed at the little eggs therein and of course he wants to own such a sky-blue pleasure, so he takes an egg and with it in hand begins his run home. Then he meets something even more wonderful: The village curate, out walking, by happenstance sees what he is about. The curate admonishes him--but not too crabbily--for taking the egg from the bird’s nest, and he offers the boy two significant pieces of information: first, that it is wrong to interfere with the bird’s plan to brood and hatch the egg; and, second, that the bird has a name, it is a stone-chat, the Saxicola. Fabre’s mind was fired, he says, telling this story decades later; thus did he realize, for the first time, that wilderness is a place of purpose and passion, and that its portions are orderly enough to have names--thus did he begin to change from an interfering boy into a fascinated observer of the natural world.

Without the lucky intervention of such an adviser, what is this world but beauty and chaos? And what shall we look to, or have our children and friends look to, if the curate is not likely to pass our way? Books, of course--those spokesmen for forbearance and organization, those containers full of enthusiasm glossed with intelligence (as many as there are paths for the shining ant across the summer field!).

365 Days of Nature Discovery, subtitled Things To Do and Learn for the Whole Family is colorful, friendly and full of scintillating information. The book, approximately six inches by six inches, presents a page for each day of the year; there is a Bean Day and an Anteater Day, a Swan Day and a Moon Day. Also there is Cabbage, the only title I could find without the appendage--something special at last for old, humble cabbage. The text is specific, fact-filled and never condescends to the subject or to the reader; also the text suggests activities, things to think about, other books to read. The illustrations are informative and do not lapse into cuteness or bland beauty. If I had eight nieces and nephews, I would want nine copies of this neat book, to satisfy all of us.

Southern Africa: Spectacular World of Wildlife is a splendid book. It is the result of a call to wildlife photographers for their best work, and so we are given the “viewpoints”--I mean by this positions of intent as well as actual views--of many photographers. Without the particular “signature” of a single artist, the world here appears less interpreted, more itself. Also, as we turn the large and lush pages, there is no hint of the traveler--not a human person or shadow appears. If we are there at all perhaps it is in the gaze of many of the animals, who have turned with curiosity, but no panic, toward the lens.

It is difficult these days to look at any TV wildlife show without being greeted almost instantly with the hunt--as though that is all wild animals do, from the rising of the pink sun to the rising of the white moon, and beyond. It is, of course, not so--but the hunt is more marketable than other activities. In Southern Africa animals hunt occasionally--naturally they do. More frequently the lions and the elephants, the baboons, monkeys, and the vivid birds, the great eagles, even the chameleon are pictured sleeping, waking, browsing, running, playing, leaping, grooming or simply gazing about their fantastic world. If the editors of “Southern Africa” hoped to convey their world with the least amount of interference, they have succeeded. The text is nicely informative; also offered are maps of the sanctuary areas and useful information for travelers or would-be travelers.

In Open Country’s text and photographs by Jay Dusard, we enjoy exactly what would have been a detriment to the Southern African enterprise--the “signature” of a single discerning eye. Dusard’s photographs of the American West witness a landscape ruled by time and light; he addresses the great creations--space, rock, clouds. But he gives attention also to the presence of man; fragile against the backdrop of mountains appear ranch buildings, a drover with startlingly expressive mustachios, a barbed-wire fence careening across a seemingly endless field. (It is as though in the cosmology of Dusard’s work there are both major gods--the natural forces--and minor deities--the men and women who lounge against fences in their dusty and luminous heaven). Luminous is the important word here; the photographs, many cropped so that the horizontal reach has powerful impact, are full of pools and crevices of silvery light. Forceful and serene, they marry the mighty to the tender, the moment that is breaking down even as we witness it against the distant sky, which is half stone. “Open Country” is the work of 20 years, and I tip my hat to a man so patient and deliberate. Such patience is not at all usual, and neither is this book. It is pleasant to make the acquaintance of the photographer in the brief, engaging text, and the judicious use of quotations from other writers is a sensitive accompaniment.

There was in Germany, at the beginning of the 17th Century, an extraordinary garden cultivated around a castle; the name of this garden was Hortus Eystettensis, and the same name was given to “a great book” depicting its multitudes of plants. There were a number of these books eventually, copied by hand, some in black and white, others hand-colored. All of this I learned from Hortus Eystettensis: The Bishop’s Garden and Besler’s Magnificent Book, which gives us both history and reproductions of the graceful and imposing colored plates. As one cannot look at the curvaceous, detailed glass flowers in Boston’s Peabody Museum, one cannot look at these pages of opulent leaves, stems and blossoms without marveling over the hand that patiently modeled them; the diligence and humility of such work is staggering. For those who have appetite for the fine and unusual among gardens, this book is a true feast.

The coyote population has been rising and for many people--including myself--living with this animal has suddenly become very real. So it was with special interest that I took up The World of the Coyote. Wayne Grady has written a valuable text, in which coyotes are neither heroes nor villains, but their own astonishing and toothy selves, thriving on this green planet in spite of the denigrations and deadly campaigns of man. The photographs reveal neither the silky devil nor the waggish dog, but an animal whose intensity, playfulness, power, musicality and integrity is undeniable. “The World of the Coyote” is an instructive book, and a timely one.

Canyons, leopards, coyotes, chameleons, flowers diverse and gorgeous--these things are our world. Insofar as we are strangers to the world, we abuse it, for we know no better. Respect begins, therefore, with knowledge, and that knowledge with attention. In all of this, books play the biggest part, with their ability, through text and photographs, to impart knowledge without destruction or intrusion. As usual no one has said it better than Emerson; in his poem “Forbearance” he asks, “Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?” Books make it possible. If you wish, you can give a coyote for Christmas, or the luminous expanse of a prairie, or a Flamingo Day, without a dimple of harm to the earth. Good and happy gifts!

365 DAYS OF NATURE AND DISCOVERY Things to Do and Learn for the Whole Family illustrated by Jane Reynolds text by Phil Gates and Gaden Robinson (Abrams: $18; 400 pp.)

SOUTHERN AFRICA Spectacular World of Wildlife by Reader’s Digest Editors (Reader’s Digest Assn . : $35; 272 pp.)

OPEN COUNTRY by Jay Dusard (Gibbs Smith: $49.95; 72 pp.)

HORTUS EYSTETTENSIS The Bishop’s Garden and Besler’s Magnificent Book by Nicholas Barker (Abrams: $60; 152 pp.)

THE WORLD OF THE COYOTE by Wayne Grady (Sierra Club Books: $25; 144 pp.)

And Keep In Mind:

PLANET OCEAN A Story of Life, the Sea, and Dancing to the Fossil Record by Brad Matsen & Ray Troll (Ten Speed Press: $29.95; 133 pp.)

SPECTACULAR AMERICA edited by Dana Levy and Letitia Burns O’Connor (Hugh Lauter Levin Associates: $75; 132 pp.)