A Few Natural Selections

KINGBIRD HIGHWAY: The Story of a Natural Obsession That Got a Little Out of Hand by Kenn Kaufman (Houghton Mifflin, $23).

WILD AMERICA: The Legendary Story of Two Great Naturalists on the Road by Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher (Mariner, $14, paperback, illustrated).

Here we have yet another way to divide the world into us and them. But before you decide you belong with “them” and turn this page for something else to read, you might bear with “us” for a minute. Your reward will be two travel books to rival any you’ve read this year:

Books about a gentle passion. About far-flung road trips across North America. About camaraderie. About what you can see right in front of you, if only you look. And about two wonderful periods of 20th century America--the 1950s and the 1970s.

The subject is birds. Not bird-watching, that idle pastime, but birding--venturing out, searching. And as the subtitle of Kenn Kaufman’s charming book suggests, getting carried away with it.

Kaufman’s first-person travelogue is about being young in the year 1973, when dropping out of the mainstream was not in itself unique. Hitchhiking from Mexico to Alaska on $1 a day, Kaufman sets out to see how many different bird species he can see in a year. And he finds himself in friendly competition with an older man with more financial resources.

What he discovers is not the distorted 1970s America of drugs and protest, but a time in which a few like-minded people are up drinking coffee until 2 a.m., talking about exotic birds, sleeping for a couple of hours and then venturing out, scouring the seashores and canyons looking for them.

This book requires no expertise in birds, only a curiosity about what motivates the birder and an appreciation of those who indulge their obsessions.

Kaufman credits one book for inspiring him as a youngster: the account of a 1953 odyssey across North America by America’s most distinguished birder, Roger Tory Peterson, and his British counterpart, James Fisher.

By coincidence this book, “Wild America,” has just been reissued in paperback. An account of travels from Newfoundland to Mexico, from the California coast to Alaska, “Wild America” is a look at postwar America through the eyes of one naturalist intimately familiar with our land and another seeing it for the first time. As natural history and as travel, it is a classic.

P.S. What has brought birding within reach of nonexperts has been the many field guides published since the 1930s to make species identification possible. My favorite, and my companion on all domestic trips, is the National Geographic Society’s Field Guide to the Birds of North America.

THE MOST SCENIC DRIVES IN AMERICA: 120 Spectacular Road Trips, project editor Richard L. Scheffel (Reader’s Digest, $30, illustrated, maps).

OUR NATIONAL PARKS: New Revised Edition, project editor Susan J. Wernert (Reader’s Digest, $30, illustrated, maps).

It seems as though a dozen or so books are published each month that aspire to be both coffee-table inspirationals and guidebooks. Most of them are reliably mediocre. But Reader’s Digest has come forth with photographs to inflame the imagination and the kind of writing that suggests drumrolls, making these two volumes standouts.

Yes, our highways and parks are congested. Nothing is what it used to be or should be. The future is grim. We can despair, or we can turn to these books--to remind us that the glass is still half full, and that a little sugar coating on the rim isn’t such a bad thing.

“Scenic Drives” is a blend of photographs and text description of points along the way. National Parks is likewise a tour de force of photographic editing, with longer articles park by park. If these books don’t put an itch in your feet, you need more than a vacation.

Quick trips

ALASKA-YUKON HANDBOOK by Deke Castleman and Don Pitcher (Moon, $17.95, paperback, illustrated, maps). Given a choice, I go north whenever I can. And in my experience, the far north produces the oddest combination of wonderful travel guides and awful ones. This is a welcome exception--a standard-style guidebook with a rock-solid feel.

FAMILY ADVENTURES: More than 500 Great Trips for Your Kids of All Ages by Christine Loomis (Fodor’s, $16, paperback). This is a thoughtfully organized and thought-provoking guide to going outdoors with your family. How about digging for dinosaur bones? Or dog sledding?

HILL COUNTRY: Discover the Fabulous Texas Hill Country by Richard Zelade (Gulf, $18.95, maps). Texas Monthly magazine brings its considerable reputation to this fourth edition of just about everything there is to know about central Texas. So if you wonder why the owners of the Blanco Bowling Club Cafe in Blanco haven’t put up a new sign in 30 years, --here you go.

Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.