Nature Biography

By the time life had finished hitting Rick Crandall from all sides, he was at the lowest point of his life, both personally and professionally. His wife, Pamela, makes an astute and life-changing suggestion: "Let's get a dog." So begins the story of Emme, a 200-pound Saint Bernard trapped in the body of a five-pound Australian terrier puppy. Soon, Emme and Rick hit the hiking trails around Aspen, Colorado. While she is groomed to be a show dog, it's soon obvious that her heart is in the hills and with Rick, who decides to add more challenging hikes to the mix.

When the worst earthquake to hit Nepal in living memory strikes on 25 April 2015, Jules Mountain is shivering in his tent at Base Camp. To reach the summit of Everest has been a life-long dream, one which he is more determined than ever to realise, having won his battle with cancer two years earlier. The climbers are faced with an impossible set of decisions: to get to a safe zone as quickly as possible? To try to be of assistance in the relief effort? To push on despite everything?

Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo - where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in northwest London. This collection of essays explores the bodies of water that separate and connect us, as well as everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar to butterflies.

Meine Fragen an das Leben: "Dies ist kein Ratgeber, sondern eine Auseinandersetzung mit mir und meiner Beziehung zur Natur. Es geht um meine Lust am Leben und meine Überforderung in anspruchsvollen Zeiten. Ich erzähle von dem, was mich umtreibt, was mich aufbaut, meinen Sehnsüchten. Ich erzähle von entscheidenden Stationen meines Lebens und den Fragen, die ich habe: Was ist mir wichtig? Wie schöpfe ich Kraft? Was bedeutet anständiges Verhalten im Hier und Jetzt? Wie versuche ich, auf mich, andere und die Natur achtzugeben und zugleich lustvoll durch die Welt zu navigieren? Ich möchte in diesem Buch das Leben feiern."

In the early 1960s, Marie Christine von Reibnitz (who would later become HRH Princess Michael of Kent) lived with her father on his farm in Mozambique. Then just a teenager, Princess Michael was entranced by the African landscape, by the wildlife and by the people she met. It was one of the happiest times of her life, and she recounts that it was an orphaned cheetah cub (called Tess) who played a huge part in making it so.

Ron Fawcett is a natural-born climber. In 1969, while still at school in his native Yorkshire, he tied into a climbing rope for the first time and was instantly hooked. From that moment on, it seemed nothing else in his life mattered nearly as much as his next vertical fix... Fawcett found the pressures of the limelight too much to bear, and at the end of the 1980s he faded from view. Now, for the first time, he tells his extraordinary story, of how his love of nature and the outdoors developed into a passion for climbing that took him to the top - and almost consumed him.

Known as the Thanksgiving Address, this Native American good morning message is based on the belief that the natural world is a precious and rare gift - from the moon and the stars to the tiniest blade of grass.

There are many reasons why it might seem unwise to walk, mostly alone, through the Middle East. That, in part, is exactly why Leon McCarron did it. From Jerusalem, McCarron followed a series of wild hiking trails that trace ancient trading and pilgrimage routes and traverse some of the most contested landscapes in the world. In the West Bank, he met families struggling to lead normal lives amidst political turmoil and had a surreal encounter with the world's oldest and smallest religious sect.

In this unique and exhilarating autobiography, Allan Jones - Canada’s first blind diplomat - vividly describes how an untreatable eye disease slowly decimated his visual world, most challengingly during his postings in Tokyo and New Delhi, and how he discovered and took to heart the revelatory Indian philosophy that changed his life.

The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it’s born as a tiny willow-leaf-shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe - a journey of about 4,000 miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water.

Jim was a South African railway inspector in the late 1800s who lost his legs in an accident while at work. Unable to perform all his tasks with his disability but desperate to keep his job, Jim discovered a brilliant solution, a baboon named Jack. Jim trained Jack to help him both at home and at the depot.

Mo Wilde made a quiet but radical pledge: to live only off free, foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. Ultimately, it is an act of love and community. Using her expert knowledge of botany and mycology, Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds, and in the process learns not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Nourishing her body and mind deepens her connection with the earth—a connection that we all hunger for.

This is the story of a girl who grows up running on the back roads of the Midwest and winds up taking the long way home. How does this pretty, educated, organically grown girl become an outcast in her own country? Set against the backdrops of the competitive University of Michigan, the vast Front Range of Colorado, the concrete jungle of Los Angeles, and a small backwoods home town in Michigan, this story winds its way through untrammeled wilderness as the search for belonging unfolds.

For Robert Hughes fishing was a lifelong obsession and the pastime that he loved best. In A Jerk on One End he brings the wit and insight that have characterized his art criticism to the subjects of fish and fishing. He traces his love of fishing to his boyhood on Sydney Harbour and recounts the high and low points of his career with rod and reel, from his first catch to hair-raising tales of shark hunts he has picked up from other fishermen.

As in all his books, Heckler draws from personal experience: training his horse, cultivating presence in aikido dojos, consulting with business executives, raising children. A masterful and encompassing book, Holding the Center develops from the fulcrum of the self in the natural world.

Maggie has spent basically every summer of her 15-year-old life at the 100-year-old Camp Bellflower for Girls, set deep in the heart of Appalachia. She's from Atlanta, she's never kissed a guy, she's into Backstreet Boys, and her long summer days are full of a pleasant, peaceful nothing - until one confounding moment. A split-second of innocent physical contact pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and, most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counselor named Erin.

In April 2019 after fishing for 40 years, Capt. Wild Bill sat down and wrote Fishing Gods. He takes you from the moment he was born on a boat in Port Aransas, Texas, to all of his fishing adventures explaining how he learned to conquer fishing until the day he ultimately transformed into a Fishing God.

Folgen Sie Reinhold Messner - zumindest im Geiste - auf den höchsten Berg der Welt. Der Bezwinger aller 14 Achttausender erzählt die Geschichte der Everest-Besteigungen von den ersten, schlecht ausgerüsteten Expeditionen gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis hin zu den kommerziell organisierten (Massen-)Touren in den letzten Jahren...

Native woodland is one of the most valuable resources for biodiversity in Ireland’s wet climate. Yet Ireland has the lowest forest cover of any part of Europe, with the surviving native woodland covering a tiny area of the country. Ireland lost the majority of its ancient forest centuries ago, but now is when we need it most to help solve the climate crisis. This audiobook is a celebration of Ireland’s native woodlands blended with a personal account of learning to manage a single small wood over a typical year.

Susan Brind Morrow brings her singular sensibility as a classicist and linguist to this strikingly original reflection on the fine but resilient threads that bind humans to the natural world. Prompted by the emotional loss of two friends, one a trapper and one a beekeeper, Susan Brind Morrow explores the implications of their very different relationships to the natural world.