Nature Writing

Zwei Fremde, ein gemeinsamer Weg: der Überraschungsbestseller aus Frankreich über die heilende Kraft der Natur. "Begleitung für letzte Reise gesucht." Diese Anzeige gibt der 26-jährige Emile auf, als er eine unheilbare Diagnose bekommt. Seine letzten Monate möchte er nicht in Krankenhäusern verbringen, sondern in der Natur und in Freiheit. Zu seinem eigenen Erstaunen meldet sich Joanne auf seine Anzeige. Über ihre Gründe schweigt die junge Frau mit dem schwarzen Hut und nur einem Rucksack als Gepäck. Und so steigen beide in Emiles alten Caravan und fahren los.

Ein einsamer Fjord, ein Leben mit dem Herzschlag der Gezeiten. Ein Holzhäuschen mit Blick auf den Fjord, im Rücken die Berge und davor ein Steg mit einem kleinen Boot. Mehr braucht Gro Kristjánsdóttir nicht für ihren Neuanfang auf den norwegischen Lofoten. In der Erdölindustrie hat sie Karriere gemacht; durch ihre besondere Fähigkeit, die Natur zu lesen und Ölvorkommen zu entdecken, ist ihr Ruf legendär. All das ist nach dem unerwarteten Tod ihres Mannes Nicklas bedeutungslos geworden.

In The Last Empty Places, bestselling author Peter Stark takes the listener to four of the most remote, wild, and unpopulated areas of the United States outside of Alaska, and mainly not part of protected wilderness: the rivers and forests of Northern Maine; the rugged, unpopulated region of Western Pennsylvania, that lies only a short distance from the East's big cities; the haunting canyons of Central New Mexico; and the vast, arid basins of Southeast Oregon.

Told with Thoreauian poeticism and appreciation to detail, Morgan Bulkeley Sr. guides the listener through the wonders of one of the World's most beautiful natural landscapes: that of the Berkshires of Massachusetts.

Sally Sierer Bethea was one of the first women in America to become a "riverkeeper"—a vocal defender of a specific waterway who holds polluters accountable. In Keeping the Chattahoochee, she tells stories that range from joyous and funny to frustrating—even alarming—to illustrate what it takes to save an endangered river. Her tales are triggered by the regular walks she takes through a forest to the Chattahoochee over the course of a year, finding solace and kinship in nature.

Pilgrims have always walked in times of upheaval, pitching themselves against weather, hunger, thirst and sometimes pain as they tread the paths their ancestors followed before them. In The Gathering Place, author, nature campaigner and veteran solo walker Mary Colwell undertakes a 500-mile pilgrimage along the Camino Francés in northern Spain at a unique moment in history – a time of pandemic, profound political change, and a climate and biodiversity emergency.

In the footsteps of Desert Solitaire, these essays by an award-winning writer and student of culture sift decades of experience backpacking and boating for a stance that questions the mainstream. More than mere tales of bravado, they offer glimpses into the heart of the places explored, with the Grand Canyon as their center of gravity. Vivid, finely crafted, shot through with humor, self-effacing while deeply opinionated, No Walk in the Park shows what it means to meet nature on nature's terms.

Not far from Seattle skyscrapers live 150-year-old clams, more than 250 species of fish, and underwater kelp forests as complex as any terrestrial ecosystem. For millennia, vibrant Coast Salish communities have lived beside these waters dense with nutrient-rich foods, with cultures intertwined through exchanges across the waterways. Transformed by settlement and resource extraction, Puget Sound and its future health now depend on a better understanding of the region's ecological complexities.

Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They're one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. In the twenty-first century, our relationship is full of contradictions: We hunt and protect them, we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness, we see them both as victims and as pests. But there is no doubt that we have a connection to deer: in mythology and story, in ecosystems biological and digital, in cities and in forests.

One dark and stormy winter night, outside his remote New England farmhouse, Hal Borland heard howling. At the door were a half-starved black-and-white mutt and his puppy companion. While reluctant to welcome these uninvited guests into their home, Hal and his wife gave them refuge, finally naming them Pat and Mike. When a local boy lost his dog, and the Borland's gave Mike to him, Pat's strong personality blossomed, and he becomes a treasured companion and member of the family.

Drei Jahrhunderte, ein mächtiges, friedliebendes Geschöpf und die Lebenswege der Menschen, die von ihm angezogen sind. Iida Turpeinen erzählt in Das Wesen des Lebens ausgehend von der ausgestorbenen Stellerschen Seekuh von obsessiven Sammlern und rastlosen Wissenschaftlern, von begeisterten Naturschützern und den Frauen, die an Naturerforschungen immer schon beteiligt waren. Sie zeigt, wie wir Menschen vom unbedingten Begehren nach Erkenntnis angetrieben werden – und wie wir dafür die unwiderrufliche Zerstörung der Natur in Kauf nehmen.

"Ich war aufgebrochen, um mich in der körperlichen Anstrengung aufzulösen. Die weiße Querung wurde für mich zur absoluten Reise, zu einem Schweben in einer Idee von Landschaft." Sylvain Tesson. Vier Jahre lang, von 2017 bis 2020, unternimmt Sylvain Tesson in Begleitung des Bergführers Daniel du Lac jeden März eine kräftezehrende Skitour, um die gesamte Alpenkette von Menton in Frankreich aus über die Gipfel bis nach Triest in Italien zu queren.

What happens when a 37-year-old office worker, who exercises marginally less than the average cheese sandwich, decides to walk 630 miles of challenging coastline in one go? Will he go on an epic voyage of self-discovery...or just get really knackered? Find out the answers to these important questions, and many more, by joining him on a grand adventure that takes in 26,719 steps, 921 stiles, 302 bridges, 91,000 feet of climbing and descending, one seal, zero basking sharks, lots of chips and one overweight, oversize backpack.

A lifelong traveler, riding on a train from Long Beach to New Orleans, Louisiana, at age one—in the middle of World War II, to a 520-mile pilgrimage trek on the Camino de Santiago in his mid-70s—the author describes many ways he has grown internally as a result of his travels and bonding with nature.

Originally published in 1969, The Inland Island is Josephine W. Johnson’s startling and brilliant chronicle of nature and the seasons at her rambling 37-acre farm in Ohio, which she and her husband reverted to wilderness with the help of a state forester. Over the course of 12 months, she observes the changing landscape with a naturalist’s precision and a poet’s evocative language. Listeners will marvel at the way she brings to life flashes of beauty, the inexorable cycle of growth and decay, and the creatures who live alongside her, great and small.

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.

Elemental, fierce, and full of wonder, the Cairngorm mountains are the high and rocky heart of Scotland. To know them would take forever, to love them demands a kind of courageous surrender. In The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover undertakes that challenge with Nan Shepherd as companion and guiding light. Following in the footsteps and contours of The Living Mountain, she explores the same landscapes and themes as Shepherd's seminal work

In this extraordinary narrative, Alan Tennant recounts his all-out effort to radio-track the transcontinental migration of the peregrine falcon, an investigation no one before him had ever taken to such lengths.

South Solo is a story of indomitable courage, of passion to save an endangered species like the albatross, and the unique adventure of solo kayaking in the frigid waters off Antarctica.

Join author Tim Hauserman on his solo journeys through the Sierra Nevada and the forests of Minnesota. Hauserman shares his experiences hiking by himself through some of the most spectacular landscapes in the United States. Along the way, he confronts his conflicting desires to be alone in the wilderness, then facing profound loneliness and fear once he is there. In a single instant, he goes from enjoying a shimmering mountain lake to being petrified by the sound of a bear crunching through sticks right next to his tent.