Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, us, dec 1995
The sun came up. As they rolled down from the forested ridges above the Tanana River, Alex gazed across the expanse of windswept muskeg stretching to the south. Gallien wondered whether he'd picked up one of those crackpots from the lower forty-eight who come north to live out ill-considered Jack London fantasies. Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing.
The Wild Trees by Richard Preston Apr 2007,
The coast redwood tree is an evergreen conifer and a member of the cypress family. Its scientific name is Sequoia sempervirens. It is sometimes called the California redwood, but most often it is simply referred to as the redwood. No one knows exactly when or where the redwood entered the history of life on earth, though it is an ancient kind of tree, and has come down to our world as an inheritance out of deep time. A redwood has furrowed, fibrous bark, and a tall, straight trunk. It has soft, flat needles that become short and spiky near the top of the tree. The tree produces seeds but does not bear flowers. The seeds of a redwood are released from cones that are about the size of olives. The heartwood of the tree is a dark, shimmery red in color, like old claret. The wood has a lemony scent, and is extremely resistant to rot.
Return to Wild America by Scott Weidensaul Hardcover: Nov 2005,
"The most spectacular New World [gannet] colony, the one at Bonaventure Island off the Gaspé, is visited by scores of bird students every year," Peterson noted. "It has become a profitable thing for the innkeeper to cater to—and even advertise to—an unending succession of summer gannet watchers…On the other hand, the colony at Cape St. Mary['s] sometimes goes for several years unvisited by any of the field-glass fraternity." It was easy to see why. The exhausting hike, first along a muddy, rutted cart track, and then overland around treacherous bogs, took them until early afternoon, and they didn't make it back to St. Bride's until well after midnight, Peterson limping from a badly strained leg muscle.
Fire Season by Philip Connors Hardcover: Apr 2011
The landscape where I work, in far southwest New Mexico, is one of the most fire-prone areas in America. I look out over a stretch of country with nearly a million acres of roadless wilderness, where an annual upsurge of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico combines with the summertime heat of the Chihuahuan Desert to create tens of thousands of lightning strikes. In an arid land with brief but intense storm activity, wildfire is no aberration.
The Ural Mountains, which cross Russia from the Arctic Ocean to Kazakhstan, are the western edge of Siberia. The Urals also separate Europe from Asia. As a mountain range with the big job of dividing two continents, the Urals aren’t much. It is possible to drive over them, as I have done, and not know. In central Russia, the summits of the Urals average between one thousand and two thousand feet. But after you cross the Urals, the land opens out, the villages are farther apart, the concrete bus shelters along the highway become fewer, and suddenly you realize you’re in Siberia.
