Synopses & Reviews
Marcia Bonta is a naturalist-writer who has lived on a 500-acre mountain-top farm in central Pennsylvania for twenty years. Appalachian Spring is her personal account of that glorious spectacle - the coming of the spring to the woods and fields of Appalachia.
Synopsis
Marcia Bonta is a naturalist-writer who has lived for decades on a five-hundred-acre mountaintop farm in Central Pennsylvania. In Appalachian Spring, the intricacies of the season unravel day by day in journal entries that combine Bonta's own meticulous observations with the research reported by botanists, entomologists, and other natural scientists.
Every aspect of the natural world catches her eye, from the life cycle of a tent caterpillar to the sex life of jack-in-the pulpit. She hopes, by recounting such wonders, to convert others to what she calls the "third stage" in humanity's relationship with nature, that of empathy with all of nature for its own sake: "To know the earth better, to grasp a little of its workings, to look on it with awe and wonder as well as with respect, is to want to save it from destruction."
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 179-183) and index.
About the Author
Marcia Bonta is a freelance nature writer and the author of, in addition to her Appalachian seasons books, Outbound Journeys in Pennsylvania, More Outbound Journeys in Pennsylvania, Women in the Field, American Women Afield (editor), and Escape to the Mountain. She has written more than three hundred magazine articles for such publications as Birder's World, Bird Watcher's Digest, Living Bird, and Hawk Mountain News. She writes Pennsylvania Outbound Journeys for the Family” for Pennsylvania Wildlife and "The Naturalist's Eye" for Pennsylvania Game News. She is a popular lecturer on nature and nature writing.