Synopses & Reviews
In the tradition of
Blue Highways and
Silent Spring,
Chasing
Spring follows nature's season of renewal even as it shows how the delicate
mechanisms of spring are increasingly endangered by climate change.
Seeking to revive his body and soul following heart surgery, acclaimed nature
writer Bruce Stutz set out on a three-month journey through the unfolding of
an American spring. Driving across the country in a twenty-year-old Chevy sedan,
Stutz shows readers that spring is not so much a progression as an arousal;
each added minute of the lengthening days and lingering sun brings yet another
transformation in the greening landscape as well as in the human spirit.
Beginning with the season's southernmost stirrings along the Gulf of Mexico,
Stutz sees the first blooms and partakes in the season's festivals -- celebrations
with ancient origins that still speak to our wonder at nature's annual rebirth.
He follows the migrations of birds northward, the return of life to the forests,
and the quickening of snowmelt in the Rockies. He moves across the southern
desert, encountering the explosion of cacti and wildflowers and the violence
of tornadoes on the drought-stricken Great Plains. He then travels north through
the national parks of the West, finally celebrating his journey's end by basking
at the solstice amid the beauty of the Alaskan Arctic's twenty-four hours of
daylight.
Along the way, he accompanies scientists into the field to study the season's
changes and meets farmers, Arctic natives, and even migrant mushroom pickers
whose livelihoods depend on the coming of spring. In each location, as he observes
the sensitive interplay of light and warmth that draws animals, plants, water,
and even the soil itself into the biological ballet that makes for the profound
stirring we call spring, he also finds that climate change now threatens the
basic pro-cesses of nature.
A moving and thought-provoking record of the year's most invigorating season,
Chasing Spring is a timely reminder that as trees bud and flowers bloom,
the human spirit reawakens as well. Anyone who has ever marveled at spring's
wondrous transformations from a first garden blossom to a world in full
flower will find in Chasing Spring a journey to savor.
Review
"Chasing Spring is a sweet, gentle renewal, a reminder of what's important in life, and that life is important. And Bruce Stutz is a generous guide and companion as he takes us from blooming ocotillo in the deserts of Arizona to the bowl of a pristine glacier in the wilds of Alaska. This is an intelligent book, but wise as well, full of information, full of ideas, full of fascinating people. It's wide ranging, deep diving, never preaching, a work of rare art, and it's built with wit, tenderness, knowledge, and most of all, abundant heart."
--Bill Roorbach, author of Temple Stream, The Smallest Color, and Big Bend.
Review
"Bruce Stutz is the best road-trip companion: bold, witty, thoughtful, and an achingly beautiful storyteller.
Chasing Spring is essential reading for anyone concerned with the fate of Earth."
-- Alan Burdick, author of Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion