Synopses & Reviews
Nature Matrix is a gathering of some of Robert Michael Pyle’s most significant, original, and timely expressions of a life immersed in the natural world, in all its splendor, power, and peril
Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays contains sixteen pieces that encompass the philosophy, ethic, and aesthetic of Robert Michael Pyle. The essays range from Pyle’s experience as a young national park ranger in the Sierra Nevada to the streets of Manhattan; from the suburban jungle to the tangles of the written word; and from the phenomenon of Bigfoot to that of the Big Year — a personal exercise in extreme birding and butterflying. They include deep profiles of John Jacob Astor I and Vladimir Nabokov, as well as excursions into wild places with teachers, children, and writers.
The nature of real wilderness in modern times comes under Pyle’s lens, as does reconsideration of his trademark concept, “the extinction of experience” — maybe the greatest threat of alienation from the living world that we face today.
Nature Matrix shows a way back toward possible integration with the world, as it plumbs the range and depth of experience in one lucky life lived in close connection to the physical earth and its denizens. This collection brings together the thoughts and hopes of one of our most widely read and respected natural philosophers as he seeks to summarize a life devoted to conservation.
Review
"What Pyle truly desires is to encourage readers to get outside... Pyle proves yet again that he is one of the most nourishing nature writers at work today. If Pyle doesn’t arouse your biophilia, check your pulse." Kirkus Reviews
Review
“Robert Michael Pyle’s Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays is a fascinating weave of ecology, history, and ethics. Decades of close observation of life’s community yield gripping narratives, each one sparkling with insight.” David George Haskell, author of John Burroughs Medal winner The Songs of Trees and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen
Review
"Robert Michael Pyle’s essays pace the fraught ground between our need for the wild and our growing neglect of it. Filled with his signature mix of insight, wit, and immersive description, this career-spanning collection is a master class in nature writing from one of its finest practitioners. Highly recommended." Thor Hanson, author of Buzz, Feathers, and The Triumph of Seeds
Review
"Written across a span of many years, these essays by Robert Michael Pyle, one of America’s great literary naturalists, make for engaging reading throughout — peppered with wit and humor, threaded through with genuine insight." Thomas Lowe Fleischner, executive director of the Natural History Institute and editor of Nature, Love, Medicine: Essays on Wildness and Wellness
About the Author
Robert Michael Pyle is a biologist and writer who has worked in conservation biology around the world. His twenty-four books include Wintergreen, Where Bigfoot Walks, Mariposa Road, four collections of poetry, the novel Magdalena Mountain, and a flight of butterfly books. Founder of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, he was recently named an honorary life fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. Pyle lives, writes, and studies natural history in rural southwest Washington.