Into the Porcupine Cave and Other Odysseys

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beautiful Swimmers, which focused on life around the Chesapeake Bay, now recounts his own nature-centered adventures around the globe, from New England to Tierra del Fuego to the jungles of Guatemala. In the opening essay, Warner describes his youthful escapade in a New England cave, where he and a friend tracked and awakened a group of about a dozen sleeping porcupines; Warner captured two of them barehanded. Next comes his account of how, during his college years, he participated in a dinosaur dig in Utah. Warner moves on to describe a birdwatching tour in the Dry Tortugas where he watched the watchers, a solo camping trip in the Maine woods at the height of the black fly season, and his encounter with a giant barracuda in the South Pacific. Whether his topic is howler monkeys, killer whales or old lighthouses, the author, a polished writer and perceptive observer of nature (including human), invariably informs and entertains. (Apr.)