A Natural History of Nature Writing

The task at hand in this well-documented, well-written volume is no less arduous than Henry David Thoreau's hopes for his extended stay at Walden Pond. Essayist and poet Stewart has attempted to capture the mystery as well as the history of nature writing. Without transgressing biographical or historical certainties, Stewart has created full-bodied characters in his interwoven portraits of the genre's most important practitioners. In doing so, the reader approaches an empirical understanding of that ephemeral ``in-betweenness'' with nature that is often left behind when reading the work of such disparate figures as Gilbert White, John Muir or Edward Abbey. Abbey's anarchic activism may have given him a cult following among renegade naturalists, but it is Thoreau to whom Stewart repeatedly returns for his historical understanding of the genre's ceaseless appeal. ``They make us aware of a kind of knowing that is potential in us but that we are apt to ignore or suppress, as though asleep,'' Stewart writes of his subjects and their work. Rigorous research and engaging prose make this study a useful secondary text for the academic and the general nature enthusiast alike. The book's extensive bibliography of further readings points the interested reader down any number of new paths. (Nov.)