Sightlines: A Conversation with the Natural World

This intelligent collection of 14 essays, informed by science and myth, heightened attention, and cultural dreams, is written with Scots brogue, language, and attitude that will give American readers a fresh view of nature. Annoyed by the rosy stories of sea lions and polar bears at a conference of scientists and artists, Scottish poet Jamie (The Overhaul), whose mother had recently died, wonders about the nature of nature: “Where did it reside?... What are vaccinations for, if not to make a formal disconnection from some of these wondrous other species?” Her musings take her to the Arctic to witness the aurora borealis, a pathology lab to view microscopic tumor landscapes, and to ponder time and legend through a lunar eclipse while staring out her own window. But visits to harsh Scottish island landscapes predominate, with the unsolvable mysteries of whales, endangered birds, and lost human cultures serving as recurrent themes. At one point Jamie recognizes a whale she sighted earlier at an island 180 miles and a year away: “ ‘Believe what you see,’ say the eye-trained naturalists. Aye, right. Most of the time you’ll sound like an idiot. But once in a blue moon you might be right. You just might be making the same journeys as these other creatures, all of us alive at the same time on the planet.” 20 b&w photos. Agent: Peter Straus, Rogers, Coleridge, & White. (Sept.)