Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays

After decades of writing and naturalist study, Robert Michael Pyle (WintergreenWhere Bigfoot Walks) thoughtfully collects essays on a theme in Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays. He conceives of a single, interconnected whole, not a binary of natural and non-natural worlds, but an organism of which humans are an inextricable (if often unaware) part. He explores the "extinction of experience" that threatens our future, defines his religion as "Alltheism" (with nods to Darwin, Muir and Kurt Cobain) and envisions wilderness as a continuum, with some version of the wild existing in every vacant lot and on every street corner. The introduction, "Pyrex, Postcards, and Panzers," makes the point nicely: it took both pretty pictures and tanks to teach the author about the interrelatedness of the natural world--which is to say, simply, the world.

With 24 books to his credit and having studied, written, lived and taught all over the world, Pyle has a broad and rich body of work to draw on for this collection, first conceived of (by this title) in the late 1960s. Nature Matrix as published in 2020 may contain different essays than in it might have in the 1970s, but the principle remains faithful. These 15 essays (ranging back to 1969, five of them previously unpublished) cover classic Pyle territory: butterflies, conservation, quiet appreciation of the outdoors.

Pyle's voice varies from cantankerous to droll, awe-filled to academic; his characters and fascinations are equally wide-ranging. It is the persistent note of wonder as much as his impressive depth of knowledge and passion that makes Nature Matrix a remarkable addition to Pyle's life's work. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

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