Before the Echo: Essays on Nature
"The natural world is a lot like a game of musical chairs," observes Pete Dunne. "Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, there are places where living things sit down, niches that support their specific needs. But just as in musical chairs, there aren't enough places to go around. Our species keeps removing them—forcing other creatures to leave the game."

In these twenty-nine essays, one of America's top nature writers trains his sights on the beauties and the vulnerabilities of the natural world. Writing to infuse others with a sense of the richness and diversity that nature holds, Pete Dunne ranges over topics from the wonder of the year's first snowfall to the lost art of stargazing to the mysterious forces that impel people to hunt—and not to hunt. Running like a thread through all the essays is Dunne's desire to preserve all that is "natural" in nature, to stop our unthinking destruction of wild places and wild creatures before we humans find ourselves with "the last chair, in an empty room" on an impoverished earth.

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Before the Echo: Essays on Nature
"The natural world is a lot like a game of musical chairs," observes Pete Dunne. "Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, there are places where living things sit down, niches that support their specific needs. But just as in musical chairs, there aren't enough places to go around. Our species keeps removing them—forcing other creatures to leave the game."

In these twenty-nine essays, one of America's top nature writers trains his sights on the beauties and the vulnerabilities of the natural world. Writing to infuse others with a sense of the richness and diversity that nature holds, Pete Dunne ranges over topics from the wonder of the year's first snowfall to the lost art of stargazing to the mysterious forces that impel people to hunt—and not to hunt. Running like a thread through all the essays is Dunne's desire to preserve all that is "natural" in nature, to stop our unthinking destruction of wild places and wild creatures before we humans find ourselves with "the last chair, in an empty room" on an impoverished earth.

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Before the Echo: Essays on Nature

Before the Echo: Essays on Nature

Before the Echo: Essays on Nature

Before the Echo: Essays on Nature

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Overview

"The natural world is a lot like a game of musical chairs," observes Pete Dunne. "Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, there are places where living things sit down, niches that support their specific needs. But just as in musical chairs, there aren't enough places to go around. Our species keeps removing them—forcing other creatures to leave the game."

In these twenty-nine essays, one of America's top nature writers trains his sights on the beauties and the vulnerabilities of the natural world. Writing to infuse others with a sense of the richness and diversity that nature holds, Pete Dunne ranges over topics from the wonder of the year's first snowfall to the lost art of stargazing to the mysterious forces that impel people to hunt—and not to hunt. Running like a thread through all the essays is Dunne's desire to preserve all that is "natural" in nature, to stop our unthinking destruction of wild places and wild creatures before we humans find ourselves with "the last chair, in an empty room" on an impoverished earth.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780292735644
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Publication date: 02/01/2011
Series: Corrie Herring Hooks Series , #28
Pages: 156
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Pete Dunne is a regular columnist for the New Jersey edition of the Sunday New York Times, where most of these essays first appeared. He is Director of the New Jersey Audubon Society’s Cape May Bird Observatory in Cape May Point, New Jersey. A widely published writer on birding, he is also the author of Tales of a Low-Rent Birder and More Tales of a Low-Rent Birder, both published by UT Press.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgments
  • Preface: Musical Chairs
  • Barely, New Jersey
  • Common Ground
  • Nothing but the Wind
  • Babes in the Woods
  • Before the Echo
  • Cast of Stars
  • Chasing Shadows
  • Hope
  • Dear Floyd
  • Ice Out
  • Onion Snow
  • For the Span of a Firefly's Light
  • The Perfect Table
  • Why Lawns?
  • The Ultimate Joystick
  • TV Nature; Throwing Stones
  • Zen and the Art of Throwing Metal
  • Revenge of the Jabberwock
  • Dialogue with Ms. D'Vil
  • Cruelty and Turtles
  • For a Tide
  • Falling in Ernest
  • Spent Shot Shell
  • This Thing of Mine and Yours
  • Epistle to Be Left in the Leaves
  • Mus Ado about Something
  • Season's First Snow
  • Ode to Ma'am Dog
  • The Fox Who Ran Forever
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