Customer Reviews

Appalachian Winter

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I first encountered the works of Marcia Bonta when assigned her books to review for a university publication. She fast became a personal favorite. I am especially fond of the quartet of seasonal nature journals, APPALACHIAN SPRING, APPALACIAN FALL, APPALACHIAN SUMMER and now APPALACHIAN WINTER. Bonta has a sharp eye, a wealth of knowledge and a graceful hand at writing that will hook anyone anywhere even though she is documenting life atop a mountain in central Pennsylvania.

The volume on Spring was her first in the quartet, and stuck closely to the flora and fauna on the mountain. The next in the series was Fall, in which her daily treks and observations brought her and her family up against an unscrupulous lumberman whose devastation of the land bordering theirs offered lessons in public policy and environmental awareness. The Summer journal included glimpses of new human life in the form of a grandchild while search parties looking for a lost child wove through the Bonta's beloved woods. The Winter volume thrums with close-up looks at birds, mammals, insects and climatic events but Bonta's awareness of ageing and the aggregation of human devastation of the environment also creep in. She weaves a tapestry of wonder, fact, observation, opinion and thought. Her way of life is extraordinary and she is generous to share her world. Though I was saddened at the prospect of no more entries to anticipate in the seasonal journals now that Winter concludes the quartet, I am heartened that Bonta expresses the conviction to continue to uphold her role as steward of the natural world and to serve as its interpreter as long as possible.

Even though I read this book in early June, I almost couldn't wait for the next winter in my area of Central Pennsylvania. Marcia Bonta also lives in this region, in a large forested enclave on top of a ridge, and this book functions as a diary of her wildlife viewing around her property during an entire winter. There are entries for each date from December 1 through March 20, and while you might think such a diary would be monotonous, that is far from the case because of the wide variety of wildlife and weather Bonta observed every day. She saw plenty of the most common woodland creatures frolicking throughout the supposedly "dead" season, with some surprise sightings of bears, beavers, and foxes. The biggest surprise for the reader is the astonishing variety of birds that inhabited the Bonta ranch during the winter, from mighty raptors to surprisingly hardy songbirds. Throughout the daily diary entries, Bonta adds informative biology lessons on the behavior of the birds and animals she spotted. Meanwhile there are occasional forays into other scientific areas, such as the botany of lichens and the history of the snowshoe, topped off by occasional passages of wise and experienced Thoreau-like naturalist philosophy. This very enjoyable book shows you that winter only seems like a dead season if you stay cooped up inside every day. Instead, venture outside and see for yourself how alive the hills and forests of Appalachia really are. [~doomsdayer520~]