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Ocracoke Wild: A Naturalist's Year on an Outer Banks Island

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Every place as special as Ocracoke should have a writer like Pat Garber to bring it to life.

Pat Garber has spent years getting to know Ocracoke, its beaches, marshes, seas, seashells, seasons, storms, and wildlife, and in this book and its companion book, Ocracoke Odyssey, she tells Ocracoke's story with knowledge and with heart. Each chapter stars a different character, maybe a dolphin, a pelican, a turtle, a bear, a storm, a comet. Garber tells their stories through accurate natural history, through personal encounters, and through a deep sense of wonder. She loves the beauty in nature, but she also feels the pain of an injured bird and the terrible power of a hurricane. She sees great dramas in the smallest things. She sees with the eyes of a poet. She quietly teaches the value of a life immersed in nature.

She encourages us to wander and to wonder and to find ourselves in a seashell or a flower: "It is slowing down, allowing not only the feet but the mind as well to wander where they will; to turn down new paths with no specific destinations in mind. It is a way of opening the soils of our minds so that new thoughts, new ideas, new dreams can take seed and flower; not the ones we deliberately plant, but those that may float in on a wisp of seaform or a moonbeam."