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The Prophet of Dry Hill: Lessons From a Life in Nature

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In "Encounters with the Archdruid," John McPhee takes a hike with former Sierra Club president David Brower and uses that scenario to present an informal biography of the noted conservationist and environmentalist. David Gessner employs the same technique here as he looks at the life of Cape Cod naturalist and writer John Hay. Perhaps the general public is not as familiar with Hay's work as it is/was with Brower's, and that's a shame. His is the third name linked to the nature writing about the Cape, after Henry David Thoreau and Henry Beston. Founder of the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, Hay started out as a poet apprentice to Conrad Aiken. Gradually he found his own voice and began writing longer pieces, eloquently describing the habitat and birds and fishes of his adopted home. When "The Run" came out in the 1950s, it was the first book to focus on the lives of herrings and on their place in the grand scheme of the natural cycle of seasons.

Gessner becomes friends with Hay, and as he accompanies the elderly gentleman on walks, he learns much about the man and about the way the Cape used to be. "The Prophet of Dry Hill" reads more like a few casual excursions and tame adventures than a traditional biography, and that suits the subject just fine. Hay, then in his mid-80s, is slowing down, and both men believe that his time here is limited. And like David Brower, Hay says what he thinks about the interconnectedness of all things and the blindness of politicians to see it. It's the end of an era on the Cape, where little old cottages are being torn down to make way for million-dollar mansions. In fact, by the end of the book, Hay and his wife have relocated to a more secluded place in Maine, and Gessner and his wife have moved to North Carolina. Neither can afford -- in one way or another -- to stay on that beautiful sandy peninsula at the easternmost edge of the continent.

This book is not the first to reminisce about the way the Cape used to be. It surely won't be the last. But it also serves as possibly a final walk along the shoreline with a man who cared deeply for the land and all of its creatures; a man who made a difference in conservation of Cape land; and a man who contributed deeply to our canon of American nature writing. It also solidifies David Gessner's place in that genre as well. It is one of the few books I've read that I know I need to read again, this time with a pen in hand to underline and star the best passages.

I've read almost everything David Gessner has written, and this slim book towers above his already impressive body of work. Gessner's portrait of naturalist John Hay is frank and warm, and depicts Hay as a philosopher from whom we all could learn some profound lessons. Hay's commitment to the natural world, and his insistence that we look to nature for the questions and answers in our lives, rather than probing the inner recesses of our psyches, stands as a much-needed corrective to the easy psychologizing of daytime television and self-help books. Hay finds meaning in our lives in the passing of the seasons, and this book can help us find meaning there too. Gessner mirrors Hay's outlook by searching for meaning through his depiction of Hay, and by letting Hay speak for himself throughout the book, rather than philosophizing about Hay or dissecting his published work. This book is really a brilliant achievement of nonfiction writing in any genre, though of course it will have special appeal to anyone interested in the natural world.

David Gessner does us all an immense service with this lovely description of his friendship with John Hay--the much-too-poorly-known dean of American nature writers. Gessner captures the spirt of this charming and visionary man at the end of his life. John Hay's dedication to place, family, and language, and his intense relationship with the natural world are an inspiration. Bravo!

David Gessner's book, The Prophet of Dry Hill, is as important to read for its language as for its content. Those of us who have read Gessner's work over the years have witnessed a progression from an adolescent self-consciousness over his persona as "a writer" to this largely unselfconscious achievement. Of course, the book is not free of those early stumblings, but the prose is crisp and clear and focused, even though the themes still echo the author's -- but subtly. Gessner says of John Hay, the prophet being memorialized here, in writing of the alewife run, " He may have seen in the herring's black eyes and shining scales something close to personal salvation both as a man and a writer. He knew that he had found his subject." Here , Gessner also reveals himself finding his own subject. His earlier books on ospreys never quite escaped from being books about his writing about ospreys. But here, John Hay and the Cape take over and the self-conscious writer slides back from view.

Not that it isn't well -written; for all of that it is better written. The opening line of the chapter titled "Exodus," is finely crafted alliteration: "With the warm weather came waves of movement." He must have enjoyed creating that line. I can imagine him as excited as Dylan Thomas was when he penned "the rain wringing wind." Echoes can be heard here too of the best works of American wilderness writing. Gessner's return to the need for "relinquishment" revive a theme found in Faulkner's great hymn to relinquishment in "The Bear."

As John Hay before him, Gessner here is doing his part to keep alive a legacy, an American tradition, of nature writing vital to our national identity. I disagree with Gessner at one point: Thoreau is not "the fountainhead of this thought." The tradition was carried to the New World and to Thoreau by the Puritans, and this faith was delivered to those saints by prophets before them. It can be found in the Old Testament. It is in danger today of being drowned in oil slicks and ipads and post-modern solipsism. Here, David Gessner is helping to keep alive the sense that inspired Prophets like John Hay of some fiery mystery that does exist outside the text. As we stumble forward into an uncertain and unnatural future, no greater compliment can be paid a writer.

Author David Gessner had always known of John Hay, who was his hero; but he only befriended the older naturalist when he returned to his childhood home on Cape Cod. His thought of writing a biography of the naturalist changed when their conversations became a record of Hay's naturalist knowledge, and thus THE PROPHET OF DRY HILL: LESSONS FROM A LIFE IN NATURE isn't just a survey of Hay's life and personality but a treasured collection of his seasoned observations on nature itself, packing in much more detail about nature than any biography would have achieved. Highly recommended.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor

California Bookwatch

I have always imagined a dinner party with only the list of "pedestal people" in my life attending. David Gessner would be on that list. While reading this amazing book, I felt like I had walked silently behind David and John Hay on the Cape that is also so close to my heart. What an amazing gift of writing from Gessner.

If you like nature and have an introspective attitude, then this is a book for you. The author examines the life of a man who spent a life time "wedging down" into nature and communicating his insights to the rest of us through his writings and actions.