14 Nature books that celebrate the great outdoors

Harry’s Trees

by Jon Cohen

A grown-up sort of fairy tale about grief, redemption, forgiveness, and joy, set amidst the beautiful Pennsylvania forest. Have you ever read a book that makes the world around you feeI just a little bit magical, even after you’ve turned the last page? Author Jon Cohen insists there’s no real magic in this story, because there’s nothing in these pages that couldn’t actually happen. And yet a whimsical air of magic permeates this vivid portrayal of characters brought together by grief but ultimately united by joy. Likely-to-delight features include an unlikely friendship, a book within the book, a battle to save the local library, and a mysterious good Samaritan known as the Susquehanna Santa. A strong sense of humor prevents this tale from verging too far into sentimental territory. Content warnings apply. For fans of Monica Wood’s The One-in-a-Million Boy and Steven Rowley’s Lily and the Octopus.

Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park

by Conor Knighton

After weathering a broken engagement, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Conor Knighton decided to spend the year visiting every single National Park. Thinking he needed a change of scenery, Knighton quickly went overboard with his planning, resulting in wonderful stories and a news segment. Read his account and then watch the On the Trail news segments that followed.

End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood

by Jan Redford

From the publisher: "In the tradition of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild comes this funny and gritty debut memoir in which Jan Redford grows from a nomadic rock climber to a mother who fights to win back her future."

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Featured as favorites in What Should I Read Next episodes 163 and 188. Kimmerer combines her training as a botanist with her perspective as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, showing readers how each plant, animal, and ecosystem provides us with lessons and gifts. Combining folklore, stories, and scientific studies, Kimmerer urges us to pay attention, be grateful, and take responsibility for our natural world.

Working the Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing

by Michele Elizabeth Lee

I'm thankful What Should I Read Next guest Charlandra Jenkins put this great book on my radar (in episode 243, "Predicting the next great American classic.") Over the course of several years living and studying in the rural South and on the West Coast, Michele Elizabeth Lee compiled interviews, stories, and wisdom from African American healers. In between stories, Lee shares a collection of remedies, medicines, and the history behind them. These natural healing practices celebrate and honor the earth, and the history is both fascinating and well-told.

A Walk in the Woods

by Bill Bryson

Renowned travel writer Bryson takes to the Appalachian Trail in this laugh-out-loud travel memoir. After returning to America after 20 years in England, Bryson reconnects with his home country by walking 800 of the AT’s 2100 miles, many of them with his cranky companion Katz, who serves as a brilliant foil to Bryson’s scholarly wit. A superb hiking memoir that skillfully combines laugh-out-loud anecdotes with serious discussions about history, ecology, and wilderness trivia. Droll, witty, entertaining.

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring

by Richard Preston

I first read this book years ago and continue to recommend it ALL THE TIME. Follow a group of young botanists and naturalists as they explore a beautiful forest of redwood trees in this account of their discoveries, passions, and adventures. I'll never climb or sleep under a redwood tree, but it was certainly enjoyable to live vicariously through these explorers as they walk through the redwood canopies and "fire caves." Told in a narrative style, this one is great for readers who love nonfiction that reads like a novel.

The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Gilbert's sweeping novel follows the life of the enigmatic Alma Whittaker, a 19th century scientist (before that was even a word). A maker at heart, and very aware of her strengths and limitations, Alma struggles to develop her unifying "Theory of Competitive Alteration" to describe her findings. Gilbert brings the field of botany to life in this ambitious novel. (Who would have thought moss could be so interesting?)

Underland: A Deep Time Journey

by Robert Macfarlane

From the publisher: In this highly anticipated sequel to his international bestseller The Old Ways, Macfarlane takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind. Traveling through “deep time”—the dizzying expanses of geologic time that stretch away from the present—he moves from the birth of the universe to a post-human future, from the prehistoric art of Norwegian sea caves to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, from Bronze Age funeral chambers to the catacomb labyrinth below Paris, and from the underground fungal networks through which trees communicate to a deep-sunk “hiding place” where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come. Woven through Macfarlane’s own travels are the unforgettable stories of descents into the underland made across history by explorers, artists, cavers, divers, mourners, dreamers, and murderers, all of whom have been drawn for different reasons to seek what Cormac McCarthy calls “the awful darkness within the world.”

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

The publisher calls this "a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world can illuminate our own human existence, while providing an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive." Kirkus calls this "a charming, delicate meditation on the meaning of life."

Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Landscape

by Lauret Savoy

From the publisher: In this provocative and powerful mosaic of personal journeys and historical inquiry across a continent and time, Savoy explores how the country’s still unfolding history, and ideas of “race,” have marked her and the land. From twisted terrain within the San Andreas Fault zone to a South Carolina plantation, from national parks to burial grounds, from “Indian Territory” and the U.S.-Mexico Border to the U.S. capital, Trace grapples with a searing national history to reveal the often unvoiced presence of the past.

H Is for Hawk

by Helen Macdonald

This memoir from a Cambridge professor landed on more than 25 "best of the year" lists. After her father dies, McDonald stumbles upon a unique way to assuage her grief: she purchases and attempts to train an English goshawk with the deceptively quaint name Mabel. McDonald had been a falconer since she was a child, but her hawk is wild, unpredictable, irascible—as is her grief. Part memoir, part nature story: her tale is moving, poignant, and surprising.

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World

by Andrea Wulf

Though you may not recognize his name, Alexander von Humboldt was the father of modern environmentalism and the most famous scientist of his age. Born in the late 18th century, he had a deep love for outdoor exploration and traversed the globe in search of unusual environments. Von Humboldt was friends with Thomas Jefferson, inspired Darwin and Thoreau, and was passionate about helping humans understand our relationship to the natural world. In this biography, Wulf captures the man as endlessly passionate, progressive, and impactful.

The Overstory

by Richard Powers

This is the kind of book they write about in Outside Magazine (and I've gotten some great book recs from Outside). In the early chapters, Powers explores the lives of nine different people in a series of stories, which share one common thread: they all involve dramatic experiences with trees. It's a slow build, but eventually the stories come together. (With 512 pages, Powers has lots of room to play.) This intricately crafted novel, which ultimately explores the connection between humans and nature, and the responsibility of one to the author, requires a patient reader.

14 Nature books that celebrate the great outdoors

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