Chasing Clayoquot: A Wilderness Almanac

by David Pitt-Brooke, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Foreword by)

Overview

First published in 2004, and now with a new introduction by the author and a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., this book of natural history, environmentalism, and politics explores one of the Earth's last primeval places: Clayoquot Sound. Pitt-Brooke takes the reader on 12 journeys, one for each month of the year. Each journey covers the outstanding natural event of that season, such as whale-watching in April, shorebird migration in May, and the salmon spawn in October.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781553655237
Publisher:	Greystone Books
Publication date:	05/25/2010
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

Table of Contents

	Foreword	xiii
	Prologue: Beginnings	1
	January: Chasing the Tempest: Who Has Seen the Wind?	9
	February: Clear and Cold: A Break in the Storm	33
	March: Nature's Plenty: Herring Time	57
	April: Thar She Blows!: The Springtime Migration of Gray Whales	81
	May: Wind Birds: Mudflats and Shorebird Migration	101
	June: Hanging On for Dear Life: The Intertidal Zone	119
	July: Through a Glass Darkly: A (Very) Brief Voyage of Oceanic Discovery	139
	August: In the Shadow of the Pacific: The Mountains of Clayoquot Sound	157
	September: Waste Not, Want Naught: Coastal Temperate Rainforest	181
	October: Ring of Bright Water: Bears, Salmon and Wild Rivers	205
	November: Day of the Dead: Seeking Y'aq-wii-itq-quu?as (Those Who Were Here Before)	227
	December: A Measure of History: In Search of the Recent Past	251
	Epilogue: East of Eden	277
	Acknowledgments	285

Editorial Reviews

What Canadian naturalist Pitt-Brooke chases in this paean to Clayoquot Sound, a still pristine patch of Vancouver Island's west coast, is hope--hope that the environmental diversity of that short stretch of natural paradise will survive population pressure, industrial encroachment and logging devastation. In a dozen poetic year-in-the-life chapters, Pitt-Brooke savors nature with Thoreauvian gusto. In January, he seeks out batten-down-the-hatches winter winds. Come April, he's out to sea, eye-to-eye with cavorting whales as they migrate north. June is for walking the intertidal zone, where mollusks and other briny beings thrive and die in the few feet where ocean washes over land; October is for hiking mountain streams, where salmon come home to spawn and black bears come to feed on them. At the close of the year, Pitt-Brooke's quest moves from exuberant physical experience to spiritual and historical reflection, as he searches for signs of ancient human presence on the land and distills the accounts of the European explorers who a scant two centuries ago wrested the land from its original inhabitants. Though the book's emotional focus is on one singular geographical location, it's a clarion call for the preservation of all wild places. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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