Finding your way to nature through books
Connecting with nature has many benefits for your mental and physical well-being. Pulling out invasive blackberries or freeing trees from climbing ivy gives you a sense of accomplishment and makes you forget the daily stress for a bit. When all the news about climate disasters become overwhelming, planting hedges or native trees along streams is really having a positive impact. Give it a try and join LEPS on one of the many volunteer opportunities all the way until the end of March. Check our event calendar for ways to get involved. This is your chance to connect with nature and to enhance the environment in our neighbourhoods. If you like to dive deeper and explore more stories around nature, LEPS very own Elyse and Marcel picked up some books from the library and summed them up for you. May they spark your curiosity and further your interest in nature.
“Once you tune in to one aspect of nature, you eventually become aware of the whole connected network of life around us.”
― Christian Cooper: Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
“There are people who are fond of tracing ideas and their connections in unlikely places and old books; I am one of them. I am easily enchanted when an odd idea or phrase looms on a page, often showing an invisible link.”
― Annie Proulx: Fen, Bog & Swamp
After going through all the books, we want to mention a few books that stood out for us:
Most practical advice: “Travels up the Creek” and “A Small Farm Future”
Most inspiring: “Climate Hope” and “Homing”
For the History Lover: “Fen, Bog and Swamp” and “The Invention of Nature”
What your Food Ate by David Montgomery and Anne Biklé, 2022
If connecting with nature means growing food or being conscious about where your food comes from, then this book is for you. The authors explore the partnership through which crops and soil life nourish one another. Navigating discoveries and surprising facts about the world beneath our feet, this book champions farmer’s work with nature as a way to improve our health and mitigate climate change.
A Natural History of Empty Lots by Christopher Brown, 2024
Growing up in midwestern suburbia, and now raising his family in Austin, Texas, the author shares his wonderous story of search for urban nature. Despite the urban sprawl covering more and more green spaces, Brown is always finding signs of wilderness in the middle of the city, edges teeming with foxes, hawks, coyotes, deer and more. The book almost reads like a walking tour with stops at industrial ruins, empty lots, creeks that find their way through the concrete jungle, back alleys and overgrown old rail tracks.
Better Living Through Birding by Christian Cooper, 2023
In his book, Christian Cooper welcomes you to his world and takes you through 6 decades of being Black, gay and an avid bird watcher. Along the way, he will offer modest tips for the uninitiated bird watcher as well as seven very specific insights as to why birding might be the next big thing to conquer the world. Most important though, he shows how birding can shift our perceptions and connect us with the wild world around us.
Consumed by Sarah Elton, 2013
- Food sustainability issues
- “What happens on this planet over the next four decades has the potential to fundamentally alter life as we know it”
- Target 2050 – feed 9 billion people
- “Rapid changes in climate do affect farming and can be linked to conflict” – in El Nino years there is twice the rate of conflict than in La Nina years.
- About every 5 years, warming trends of El Nino cause droughts and torrential rains in tropical regions. When turbulent weather reduces agricultural production, food prices rise, and people are more likely to protest.
- “If climate already knows how we behave, what’s going to happen when it becomes less predictable?”
- Food insecurity – as prices climb, more and more people go without nourishment. Food insecurity leaves people without access to nourishing food (Food deserts), or hungry, without enough to eat.
- “Sustainable/regenerative agriculture and locally centered food systems are the only way we can feed the world while reducing the damage we do to this planet”
- Biophilic cities – residents care about nature and work on its behalf, locally and globally. Urban agriculture makes this idea tangible
The Future we Choose: Surviving the climate crisis by Christina Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, 2020
Climate change is not only an environmental issue: It affects the livelihood of millions of people who suffer through extreme weather events every year. Despite many scenarios predicted by research, the political and societal will to fully address the issue is weak. The authors, both negotiators for the 2015 Paris Agreement, outline a world in 2050 that doesn’t meet the climate targets and one in which carbon neutral and regenerative practices have become the standard.
Cautionary but optimistic, this book talks about 3 ways to adapt our mindset and 10 actions we can do in our daily lives to confront the climate crisis head on.
Travels Up the Creek: A biologist’s search for a paddle by Lorne Fitch, P. Biol., 2024
Lorne Fitch is a professional biologist in Alberta. He co-founded Alberta Cows and Fish, a non-profit stewardship organization that promotes healthy landscapes by fostering riparian stewardship. In his book Travels Up the Creek, Fitch describes science-based environmental stewardship to tackle environmental challenges, urging a shift in perspective and promoting curiosity, scrutiny, and empathy for our natural world.
Climate Hope: Stories of action in an age of global crisis by David Geselbracht, 2024
- Science and technologies that can address climate change, as well as the social, cultural, political, economic and religious factors that will all play a role in cutting carbon emissions
- Chapter 4 Climate Evacuees – good discussion on wildfires and floods in BC (particularly for Kanaka Bar and Lytton)
- “After a fire comes a flood” – wildfires destroy organic matter and burn soils, turning the ground into a hydrophobic glossy sheen that prevents the normal absorption of rain. “Every rain now is going to bring walls of water and debris.” P.77
- “Human beings adapt to their environment; the environment doesn’t adapt to us.”
- Kanaka Bar – Fire Smart – greater advance preparation through risk awareness, improved disaster communication protocols and plants for evacuations and housing
- In discussion about the 2021 atmospheric rivers in BC, “Are we addicted to response mode?” P.78 “We need to start investing in resiliency.” “Adaptation requires a community approach, an all-in approach.”
Where Have All the Bees Gone? Pollinators in crisis by Rebecca E. Hirsch, 2020
- All about bees – will make anybody a bee lover
- Food systems
All We Can Save by Ayana E. Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson, 2020
A collection of essays and poetry, this book tells of women who set out to make a change in this climate crisis. This book is a true resource for those looking for new perspectives on the impacts of climate change as well as possible solutions on how to mitigate climate change. Although a global issue, this book focuses on women in the US who are inspiring change in their own country.
Leave Only Footprints by Conor Knighton, 2020
Read this book and follow along Knighton as he is hopping from park to park, eventually visiting every National Park in the US in one year. This very enlivening read weaves together history and wonder for nature, curiosity and individual stories. This book is proof that venturing out to nature is eye and mind opening.
Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, 2008
If you’re feeling today’s young generation doesn’t have the same connection to their natural environment as you or even your parents had – you’re right. Drawing from his own experience as a child in the woods, and as a parent, Richard Louv connects multidisciplinary research and literature to show the divide between children and nature. Legal fears on one side and romanticized wilderness escapes on the other – bringing children back in touch with nature seems overwhelming, but this book offers valuable insights, advice and encouragement to do just that. Why? Because “in nature a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.”
The Insect Crisis: The fall of the tiny empires that run the world by Oliver Milman, 2022.
After road trips through the countryside in the early 90s, we often had to clean the windshield of dead insects. Now, more than 30 years later, we rarely find insects splattered on our windshield. Milman tries to find answers to this “windshield phenomenon” that people are experiencing in many places around the world. The author considers a lot of research done in this field, which casts a light on the complex ecosystem value insects have. While insect diversity has experienced little losses through the previous 5 mass extinctions, insect populations seem to decline rapidly since the rise of industrialization. One of the most unnerving aspects of the insect crisis is that we don’t quite know where it will lead us.
Fen, Bog & Swamp by Annie Proulx, 2022
- A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis
- “The history of wetlands is the history of their destruction” Oliver Rackham
- “Humans are exceedingly good at construction and destruction but pitifully inadequate at restoring the natural world.”
- Sphagnum moss uses were as aseptic and soothing bandage; diapers by North American indigenous west coast people; used as a bandage material in WWI; is still used to keep fish and root crops fresh in Scandinavian countries.
- Very similar to Swamplands: Tundra Beavers, Quaking Bogs, and the Improbable World of Peat by Edward Struzik
- Descriptions of wetlands and wetlands-once-upon-a-time across the world
The Treeline: The last forest and the future of life on earth by Ben Rawlence, 2022
An homage to the boreal forest. Ben Rawlence takes the reader on a journey following the Arctic treeline around the globe. Starting in Scotland and going east, he dives into the stories of the trees and the forests and their value for our climate today and in the past. He uses the northward migration of the treeline to highlight the changes in climate and what that might imply for our future.
A Small Farm Future by Chris Smaje, 2020.
- Making the case for a society built around local economies, self-provisioning, agricultural diversity and a shared earth
- “In a time of uncertainty, what would a truly resilient society look like?
- “Plants a flag at the intersection between economics, agriculture and society during a time of immense crisis”
- “Farmer and social scientist Chris Smaje makes the case for organizing human societies around small-scale, local, agroecological farming in order to meet the environmental and political challenges of our times”
- Low-carbon, locally self-reliant, agrarian communities
- 142 “Re-wilding applies not only to other plants and animals but also in some degree to ourselves”
- “If we’re to successfully re-wild the earth’s habitats we need to re-wild human cultures as well, including our agricultures.”
- Powerful arguments for collective action in agriculture
- Small farms offer solutions to the crises of our time
- Stewardship, guardianship and rebuilding biodiversity is real, meaningful work. If each human engaged meaningfully, every day, in their own subsistence, imagine how much more accountable our society would become.
- “As a breakdown of the climate, state power and globalized markets pushes us toward an epochal transition, Chris Smaje offers us a hopeful vision of a relocalized, self-sufficient world.”
- With fierce intelligence and rich evidence, Smaje explains the vital role that small farms must play in this emerging future, artfully weaving together neglected strands of economic, ecological, cultural, and political thought.
Farmer and social scientist Chris Smaje makes a compelling case for small-scale, local, agroecological farming to meet the environmental and political challenges of our times. Smaje emphasizes the need for re-wilding, not only the terra of our earth but also ourselves. A Small Farm Future is a book of hope and resilience in an agriculturally peril time.
52 Ways to Walk by Annabel Streets, 2022
Growing up having to walk everywhere, Streets is overjoyed to have her own car as a young adult and uses it for everything. Reading Bill Bryson’s “A walk in the woods” and noticing changes within her body (rounder, softer, stiffer, unsettled, discontent), she starts to hit the road again – by foot. Rejoiced by better emotional and physical health, and driven by her new found curiosity, Streets starts to “walk” through the year week by week, each week with a new take on “walking” and why walking benefits us. This fun read shares many tips and tricks that will beat any excuse not to go for a walk.
How to be a Climate Optimist by Chris Turner, 2022
Instead of mapping catastrophic hotspots of climate change, Turner sets out to chart places that offer hope and ingenuity for the world that lies ahead of us. From new technologies to effective policies, Turner paints an indeed optimistic, sometimes even euphoric vision of the 21st century that can be so much better than the previous century.
The End of Eden: Wild nature in the age of climate breakdown by Adam Welz, 2023
- Climate crisis
- Deep dive into the species most affected by climate change
Homing: A quest to care for myself and the earth by Alice Irene Whittaker, 2024
Stretching herself thin between her growing environmental awareness, professional dancer and rising in a fulfilling career – the author eventually finds herself abandoned, chastising herself for the weight of a world in crisis. Her last rescue: She moves with her family into the woods where she grounds herself again, connecting with the nature around her as well as with many other individuals that care a whole lot about the world, one bit at the time.
The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s new world by Andrea Wulf, 2015
- Alexander Von Humboldt (1769 – 1859), a famous German naturalist and polymath who had the revolutionary idea/radical concept that “nature as a complex and interconnected global force does not exist for the use of humankind alone”
- “Humboldt’s ideas form the foundation of modern environmentalism”
The book is organized into four thoughts, starting with how Humboldt’s childhood tried to stifle his interests in the natural world, to him discovering his freedom and exploration of scientific thought and journeys through Central and South America, and profound author once he returns to Europe, in which he criticizes the colonization of Latin America in his writings. The final thought describes the influence Humboldt had as a mentor in the natural sciences to Charles Darwin and to American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Overall, Wulf’s novel is a “dazzling account of Humboldt’s restless search for scientific, emotional and aesthetic satisfaction.”