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Massachusetts has Walden Pond by Henry David
Thoreau. Wisconsin has Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Utah has Desert
Solitaire by Edward Albee. What do we have? My vote goes for Backyard Carolina
by Andy Wood, North Carolina Audubon’s Director of Education.
Even if Andy wasn’t the T. Gilbert Pearson Audubon Society’s October guest
speaker, he’d still get my vote! This terrific book is a selection of 52 short
excursions into the natural world of Carolina, selected from 20 years of weekly
radio commentaries Andy has done for WHQR, Wilmington’s public radio station.
Like most nature writing that moves us, Andy’s writing shifts effortlessly from
the small to the large, from the birth of water fleas to lessons learned from
the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, from the joys of digging in the sand to spelling
out our responsibilities to future generations. And, like the best naturalists,
Andy writes about what he knows, so much of the book is set in coastal Carolina,
in the Cape Fear River Basin, or under bushes in Andy’s backyard in Hampstead,
North Carolina. But unlike many nature writers, the span of Andy’s knowledge
seems limitless: he is just as comfortable telling us about seed dispersal of
the baccharis, the groundsel tree, as he is in revealing the secret underground
world of moles.
The book’s editor tried her best to organize Andy’s vast ramblings, putting his
backyard stories in one spot, letting Andy roam outside his neighborhood in the
next. She even put each section in the order of the seasons. But it didn’t work
for me. The minute I read Andy’s dedication: “This book is lovingly dedicated to
my closest friends: Sandy, Robin, and Carson (and P. magnifica),” I was thumbing
through the book looking for some clue to the identity of this P. magnifica.
With no index, and no essay obviously about this closest friend, I found a
possible thread in the list of illustrations: Magnificent rams-horn snail, page
137. And there he was, shell and all, star of the essay entitled “An Endangered
Species Conundrum.” I found P. magnifica again when I read Andy’s essay called
“The Surprise of Fran,” about the devastation of hurricane Fran. Just before the
eye of the hurricane passed over, Andy rushed out and saved twelve P. magnifica
from a backyard plastic pond, and brought these twelve closest friends into the
house to weather the storm with Sandy, Robin and Carson.
So go into the forest with Andy, walk the shore at his side, dip your hands next
to his into that cold pond, and your experience outdoors will never be the same.
You may even discover some new closest friends.
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