Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

  Title: The Curve of Time: New, Expanded Edition Author: M. Wylie Blanchet Publication Info: Whitecap Books, 2011, 272 pages. Originally published by Blackwood & Sons in 1961. Source: Library P ublisher's Blurb : Widowed at the age of thirty-five, Muriel Wylie Blanchet packed up her five children in the summers that followed and set sail aboard the twenty-five-foot Caprice . For fifteen summers, in the 1920s and 1930s, the family explored the coves and islands of the BC coast, encountering settlers and hermits, hungry bears and dangerous tides, and falling under the spell of the region’s natural beauty. Driven by curiosity, the family followed the quiet coastline, and Blanchet—known as Capi, after her boat—recorded their wonder as they threaded their way between the snowfields, slept under the bright stars and wandered through Indigenous winter villages left empty in the summer months. The Curve of Time weaves the story of these years into a memoir that has insp...

I'm a little late with today's post thanks to the massive bomb cyclone that hit the NW last night--power was out at my house for about 10 hours. Of course, if I weren't a procrastinator, it wouldn't have mattered, but I am, and it did :D     Title : Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses Author : Robin Wall Kimmerer. Audio book read by the author. Publication Info: Audiobook Tantor Audio, 2003, 8 hours. Paper and ebook 2003 by Oregon State University Press, 176 pages.  Source: Library Publisher's blurb: Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites readers to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses. Robin Wall Kimmerer's book is not an identification guide, nor is it a scientific treatise. Rather, it is a series of linked personal essays that will lead...

Another installment in my quest to understand walking, hiking and the huge mental health benefits that I, at least, get from doing it.     Title: On Trails: An Exploration 
 Author: 
Robert Moor, read by Jason Grasl Publication Info: Audiobooks.com, 2016. 11 hours. Original by Simon and Schuster, 2016. 
 Source:  Library 

 Publisher’s Blurb: 

   From a brilliant new literary voice comes a groundbreaking exploration of how trails help us understand the world—from tiny ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet. In 2009, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet: How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own? Over the course of the next seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds, from the minuscule to the massive. He learned the tricks of master trail-...

 This is a classic of the genre, with the good and the bad that implies.     Title: The Singing Wilderness Author :Sigurd F. Olson. Illustrated by Francis Lee Jaques Publication info :Kindle edition, Knopf 2017. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1956. 244 pages. Publisher's Blurb (per Goodreads): Sigurd F. Olson was for more than thirty years a wilderness guide in the Quetico-Superior country, and no one knew with the same intimacy the mysteries of the lakes and forests of that magnificent primitive area. To the many out-of-doorsmen who canoed and portaged with him through this wilderness, he was known honorifically as the Bourgeois--as the voyageurs of old called their trusted leaders through this same region. My Review: As is common with classics of nature and the outdoors, this book has both aged well, and aged poorly. There is no question that it is a beautiful paeon to the author's home, the lakes and streams on the boundary between Canada and the US on...

Another of my random history reads.     Title: Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War Author : 
Lynne Olson. Read by Arthur Morey & Kimberly Farr Publication Info : Random House Audio, 2017, 19 hours. Original hardback by Random House, 2017, 526 pages. Source: Library 

Publisher’s Blurb (via Overdrive): 

 A groundbreaking account of how Britain became the base of operations for the exiled leaders of Europe in their desperate struggle to reclaim their continent from Hitler, from the New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over continental Europe in the early days of World War II, the city of London became a refuge for the governments and armed forces of six occupied nations who escaped there to continue the fight. So, too, did General Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed representative of free France.     As the on...

This one comes out of the "random audiobooks on historical/science/nature topics" file.     Title: Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner,and an Gentleman Solve the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail Author: Stephen R. Bown Publisher : Phoenix Books, Inc., 2007, 8 hours. Original hardback published 2003 by Viking, 256 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb (from Overdrive) : A lively recounting of how three determined individuals overcame the constraints of 18th century thinking to solve the greatest medical mystery of their era. The cure for scurvy ranks among the greatest of military successes, yet its impact on history has mostly been ignored. Stephen Bown, in this engaging and often gripping book, searches back to the earliest recorded appearance of scurvy in the 16th century, to the 18th century, when the disease was at its gum-shred, bone-snapping worst, to the early 19th century, when the preventative was finally put into service. Bown introduces us,...

Important stuff, but hard to hear. Title: Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Author: Bill McKibben. Ready by Olivery Wyman Publication Info: Macmillan Audio 2019. 11 hours. Hardback by Henry Holt & Co., 291 pages. Source: Library Blurb: (Goodreads): Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience. Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And t...

I seem to have missed my Monday post. It appears that schedules are becoming less and less something I understand! This post will have to do for Monday and Wednesday. Let's hope I manage the weekend photos before the weekend is over!     Title: Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home Author: Heather "Anish" Anderson Publisher:  Tantor Audio, 2019. 6 hours. Originally published Mountaineers Books, 2019. Source: Library   Publisher's Blurb: By age 25, Heather Anderson had hiked what is known as the "Triple Crown" of backpacking: the Appalachian Trail (AT), Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), and Continental Divide Trail (CDT)—a combined distance of 7,900 miles with a vertical gain of more than one million feet. A few years later, she left her job, her marriage, and a dissatisfied life and walked back into those mountains. In her new memoir, Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home , Heather, whose trail name is "Anish," conveys not only her athleticism and wilderness adventures,...

One of my friends sent me this book, and I've already managed to forget who. Thanks--it was a good read and I learned a lot.     Title: Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest Author: Lesley Poling-Kempes Publication Info: University of Arizona Press, 2015.  373 pages Source: Gift Publisher’s Blurb: Ladies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world. Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and the landscape of the American Southwest. Part of an influential circle of women that included Louisa Wade Wetherill, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, ...

How could I not be drawn to a title like that?! Another report from my on-going perusal of semi-randomly selected non-fiction audio books, especially about women doing cool stuff.   Title: Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman Author: Lindy Elkins-Tanton Publication Info: Harper Audio, 2022. 8hrs 40 min. Hardcover 2022 by William Morrow, 272 pages. Source: Publisher's Blurb: Deep in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, three times farther from the sun than the Earth is, orbits a massive asteroid called (16) Psyche. It is one of the largest objects in the belt, potentially containing the equivalent of the world's total economy in metals, though they cannot be brought back to Earth. But (16) Psyche has the potential to unlock something even more valuable: the story of how planets form, and how our planet formed. Soon we will find out, thanks to the extraordinary work of Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the Principal Investigator of NASA's $800 million Psyche mission,...

The life story of the author of the "Little House" books. Title: The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapes That Inspired The Little House Books Author: Marta McDowell, read by Donna Postel Publication Info: Tantor Audio 2018. 6 1/4 hours. Original hardback 2017 by Timber Press, 390 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: The universal appeal of Laura Ingalls Wilder springs from a life lived in partnership with the land, on farms she and her family settled across the Northeast and Midwest. In this revealing exploration of Wilder's deep connection with the natural world, Marta McDowell follows the wagon trail of the beloved Little House series. You'll learn details about Wilder's life and inspirations, pinpoint the Ingalls and Wilder homestead claims on authentic archival maps, and learn to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the series. Excerpts from Wilder's books, letters, and diaries bring to light her profound appreciat...

  A follow-up to Mountains of the Mind , I grabbed the audio of this book to get more of the author's thoughts. Then I had to get the paperback because there were things I needed to read slowly, and flag, and return to. Title: The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot Author: Robert Macfarlane. Read by Robin Sachs Publication Info: Blackstone Audio, 2012.  Original hardback, Hamish Hamilton, 2012, 433 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: From the acclaimed author of  The Wild Places  comes an engrossing exploration of walking and thinking. In this exquisitely written book, Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge, England, home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads, and sea paths that crisscross both the British landscape and its waters and territories beyond. The result is an immersive, enthralling exploration of the ghosts and voices that haunt old paths, of the stories our tracks keep and tell, and of pil...

I've been doing a lot of reading about travel, mostly accounts of travel or adventures/exploration. I'm also getting more interested in the philosophy and psychology of an activity that I greatly enjoy and at times feel driven to pursue. Title: The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad Author: Emily Thomas Publication Info: Oxford University Press, 2020. 261 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: How can we think more deeply about travel? This was the thought that inspired Emily Thomas to journey into the philosophy of travel, to explore the places where philosophy and travel intersect. Part philosophical ramble, part memoir, The Meaning of Travel begins in the Age of Discovery in the sixteenth century, when philosophers first began thinking and writing seriously about travel It then meanders forward to encounter the thoughts of Montaigne on otherness, John Locke on cannibals, and Henry Thoreau on wilderness. On our travels with Emily Thomas, we discover the dar...

A few weeks ago I reviewed a book in the spirit of Thoreau, which ended up irritating me a great deal. This book felt like the antidote.   Title: Nature Beyond Solitude: Notes from the Field Author: John Seibert Farnsworth Publication Info: Blackstone Audio, 2020. 8hrs 50 min. Original hardback Comstock Publishing, 2020. 216 pages. Source: library Publisher's Blurb: John Seibert Farnsworth's delightful notes are not only about nature, but from nature as well. In Nature Beyond Solitude, he lets us peer over his shoulder as he takes his notes. We follow him to a series of field stations where he teams up with scientists, citizen scientists, rangers, stewards, and grad students engaged in long-term ecological study, all the while scribbling down what he sees, hears, and feels in the moment. With humor and insight, Farnsworth explores how communal experiences of nature might ultimately provide greater depths of appreciation for the natural world. In the course of his travel...

Another of my semi-random picks from the library's digital audio books.    Title: The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology Author: Mark Boyle Publication Info: Blackstone Audio, 2019. 8hrs 40 min. Original hardcover, Oneworld, 2019, 288 pages Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: "It was 11:00 pm when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be forever. No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio, or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce." The Way Home is a modern-day Walden―an honest and lyrical account of a remarkable life lived in nature without modern technology. Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Man, explores the hard-won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the stream, foraging, and fishing. What he finds is an elemental life, one ...