This work, a collection of essays on the natural world during a year spent in the Blue Ridge valley of Virginia, reflects the author's interactions with her wilderness surroundings. The author takes us through a year of on-foot explorations through her own landscape, bringing anecdotes, curiosities, and insights about all she observes and experiences. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and thinks about wave mechanics; in the fall, she...

Bryson share his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail with a childhood friend. The two encounter eccentric characters, a blizzard, getting lost, and rude yuppies along the way.

Carrying the famous biologist Charles Darwin, the Beagle set sail from Plymouth Sound in December of 1831 and returned in October of 1836-completing its journey across the world. This journal kept by Charles Darwin contains his notes from the journey and his commentary on the discoveries that were made. It also includes illustrations of the wonders that they encountered and in-depth discussions about life on the sea.

"The average American spends ninety percent of their time indoors, and children are no exception. Today, kids can spend up to seven hours per day looking at screens. Not only does this phenomenon have consequences for our kids' physical and mental health, it calls into question their ability to understand and engage with anything beyond the built environment. We can talk about environmental stewardship, but until more people make meaningful contact...

"A.J. thinks that nothing can possibly be as boring as a sleepover in the natural history museum. But anything can happen when Ms. Krup is in charge. The tour guide says that dinosaur skeletons come to life in the middle of the night. Is she right?"--P. [4] of cover.

After twelve-year-old John Boarhog's mom dies, the last thing he wants is to be schlepped off to the Jersey Home for Boys, where kids are forced to make skinny jeans for hipsters and are fed nothing but kale. Instead, he makes himself a snug home in the ceiling of the New York Museum of Natural History, where he reads anything he get his hands on and explores the artifacts afterhours. But when a rare Egyptian ruby--the highlight of the museum's new...

"Just what is a jackalope? Purported to be part jackrabbit and part antelope, the jackalope began as a local joke concocted by two young brothers in a small Wyoming town during the Great Depression. Their creation quickly spread around the U.S., where it now regularly appears as innumerable forms of kitsch--wall mounts, postcards, keychains, coffee mugs, shot glasses, and so on. A vast body of folk narratives has carried the jackalope's fame around...

"George Bird Grinnell, the son of a New York merchant, saw a different future for a nation in the thrall of the Industrial Age. With railroads scarring virgin lands and the formerly vast buffalo herds decimated, the country faced a crossroads: Could it pursue Manifest Destiny without destroying its natural bounty and beauty? The alarm that Grinnell sounded would spark America's conservation movement. Yet today his name has been forgotten -- an omission...

Collection of three Western stories, featuring the title piece about the relationship between a father and his two sons, bound together by love and fly fishing.

"The Shotgun Conservationist doesn't teach you how to hunt. It teaches you why to hunt. As public lands remain imperiled, factory farms pollute the earth and denigrate animals, and global uncertainty presses us all to be more self-sufficient, there has never been a better time for the conservation-minded, environmentally concerned citizen to take up hunting. Writer, natural historian, and public speaker Brant MacDuff has done just that. Two years...