"One who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe," Albert Einstein once said, "is as good as dead." Nature writers demonstrate the spiritual practice of wonder. They look around and see marvels in the strangest places. Here's an example from this anthology of essays, autobiographical pieces, short stories, and poetry. Poet W. S. Merwin writes about butterflies in the western mountains of Mexico where they have migrated to escape the winter in North America: "We stood in the afternoon sunlight in the sound of them, a sound of words before words, a whisper of one syllable older than language, continuing like a pulse. In the updraft from the valley the monarchs fluttered toward us, lighted on us. At one moment there were fifteen of them on me, trembling on their way. The fragility was not only theirs."
Then there is Terry Tempest Williams saluting the desert tortoise as a teacher of "the slow art of revolutionary patience." Rick Bass is on hand to make a case for the preservation of a remote mountain village in Montana. And for heart-affecting emotion, check out John Daniel's piece on a moody cat, grief, and moving to a new place. All of these writers tutor us in wonder and keep alive the tradition of being alert to the enchantments and mysteries of the natural world.
