The Inland Island

Rating:
Summary: Nature writing at its most thought-provoking best
Review: This is my all-time favorite book. If you like "Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek," be sure to read "Inland Island" by Josephine Johnson. She has the same unromanticized view of nature's uncompromising rule (whatever survives, works), and she has the mind of an agnostic poet expressed in prose. Example: I think it is disgusting to praise God for making us acknowledge His presence by a poke in our eyeballs with His sharp stick.

And: All day, a rain of life and death goes on. A catbird crashed against the pane and fell gasping. Then it gathered itself in a narrow canoe shape and lay there patiently waiting to recover or die. Awareness is a name of agony. I wish there was something to pray to for its life. But one must not get excited. One must not grieve. Nature, Mom, all-powerful, monstrous and monolithic Mother sits and chooses.

The whole book is wonderful! I wish I could read it again for the first time just for the pleasure of its discovery.