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The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature

2009; Oxford University Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/isle/isp014

1759-1090

Paul Bogard,

Environmental Philosophy and Ethics

For students of literature and environment, Jonathan Rosen's The Life of the Skies—one part birding history, one part personal journey, and well-written throughout—may be the perfect book about birding. While suggesting that “the outdoor world of birdwatching is bound to an indoor world of books,” Rosen claims that this relationship is “a paradox present in all great quests” (301). He means, I think, that it is not enough to love only books (or any academic pursuit) or only birding (or any outdoor activity), but that together these different pursuits offer the deepest perspective, as his own quest demonstrates. As Rosen writes, “this is how birdwatching, which grows out of books but can never be satisfied with books, creates environmentalists. If we don't shore up the earth, the sky will be empty” (94). Not only does this book with the D. H. Lawrence-inspired title feature the lives and letters of such birders and scientists as Audubon, Wallace, Darwin, and E. O. Wilson, but it also offers steady reference to Whitman, Thoreau, Frost, Dickinson, and others as well. (Indeed, The Life of the Skies would complement a course in American literature for its birding-inspired insights.) Rosen's chapter on Frost's “The Ovenbird,” which he considers “the birdwatchers' anthem, a poem steeped in diminished expectations and defiant hopes” (151), is especially rich: it blends close reading and close observation, as though Rosen has before him both the poem and the bird itself. “The whole poem,” he claims, “is a lament for a world that has lost its wildness” (152). “Birds,” writes Rosen, “bring news of this diminishment like nothing else” (172).