"The naturalist, says Emerson, must satisfy all the demands of the spirit. Dana Wilde does that by uniquely unifying acute perception with that transcendental metaphysic that Emerson unabashedly called Love. Wilde is the poet of facts, his science always in the service of reverence and his universal intimations of spirit never "the easy gold of fay or elf," as Robert Frost praised a practice of the natural supernatural. Wilde is not an excursionist, but a seer who observes the comprehensive, year round fluidity of nature surrounding him and the eternal cosmos above him from his backyard in Troy, Maine. He is the best of the real thing, letting the obdurate bleakness and the rampant beauty of Maine inform each other in wit that is invariably wise and intimate. Every essay in this book can teach us like parables of understanding and reason how to unite devotion and thought to be whole people in our waking lives." --William Hathaway, author of Dawn Chorus and The Right NoFrom first signs or unseen sense of Fall's closing in, to the certain loosening thaws and drips prefacing ice out, from First Peoples' tellings and showings to the habits of next inhabitants here, now, and in whatever untamed future survives the changing climate, this book is a fire for the darks and lights of winter in Maine. And a source, as any fire is, of realization, solace, and meditation burning perfectly, steadfastly, through Winter's grief and any joy to be found. Season by season, discovery by revelation, no one in Maine works harder, truer, nor more beautifully and imaginatively than Dana Wilde. --Patricia Ranzoni, author of Settling and Bedding Vows
