TTT: Books which make me appreciate nature more

Top Ten Tuesday: 

Books that have increased my knowledge and/or appreciation of nature

1. RED BIRD Poems by Mary Oliver
I am currently reading this little volume of poems published in 2008. Oliver always make me walk out the door with a new appreciation of nature and new eyes to with which to see.  Here is a small word of advice for today---
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

2. FLIGHT BEHAVIOR by Barbara Kingsolver
This novel deals with the results of global warming on one creature: the monarch butterfly.
“For scientists, reality is not optional.”

3. LAB GIRL by Hope Jahren
Ms. Jahren is a scientist who studies plants, especially trees. My heart opened to a new language, the language of plants, as I read this memoir.
“Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.”

4. OVERSTORY by Richard Powers
This Pulitzer prize winner is described as a "paean to the natural world." It is also about how humans can help resist the downfall of nature.
  “To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.”

5. MARTIN MARTEN by Brian Doyle
This quirky book set in a small community on the foothills of Mt. Hood opened my eyes to the unknown specialness of a certain animal I've never thought of before---the pine marten.
“It’s wrong to say that animals do not feel what we feel; indeed, they may feel far more than we do and in far different emotional shades.” 

6. WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens
After reading this novel I dearly wanted to visit a marsh before they are all gone.
“Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”

7. THE RACE TO SAVE THE LORD GOD BIRD by Philip Hoose
Extinction is forever and this book is about how a bird, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, went extinct. Can we prevent it from happening to other birds, species?

Audubon's illustration of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This is all the world has left of this magnificent bird.

8. THE LORAX by Dr. Seuss
My first book about conservation. It should have been a warning to us all. Heed Dr. Seuss's words.

9.  A THOUSAND MORNINGS Poems by Mary Oliver
Poetry speaks to my need for more nature. Lucky I am on vacation is a very nature-full setting.
From the poem Hum, Hum

"The resurrection of the morning.
The mystery of the night.
The hummingbird's wings.
The excitement of thunder.
The rainbow in the waterfall.
Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.” 

10.  THE BIG BURN: TEDDY ROOSEVELT AND THE FIRE THAT SAVED AMERICA by Timothy Egan
How can a forest fire save America? When that fire led to more safeguards by preservation and more National Parks and forests. Now everyone can enjoy nature in these saved spaces.
“Far ahead of his time, and to the criticism of isolationists in his own party, Roosevelt tried to get the major nations of the world to come together and take stock of the globe they shared.”

What books have awakened a deeper appreciation of nature in you?