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Oh, this was nice.

I enjoy a book that blends the personal with the scientific. It's the best way to learn. A writer I know calls this "creative nonfiction" and that sums it up nicely -- although I admit I found it disconcerting when he would adjust the details of the personal side. His science was spot on, but sometimes our conversations would include me saying, "But it wasn't during X hike that we saw Y." His answer always insisted that the story was better that way . . . not that I found that very persuasive. In fact, it made me question the accuracy of other events he wrote about. Not the science, just the storytelling.

But I digress. 

I'm willing to give Carl Safina and The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World the benefit of the doubt. I love the way Safina describes his beachfront life with his dog, walking the sand to discover what has turned up overnight, greeting the morning in all weather and all seasons with the dunes and the birds and the fishes. It sounds like an ideal life for a naturalist who loves the world as he does. It's also the ideal entrance into the scientific subject matter for that particular section.

I also loved his travels, cold water and warm water, and the things he discovers along the way when he leaves his Long Island cottage. I may never make it to Alaska or to the Carribbean -- I'm more of a long weekend traveler, not a long-distance, long-term traveler -- but I enjoy tagging along virtually. Safina is a very interesting companion, blending his travel stories of the people he meets with whatever scientific investigation they're pursuing. Anyone who's interested in nature will relish the opportunity to stand at their elbows and eavesdrop, without ever being jet-lagged or cold.

The discoveries these engaging people are making are generally Not Good. The world is damaged and we may or may not change our ways in time. It may already be too late, actually. (It was particularly affecting when Safina's host at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault described how the temperature ranges for growing certain crops are changing drastically due to climate change. In this case, "drastically" means predicted temperatures in the future have zero overlap with existing growing temperatures in certain regions. As in, you can't grow corn here anymore, it's become too hot.)

Safina faces this truth head on, but in the way a solid, discerning friend would broach the conversation with you, and would also -- we hope -- stop mid-sentence to point out a particular beachcombing bird that flew all the way from another continent before backgrounding his words with its cry. 

Excerpt (visiting Svalbard, Norway, north of the Arctic Circle):

Here at the outer limits of their summer ranges, these birds seem familiar; I know them from home. Even Ruddy Turnstones sometimes get this far. From their North American populations, these species all send delegates to waters near my beach house. The murres, auks, skuas, fulmars, the terns, the loons, the eiders and Long-tailed Ducks, of course, even the bunting -- I've seen them all around Lazy Point. That's how small the world is and how big their lives are. Now, far from my own shores, they make me feel unexpectedly at home.

Note: This book counts toward the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.