Too wet outside? Let these books take you outdoors
Published 9:00 pm Friday, March 9, 2007
The gray, damp and chilly weather will be with us for some time, so toss a log on the fire and cuddle up with a stack of books. Plan a spring trip, learn how to deal with hungry bears fresh out of hibernation, or take a short course in weather forecasting that doesn’t involve turning on an electronic device.
Owning a boat is not a prerequisite for enjoying Anne and Laurence Yeadon-Jones’s “The Broughtons and Vancouver Island: Kelsey Bay to Port Hardy” ($49.95, Harbour). The Broughtons are a complex maze of islands and inlets north of Desolation Sound.
Yes, that’s an … enthusiastic … price but “Broughtons” is part practical, part art (hand-drawn colored charts) and part coffee table (fine photography, including one photograph that is now in my top-10 favorites).
Learn where to put in for a guided trip to see grizzlies or petroglyphs, discover what harbors might also include trails within walking distance, line up picnic spots ahead of time, and absorb some history in the process.
And, yes, the sailing authors also address charts, approaches and anchoring as well in volume five of the Dreamspeaker cruising series.
Or if you’d rather curl up with a maritime novel, there’s thought-provoking “The Solitude of Thomas Cave” ($24, Bloomsbury) by Georgina Harding.
In 1616, whaler Thomas Cave bets his fellow whalers that he can spend the winter on an Arctic island alone, until they return for the next whaling season. While full of trials and tribulations, it’s a well-turned story of what one can learn in solitude.
“Beluga Days: Tracking the Endangered White Whale” ($17, Mountaineers Books): Nancy Lord’s fascinating book is now in paperback. There’s much to learn here, including an answer to the mystery of how (and why) the beluga can change the shape of its head, a lumpy counterpoint to its graceful maneuvers.
“Backcountry Bear Basics” ($16, Mountaineers Books): Dave Smith is back with the second edition of “The Definitive Guide to Avoiding Unpleasant Encounters.” He makes an effort to dispel the tar-and-feather approach to the alleged “predatory black bear,” and sprinkles in several fact-or-fantasy sidebars.
“Stalked by a Mountain Lion: Fear, Fact and the Uncertain Future of Cougars in America” ($15, Falcon): Jo Deurbrouck brings the cougar story up to date through several modern cougar-human interactions, some of them fatal. She also expands the sound-bite advice often heard or read after a cougar attack.
“Basic Essentials: Backpacking” ($9, Falcon): The third edition includes tips on buying a cooking stove, basic raingear comparisons, and an explanation of external vs. internal backpacks. It’s very basic, good for the first-timer, but not suited to anyone who has done a bit of backpacking and would like to explore the finer points.
“Basic Essentials: Edible Wild Plants and Useful Herbs” ($9, Falcon, third edition): Jim Meuninck groups the plants by location (seashore tidal areas, riparian, woodlands, etc.), using color photographs, short descriptions, and occasionally warnings. He adds wild-plant recipes and a chapter on poisonous plants.
“Saving Puget Sound: A Conservation Strategy for the 21st Century” ($35, University of Washington Press): This is not a book to curl up with in front of the fire but it’s an important one, nonetheless.
With a serious interest in our environment and perseverance, a reader would become armed with valuable information and approaches to solving the area’s ecological challenges.
John Lombard challenges our assumptions in the foreword and meticulously lays out the problems, how we’ve dealt with them, and what we should do now.
For a quick, bare-bones plunge into the art of understanding tomorrow’s weather, “Basic Essentials of Weather Forecasting” ($9, Falcon) will do the trick. It includes a light-hearted chapter on alternative forecasting, using geese, coffee, frogs, hair, sky colors or campfire smoke.
Columnist Sharon Wootton can be reached at 360-468-3964 or www.songandword.com.
