Nature Boys

Threaded in among my reading during the last month or so, a pretty even melange of fiction and non, were two great numbers celebrating the natural world and the finding of a home place.  In both cases the locale was rural, at least at the time of writing, and here in the Pacific Northwest.  I don't believe I have yet read "Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek," set in a quite different locale, but I have the sense that much more famous book, likely familiar to many, may be a close relative to these.

The first I tumbled to at the B-and-B we stayed at in Enterprise, OR during our road trip this summer.  I was naturally intrigued with this one, "Sky Time in Grays River," both from the blurbs and from having savored author Robert Michael Pyle's "Wintergreen" and "The Thunder Tree" a while back. I am happy to also own his great NW butterfly guide, and "Chasing Monarchs" is also queued up here.  One extra little fillip of personal interest is that I came to understand years ago, not long after reading Wintergreen, that a HS chum, teaching in the nether reaches of Western Washington at the time (it's not all about Seattle), struck up an acquaintance with RMP.  From reading Sky Time, I could see how that could happen.  Pyle seems like the sort of person many would naturally gravitate to.  The book really makes the landscape and surroundings of Grays River of personal interest.  The author was wise to have an endpiece that discouraged readers from relocating to GR.  His obvious joy in the place, a measure in equal parts of both the great beauty and attraction of the area and his and his partner's own very significant personal investment in making life work there, could easily mis-lure the innocent.

My encounter with the other book was serendipitous in its own way.  I don't even remember the connection, but I probably came upon "The Elderberry Tree" in an on-line search and the name was familiar. I vaguely remember reading Irving Petite's account of semi-homesteading on the slopes of Tiger Mountain just east of Issaquah probably back in the '60's.  Sort of in the Walden school, but less transcendental and philosophical.  More about the animal relationships, including an adopted fawn.  Petite also wrote about his raising of a bear cub in Mister B.  Pretty inspiring stuff, a great antidote to excess of pavement.

Thinking about these books brought to mind the classic Nat King Cole tune "Nature Boy" (eden ahbez the composer is quite a fascinating story on his own), which I suspect I heard more than a few times as a child.  I believe I may even have a copy of the sheet music.  I have no specific memories associated with the song from that time, but it has resonated with me ever since.  I find the title and tune wonderfully evocative in the general realm of Robinson Crusoe, James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small), Into the Wild, and Wyss (Swiss Family Robinson).  As it happens, of course, the actual lyrics go in a somewhat different, but also very uplifting direction:

There was a boy...
A very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea,
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.

And then one day,
A magic day, he passed my way.
And while we spoke of many things,
Fools and kings,
This he said to me,
The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return.