Wild Thoughts from Wild Places

by Quammen, David; Golden, Renee Wayne; Guarnaschelli, Maria

• ISBN13: 9780684835099
• ISBN10: 0684835096
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-02-01
• Publisher: Scribner

Summary

For the past two decades, David Quammen has followed winding trails and fresh lines of thought through the world's outback. This book is a collection of twenty-three of Quammen's most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces. In it you will meet seasoned professional kayakers on the Futaleufu River of southern Chile, where Quammen describes how it feels to travel in fast company and flail for survival in the river's maw. You will be introduced to the commerce in pearls (and black-market parrots) in the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia and taken ambivalently along on a lion-hunting excursion through the mountains of Montana. At the Cincinnati Zoo, there is a lesson to be learned about the ugly truth behind those beautiful white tigers, and the celebration of a fiftieth wedding anniversary serves as occasion for pondering Einstein's ideas on the relativity of time. Even within the boundaries of smog-choked Los Angeles, Quammen finds wildness - embodied in an elusive population of urban coyotes, too stubborn and too clever to surrender to the sprawl of civilization.

Table of Contents

Introduction	11	(8)
I. THE RIVER	19	(62)
Synecdoche and the Trout	19	(8)
Time and Tide on the Ocoee River	27	(19)
Vortex	46	(10)
Only Connect	56	(10)
Grabbing the Loop	66	(15)
II. THE CITY	81	(48)
The White Tigers of Cincinnati	81	(9)
To Live and Die in L.A.	90	(10)
Reaction Wood	100	(9)
Superdove on 46th Street	109	(9)
Before the Fall	118	(11)
III. THE MOUNTAINS	129	(70)
Pinhead Secrets	129	(13)
The Keys to Kingdom Come	142	(13)
Karl's Sense of Snow	155	(10)
The Trees Cry Out on Currawong Moor	165	(13)
The Big Turn	178	(9)
Eat of This Flesh	187	(12)
IV. THE HEART	199	(70)
The Swallow That Hibernates Underwater	199	(9)
Trinket from Aru	208	(10)
Bagpipes for Ed	218	(8)
Point of Attachment	226	(10)
Voice Part for a Duet	236	(9)
Love in the Age of Relativity	245	(8)
Strawberries Under Ice	253	(16)
Notes and Provenance	269	(6)
Bibliography	275	(18)
Index	293