![]() ![]() The river seemed inscrutable, but alive with possibility.” Gierach writes about both patience and process, and he describes the long spells between catches as the fisherman’s equivalent of writer’s block. In one representatively poetic passage, he writes, “it was a chilly fall afternoon with the leaves changing, the current whispering, and a pale moon in a daytime sky. It is the everything else that has earned Gierach the following of fellow writers and legions of readers who may not even fish but are drawn to his musings on community, culture, the natural world, and the seasons of life. The latest collection of interrelated essays by the veteran fishing writer.Īs in his previous books-from The View From Rat Lake through All Fishermen Are Liars-Gierach hones in on the ups and downs of fishing, and those looking for how-to tips will find plenty here on rods, flies, guides, streams, and pretty much everything else that informs the fishing life. For readers who like their pets on the hazardous side-and those readers are in for a treat. Pigs eat just about anything, he writes, including the runts of their litters most humans are more selective, but we do eat 88 million pigs each year, for which we employ specialists who ensure that they mate more effectively than nature intended-a tale not for the easily offended, and which Grice clearly delights in relating. Grice writes with ironic humor, especially when his investigations take turns that are of questionable taste. ``We're not pure predators like the mantid, but we have the equipment to be,'' he writes we also, he continues in a later essay, have a feral and fearsome capacity ``to murder, to become demonic,'' much more so than any other creature. Neither does he shy from making sweeping judgments about the human-and animal-condition, as when, without venturing into the murky realm of sociobiology, he likens people to the hunting creatures of whom he's so clearly fond. Grice is not afraid to commit the naturalist's no-no of anthropomorphism in his view, caterpillars are stupid, wolves intelligent, tarantulas sneaky. For the black widow spider he professes a fascination bordering on love, although he recognizes their danger to unwary humans for the brown recluse, a more dangerous creature still, he exhibits a healthy respect for all the creatures who fall under his survey, he has many sympathies. He gives all of them respectful due in this collection of natural history essays. First-time author Grice, whose piece ``Black Widow'' was anthologized in Best American Essays 1996, is a longtime resident of rural western Oklahoma, where creatures like spiders, coyotes, and rattlesnakes abound. A nicely written, appropriately gruesome look at black widows, brown recluses, tarantulas, and other creepy-crawlies.
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