Before the Echo: Essays on Nature

by Pete Dunne

"The natural world is a lot like a game of musical chairs," observes Pete Dunne. "Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, there are places where living things sit down, niches that support their specific needs. But just as in musical chairs, there aren't enough places to go around. Our species keeps removing them—forcing other creatures to leave the game." In these twenty-nine essays, one of America's top nature writers trains his sights on the beauties and the vulnerabilities of the natural world. Writing to infuse others with a sense of the richness and diversity that nature holds, Pete Dunne ranges over topics from the wonder of the year's first snowfall to the lost art of stargazing to the mysterious forces that impel people to hunt—and not to hunt. Running like a thread through all the essays is Dunne's desire to preserve all that is "natural" in nature, to stop our unthinking destruction of wild places and wild creatures before we humans find ourselves with "the last chair, in an empty room" on an impoverished earth.

Genres: Nature

156 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1995

Reviews

[Ellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Dunne writes so beautifully about the wonders of the natural world and our responsibility to maintain it. But rather than sounding preachy, his prose is easy and absorbing, like listening to Garrison Keillor's tales of Lake Wobegon. In one essay, he muses on the history of a vintage spent shotgun shell his dog digs up. Who shot it and when, and was its target a woodcock, a grouse, or a rabbit? In another essay, a skunk comes out of hibernation to find a new house where its den used to be. Desperate and confused, he shelters in a woodpile in the garage. The consequences are funny but to the point. The wild animals are losing habitat with every new housing project and office complex. He talks of our need to get close to nature in real time, seeing what we can see in an afternoon, in a season, in a year, one day at a time. Only then can we truly appreciate what we have in our own backyards, and only then can we understand the need to preserve it.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful read recommended by a friend. Dunne is a nature writer, a birder and environmentalist, among other things. He lives and works in New Jersey for the Audubon Society. These essays cover everything from conserving the land to dogs, foxes, fishing, turtles, falling leaves and his favorite people. I was especially smitten with his essay about fireflies (a being I've never seen living in Oregon). A book you want to read curled up in a blanket by the fire.