The Nature Pages

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	The Pine Island Paradox by Kathleen Dean Moore Milkweed Editions, 2004 Order a copy
	This collection of short personal essays, linked by the island as a metaphor for nature and the human condition, confronts the dissonance of our philosophical divisions and finds renewed faith in nature's interconnected harmonies.		.
	"In this book, I want to take the measure of three insulae, three separations drawn onto the worldviews of the Western world," Kathleen Dean Moore explains. "The first is the claim that human beings are separate from, and superior to, nature." The other two separations are the divides between what is near in time and space and what is far away (near/far) and the split between the mundane and the sacred ("the idea that we live in a material world that has only instrumental value, apart from the sacred, the intrinsically valuable, which exists on a different plane, if it exists at all").		"At night, the boundaries of our bodies fade into darkness, and we become pure feeling extended into space. The substance of the world fades, too, leaving only sense impressions -- the sweetness of the trees, the dampness of the air. Lying in the boat, I am perception and speculation linked by moving air to the universe."
	But while Moore's intent is scholarly, the style of her essays is accessibly down-to-earth, finding bridges for the divides in stories about witnessing the mating dance of grouse on the high desert, discovering nature at home rather than far away, recognizing redemption in the charred embers of a wildfire.
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