Grow Old And Die Young
Bollingen Prize winning writer Fred Chappell says, "Her is memoir, meditation series, poetry, photo/art gallery, nature notebook, scientific ponderance, and exhortation for the protection of the wild. It is handsome to look at, fun to repage through, a joy to display . . . a grand collector's item. Future folks will come looking."
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT:
How can we say we love nature when nature shows no love for us, does not acknowledge either our cruelty or our kindness? The answer is a paradox. We are one of millions of forms life takes. We are made of the same molecules and atoms as lifeless mountains, clouds, and oceans, stars and comets. Yet we are uniquely different because we are conscious, because we can remember the past and imagine the future, and because we can love. And only when we can fall in love with the world that does not love us back, the world that will ultimately consume us, only then do we fully realize our most positive human power.
Despite all we have inflicted on the natural world around us, we are the only species that cares for the world as a whole. We care because we come to recognize more than biology; more than costs and benefits. We want to preserve what we love. Grow Old And Die Young is that necessary love story. Through the story of a man who has traveled much of the world and seen its achievements and tragedies, this story connects the soggy, muddy, salty, marshy, mosquito clouded, and subtly beautiful world of coastal wetlands to every human heart.