Fine Nature Writing Alive And Well

"Loren Eiseley would have loved this book." Roger de Rageot, PhD (Sorbonne), Curator Emeritis, former Norfolk Museum of Natural History. A nature book for nature lovers. The Embracing Forest concerns a young naturalist growing up in a small 1950's town snuggled up to Georgia's Pine Mountain, part of the Great Pine Forest. The book remembers the boys, beasts and bullies -- the escapes into the woods to find peace and wisdom. It's about animal behavior observed and the boy's realization that animal behavior and human behavior are intimately related -- indeed the same. It's also beautifully written. God bless the boys and beasts of Fulgham's pine forest.

    
By Roger de Rageot, Dr. Sci. (Sorbonne)
     Remember the innocent '50's and '60's in America when wonderfully written nature books topped the Best Seller lists every week? Well, those times may be coming back, thanks to naturalists like Richard Lee Fulgham.
    His book "The Embracing Woods" hasn't hit the best selling strata yet but it's well on its way -- at least among online booksellers. Its brisk sales prove that more and more Americans want peace and quiet -- and the gentle breezes that waft over cold streams in autumn -- and the heart touching scenes of deer wild and free in the forests of forever -- and the wisdom which comes with watching animal behavior in the wild and realizing in our poetic subconscious that the way of the wild is also the way of our human friends.
    Fulgham writes about growing up on Georgia's famous Pine Mountain, the southernmost tip of the Appalachian Range. He writes about his boyhood friends in the small town of Manchester in Meriwether County, cut through by the mighty Flint and Chattahoochee rivers, land covered with a carpet of pines and pine needles.
    He writes about his hilarious but human-all-too-human buddies -- Pootaroot, Willy, Roundtree and Marvin. In them he sees the same behavior and animal instincts he sees in the wild animals he observes in the Great Pine Forest. He writes with a great nostalgia for more innocent days and with a tremendous knowledge of wild animals. And his ability to see his human friends in the same light as his wild animal friends reveals a wisdom beyond wisdom, an understanding of the marvelous cycles and laws of Nature.
     So -- if you're a Nature Lover like myself -- I suggest you get a copy of "The Embracing Woods", settle down near a stream, listen to the orchestra of birds and crickets, and read your way into a natural world which we humans have too long forgotten.
     "The Embracing Woods" is now available at www.Lulu.com (key in title) and will soon be avialable at all major books stores, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Etc.
     (Note: this review was written by Roger de Rageot, Dr. Sci. (Sorbonne), curator emeritus of the former Noroflk Museum of Natural History.)