Unequal Hours: Moments of Being in the Natural World

In these jewel-like essays, Underhill invites readers to practice the difficult art of stillness. Quiet, small, transcendent moments of illumination that restore us to ourselves and to a sense of connection with all things can occur, she insists, while watching the rain, or sweeping the porch, or sitting and looking at the backyard. To commune with nature, she reassures readers, it's not necessary to emulate Thoreau, to leave home and go live in the woods. Underhill, who lives in western New York's rural Allegheny County (where she teaches at Alfred University), finds creative solitude in her yard and in a nearby private sanctuary, her family's farm, with its cabin by a pond. Of course, such idyllic settings aren't available to many, yet her keenly observant reflections--on wind, trees, birds, water, on nature's symphony of colors, on the spiritual rewards of gardens and gardening--overflow with evidence that nature watching has greatly enriched her life, and beckon us to do likewise. Underhill also follows engaging, serendipitous tangents, describing a ride on a hot-air balloon with a veteran pilot or exploring the roots of Christmas traditions in pagan Saturnalia. While her book opens by briefly describing a successful grassroots campaign to prevent former New York governor Mario Cuomo from placing a nuclear waste dump in Allegany County, and while Underhill bemoans the loss of wilderness that has drastically reduced the number of migrating songbirds in her area, this is not an environmentalist activist's screed. It's more a series of elegant meditations in the tradition of Wendell Berry, sprinkled with references to poetry, myth, science, Taoism, ecology and ancient customs. (Jan.)