Meyer (author of the unlikely international bestseller How to Shit in the Woods) offers a thoughtful and irreverent account of her life cohabitating with bats, skunks, mice and an Irish gypsy horseshoer named Patrick McCarron, in a 75-year-old dairy barn in Montana's rural Bitterroot Valley. Meyer describes the couple's struggles to balance the needs of the natural world with their own, recounting many amusing anecdotes to support her contention that "the person passionate to live gently, with cheek and ear to the ground, is mightily challenged to figure out how." For instance, efforts to control deer mice and cluster flies, both of which threaten to overrun her barn, lead to questions of the power that "ordinary, all-powerful Homo sapiens" have to determine which species will survive. The couple learns to adapt to such unusual circumstances as baby bats dive-bombing them at night and skunks spraying the barn during their mating season. Meyer also helps care for bears driven from their habitat by sprawling towns and lack of food, and reflects on the decline of native trout populations. Drawing on interviews with local naturalists and scientists, including well-known writer David Quammen (Song of the Dodo), she provides a wealth of information about each species, though at times gets bogged down in unnecessary detail. Although mostly focused on environmental concerns, Meyer's loosely structured account does include personal elements, including frequent references to Patrick and an account of their empowering journey across the Continental Divide via covered wagon, yielding a compelling portrait of a life lived close to nature. (Aug.)
