The Sylvan Path: A Journey Through America's Forests

In prose as inviting and uplifting as a walk in the woods, naturalist Ferguson (Spirits of the Wild) shares his lifelong passion for the forest and the lives of the people he meets there. With the woodlands of his childhood nearly extinct, the author, a former forest-service ranger in his mid-30s, sets off in his Chevy van in search of the vanishing, natural world. In Maine, he helps to construct a Penobscot wigwam from sheets of birch paper, meets members of a fishing camp and provides the reader with such a strong sense of place that the scent of pine seems to rise from the pages. In New Hampshire, he visits the farm of poet Robert Frost (""Yankee-spare, uncluttered, functional""), then continues through Appalachia to Tennessee (rich in vegetation, moonshiners and marijuana growers) and back through his native Indiana, where Frost's timeless question ""Whose woods are these?"" seems to have been answered by the land developers. Ferguson has a gentle way of standing beside his story, letting the farmers, faith healers, dog-sled mushers, canoe-builders and marijuana growers spin history, myth and love of the woodlands through their own dialect and anecdotes. With a sense of discovery, humor and a deep reverence for his subject, the author reclaims the natural world for himself, and for the reader as well. (Mar.)