Set Free in China: Sojourns on the Edge

Blood Brook is an unpretentious stream in Vermont, one of two main feeders of Lake Fairlee. It also runs through the homesite of Levin, a talented naturalist and storyteller who imbues these 18 essays with both a sense of nature and an intimate sense of place. From the sequential ripening of fruits with their concurrent displays of colors, timed to satisfy the needs of migrating birds, to the travails of transporting a 30-pound snapping turtle in a stick-shift car, Levin weaves the various aspects of Blood Brook into an accessible whole. When his small son wearies of a nature talk about insects, Levin challenges him to a game of ``Let's get the Cricket.'' When his wife incinerates a black widow spider nest near their son's play area, there are no crocodile tears for the arachnid. For Levin, death's shroud is part of the cloth of nature. Indeed, his description of a bee, destroyed by two ambush bugs as it sips nectar, is strangely, hauntingly beautiful. He even sees extinction as part of nature, dismissing as folly the attempt to save the California condor. Levin ( The Curious Naturalist ) doesn't sugarcoat nature, but his work is all the more fascinating for that. (Sept.)