Chasing Spring: An American Journey Through a Changing Season

by Bruce Stutz

Book Overview

In the tradition of Blue Highways and Silent Spring , Chasing Spring follows nature's season of renewal even as it shows how the delicate mechanisms of spring are increasingly endangered by climate... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743262476
• ISBN13: 9780743262477
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Not Just Another Road Book

A journey of self discovery, as well as a journey exploring recent North American changes in Spring, this book is literate and erudite. As noted in comments above, it contains small factual errors, (analagous to claiming Martin Van Burean was the 12th President), but these do not detract from the over-all quality of nor the message of the book. I heartily recommend it to those interested in journies of self discovery as well as those concerned about global warming's effects.

Great for travel and science junkies

Bruce Stutz's writing is a joy to read. I love reading travel writing anyway, plus my favorite season is spring, so it's been a pleasure to read about the science behind the spring he experiences in different regions of the States. Also enjoyed learning the science behind global warming so I can use actual facts in debates with people who don't believe we play a role in it.

"Great car"

Bruce Stutz is a 56 year old Jewish naturalist writer from Brooklyn who after a heart-valve surgery decides to drive across the USA following the progress of Spring, moving generally from south to north (map of route included). I was drawn to this because I have driven across the USA on solo trips with no particular itinerary just exploring and was interested in traveling with a like-minded soul and seeing it from another perspective. Some of the highlites of the trip include small town mardi gras celebrations in Louisiana, the Punxsutawney Phil groundhog day, a tour of the now-defunct Biosphere and its lone remaining tour-guide/guard, hiking the deserts of AZ, the sandhills of Nebraska underneath which lies the largest aquafier of water in North America, difficult climbing in the mountains near Denver, birding on the salt flats, mushroom picking in the OR Cascade Mountains with Asian pickers (a fascinating and new phenomenon to me), flying into the ANWAR in Alaska with bush pilots. Throughout Stutz emphasis es the nature of change not only of the season into Spring, but of the changing weather and climate of the planet and how this is effecting the natural world visably today. Never preachy, it is a gentle and beautiful road-trip in a gas-guzzling 1983 Chevy, appropriately nick-named "Moby Dick" for its large "whale" of a size, white color, and for anyone who has read the novel, a metaphor for the elements of life that are out of our control. A book well worth reading for anyone interested in travel, nature, a changing world and the promise of Spring around the corner on a winters evening.