Chasing Lakes

An aquatic ecologist and permafrost scientist recalls her captivating adventures across the Arctic studying climate change, her quest to find belonging and family, and her journey of faith in a world of science in this poignant, eye-opening, and hopeful memoir in the spirit of Lab Girl, Educated, and Finding the Mother Tree. Katey Walter Anthony’s enchantment with lakes began when she was growing up amid the Sierra Nevada mountains. Today, her love for these bodies of water have taken her to the deepest reaches of Alaska and Siberia, where she is undertaking pioneering research on methane emissions. Chasing Lakes is her story: one-part adventure—complete with shipwrecks and treacherous treks through Arctic storms by helicopter, snowmobile, and foot to measure greenhouse gases—part coming-of-age tale, as she searches for belonging in the wake of a broken childhood, and part spiritual quest to find a wholeness science cannot fill. Somewhere between the remote, frozen landscapes of Siberia and her rough cabin in Alaska, she discovers her spiritual and emotional home when she meets Peter, a bright and humble Minnesota farmer who reinvigorates her faith and helps ground her. Yet finding love and fulfillment brings its own challenges. The closer she gets to having the family she’s always wanted, the further she’s pushed from the important field work that is her passion. Chasing Lakes is a chronicle of a woman seeking truth, adventure, scientific discovery, family, love, and grace. Both an eye-opening look from the frontlines of the climate crisis and an intimate portrait of a brilliant scientist, Chasing Lakes is memoir writing at its finest: beautiful, complex, revelatory, and moving.

Circles and the Cross is an invitation to explore two mysteries. One is the miracle of the cosmos: why is there something and not nothing? The other is the miracle of consciousness: why should this collection of stardust be an I and not just an it? Our basic response to those mysteries is wonder, and from wonder have grown the three great trees of human culture: religion, art, and science. This exploration is undertaken in the light of a third mystery: the cross of Christ is the clearest picture we have of the triune Creator of both cosmos and consciousness. That self-emptying of the Creator out of love for the creation helps us understand the pleasures, paradoxes, and pains of science; it helps us understand how “evolution” can be another name for creation; it casts light on the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In particular, it illuminates the environmental movement: an ethic in search of a religion. Loren Wilkinson, drawing on fifty years of teaching and writing about our relationship to creation, invites you to join this journey into understanding how the cross of Christ sheds light on the mysteries that surround us—and gives us hope in a difficult age.

Woven together as a text of humanities-based environmental research outcomes, Himalayan Climes and Multispecies Encounters hosts a collection of historical and fieldwork-based case studies and conceptual discussions of climate change in the greater Himalayan region. The collective endeavour of the book is expressed in what the editors characterize as the clime studies of the Himalayan multispecies worlds. Synonymous with place embodied with weather patterns and environmental history, clime is understood as both a recipient of and a contributor to climate change over time. Supported by empirical and historical findings, the chapters showcase climate change as clime change that concurrently entails multispecies encounters, multifaceted cultural processes, and ecologically specific environmental changes in the more-than-human worlds of the Himalayas. As the case studies complement, enrich, and converse with natural scientific understandings of Himalayan climate change, this book offers students, academics, and the interested public fresh approaches to the interdisciplinary field of climate studies and policy debates on climate change and sustainable development.

The internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers crafts a love letter to his native land and one of its most unique inhabitants: the kangaroo. Drawing on three decades of travel, research, and field work, Tim Flannery shows us how the destiny of the extraordinary kangaroo is inseparable from the environment that created it. Along the way he uses encounters with ancient aboriginal cultures, eccentric fossil hunters, farmers, scientists, kangaroo advocates, and kangaroo hunters, to explore how Australia’s deserts and rain forests have shaped human responses to the continent—and how kangaroos have evolved to handle the resulting challenges. Ultimately, Chasing Kangaroos is a captivating blend of memoir, travel, natural history, and evolutionary science—and further proof of Flannery’s “offhand interdisciplinary brilliance” (Entertainment Weekly). “Absorbing, funny, and wonderfully learned.” —Bill Bryson, New York Times–bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods

Although no one had ever followed North American monarch butterflies on their annual southward journey to Mexico and California, in the 1990s there were well-accepted assumptions about the nature and form of the migration. But to Robert Michael Pyle, a naturalist with long experience in monarch conservation, the received wisdom about the butterflies’ long journey just didn’t make sense. In the autumn of 1996 he set out to uncover the facts, to pursue the tide of “cinnamon sailors” on their long, mysterious flight. Chasing Monarchs chronicles Pyle’s 9,000-mile journey to discover firsthand the secrets of the monarchs’ annual migration. Part road trip, part outdoor adventure, and part natural history study, Pyle’s book overturns old theories and provides insights both large and small regarding monarch butterflies, their biology, and their spectacular migratory travels. Since the book’s first publication, its controversial conclusions have been fully confirmed, and monarchs are better understood than ever before. The Afterword for this volume includes not only updated information on the myriad threats to monarch butterflies, but also various efforts under way to ensure the future of the world’s most amazing butterfly migration.

This publication contains reports of ten case studies of freshwater fisheries in southern Africa which were conducted in five medium-sized lakes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Five of the case studies focus on the biological and environmental effects of fishing while the remaining five are concerned with historical and sociological analysis.

Steelhead is the most sought-after Great Lakes species, attracting fly fishers from around the country. Guide extraordinaire Karl Weixlmann provides a thorough compendium of information, tips, and tech niques for any angler chasing the elusive salmon, trout, and steelhead of the Great Lakes. Includes recipes for 86 flies and photo sequences of five casting and fishing techniques.

Comprehensive look at fly fishing across the Great Lakes.