Distractions

Our clocks “fall back” on November 2, 2025. The transition to Daylight Savings Time is abrupt. When the skies get dark before 5pm, the motivation to get outside for a cool run or early season ski session fades a little. Workout habits will return as we get used to early sunsets. Until then, grab a good book. This month’s selection explores birds, bugs, trees, living off the grid and the fascinating connection between the mind and Mother Nature.

Woodpecker

A Year in the Life of North American Woodpeckers

Paul Bannick

Woodpeckers are one of the most remarkable bird species found in the avian world. They have evolved in ways that make them ecologically critical to forest health, serving as keystone species in a variety of wooded habitats across North America.

Paul Bannick captures the woodpeckers’ charismatic behavior as well as their colorful displays and sensitive habitats in fascinating images. With accessible, science-based text he compares and contrasts typical behavior and anomalies among the 41 woodpecker species in North America, and shares their conservation outlook for the future.

Tree Notes

Nalini Nadkarni

From a National Geographic explorer and forest ecologist, a charming collection of thought-provoking essays exploring the meaning of trees in our lives.

Telephone poles, baseball bats, railroad ties. Peaches, nutmeg, and vanilla. The more you look, the more you realize: Our world depends on products made from trees. Forest ecologist Nalini Nadkarni takes you on a worldwide journey to learn more about trees—their variety, their usefulness, their beauty, and their importance, not only to human culture, but to the entire natural world.

Nature & The Mind

Marc Berman

Dr. Marc Berman, the pioneering creator of the field of environmental neuroscience, has discovered the surprising connection between mind, body, and environment, with a special emphasis on the natural environment. If you sometimes feel drained, distracted, or depressed, Dr. Berman has identified the elements of a “nature prescription” that can boost your energy, sharpen your focus, change your mood, and improve your mental and physical health. This guide explains why and how nature is good for our brains and bodies and gives us a window into fundamental aspects of our psychology and physiology that can be improved through interactions with nature.

Following the Bend
How to Read a River and Understand Its Nature

Ellen Wohl

When we look at a river, either up close or while flying over a river valley, what are we really seeing? The book takes readers on a journey by water to find answers, along the way shedding light on the key concepts of modern river science, from hydrology and water chemistry to stream and wetland ecology. Sharing a new understanding of how rivers function as both physical systems and ecosystems, Following the Bend enables us to observe rivers with fresh eyes and more fully appreciate the beauty, vibrancy, and complexity of our planet’s vital waterways.

Insectopolis
A Natural History

Peter Kuper

This visually immersive work of graphic nonfiction dives into a world where ants, cicadas, bees, and butterflies visit a library exhibition that displays their stories and humanity’s connection to them throughout the ages. Kuper’s thrilling visual feast layers history and science, color and design, to tell the remarkable tales of dung beetles navigating by the stars, hawk-size prehistoric dragonflies hunting prey, and mosquitoes changing the course of human history.

Award-winning cartoonist Peter Kuper transports readers through the 400-million-year history of insects and the remarkable entomologists who have studied them.

The Way Home

Mark Boyle

In this lyrical account of a remarkable life without modern technology, Mark Boyle explores the hard won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the spring, foraging and fishing.

What he finds is an elemental life, one governed by the rhythms of the sun and seasons, where life and death dance in a primal landscape of blood, wood, muck, water, and fire – much the same life we have lived for most of our time on earth. Revisiting it brings a deep insight into what it means to be human at a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring. An honest, radical and moving account of life off the grid.