A Painter’s Lifeis a rare glimpse into the mind of an uncompromising painter. Mari Lyons was a life-long “every-day” painter and from an early journal she kept for a short time she reveals the heartbreaks, the pain of rejection, the intense and abiding love of her work, and the quiet triumphs of a painter juggling the demanding life of a mother of four, a busy husband, constant financial pressure; she had a fierce desire to make ever-better work, and for her work to become more vi...

This ample selection of articles and essays by one of America’s most popular writers about fly-fishing begins with a moment on Michigan’s Au Sable River—the exact moment when the author lost his heart to fly-fishing. This collection chronicles a fishing life punctuated by a revealing trip with one of his grown sons and mellow reflections from a hospital bed.This is the broadest of Nick Lyons’s books, with sections on tarpon and pike fishing in the Marquesas and in France, bass bugg...

All fishermen who have fished for a lifetime have baskets of great stories and reminiscences about the sport they love. Nick Lyons’s new collection is chock-full of them. From fishing a small Catskill creek and catching a huge brook trout when he was barely out of infancy to long opening day treks during his teens, and then on to fishing in France, Iceland, Key West, Montana, and widely elsewhere, Nick has spent a lifetime on the water.Fishing Stories features tales about ...

“Spring Creek is everything a fishing book should be,” says Craig Nova. “It has the ability to convey the magic that always exists between somebody who loves fishing and a particular piece of water that endlessly lives up to its end of the bargain.” It has been called Lyons's masterpiece.The river is one of those rare places where the trout are as long as your arm but also exceedingly difficult to catch. Lyons explores its secrets and confronts its greatest challenges. At first he ...

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers.Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders collects forty of John Gierach’s finest essays on fishing from six of his books. Like all his writing, these essays are seasoned by a keen sense of observation and a deep knowledge and love of fishing lore, leavened by a wonderfully wry sense of humor. Gierach often begins with an observa...

Whether we live in cities, suburbs, or villages, we are encroaching on nature, and it in one way or another perseveres. Naturalist Susan Shetterly looks at how animals, humans, and plants share the land—observing her own neighborhood in rural Maine. She tells tales of the locals (humans, yes, but also snowshoe hares, raccoons, bobcats, turtles, salmon, ravens, hummingbirds, cormorants, sandpipers, and spring peepers). She expertly shows us how they all make their way in an ever-changing ha...

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers.“Good fishing and good writing use the same skills,” writes John Gierach, “whether you’re after a trout or a story, you won’t get that far with brute force. You’re better off to watch, wait, and remain calm…letting it all happen, rather than trying to make it happen.” As the wry and perceptive essays in Another Lousy Day in...

In 26 giant photographs—of a roaring grizzly, a piranhas razor-sharp teeth, a rattlesnakes poisonous fangs—Seymour Simon reveals the truth about natures most misunderstood animals and lets the reader decide what to really think about natures grossest, fiercest, and most fascinating survivors.

Can the love reserved for family and friends be extended to a place? "Luminous essays" on nature and environmental stewardship ( Booklist).Named one of the Top Ten Northwest Books of the Year by the OregonianIn this book, acclaimed author Kathleen Dean Moore, a winner of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award for Holdfast, reflects on how deeply the environment is entrenched in the human spirit, despite the notion that nature and hum...

Bright Rivers chronicles the angling passions and frustrations of one of fly-fishing's greatest men of letters.A city dweller trapped in the complexities of modern life, Nick Lyons has always found solace in his pilgrimages to great rivers. It is there that he fishes for trout, and in Bright Rivers, Lyons recounts the sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious experiences of his expeditions to Delaware, Beaverkill, Madison, Big Hole, and Yellowstone rivers, sharing rem...

Most fishermen have longed to catch a big catfish. Some have, and some have only talked of how the big one got away. Through years of experience with fishing, I have learned how to catch the big ones and decided to share some of my secrets with you. If youre fishing with a rod and reel, it is very important to know how to bait your hook and when to set it, to know when to fish and how to use limb lines, and to know the size of hook to use and the depth to fish. I discuss all of these thing...

Throughout his career, Harry Middleton contributed hundreds of stories, essays, and book reviews to some of the most respected periodicals, including the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Field & Stream, Country Journal, Smithsonian, and Sierra, among others. When he died in 1993, Middleton left behind a legacy rich with mountain streams, wild trout, and fishermen’s dreams.In That Sweet Co...