Join Greenbelt Land Trust and the Spring Creek Project for a special reading by poet, essayist, naturalist, lepidopterist, and author Robert Michael Pyle. Pyle will read from his new poetry book, Chinook and Chanterelle (Lost Horse Press) and a new collection of essays, Through a Green Lens: Fifty Years of Writing for Nature (OSU Press). Rich in natural images, stories, and indelible episodes from the whole world around us, Pyle’s writings also track the territory of loss and grief as it rises into the higher ground of rediscovery, redemption, and re-enchantment. His poems and essays exalt the ordinary even as they find the extraordinary in physical details that we too often look right through. This event is part of the 8th Annual Natural Areas Celebration Week.
Robert Michael Pyle was born and raised in Colorado and has lived in the Pacific Northwest, California, New England, and Great Britain. His B.Sc. in Nature Perception and Protection and M.Sc. in Nature Interpretation from the University of Washington were followed by a Ph.D. in Lepidoptera Ecology and Conservation from Yale University. He worked as Ranger-Naturalist in Sequoia National Park, butterfly conservation consultant for the government of Papua New Guinea, Northwest Land Steward for The Nature Conservancy, and co-manager of the Species Conservation Monitoring Center in Cambridge, U.K. In 1971, he founded the international Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (http://www.xerces.org/).
For thirty-four years, Pyle has been an independent, full-time biologist, writer, teacher, and speaker. He has published hundreds of articles, essays, papers, stories, and poems, and twenty books. They include Wintergreen, The Thunder Tree, Where Bigfoot Walks, Chasing Monarchs, Walking the High Ridge, Sky Time in Gray’s River, and Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year; as well as two poetry collections, and a flight of butterfly books including The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies and The Butterflies of Cascadia. Chinook & Chanterelle: Poems and Through a Green Lens: Fifty Years of Writing for Nature appeared in 2016. Pyle’s books have won the John Burroughs Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Governor’s Writer’s Awards, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Harry Nehls Award for Nature Writing, and the National Outdoor Book Award for natural history literature, among other awards.
“I’ve always felt there is something sacred in a piece of paper that travels the earth from hand to hand, head to head, heart to heart.”
― Robert Michael Pyle, Sky Time in Gray’s River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place
Event Location
Corvallis Public Library, Main Meeting Room – 645 NW Monroe Ave., Corvallis
Contact
No registration required. Please contact Jessica with any questions.
Natural Areas Celebration Week
This event is sponsored by Greenbelt Land Trust, the Spring Creek Project, Friends of the Library, and Grassroots Books, and is part of Natural Areas Celebration Week.
Natural Areas Celebration Week has something for everyone! Natural resource partners throughout the region join together during this week to highlight their projects and to celebrate the incredible resources in our backyard here in the mid-Valley. From walks to talks, open houses, local food and drinks, and more, you are sure to have a great time! Find the entire week’s calendar HERE.
