Reviewed by Kelly Stewart

Ecologist Robert Michael Pyle has written more than a dozen books about the natural world, focusing on butterflies, logging’s effect on rural communities, and trekking through the forests where Bigfoot is said to roam. His latest volume, Sky Time in Gray’s River, is a beautifully written chronicle of the seasonal rhythms of living in a small town in Southwest Washington. Pyle structures the book with 12 chapters, each representing a month of the year, but he assembles the chapters from 30 years of careful observation of the rain-soaked place he calls home.

 “I know of no better way to get to the heart of a place than through its phenology – the progression of the seasons as told by its animal and plant appearances,” Pyle writes. He doesn’t have to venture far to find colorful stories. In the leaky basement of his old house, he finds a wood rat’s nest, which he picks apart and catalogues like an archivist (he finds, among other things, a missing sock, a list handwritten by his wife, and drumsticks from his days in a marching band). There are honeybees nesting in the wall, and mating slugs, rapturously intertwined, in the backyard. He tells these tales with contagious joy.

The meatiest parts of Pyle’s book are his musings about the inhabitants of Gray’s River. Descendents of the village’s original settlers still live in town; the telephone company is owned by a neighbor who adds tidbits of Gray’s River history to the phone directory; and a walk to retrieve the mail might involve a bit of bird-watching with the postmaster. Yet over the years, the town’s logging and dairy industries have faded, and outside developers have proposed building new homes in the river’s flood plain.

Although Pyle’s neighbors in Gray’s River might disagree about politics, they concur that their simple way of life is something to be treasured. Pyle writes, “Maybe we’ll endure, even thrive, in this backwater where cell phones don’t work every well and where computer games go cold in haying season, when there is always summer work for young, strong kids willing to heave bales into the back of a pickup, their tanned arms scratched by hay and berry vines.” As the country relies more on virtual and electronic communication, it’s refreshing to know that people can sit down, have a piece of pie at the local Grange, and actually talk.