BOOKMONGER
DEFENDING NATURE’S RICH SONGBOOK
‘Earth’s Wild Music’
explores terrain, wildlife
Kathleen Dean Moore’s latest essay col-
lection, “Earth’s Wild Music,” is a book for
our times.
Moore is a philosopher, environmental-
ist and interdisciplinary educator who had
a long affi liation with Oregon State Univer-
sity. She left academia in 2013 and has since
dedicated herself to amplifying humani-
ty’s moral imperative to understand and heal
the environmental degradation that humans
have caused. It has been an uphill battle.
In these writings, Moore uses the irre-
sistible siren songs of the natural world to
draw readers in. Early on, she notes, dino-
saurs could not vocalize in the way of many
animals today — they were alive before
voice box organs had evolved. Although,
scientists believe dinos were able to hiss
or blow air through resonance chambers in
their skulls.
Song didn’t begin to fl ourish until the
development of an organ called the syrinx
in birds, which has been detected in 67-mil-
lion-year-old bird fossils. Mammals devel-
oped something similar — the larynx.
“Now the whole Earth chimes, from
deep in the sea to high in the atmosphere,
with the sounds of snapping shrimp, sing-
ing mice, roaring whales, moaning bears,
clattering dragonfl ies, and a fi sh calling like
a foghorn,” Moore writes. “Who could cat-
alog the astonishing oeuvre of the Earth?”
With her own philosophical bent for
wonder and a poetic capacity for fi nely
honed cadence, Moore takes readers with
her as she roams the varied habitats of
western North America. Whether on the
grasslands of Saskatchewan, the islands of
southeast Alaska or the dunes of Oregon’s
coast, she explores the terrain and the wild-
life that inhabit it.
The immediacy of Moore’s writing is a
joy. From her descriptions, you will think
your ears are still ringing from that crack of
thunder over the marsh — or that you were
the one to experience the unnerving eyesh-
ine of spiders. Every essay is a sortie into
deep engagement with the natural world.
But then there is the capper at the end of
each piece.
After you have had a chance to get to
know the charms of the Arizona desert, for
14 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
This week’s book
‘Earth’s Wild Music’ by
Kathleen Dean Moore
Counterpoint — 272 pages — $26
instance, a little gray box con-
tains this factoid: in Saguaro
National Park, a place dedi-
cated to the preservation of
that iconic cactus, “estab-
lishment of young saguaros
has nearly ceased since the
early 1990s,” according to
the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature.
The decline is attributed to
drought and extreme heat
events associated with cli-
mate change.
There is a dreaded gray
box at the end of every
chapter and each contains a
dire statistic: the decline of
migratory shorebirds; the
fragmentation of habitat
for red-legged frogs; the
global shrinkage of for-
ests; the rise of bone mar-
row cancer in humans and
so on.
Moore rolls all of
these into 250-plus pages
of keen observations
about the splendor of our
home planet and how
human activity and apa-
thy are rapidly devas-
tating it. “Earth’s Wild
Music” is a lamentation,
an exaltation, an impas-
sioned indictment and
most defi nitely a call to
action.
The Bookmonger is
Barbara Lloyd McMi-
chael, who writes this
weekly column focusing
on the books, authors
and publishers of the
Pacifi c Northwest.
Contact her at bar-
baralmcm@gmail.
com.