Gary Ferguson

Author of Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone

39 Works 580 Members 20 Reviews

About the Author

Gary Ferguson's nature articles have appeared in dozens of national magazines, and he lectures regularly on wilderness and conservation issues. A longtime Rocky Mountain resident naturalist, he lives in Montana

Works by Gary Ferguson

Popular Recent

Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone (2003) 45 copies, 3 reviews

Walking Down the Wild: A Journey Through the Yellowstone Rockies (1993) 45 copies, 2 reviews

The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World (2019) 44 copies, 2 reviews

The Great Divide: A Biography of the Rocky Mountains (2004) 43 copies

Care & Breeding of Chameleons (1995) — Editor — 40 copies, 2 reviews

The Yellowstone Wolves: The First Year (1996) 37 copies, 1 review

Spirits of the Wild: The World's Great Nature Myths (1996) 37 copies, 1 review

National Geographic Guide to America's Outdoors: New England (2000) 30 copies

The Carry Home (2014) 30 copies, 1 review

Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West (2017) 29 copies, 5 reviews

Through the Woods: A Journey Through America's Forests (The Sylvan Path) (1997) 22 copies, 2 reviews

Shouting at the Sky: Troubled Teens and the Promise of the Wild (1999) 22 copies, 1 review

The Sylvan Path: A Journey Through America's Forests (1997) 20 copies

Rites of Passage: Celebrating Life's Changes (1998) 15 copies

Rocky Mountain Walks (1993) 15 copies

Walks of the Pacific Northwest (1991) 15 copies

Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome: Sexuality, Identity, and Community in Early Modern Europe (2016) 12 copies

On Distant Ground : the Art of Scott L. Christensen (2000) 8 copies

Walks of California (1987) 8 copies

Freewheeling: Bicycling the Open Road (1984) 7 copies

Walks of New England (1989) 7 copies

Northwest Walks (1995) 6 copies

Montana National Forests (National Forests of America Series) (1990) 6 copies

National Geographic Guide to America's Outdoors: Southern Rockies (2001) 5 copies

New England Walks (1995) 5 copies

Walks of the Rockies (1988) 5 copies

As Oito Grandes Lições da Natureza O que a natureza nos ensina sobre viver bem no mundo 3 copies

Queer (re)readings in the French Renaissance : homosexuality, gender, culture (2008) 3 copies

Opening Doors: Carole Noon and Her Dream to Save the Chimps (2014) 3 copies

A companion to Marguerite de Navarre (2013) 2 copies

Die acht großen Lehren der Natur (2020) 2 copies

Nature's Keeper: John Ripley Forbes and the Children's Nature Movement (2012) 2 copies

God Wars: When Science and Religion Collide (2015) 1 copy

I'm Really Leaving (1995) 1 copy

Die acht großen Lehren der Natur: Was wir von Tieren und Pflanzen lernen können (2020) 1 copy

The Great Divide The Rocky Mountains in the American Mind 1 copy

World's Great Nature Myths, The : Previously Published as Spirits of the Wind 1 copy

Through the Woods 1 copy

Mirroring belief : Marguerite de Navarre's devotional poetry (1992) 1 copy

Work Explorer

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(5) America (5) animals (9) chameleons (7) conservation (3) environment (4) fiction (3) folklore (5) grief (3) herps (3) hiking (14) history (8) Idaho (4) melony-office (4) memoir (10) Montana (14) myths (3) natural history (12) nature (46) New England (5) non-fiction (35) outdoors (11) paperback (4) reptiles (5) Rocky Mountains (6) science (4) Science & Nature (3) spirituality (3) The West (4) to-read (12) travel (25) trees (4) unread (5) USA (5) walking (5) wilderness (6) wolves (10) Wyoming (7) Yellowstone (11) Yellowstone National Park (9)

Common Knowledge

Birthdate: 1956-06-08
Gender: male
Nationality: USA

Members

Reviews

Eight Master Lessons of Nature by Gary Ferguson

I received 'Eight Master Lessons of Nature' as a Christmas present. The cover is very pretty, however I was a little wary as there's no information about the author to be found in the blurb or opening pages. When reading non-fiction, I like to have some expectations of style: journalistic, academic, memoir, etc. When I began reading, I found the folksy American tone a bit trying at first, as it seemed somewhat inappropriate for a white American man to be opining on the importance of nature. However, my initial qualms were soothed as Ferguson displayed a pleasing self-awareness and sincerity that I came to appreciate.

There are definitely elements on memoir here, however the book is largely a paean to the natural world and spending time with it. A variety of literary and oral tradition sources are drawn upon to supplement personal experience. There are some broad generalisations about the Enlightenment, but nothing that seemed incorrect or wholly misinterpreted. Rather than stimulating the tiresomely pedantic academic part of my brain, reading '8 Master Lessons of Nature' brought back happy memories of wandering through meadows, along rivers, and across moors in years past. I'm fundamentally an indoor person, yet lockdown has led me to appreciate glimpses of nature in my daily walks that I'd previously taken for granted. Spotting ducklings, identifying fritillaries, listening to a river babble, and seeing unfurling fern fronds have all disproportionately lifted my spirits. In short, once I became used to the style of writing, I found myself greatly in agreement with the book's thesis, for example:

However, the idea of kicking ourselves out of the garden as a kind of self-punishment is itself a trap, a kind of binary thinking, which, in its own way, is an act of separation no less objectifying than the Greek idea that nature could only be studied by standing outside it. We don't get to throw ourselves out of the garden. We remain connected because that's the only way any of us gets to live on this planet. We can grieve our mistakes, take a couple of deep breaths, and get busy patiently repairing the relationships we've either strained or left in tatters.

Most of the ideas explained here were not entirely new to me, albeit presented in a clear, accessible, and interconnected way. An unfamiliar part that I found thought-provoking, however, concerned turning the concept of anthropocentrism on its head. Rather than assuming we are projecting upon other animals when we ascribe emotions or thoughts to them, perhaps we as humans emulate certain animal behaviours? I found this neat reversal a much more powerful thought experiment than all the academic theorising in [b:Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene|28369185|Staying with the Trouble Making Kin in the Chthulucene|Donna J. Haraway|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1458692014l/28369185._SX50_.jpg|48445485]. Indeed, by the end of the book I was enjoying the sincerity and clarity of the writing and felt rather ashamed of the academic snobbery I began it with. '8 Master Lessons of Nature' is a suitable lockdown read as it is optimistic and uplifting in tone. It avoids the dense thickets of theory around the relationship between humans and our environment, instead presenting the earnest view that above all we should just enjoy nature. In mood, this makes it the exact obverse of [b:Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays|31450661|Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays|Paul Kingsnorth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1483077976l/31450661._SX50_.jpg|52153539] by Paul Kingsnorth. Where Kingsnorth's time in nature is characterised by mourning and sadness, Ferguson's is characterised by joy and hope. While both are well worth reading and thinking about, I would not want to re-read Kingsnorth at the moment.… (more)

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annarchism | 1 other review | Aug 4, 2024 |

Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West by Gary Ferguson

Lots of information on a topic we don't typically think much about (especially here in the Eastern US): wildfires and wildfire-fighting. If you have a friend who is a climate change skeptic, give them this book. It puts the climate changes we face into clear perspective via the undeniable fact of increasing wildfire frequency and intensity.

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Treebeard_404 | 4 other reviews | Jan 23, 2024 |

Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West by Gary Ferguson

Very powerful! Gave a lot of detail on the nature of fire and the problems of fighting today's mega forest fires. I'm glad I read it; I now have a list of discussion questions to ask whenever we travel to areas that have experienced devastating fires.

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mapg.genie | 4 other reviews | Apr 30, 2023 |

Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West by Gary Ferguson

“There is much at stake with this loss of land management and science capacity, “ says Topik (Christopher Topik of the Nature Conservancy). “Forestlands provide half of our nation’s water and sequester about 13 percent of total US fossil fuel carbon emissions, but projections suggest that forest will become net carbon emitters later this century if steps are not take to make them more resilient..' "

I read this as part of the Glacier Conservancy Book Club.

A summary of wildfire, how it is fought, current thoughts on how fire is important to ecosystems and what global warming will mean to wildland fires.

Pretty straight forward. Since I live in an area impacted by wildfires, there wasn’t much information new to me, but it’s nice to see it together in one place.… (more)

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streamsong | 4 other reviews | Sep 27, 2022 |

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