When I first started teaching gardening I stumbled across Paul Krafel’s Seeing Nature, and it was a revelation to me. Through a series of personal nature parables he shifts our perception in order to reveal the subtle flows, cycles, patterns and personalities that inhabit the living world around us. Sand fleas, a deer carcass, vulture flight, tundra flora and water erosion (among other things) all have something to teach us, if only we are willing to look deeply and listen. It’s a great book for outdoors(wo)men, naturalists and anyone teaching observation and pattern recognition.

I would also recommend Paul’s insightful newsletter, Cairns of H.O.P.E, for a more of his explorations and encounters with the natural world.

Seeing Nature, by Paul Krafel, Chelsea Green Publishing 1999