Children and Other Wild Animals

The short essays in this short book struck a chord with me as a nature lover and a Pacific Northwesterner and a parent of a young feral child and an avid reader of books and a writer of words. I expected it to be a fast read, especially with all those run-away sentences, and it would've been if I hadn't forced myself to slow down or been compelled again and again to reread sentences and paragraphs and whole pages and to read only one or two essays at a time. Doyle's voice is eager and effusive and awed. His prose is glittering and alive. His nature vignettes especially left me feeling like I'd had an extremely pleasant encounter with a friendly stranger at a trailhead or a viewpoint or some other place where we'd both bore witness to something ordinary and miraculous that reminded us of what it is to love the world and words and each other.