Great Lakes Nature, An Outdoor Year, by Mary Blocksma
University of Michigan Press, 2004.  ISBN0-472-08982-X
Full color. Paper. $22.95 SPECIAL $18.00  (50% discount wholesale and School)

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At last, a January to December guide to Michigan nature, journaling over 200 walks through a breathtaking variety of woods, beaches, and wetlands. This is the perfect read for the person who wants to know more but thinks it can't be done, as well as reference for teachers who would like to know interesting facts about specific species, and where and when to find them.

When I moved back to Michigan from California, renting a cottage for a winter on Lake Michigan, I suddenly realized that the only things I could recognize in nature were loud bright birds. It was just before Christmas and so I decided to make the first and possibly only New Year's Resolution that I would ever keep:  I would take four or five walks for a year, and each time I would name--identify--one thing.

These walks became treasure hunts I looked forward to daily. It was personal project, to see if I could actually learn to recognize my natural neighbors, a task that had seemed impossible before, but my editor at Penguin loved the idea and wanted to do it herself. So it became a book, published first by Penguin as Naming Nature, and then, in full color, by the University of Michigan.

The book is arranged seasonably--January through December--and each of the more than 200 entries describes my walk and where I found what I found that day, as well as sidebars written by my research librarian side, which help the reader distinquish between that and similar species. The book was actually written to help anyone in any part of the country do the same thing: learn their area by taking walks regularly and each time identifying one thing.

Teachers in all levels of schooling--elementary, secondary, and college--will find this a very useful tool, both for themselves and for their students.

http://maryblocksma.com/work4.htm