"What a superb writer Nick Neely is and just the kind of natural history observer we need in a time of fierce change. He enlivens chiton, eel, newt, hummingbird in the sapling outside the Safeway, and boy, with keen eyes and ears, quick veers of mind and syntax, and an abiding sense of the connection between the wild and the made worlds. Precise, gorgeous and imaginatively wed to both science and myth, his rendering of Coyote brings the creature smack-dab into twenty-first-century America, as soul-troubling as ever he was in myth and landscape. A fine collection to read and savor." --Alison Hawthorne Deming "These are nature essays with a difference: the sureness and delicacy with which Nick Neely directs our attention from the miracles of the outer world to the gyroscopic peculiarities of his consciousness make for a very satisfying reading experience." --Phillip Lopate