Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day

A celebrated storyteller-poet-naturalist explores a year of dawns in her most personal book to date.

In an eye-opening sequence of personal meditations through the cycle of seasons, Diane Ackerman awakens us to the world at dawn€"drawing on sources as diverse as meteorology, world religion, etymology, art history, poetry, organic farming, and beekeeping. As a patient and learned observer of animal and human physiology and behavior, she introduces us to varieties of bird music and other signs of avian intelligence, while she herself €œmigrates€ from winter in Florida to spring, summer, and fall in upstate New York.

Humans might luxuriate in the idea of being €œin€ nature, Ackerman points out, but we often forget that we are nature€"for €œno facet of nature is as unlikely as we, the tiny bipeds with the giant dreams.€ Joining science€s devotion to detail with religion€s appreciation of the sublime, Dawn Light is an impassioned celebration of the miracles of evolution€"especially human consciousness of our numbered days on a turning earth. 8 pages of color