Klinkenborg: 'The Rural Life'

 I like books about places and the notion of finding or making a place. Verlyn Klinkenborg, who came up the other day in a discussion of writing, wrote a fine one, The Rural Life.

The book, based on a column by the same name in The New York Times, has a great early line:

A conscientious record keeper is really the natural historian of his own life.

 

That’s close to a religious truth for me. As an example of what that record keeper looks like, Klinkenborg mentioned the Rev. Gilbert White, whose The Natural History of Selborne made me want to be a better student of the natural world.

I grew up among folks who believed, as the old hymn has it, that this earth is not our home. But it is. It seems to me that learning about it, understanding it, perhaps even feeling at home in it, is a worthy quest.

If you’re the kind of person who thinks about place and places, you’ll find good things in this book.

• Source: Verlyn Klinkenborg, The Rural Life; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2003, p. 4.