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"Birds are my almanac. They tune me into the seasons, and into
myself." So begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed
filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of
the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her
immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as
a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than
human life, and discouraged by the civilization she saw
contributing to its destruction. It was only in her twenties,
living in Los Angeles and working on films, that she began to
rediscover her place in the landscape -- and in the cosmos -- by
way of watching birds. Tracing her movements across the American
West, this stirring collection of essays brings the avian world
richly to life. Kumar's perspective is not that of a list keeper,
counting and cataloguing species. Rather, from the mango-colored
western tanager that rescues her from a bout of altitude sickness
in Sequoia National Park to ancient sandhill cranes in the Bosque
del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, and from the snowy plovers
building shallow nests with bits of shell and grass to the
white-breasted nuthatch that regularly visits the apricot tree
behind her family's casita in Sante Fe, for Kumar, birds "become a
portal to a more vivid, enchanted world." At a time when climate
change, habitat loss, and the reckless use of pesticides are
causing widespread extinction of species, Kumar's reflections on
these messengers from our distant past and harbingers of our future
offer luminous evidence of her suggestion that "seeds of
transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts. Sometimes it just
takes the right bird to awaken us."
“Birds are my almanac. They tune me into the seasons, and into
myself.” So begins this lively collection of essays by acclaimed
filmmaker and novelist Priyanka Kumar. Growing up at the feet of
the Himalayas in northern India, Kumar took for granted her
immersion in a lush natural world. After moving to North America as
a teenager, she found herself increasingly distanced from more than
human life and discouraged by the civilization she saw contributing
to its destruction. It was only in her twenties, living in Los
Angeles and working on films, that she began to rediscover her
place in the landscape—and in the cosmos—by way of watching
birds. Tracing her movements across the American West, this
stirring collection of essays brings the avian world richly to
life. Kumar’s perspective is not that of a list keeper, counting
and cataloguing species. Rather, from the mango-colored western
tanager that rescues her from a bout of altitude sickness in
Sequoia National Park to ancient sandhill cranes in the Bosque del
Apache National Wildlife Refuge, and from the snowy plovers
building shallow nests with bits of shell and grass to the
white-breasted nuthatch that regularly visits the apricot tree
behind her family’s casita in Santa Fe, for Kumar, birds
“become a portal to a more vivid, enchanted world.” At a time
when climate change, habitat loss, and the reckless use of
pesticides are causing widespread extinction of species, Kumar’s
reflections on these messengers from our distant past and
harbingers of our future offer luminous evidence of her suggestion
that “seeds of transformation lie dormant in all of our hearts.
Sometimes it just takes the right bird to awaken us.”
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