Pyle's classic account of discovery along the migration trail of monarch butterflies is part natural history, part road trip adventure Although no one had ever followed North American monarch butterflies on their annual southward journey to Mexico and California, in the 1990s there were well-accepted assumptions about the nature and form of the migration. But to Robert Michael Pyle, a naturalist with long experience in monarch conservation, the received wisdom about the butterflies' long journey just didn't make sense. In the autumn of 1996 he set out to uncover the facts, to pursue the tide of "cinnamon sailors" on their long, mysterious flight. Chasing Monarchs chronicles Pyle's 9,000-mile journey to discover firsthand the secrets of the monarchs' annual migration. Part road trip, part outdoor adventure, and part natural history study, Pyle's book overturns old theories and provides insights both large and small regarding monarch butterflies, their biology, and their spectacular migratory travels. Since the book's first publication, its controversial conclusions have been fully confirmed, and monarchs are better understood than ever before. The Afterword for this volume includes not only updated information on the myriad threats to monarch butterflies, but also various efforts under way to ensure the future of the world's most amazing butterfly migration.

For Robert Michael Pyle, "walking the high ridge" is a way of life both figuratively and literally. In his latest book he describes in compelling detail his efforts to live and work in that special natural space Nabokov described as "a high ridge where the mountainside of scientific knowledge joins the opposite slope of artistic imagination".

The inspiration for the film The Dark Divide starring David Cross and Debra Messing, one of America's most esteemed natural history writers takes to the hills in search of Bigfoot-and finds the wildness within ourselves. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to investigate the legends of Sasquatch, Yale-trained ecologist Dr. Robert Pyle treks into the unprotected wilderness of the Dark Divide near Mount St. Helens, where he discovers both a giant fossil footprint and recent tracks. On the trail of what he thought was legend, he searches out Indians who tell him of an outcast tribe, the Seeahtiks, who had not fully evolved into humans. A handful of open-minded biologists and anthropologists counter the tabloids Pyle studies, while rogue Forest Service employees and loggers swear of a vast conspiracy to deep-six true stories of unknown, upright hominoid apes among us. He attends Sasquatch Daze, where he meets scientists, hunters, and others who have devoted their lives to the search, only to realize that "these guys don't want to find Bigfoot they want to be Bigfoot!" Since its original publication, the author's fresh experiences and finds have been added to his original work through an updated chapter. With an evaluation of recent DNA evidence from Bigfoot hair and scat, the study of speech phonemes in the "Sierra Sounds" purported Bigfoot recordings, an examination of the impact of the wildly popular Animal Planet series Bigfoot Hunters, the reemergence of the famous Bob Gimlin into the Bigfoot community, and more, Walking With Bigfoot keeps every Bigfoot enthusiast's mind wide open to one of the biggest questions in the land and brings Pyle's work on the "legend" of Bigfoot into the new century.