by John S. Burk, Schiffer Books, 2012
It’s a guidebook, but hardly one to slip in the backpack or back pocket while hiking. With its glossy color photos, New England’s Natural Wonders: An Explorer’s Guide, by John S. Burk, belongs on the coffee table at camp or the beach house. It’s a leisurely page-through, a book to inspire outdoor adventure.
Burk, a researcher at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, and an author who has written several books, including Wildlife of New England: A Viewers Guide, takes readers across the six states in this latest book to natural areas renowned for scenery, geologic relevance, or biological import. Burk divides the region not by states, but topically, with chapter titles like “Alpine Mountains,” “Old Forests,” “Lakes,” and “Coastal Southern.”
Quick, can you explain the difference between bogs, swamps, and fens? Did you know that New England has a whopping 6,000 miles of ocean shoreline? Or that the difference between a lake and pond is not size, but whether an area under a particular body of water is deep and dark enough to inhibit plant growth? Or, for that matter, that Lake Champlain was once an inland sea, a major clue to that fact being the whale skeleton unearthed near its banks in 1849?
Burk offers colorful tidbits throughout the narrative, as in the possible origins of Purgatory Chasm in Sutton, Massachusetts – possibly named by Quakers, writes Burk, “who viewed this rocky ravine in the hills south of Worcester as a place between heaven and hell.” Land features in the chasm have names such as “Devil’s Corncrib” and “Devil’s Pulpit.”
Burk writes about mountain formation, glacial impacts, river and lake formation, 300-year-old hemlocks, and peaks with exquisite views. As a guide, he tells us how to get there from here, what trails to take, where to find the boardwalk across a wetland, and where to perch to watch raptor migrations.
Burk’s style is clear and straightforward, his tone reverential and not preachy, though he reminds readers that invasive species, pesticides, and pollutants have taken a toll on New England’s natural world. His message: New England is exceedingly rich in natural diversity; it has wonderful places to embrace and protect.
As a photography book, New England’s Natural Wonders comes up a bit short. There’s a redundancy to some of the photos, especially in the “Waterfalls” chapter, where one waterfall looks almost the same as the next. And there are no photos of humans up close enjoying themselves in the outdoors, which is, after all, the idea behind the book.
And of more than 200 photographs, there are only five with snow! That’s an unfortunate oversight given that so many New Englanders love to experience their surroundings on skis and snowshoes.
Still, Natural Wonders is a book you can proudly send to Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Ned out in Iowa to finally get them out this way. They can start their New England tour with a stop at the dinosaur museum at Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut, then meander north to Katahdin in Maine, which, at 5,267 feet, is New England’s highest peak – tall enough to awe anyone today as it did Henry David Thoreau in 1846.