Appalachian Autumn chronicles the beauties of the fall months, small and large. But Marcia Bonta’s quiet mountaintop life is shattered by a lumberman who clear-cuts a neighboring property. The massive bulldozers and skidders crush every tree and shrub, weed, and wildflower, leaving only rubble in their wake. Fleeing from the whine of chain saws and the crash of falling trees, she roams the mountain, watching wild turkeys forage in the field, flocks of migrating birds feast on wild grapes, and does and bucks eye each other in their mating ritual. “Autumn is a bittersweet time,” Bonta writes, “a season of good-byes, when, after the flaming leaves fall and start the inevitable process of decay, we are left with only the bare bones of nature.” If we are not careful, she warns, there may come a day when autumn’s dusk and winter’s night no longer lead into spring’s morning. 

Marcia Bonta is a naturalist-writer who has lived for decades on a five-hundred-acre mountaintop farm in Central Pennsylvania. In Appalachian Spring, the intricacies of the season unravel day by day in journal entries that combine Bonta’s own meticulous observations with the research reported by botanists, entomologists, and other natural scientists.

Every aspect of the natural world catches her eye, from the life cycle of a tent caterpillar to the sex life of jack-in-the pulpit. She hopes, by recounting such wonders, to convert others to what she calls the “third stage” in humanity’s relationship with nature, that of empathy with all of nature for its own sake: “To know the earth better, to grasp a little of its workings, to look on it with awe and wonder as well as with respect, is to want to save it from destruction.”

 

In Appalachian Summer, Marcia Bonta offers a day-by-day account of summer’s budding, blossoming, and fading on her 650-acre property in south-central Pennsylvania. During this summer, the author’s first grandchild grows alongside the forest animals that populate the mountain. A local girl disappears, and while searchers comb the mountain for her, Bonta poses questions about women’s safety in the woods and why they might hesitate to hike or camp on their own. Undeterred, she continues her meandering daily walks around her forested home, making minute observations of this one place in this one season, ultimately laying bare the undeniable connections we retain to the natural world—which is, after all, our own. 

Winter is the season that most tests our mettle. The psychological burdens of waiting for spring under gray skies compound the challenges of freezing rain, wind chill, deep snow, and dangerous ice. Despite winter’s harshness, there is plenty of beauty and life in the woods if only we know where to look. The stark, white landscape sparkles in the sunshine and glows beneath the moon on crisp, clear nights; bare branches make it easy to see long distances; birds flock to feeders; and animals—even those that should be hibernating—make surprise visits from time to time. Appalachian Winter offers acclaimed naturalist Marcia Bonta’s account of one season as experienced on and around her 650-acre home on the westernmost ridge of the hill-and-valley landscape that dominates central Pennsylvania.