nature

Becky Cushing Gop is an award-winning environmental educator and director of Mass Audubon West, encompassing 18 wildlife sanctuaries, conservation partnerships, and widespread community and school programming. She is based at the 1,400-acre Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Lenox, home to a healthy population of the North American beaver.

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author. Her new novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” is at once an adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. It tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history.

David McIntyre is a Scottish photographer, filmmaker, and artist based in the Hudson Valley of New York. In his early career, he achieved acclaim in photojournalism, portraiture, and fashion photography. McIntyre’s latest exhibition, “Walking” is currently on view at Hudson Hall.

The Ashokan Center’s annual three-day festival known as The Summer Hoot gets underway this coming weekend, August 25-27, It’s a music festival, a community get-together, a chance to commune with nature. It’s a crafts fair; you can sip a beer or cider, sample some fine food; hear some music; make some music; visit with friends; make new friends.

Adirondack Riverwalking offers guided outdoor experiences near Lake Placid, New York in the Adirondack Park that enhance human health and foster care for nature.Co-founded by Helene Gibbens and Suzanne Weirich, Adirondack Riverwalking offers small-group guided Sensory Snowshoeing, Forest Bathing, and - as the name would suggest - Riverwalking.Helene Gibbens is a Certified Forest Therapy Guide, NY State Licensed Hiking and Boats/Canoes Guide, and Certified Yoga Teacher and she joins us.

For more than two decades, award-winning science and nature writer David Quammen has traveled to Earth’s most far-flung and fragile destinations, sending back field notes from places caught in the tension between humans and the wild. "The Heartbeat of the Wild" features 20 of those assignments: elegantly written narratives, originally published in National Geographic magazine and updated for today, telling colorful and impassioned stories from some of the planet’s wildest locales.

T.C. Boyle is one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction. In his latest novel, "Blue Skies," he transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, reflecting dark mirrors between the two coasts with the storyline shifting between Florida and California.

"Big Tree," an illustrated novel by #1 New York Times bestselling and Caldecott Medal-winning author-artist Brian Selznick, is a love letter to the natural world which takes readers on a mesmerizing journey from the prehistoric age to present day.

Andrea Barrett, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the author of the new book “Natural History: Stories” The collection connects the lives of the family of scientists, teachers and innovators that she has featured in her writing throughout her career.

“For the Birds: The Birdsong Project” is an unprecedented outpouring of creativity by more than 220 music artists, actors, literary figures, and visual artists, all coming together to celebrate the joy birds bring to human lives and to emphasize the climate crisis indicators made evident by changes in bird behaviors and migration patterns.“For the Birds” is a collection of 172 pieces of new music inspired by the beauty of birdsong, performed by artists from across the musical spectrum and 73 works of bird-inspired poetry, read by familiar and famous voices - like Tilda Swinton, Wendell Pierce, Regina King, Michelle Williams, Greta Gerwig, and Bobby Cannavale.The collection is curated and compiled by distinguished film and television music supervisor Randall Poster; he joins us now along with Executive producer and "For the Birds" creator Rebecca Reagan.