Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day

<p>A celebrated storyteller-poet-naturalist explores a year of dawns in her most personal book to date.</p> In an eye-opening sequence of personal meditations through the cycle of seasons, Diane Ackerman awakens us to the world at dawn -- drawing on sources as diverse as meteorology, world religion, etymology, art history, poetry, organic farming, and beekeeping. As a patient and learned observer of animal and human physiology and behavior, she introduces us to varieties of bird music and other signs of avian intelligence, while she herself &quot;migrates&quot; from winter in Florida to spring, summer, and fall in upstate New York.<br><br> Humans might luxuriate in the idea of being &quot;in&quot; nature, Ackerman points out, but we often forget that we are nature -- for &quot;no facet of nature is as unlikely as we, the tiny bipeds with the giant dreams.&quot; Joining science's devotion to detail with religion's appreciation of the sublime, Dawn Light is an impassioned celebration of the miracles of evolution -- especially human consciousness of our numbered days on a turning earth. 8 pages of color