Cascadia Field Guide - by Cmarie Fuhrman & Elizabeth Bradfield & Derek Sheffield (Paperback)

About the Book

Science and art combine to create a poetic ecology--a field guide and literary anthology that celebrates the natural beauty of the Cascadia bioregion

Book Synopsis

"Have you ever been so filled up with the wonder of a place that it wants to spill out as a song? Well, here is the songbook. I imagine walking through a forest and pausing to read these illuminating pages aloud to a listening cedar or a dipper. There are field guides that help us to see, and to name, and to know; Cascadia Field Guide does all of that and more. This is a guide to relationship, a gift in reciprocity for the gifts of the land." - Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass

Pacific Northwest Book Award Winner • Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal in Anthologies • Banff Mountain Book Award finalist in Mountain Fiction & Poetry • Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Gold Medal in Nature

Cascadia stretches from Southeast Alaska to Northern California and from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide. Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry blends art and science to celebrate this diverse yet interconnected region through natural and cultural histories, poetry, and illustrations. Organized into 13 bioregions, the guide includes entries for everything from cryptobiotic soil and the western thatching ant to the giant Pacific octopus and Sitka spruce, as well as the likes of common raven, hoary marmot, Idaho giant salamander, snowberry, and 120 more!

Both well-established and new writers are included, representing a diverse spectrum of voices, with poems that range from comic to serious, colloquial to scientific, urban to off-the-grid, narrative to postmodern. Likewise, the artists span styles and mediums, using classic natural history drawing, form line design, graffiti, sketch, and more. All writers and artists have deep ties to the region.

This project was supported, in part, by a grant from 4Culture

Review Quotes

Have you ever been so filled up with the wonder of a place that it wants to spill out as a song? Well, here is the songbook. I imagine walking through a forest and pausing to read these illuminating pages aloud to a listening cedar or a dipper. There are field guides that help us to see, and to name, and to know; Cascadia Field Guide does all of that and more. This is a guide to relationship, a gift in reciprocity for the gifts of the land.--Robin Wall Kimmerer "Author of Braiding Sweetgrass"

If you're looking to fill your backpack with nature books this fall, you'll want to include Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry.... The pairing of factual information with artistic interpretation lights up all corners of the noggin, and that's intended. I've kept a copy on my nightstand all summer, taking little sips of it before I turn out the lights.--Brangien Davis "Crosscut"

The rich array of writers and artists in Cascadia Field Guide takes us by verse and image through one of the most diverse eco-regions in North America. The collection, inspired by ecological and cultural inclusion, catalogs beast by beast and habitat by habitat why so many look to the northwest corner of the nation for wild respite. More than a collection, it is an essential compendium to the Pacific Northwest; a 'feel guide' to an extraordinary place.--J. Drew Lanham "Author of The Home Place and Sparrow Envy"

This beautiful choral celebration of entanglement ongoing and evermore is amazing, a wonder, a gratitude.--Ross Gay "Author of Inciting Joy"

This field guide is a deeply informative and wildly exuberant visual and literary romp through one of the most spectacular regions of the world--a varied chorus of voices and visual talents, all celebrating the animals and plants of the great Pacific Northwest.--Ray Troll "Artist and Co-author of Cruisin' the Fossil Coastline"

The book's editors -- Elizabeth Bradfield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Derek Sheffield -- have crafted a delightfully readable, visually stunning, and heart-stirring volume that becomes an ecosystem of its own, with myriad voices chorusing together to offer a song of praise to the flora and fauna of one of our most ecologically diverse regions. It's a field guide to the soul, as well as a geographic region.--Marc Beaudin "Big Sky Journal"

...a love story masquerading as a field guide.....Whether you have a longstanding love affair with Cascadia or are new to its charms, this field guide is a fresh and intimate illumination of the extraordinary place we call home.-- "Cascadia Daily News"

...a new field guide that is probably unlike any such book you've held. Browsing the book is a bit like hiking with a naturalist, when you're near enough to hear commentary on nature's secrets studied into memory by someone who has really been paying attention, looking closely, and caring deeply.--Bill Thorness "Washington Park Arboretum Bulletin"

Here is a literary field guide that merges fact with art and verse to impart a sense of the bioregion known as Cascadia. Here text flows around images of its inhabitants: Map Lichen, Sword Fern, Tufted Puffin--all capitalized to acknowledge the intrinsic merits of their respective namebearers. Space is made and held not only for contributors and readers, but also for the entities and the worlds they are bound to, live by. Cascadia thus resounds as an assemblage of voices, offering a rich and vital approach to contemplate the Pacific Northwest, varied, expansive, everchanging--Isaac Yuen "Orion Magazine"

I've never seen an anthology like it. Its beauty, its plentitude, and its inclusiveness. It's really startling and wonderful.--Paisley Rekdal "High Country News"

This is a volume that should live in a pack, alongside binoculars, a hand lens and a notebook. Read a poem to a forest, rest your lunch on the pages while you watch foraging birds, enjoy a drawing of skunk cabbage and give it a sniff. And introduce yourself!--Meg Olson "Mount Baker Experience Magazine"

There is so much more about birds and bears, slugs and herbs, and fish, lizards and crabs; all bound together in this ecological masterpiece aiming to meld art and science.-- "San Francisco Book Review"

The expansive region might seem too vast and diverse to easily summarize, yet authors Elizabeth Bradfield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Derek Sheffield have managed to seamlessly capture the wildness, wonder, and beauty of the bioregion in this book.--Hailee Wickersham "425 Magazine"