"An elegant, eccentric novel of love, loneliness, and lepidoptera . . . Worthy company for work by other naturalist/novelists: Nabokov, Matthiessen, Kingsolver." ― Kirkus Reviews In Magdalena Mountain , Robert Michael Pyle's first and long-awaited novel, the award-winning naturalist proves he is as at home in an imagined landscape as he is in the natural one. At the center of this story of majesty and high mountain magic are three Magdalenas—Mary, a woman whose uncertain journey opens the book; Magdalena Mountain, shrouded in mystery and menace; and the all-black Magdalena alpine butterfly, the most elusive of several rare and beautiful species found on the mountain. And high in the Colorado Rocky Mountain wilderness, sharing the remote territory of the Erebia magdalena butterfly, lives the enigmatic Oberon, a reluctant de facto leader of the Grove, a diverse community of monks who share a devotion to nature. Converging in the same wilderness are October Carson, a beachcomber-wanderer in pursuit of the alpine butterflies he collects for museums; James Mead, a young graduate student intent upon learning the ecology of this seductive creature; and Mary Glanville, who also seeks the butterfly but can't remember why. While the mystery surrounding Mary takes a menacing turn, their shared quest pulls them deeper into the high mountain wilderness, culminating in a harrowing encounter on the stony slopes of Magdalena Mountain.
"Fast claiming his place as one of the country’s finest natural history writers, Pyle takes to the hills in search of Bigfoot in this absorbing, classily written field report. Pyle makes all the right connections. Best of all, he loves a good mystery and is smart enough, open and radical enough, to never say never." — Kirkus Reviews Awarded a Guggenheim to investigate the legends of Sasquatch, Dr. Robert Pyle trekked into the unprotected wilderness of the Dark Divide near Mount St. Helens, where he discovered both a giant fossil footprint and recent tracks. He searched out Indians who told him of an outcast tribe, the Seeahtiks, who had not fully evolved into humans. He attended Sasquatch Daze, where he met scientists, hunters, and others who have devoted their lives to the search, and realized that «these guys don't want to find Bigfoot—they want to be Bigfoot!» A handful of open-minded biologists and anthropologists countered the tabloids he studied, while rogue Forest Service employees and loggers swore of an industry conspiracy to deep-six accounts of unknown, upright hominoid apes among us. In the years since publication, the author's fresh experiences and finds—detailed in an all-new chapter which includes an evaluation of recent DNA evidence from Bigfoot hair and scat, the study of speech phonemes in the “Sierra Sounds” purported Bigfoot recordings, Pyle’s examination of the impact of the wildly popular Animal Planet series Bigfoot Hunters , the reemergence of the famous Bob Gimlin into the Bigfoot community, and more—have kept his own mind wide open to one of the biggest questions in the land.
In the Willapa Hills of southwest Washington, both the human community and the forest community are threatened with extinction. Virtually every acre of the hills has been logged, often repeatedly, in the past hundred years, endangering both the land and the people, leaving dying towns as well as a devastated ecosystem. Weaving vivid portraits of the place and its inhabitants—animal, plant, and human—with the story of his own love affair with the hills, Robert Michael Pyle has written a book so even-handed in its passion that it has been celebrated by those who make their living with a chain saw as well as by environmentalists. As he writes, 'My sympathies lie with the people and the woods, but not with the companies that have used them both with equal disregard.'In his vivid portrayal of the land, plants, people and animals of the Willapa Hills of Washington State, Bob Pyle makes the modest patch of land he writes about a metaphor for the world.