With "natural treasure map" in hand...
I reviewed Imperial Dreams by Tim Gallagher last year for Booklist (it received a star and I loved it), but as it has been selected to the Editor's Choice for a Best Book of 2013 (and a top ten in the Science & Health category), I wanted to revisit it here.
Gallagher is the Editor-in-Chief of Living Bird, the magazine for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He also tracked and wrote a book about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker which I thought was pretty good as well. For his latest title, he traveled to Mexico in search of the Imperial Woodpecker which has not been declared extinct but also hasn't reliably been seen in 50 years. All of that would be daunting enough except the habitat for the Imperial Woodpecker happens to be very difficult territory to traverse. It's also right in the heart of Mexico's drug territory, so if the mountains don't get you then the drug lords will.
But the bird could be there and Tim Gallagher really wants to find it; he really wants to know that this bird is still alive.
Imperial Dreams is a lot of things but mostly it is really excellent writing. There is natural history here, the story of a bird that was TWO FEET long, but also a travel story and an adventure story and an introspective tale about a man and his friends and a maybe, possibly, doomed quest that no one can let go. Gallagher wades deep into the territory of Pancho Villa and Geronimo, giving readers some history here, some cultural awareness there, plus a moment or two where he had downright fear-for-your-life type thoughts. It's all good, promise.
If you asked him, I bet Tim Gallagher would say that Imperial Dreams is all about a bird and because this bird is so amazing, that would be enough for any book. But as I read more of his work, I am realizing that where Gallagher is going is not so much into the field in search of birds, but into his own heart, into our collective hearts, into the places where a beautiful bird still matters.
In elegant and entertaining prose, Tim Gallagher is reminding us what matters. The Imperial Woodpecker is one of those things and if we have lost it forever, then the world really ought to weep.
You can read more about Gallagher's work and the Imperial Woodpecker at his blog.
