Planet steward: journal of a wildlife sanctuary

by Stephen Levine

Book by Levine, Stephen

229 pages, Loose Leaf

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read; the book is about a writer and his family taking on a stewardship role at one of the Nature Conservancy's preserves. Levine then writes about the experiences in the fashion of a journal (by date) they have and the connections he makes to the land. Very poetic, in some ways quite insightful. I would have rated this book higher except for a few things: it was written in 1969 and the man is definitely one of the flower children. As a result, he often drifts off-course into ideas that are a little too far out for my preferences and at times almost a little farcical. In addition, he adds intimate details about the family life, like "our son was conceived this night" or in-depth talk about the delivery of a neighbor's child and adds a lot of excessive metaphor to these entries. I'm certain Levine means for these types of entries to simply record the human experience, but it wasn't what I expected or was looking for, so Levine comes off as narcissistic, much like the friends you have on Facebook who bring up far too many personal details about their lives or those of their children, somehow believing we all want to know all about these things when we don't (sadly I think we all have those types, often but not always ones we haven't seen in years). Still, an interesting read from an era far different from today.