Chasing Spring: An American Journey Through a Changing Season

by Bruce Stutz

In the tradition of Blue Highways and Silent Spring, Chasing Spring follows nature's season of renewal even as it shows how the delicate mechanisms of spring are increasingly endangered by climate change.Seeking to revive his body and soul following heart surgery, acclaimed nature writer Bruce Stutz set out on a three-month journey through the unfolding of an American spring. Driving across the country in a twenty-year-old Chevy sedan, Stutz shows readers that spring is not so much a progression as an arousal; each added minute of the lengthening days and lingering sun brings yet another transformation in the greening landscape as well as in the human spirit. Beginning with the season's southernmost stirrings along the Gulf of Mexico, Stutz sees the first blooms and partakes in the season's festivals -- celebrations with ancient origins that still speak to our wonder at nature's annual rebirth. He follows the migrations of birds northward, the return of life to the forests, and the quickening of snowmelt in the Rockies. He moves across the southern desert, encountering the explosion of cacti and wildflowers and the violence of tornadoes on the drought-stricken Great Plains. He then travels north through the national parks of the West, finally celebrating his journey's end by basking at the solstice amid the beauty of the Alaskan Arctic's twenty-four hours of daylight. Along the way, he accompanies scientists into the field to study the season's changes and meets farmers, Arctic natives, and even migrant mushroom pickers whose livelihoods depend on the coming of spring. In each location, as he observes the sensitive interplay of light and warmth that draws animals, plants, water, and even the soil itself into the biological ballet that makes for the profound stirring we call spring, he also finds that climate change now threatens the basic pro-cesses of nature. A moving and thought-provoking record of the year¹s most invigorating season, Chasing Spring is a timely reminder that as trees bud and flowers bloom, the human spirit reawakens as well. Anyone who has ever marveled at spring¹s wondrous transformations¿from a first garden blossom to a world in full flower¿will find in Chasing Spring a journey to savor.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Nature, Environment

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Allyson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had this book on my bookshelf for years, unread, just waiting.
Each spring, I had looked beyond it to something else.
It has a lovely cover and a beautiful inside collection of observations both personal and objective ending with a magnificent journey in the ANWR. He writes in a manner both compelling and evocative of his space and things seen during this specific journey and also at other times in his life. And in the short space of this too short book, he covered so many interesting facts and subjects previously foreign to me.
However, much like my present day reading of The Audacity of Hope published around the same time, I found this a bittersweet experience looking back to his publication date of 2006. Back then, I also had hope and expectations for a different sort of country from what exists now in 2021.
Interestingly he noted the 17 year locust event of 2005 which is happening again, 17 years later.
I suppose this book was murmuring to me from my shelf, and luckily, this time, I heard it.

[Tricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is in one sense an update,for the age of climate change, on Edwin Way Teale's North with the Spring, but it is also about a man's rejuvenation after heart surgery and a quest that takes him from Brooklyn to Tucson and then all the way to ANWR and an endless Artic day. Beautifully written and frightening in the description of the effects of climate change on Spring and the flora and fauna (especially migratory fauna) we associate with that season.

[Carole Zoeller]

The author follows the emergence of spring across the North American continent, making readers aware of current environmental conditions in climate change and the complex connections that exist in the natural world.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I nearly gave up on this book about 30 pages in. The first chapter failed to engage me - it read like a textbook or a dissertation.
I am happy I persisted, as once the author got up to speed and began his journey, his observations and eloquent musings as he traveled thru Spring captured my attention.
Yes, there are lots of 'big words' and scientific exposition, but it's presented in a relatable manner.
Reading this book 16 years after publication further reinforces the cautionary tale of climate change.

[Mckinley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Many threads of this accounting didn't come together for me.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

North American road trip with emphasis on the coming of spring in various regions.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chasing Spring: An American Journey Through a Changing Season by Bruce Stutz (Scribner 2006)(508.2). The author travels North with Spring as the climate catches up with the calendar. The author spent three months driving a twenty-year-old car from the Gulf Coast northward. He eventually wound up in Alaska. I guess he needed a gimmick to sell a book proposal, and this is the best he could come up with. Derivative it is, Blue Highways it is not. My rating: 6.5/10, finished 2009.

[Anne Marshall · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't finish

[Ljonz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travelogue and research into earth science are woven poetically into a treatise about global warming.

[M.G. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried it, but I didn't like it. It wasn't what I expected.