Follow Here To Purchase The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

Author: Carl Safina, with drawings by Trudy Nicholson; maps by John Luoma

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

ISBN: 978-0-8050-9040-6

Starting with the viewpoint provided from his renovated beach cottage overlooking the bay at Lazy Point on the Montauk peninsula, the well-known ecologist Carl Safina takes us on a tour of the marine environment from a coastal perspective. No matter whether he is discussing the role played by single-celled algae or that played by the relatively giant Polar Bear, Safina shows that he is as sensitive to the environment as were Thoreau and Whitman in their day. He is clearly familiar with the work of these two great philosophers and recorders of the human spirit, with it no doubt having formed the spawning ground for many of his own insightful musings. Despite urging an ongoing vigil as to the dangers and risks facing the natural environment, Safina’s message is far from being one of doom and gloom. Rather, he is intent on exploring the benefits that can be gained from a wise and perspicacious awareness of one’s environs.

Safina writes with great fluency and ease, so that the reading of this chronicle of a year is felt to be as the summer breeze wafting gently against one’s face. One breathes his writing in as one does a welcoming balm, allowing his every word to soothe and ease the soul. His writing, which has the effect of enabling us to transcend our daily anguish, transports us to a world where the real matters and the trivial is, thankfully, obscured.

This marvellous gem of a book gave me gooseflesh as soon as I had read a few pages – it is just so much in sync with where I live, in a tiny fishing village on the West Coast of South Africa. On a daily basis, I wonder at how very few people strive to appreciate the wonders of nature that surround us. Seldom will you find anyone walking on the beach or alongside the river merely to savor the brisk freshness of our wintry weather – they’d far rather spend time indoors gossiping about their neighbors and tearing the local government and society apart.

The View from Lazy Point is for those others of us who prefer to drift with the natural tide, and who find the natural rhythms of life around us comforting and inspiring – we must acknowledge that we are, indeed, blessed. Those who desire a warm and comforting companion on a dark and blustery night need go no farther than The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World.


Follow Here To Purchase The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World