Wildlife Congregations A Priest's Year of Gaggles, Colonies and Murders by the Salish Sea

About this book

A naturalist-priest documents a year of spiritual encounters with large gatherings of wild creatures in the lower Fraser watershed in British Columbia. These local low-tech adventures with a run of spawning salmon, a siege of nesting herons, a colony of bats in a heritage house, a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, 1000 sea lions with bad breath and more are an antidote to interspecies loneliness in this age of extinction. A moving testament to both the fragility and resilience of a bioregion impacted by our current climate crisis, the book offers entry points for all kinds of readers. Dykstra twines together accessible natural history, love of language, the history of saints and clerics in the natural sciences, and gratuitous detours into the weird and wonderful: gay bat sex, exploding caterpillars, and the colonization history of bird poop. Each chapter includes a wealth of resources, from field guides to fiction, for nature enthusiasts of all ages.

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Biography

Laurel Dykstra is an Anglican priest, environmental activist, and amateur naturalist who lives in the lower Fraser watershed on Coast Salish territory with a haphazard queer family and a cat who looks like bad taxidermy. Laurel leads Salal + Cedar, a tiny church that worships outdoors. Writing from Laurel includes books, articles, and anthologies mostly at the intersection of Bible and social action with occasional helpings of parenting and racial justice.