NONFICTION - June 27, 1993

STAYING PUT: Making a Home in a Restless World by Scott Russell Sanders (Beacon: $20; 222 pp.). There’s a lot of very pretty writing here about the smell of beech trees and blackberries, about creeks dappled with sycamores and sunlight flaming in a blade of grass, about the pleasures of living “with all the creatures that run and root and soar.” But don’t be fooled: While his sweet celebrations of nature are genuine, Indiana University literature professor Russell Sanders is at heart a tough politician with a cause. Like Barry Lopez, Lance Kinseth and other polemical nature writers, Sanders finds in nature a radical rebuttal to Western culture. Arguing that “My nation’s history does not encourage me, or anyone, to belong somewhere with a full heart,” he proposes a different kind of citizenship: “When we figure our addresses, we might do better to forget ZIP codes and consider where the rain goes after it falls outside our windows. We need such knowledge, need to feel as intimate with the branching and gathering of the earth’s veins as we do with the veins in our own wrists.”