THE TRAIL HOME: Nature, Imagination and the...

THE TRAIL HOME: Nature, Imagination and the American West by John Daniel (Pantheon: $13; 263 pp., expanded edition). In these unusually articulate essays, poet John Daniel begins with the microcosm of his back yard, then expands his ideas to encompass the national parks and forests and, finally, the state of the planet. Daniel’s conclusion that mankind has wantonly ravaged the Earth and needs to develop a sense of stewardship hardly qualifies as a revelation, but his verbal skill enables him to imbue familiar ideas with unaccustomed resonance: “The act of self-restraint required of us involves more than simply halting our cars or even our footsteps at the wilderness boundary--we need to restrain the reckless way of life that first made that boundary necessary and now threatens to make it meaningless.”