ENVIRONMENT

SACRED TRUSTS: Essays on Stewardship and Responsibility edited by Michael Katakis. (Mercury House: $17.95; 304 pp.) Essays in this book are by some of our finest nature writers: Bill McKibben, Gerald Vizenor, Gary Paul Nabhan, Wendell Berry, John Nichols, and Stephen Bodio, to name a few. They reveal a marvelous variety of motivations for stewardship as an approach to living in nature (although a suspicious number of the authors seem to be writing from Montana!). All of these motivations (the birth of a son, the death of a father), experiences, memories, identification with different places really add up to different aspects of love. Dan Gerber writes about passion for a place, Bodio about a passion for falcons; C. L. Rawlins writes about trust; Kris Hardin writes about honesty; Jack Turner writes about pelicans soaring and joy; William Hjortsberg writes about non-ownership and respect; John Gierach writes about restraint in our use of resources; the fishermen and women write about patience; and Michael Katakis writes about commitment. Passion, trust, honesty, joy, respect, restraint, patience and commitment. Sounds like a pretty good relationship.