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The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe by Chet Raymo (1-Mar-2004) Paperback
For almost forty years, Chet Raymo has walked a one-mile path from his house to the college where he taught, chronicling the universe he has found through observing every detail of his route with a scientist's curiosity, a historian's respect for the past, and a child's capacity for wonder. With each step, the landscape he traversed became richer, suggesting deeper and deeper aspects of astronomy, history, biology, and literature, and making the path universal in scope. His insights inspire us to turn out local paths-- whether through cities, suburbs, or rural areas-- into portals to greater understanding of our interconnectedness with nature and history.
Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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About the author
Chet Raymo
30 books61 followersChet Raymo (born September 17, 1936 in Chattanooga, Tennessee) is a noted writer, educator and naturalist. He is Professor Emeritus of Physics at Stonehill College, in Easton, Massachusetts. His weekly newspaper column Science Musings appeared in the Boston Globe for twenty years, and his musings can still be read online at www.sciencemusings.com.
His most famous book was the novel entitled The Dork of Cork, and was made into the feature length film Frankie Starlight. Raymo is also the author of Walking Zero, a scientific and historical account of his wanderings along the Prime Meridian in Great Britain.
Raymo was the recipient of the 1998 Lannan Literary Award for his Nonfiction work.
His most famous book was the novel entitled The Dork of Cork, and was made into the feature length film Frankie Starlight. Raymo is also the author of Walking Zero, a scientific and historical account of his wanderings along the Prime Meridian in Great Britain.
Raymo was the recipient of the 1998 Lannan Literary Award for his Nonfiction work.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 6, 2022
I bought a copy of The Path at an airport bookstore to read on a flight shortly after it was published in 2003. I read a few chapters, then tucked it into the seat-back pocket in front of me to take a nap, and when the plane arrived I forgot to retrieve it. Years passed, and when I saw a copy at my local library I decided to take another stab at it. I’m glad I did, because this is a pleasant and informative book. Its style reminded me of the naturalist Loren Eiseley, whose classic The Immense Journey also feels like a conversation rather than a lecture, a pleasant stroll on a sunny day with a friend possessed of an encyclopedic knowledge of history, botany, geology, cosmology, and more. It is a walk worth taking.
Raymo’s writing style pulls the reader along, linking one idea to another. For example:
The title of the book comes from the one-mile route he walked from his house to Stonehill College in North Easton, Massachusetts, where he was a professor of physics and astronomy. His path took him past rocks deposited by ancient glaciers, across streams which had been harnessed in previous centuries to provide power for early industries, into meadows in which a careful observer could note the changing balance of native and introduced species, and through woods whose trees showed the ecological effects of early land clearance followed by the re-greening of the past century. There is something to learn in each of these places as Professor Raymo guides the reader along, pointing out one interesting fact or connection after another.
He expands on his immediate surroundings by examining the larger picture. In one case, he was able to use the scratches on a glacial bolder to trace it to the parent rock it split from, miles away and at least ten thousand years in the past. He describes the moving mountains of ice that picked up, carried away, and ground down rocks, depositing them where they fell when the glaciers retreated, sometimes hundreds of miles from their starting point. In a similar way he traces the economic history of his town and its early prosperity from harnessing of the downhill flow of water to power machinery, in particular a factory producing all manner of shovels. North Easton was at one time, and for several decades, the shovel capital of America.
I particularly liked the way he was able to turn facts into stories, such as “a flurry of activity is going on in every cell of my body. Tiny protein-based ‘motors’ crawl along the stands of DNA, transcribing the code into single-strand RNA molecules, which in turn provide the templates for building the many proteins that are my body’s warp and weft.” It makes you want to delve deeper into every subject he touches upon.
This book will entertain and inform you. It is written in a non-technical style which is accessible to anyone, and it can spark a sense of wonder in the reader, along with a desire to lace up your hiking shoes and head out to where the wild things are, to look at, and perhaps to really see for the first time, the animals and plants all around you. It reminded me of the line from William Blake, “to see a world in a grain of sand...”
Raymo’s writing style pulls the reader along, linking one idea to another. For example:
My 165-pound body consists of about 110 pounds of oxygen, 30 pounds of carbon, 16 pounds of hydrogen, 6 pounds of nitrogen, and 3 pounds of everything else….Consider those 6 pounds of nitrogen in my body. Our cells build proteins by stringing together chemical units called amino acids, and every amino acid contains a nitrogen atom. Without nitrogen, no proteins. Without proteins, no me….The atmosphere is 80 percent nitrogen. We suck in lungfuls of nitrogen with every breath. But the nitrogen in the atmosphere (and in our lungs) is useless. The two nitrogen atoms in a nitrogen molecule are so tightly bound together that they are essentially inert; they hardly react with anything else….Since we cannot use nitrogen from the air, our bodies extract nitrogen atoms from less tightly bound molecules in the food we eat, and from these we make amino acids and ultimately proteins. Even then, there are ten amino acids that we can’t manufacture ourselves – the so-called essential amino acids – and for these we must rely upon plants –without those ten essential amino acids that animals cannot make – you and I would not exist. And where to the plants get their nitrogen to make amino acids? Bacteria that live with certain plants have the ability to do what we can’t do and what the plants themselves can’t do: take nitrogen from the atmosphere, break those devilish bonds, and incorporate the nitrogen into molecules that plants and animals can use. (p. 161-162)
The title of the book comes from the one-mile route he walked from his house to Stonehill College in North Easton, Massachusetts, where he was a professor of physics and astronomy. His path took him past rocks deposited by ancient glaciers, across streams which had been harnessed in previous centuries to provide power for early industries, into meadows in which a careful observer could note the changing balance of native and introduced species, and through woods whose trees showed the ecological effects of early land clearance followed by the re-greening of the past century. There is something to learn in each of these places as Professor Raymo guides the reader along, pointing out one interesting fact or connection after another.
He expands on his immediate surroundings by examining the larger picture. In one case, he was able to use the scratches on a glacial bolder to trace it to the parent rock it split from, miles away and at least ten thousand years in the past. He describes the moving mountains of ice that picked up, carried away, and ground down rocks, depositing them where they fell when the glaciers retreated, sometimes hundreds of miles from their starting point. In a similar way he traces the economic history of his town and its early prosperity from harnessing of the downhill flow of water to power machinery, in particular a factory producing all manner of shovels. North Easton was at one time, and for several decades, the shovel capital of America.
I particularly liked the way he was able to turn facts into stories, such as “a flurry of activity is going on in every cell of my body. Tiny protein-based ‘motors’ crawl along the stands of DNA, transcribing the code into single-strand RNA molecules, which in turn provide the templates for building the many proteins that are my body’s warp and weft.” It makes you want to delve deeper into every subject he touches upon.
This book will entertain and inform you. It is written in a non-technical style which is accessible to anyone, and it can spark a sense of wonder in the reader, along with a desire to lace up your hiking shoes and head out to where the wild things are, to look at, and perhaps to really see for the first time, the animals and plants all around you. It reminded me of the line from William Blake, “to see a world in a grain of sand...”
April 17, 2011
The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe, by Chet Raymo, is one of the most fascinating books you'll ever read. Chet Raymo is a scientist, a thinker and a consummate inquirer. Everything excites him, draws his attention and I suspect threatens to distract him from his real job as professor emeritus of physics and astronomy at Stonehill College. Every morning, he walks to work along a course that covers approximately one mile. Having the type of mind he has, he can't help but muse over every building, every smell, each part of his journey. It is in this book that he records his musings. Being a scientist with a passion for history, they are couched in the story of our Universe.He sees not just the upturned rock, but the forces that moved it to its current position and canted it at the odd angle. He sees not the flower by the stream, but its historic pilgrimmage from Europe to its current home in New Hampshire.
Here are a few more of his connections:
* The Queset Brook tells the story of water power and the force of gravity pulling water downstream
* the evolution of long stems on plants shows the competition in nature for survival of the fittest, competition being a moving force in our world
* a walk through the woods takes Raymo to a consideration of the Earth's two million living species--though there have been at least ten times as many that have become extinct
* Raymo chipped off a piece of a local boulder, followed its history (displayed by matching its scratches) several miles out of his town to a south-facing ledge of bedrock identifical to the piece in his hand. Why? Glaciers.
* His town's brook leads him to a discussion of the water planet that is Earth and the uses for water, its states in matter and its history
* A winter skate on a frozen pond leads to a romp through the amazing nature of frozen water
* A beehive leads Raymo to a story of the eighteenth century Bee Boy, a mentally challenged young man so fascinated by bees that he sought them out, grbbed them with his hands despite the stings, sucked their bodies for the honey.
* Lying in a field of butterflies becomes a discussion on man's obsession to wipe out insects (impossible--learning to cohabitate amicably is a better solution) and the failed effort to do just that with DDT
* Standing in a water meadow, he ponders the molecular machinery and complicated simplicity of DNA that is at the foundation of all life
* Enjoying the gardens in his hometown leads to a discussion on how man began to farm
After reading this book, I can't take a nature walk without a similar look at what is around me, though mine is not so informed as Raymo's. It doesn't matter, because I enjoy looking at what's below the surface, its history, even if I make only educated guesses. My only difficulty is following the erratic path of Raymo's brain as he skitters through connections. In the fullness of the discussion, they become clear, but at the outset, I constantly had to stop and think about where he was going.
If you enjoyed Bill Bryson's The History of Everything, you'll love this book.
Here are a few more of his connections:
* The Queset Brook tells the story of water power and the force of gravity pulling water downstream
* the evolution of long stems on plants shows the competition in nature for survival of the fittest, competition being a moving force in our world
* a walk through the woods takes Raymo to a consideration of the Earth's two million living species--though there have been at least ten times as many that have become extinct
* Raymo chipped off a piece of a local boulder, followed its history (displayed by matching its scratches) several miles out of his town to a south-facing ledge of bedrock identifical to the piece in his hand. Why? Glaciers.
* His town's brook leads him to a discussion of the water planet that is Earth and the uses for water, its states in matter and its history
* A winter skate on a frozen pond leads to a romp through the amazing nature of frozen water
* A beehive leads Raymo to a story of the eighteenth century Bee Boy, a mentally challenged young man so fascinated by bees that he sought them out, grbbed them with his hands despite the stings, sucked their bodies for the honey.
* Lying in a field of butterflies becomes a discussion on man's obsession to wipe out insects (impossible--learning to cohabitate amicably is a better solution) and the failed effort to do just that with DDT
* Standing in a water meadow, he ponders the molecular machinery and complicated simplicity of DNA that is at the foundation of all life
* Enjoying the gardens in his hometown leads to a discussion on how man began to farm
After reading this book, I can't take a nature walk without a similar look at what is around me, though mine is not so informed as Raymo's. It doesn't matter, because I enjoy looking at what's below the surface, its history, even if I make only educated guesses. My only difficulty is following the erratic path of Raymo's brain as he skitters through connections. In the fullness of the discussion, they become clear, but at the outset, I constantly had to stop and think about where he was going.
If you enjoyed Bill Bryson's The History of Everything, you'll love this book.
December 11, 2011
It is said that Thoreau carried two notebooks with him when he walked around his beloved New England. One notebook was to record things he saw in nature and the other for the poetry he was inspired to write. There were times when he encountered something that thrilled him so, he wouldn't know which notebook to record it in. In other words, nature itself is sheer poetry.
Flash forward 150 years to Chet Raymo, retired physics and astronomy professor from Stonehill College in Massachusetts. Born in my home state, in Chattanooga, he left Tennessee to peruse the universe. I first discovered him through his 1985 book Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage.
But Raymo is equally poetic and proficient and powerful in describing the universe inside us all.
“We have, it seems, a fierce attraction for spirits: auras, angels, poltergeists, disembodied souls, out-of-body experiences….If we want more than meets the eye, we should practice on this: the invisible flame of DNA.
“Even as I stand motionless and attentive at the edge of the water meadow, a flurry of activity is going on in every cell of my body. Tiny protein-based “motors” crawl along the stands of DNA, transcribing the code into single-strand RNA molecules, which in turn provide the templates for building the many proteins that are my body’s warp and weft. Other proteins help pack DNA neatly into the nuclei of cells and maintain the tidy chromosome structures. Still other protein-based motors are busily at work untying knots that form in DNA as it is unpacked in the nucleus of a cell and copied during cell division. Others are in charge of quality control, checking for accuracy and repairing errors. Working, spinning, weaving, winding, unwinding, patching, repairing—each cell is like a bustling factory of a thousand workers. A trillion cells in my body are humming with the business of life. And not just in my body. The frogs singing from their hiding places—their cells are in a flurry, too. The mallards paddle-wheeling through the flooded grass. The gelatinous scum of frog eggs at the water’s edge. All of it invisibly astir. The more one thinks about it, the more unbelievable it sounds.
"Oscar Wilde said “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” The smallest insect is more worthy of our astonishment than a thousand sprites or ghosts.
"To say that it is all chemistry doesn’t demean the dignity of life; rather, it suggests that the most elemental fabric of the world is charged with potentialities of a most spectacular sort. We have perhaps an infinite amount yet to learn about the molecular chemistry of life, but what we have already learned stands as one of the grandest and most dignified achievements of human curiosity. Forget all the other stuff—the spooks, the auras, the disembodied souls; embodied soul is what really matters. As I stand by the water meadow, I try to refocus my attention away from the ducks and geese and trees and frogs (and human observer), and attend instead to the thing I cannot see but know to be there, the endlessly active, architecturally simple unity of life—the meadow aflame, burning, burning.”
Indeed, the meadow aflame, burning, burning. Once again Raymo proves to be the most poetic nature writer under our canopy of stars.
Bravo, Raymo. Bravo.
Flash forward 150 years to Chet Raymo, retired physics and astronomy professor from Stonehill College in Massachusetts. Born in my home state, in Chattanooga, he left Tennessee to peruse the universe. I first discovered him through his 1985 book Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage.
But Raymo is equally poetic and proficient and powerful in describing the universe inside us all.
“We have, it seems, a fierce attraction for spirits: auras, angels, poltergeists, disembodied souls, out-of-body experiences….If we want more than meets the eye, we should practice on this: the invisible flame of DNA.
“Even as I stand motionless and attentive at the edge of the water meadow, a flurry of activity is going on in every cell of my body. Tiny protein-based “motors” crawl along the stands of DNA, transcribing the code into single-strand RNA molecules, which in turn provide the templates for building the many proteins that are my body’s warp and weft. Other proteins help pack DNA neatly into the nuclei of cells and maintain the tidy chromosome structures. Still other protein-based motors are busily at work untying knots that form in DNA as it is unpacked in the nucleus of a cell and copied during cell division. Others are in charge of quality control, checking for accuracy and repairing errors. Working, spinning, weaving, winding, unwinding, patching, repairing—each cell is like a bustling factory of a thousand workers. A trillion cells in my body are humming with the business of life. And not just in my body. The frogs singing from their hiding places—their cells are in a flurry, too. The mallards paddle-wheeling through the flooded grass. The gelatinous scum of frog eggs at the water’s edge. All of it invisibly astir. The more one thinks about it, the more unbelievable it sounds.
"Oscar Wilde said “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” The smallest insect is more worthy of our astonishment than a thousand sprites or ghosts.
"To say that it is all chemistry doesn’t demean the dignity of life; rather, it suggests that the most elemental fabric of the world is charged with potentialities of a most spectacular sort. We have perhaps an infinite amount yet to learn about the molecular chemistry of life, but what we have already learned stands as one of the grandest and most dignified achievements of human curiosity. Forget all the other stuff—the spooks, the auras, the disembodied souls; embodied soul is what really matters. As I stand by the water meadow, I try to refocus my attention away from the ducks and geese and trees and frogs (and human observer), and attend instead to the thing I cannot see but know to be there, the endlessly active, architecturally simple unity of life—the meadow aflame, burning, burning.”
Indeed, the meadow aflame, burning, burning. Once again Raymo proves to be the most poetic nature writer under our canopy of stars.
Bravo, Raymo. Bravo.
December 30, 2014
I lived in North Easton right next to the path described in this book so some of the descriptions of the town and the path itself were especially meaningful to me. The book has meaning for anyone, however, as Chet Raymo explains how everything in the world is connected to everything else. This is a big task but the author does an admirable job of getting us thinking about such things.
December 18, 2007
The concept for this book is delightful, and Chet Raymo executes it with wisdom and grace.
Each day, Raymo walks from his home in North Easton, Mass., to the place he works as a professor, Stonehill College. His trip along this one-mile path takes him past glacial rocks, sandy loam, a brook, grassland, meadows and community gardens.
Like other amateur naturalists who have gone before him, Raymo believes that "A minute lived attentively can contain a millennium; an adequate step can span the planet."
And he goes on to prove it. Whether he is describing the effect of the ice ages on the landscape, the impact of the first colonists, with their European tastes for open land and farming and the seeds that hitchhiked in their clothing and on their animals, or the plants and animals that inhabit his Aracadian space, Raymo shows a gift for being able to use his path to open up the mysteries of the universe, both galactic and molecular, and do it with grace and poetic sensibility.
There may not be quite as much new to learn as in some other science books, but it is more than compensated for by the beauty of his language. Describing how stones buried in the earth make their way down hillsides under the cyclical influence of the freeze-thaw cycle, Raymo writes: "Frost lifts a stone in a direction perpendicular to the slope of the hill. Then, as the soil thaws, gravity pull the stone straight down. Up forward, straight down. Up forward, straight down. Thus do stones descend to the bottom of sloping meadows, taking their sweet geologic time, creeping on frosty fingers."
As he lies on a bridge across a brook, "I watch male and female dragonflies curl their bodies into valentine-shaped embraces, coitus on the wing. Sometimes a mating pair stays locked together for an unseemly long time ... Like mating dragonflies, our drawing toward each other was cradled in the pond, nurtured on the tangled bank, perfected in the same urgency of seek and join that causes these agile fliers to bend their bodies into a heart-shaped kiss."
Writing about the winter home in Mexico of the Monarch butterflies that leave his environs, Raymo says that "science and politics alone will not save the monarchs ... What is required is ... a deeply felt, unintellectualized, instinctive 'yes' -- a sense that behind the gaudy delight of 20 million butterflies hanging on fir trees, there is a natural and infinite power that binds all life in a holy web."
This slim but powerful book evokes just that kind of interconnected awe.
Each day, Raymo walks from his home in North Easton, Mass., to the place he works as a professor, Stonehill College. His trip along this one-mile path takes him past glacial rocks, sandy loam, a brook, grassland, meadows and community gardens.
Like other amateur naturalists who have gone before him, Raymo believes that "A minute lived attentively can contain a millennium; an adequate step can span the planet."
And he goes on to prove it. Whether he is describing the effect of the ice ages on the landscape, the impact of the first colonists, with their European tastes for open land and farming and the seeds that hitchhiked in their clothing and on their animals, or the plants and animals that inhabit his Aracadian space, Raymo shows a gift for being able to use his path to open up the mysteries of the universe, both galactic and molecular, and do it with grace and poetic sensibility.
There may not be quite as much new to learn as in some other science books, but it is more than compensated for by the beauty of his language. Describing how stones buried in the earth make their way down hillsides under the cyclical influence of the freeze-thaw cycle, Raymo writes: "Frost lifts a stone in a direction perpendicular to the slope of the hill. Then, as the soil thaws, gravity pull the stone straight down. Up forward, straight down. Up forward, straight down. Thus do stones descend to the bottom of sloping meadows, taking their sweet geologic time, creeping on frosty fingers."
As he lies on a bridge across a brook, "I watch male and female dragonflies curl their bodies into valentine-shaped embraces, coitus on the wing. Sometimes a mating pair stays locked together for an unseemly long time ... Like mating dragonflies, our drawing toward each other was cradled in the pond, nurtured on the tangled bank, perfected in the same urgency of seek and join that causes these agile fliers to bend their bodies into a heart-shaped kiss."
Writing about the winter home in Mexico of the Monarch butterflies that leave his environs, Raymo says that "science and politics alone will not save the monarchs ... What is required is ... a deeply felt, unintellectualized, instinctive 'yes' -- a sense that behind the gaudy delight of 20 million butterflies hanging on fir trees, there is a natural and infinite power that binds all life in a holy web."
This slim but powerful book evokes just that kind of interconnected awe.
December 25, 2020
This begins as a description of a nature walk but expands to include economic history, biology, ornithology, zoology, geology, meteorology, astronomy, the history and development of nature writing, conservation, and cultural anthropology. The author's knowledge is vast, and he brings it to bear on his walk through a town, the woods, brooks, fields and meadows, and community gardens. Most of us cannot equal his understanding of the natural world he passes through, but his lesson is to open our eyes and see what is before us. Ask questions about what we don't understand, and discover the link between us and the larger world as well as the smaller one, the unit of the cell from which all life grows. This is a gentle introduction into the interlacing of all aspects of life as well as the pleasures of seeing deeply into the world around us.
January 15, 2009
So, it's a pretty fast read and it offers some interesting facts about how everything is connected by atoms and molecules, but nothing profound. Don't get me wrong, I liked the book, but not for it's scientific analyses or products. The author gives a great historical overview of the location (North Easton in Boston) and then ties it to cosmic and atomic science. It's an interesting perspective and enjoyable, but not for readers who want great depth in facts. I like to think of it as a book that dangles the carrot in front of inquiring minds and then leaves it up to you to do more research with other books :)
July 27, 2018
This book takes a twofold approach to presenting its argument, both of which are present in its subtitle: 'A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe'. It is a cosmological and ecological romp, while at the same time providing a history of the Ames family along with the business dynamics that literally shaped the town of Easton in the early 1800's.
While presenting a walk that he takes to go to and from work, the author ends up discussing many things: the plants and animals of the environment, the mysteries of our shared animal biology, the history of the region, and our inherited stewardship of the environment.
While presenting a walk that he takes to go to and from work, the author ends up discussing many things: the plants and animals of the environment, the mysteries of our shared animal biology, the history of the region, and our inherited stewardship of the environment.
July 1, 2018
A minute lived attentively can contain a millennium; an adequate step can span the plant (p. 5)
An adequate step is define by Tim Robinson as a step worthy of the landscape it traverses. It takes note of geology, biology, myths, history, and politics.
This book is definitely an enjoyable, adequate step.
An adequate step is define by Tim Robinson as a step worthy of the landscape it traverses. It takes note of geology, biology, myths, history, and politics.
This book is definitely an enjoyable, adequate step.
July 6, 2020
Some people climb Mt. Everest to have a trancendental experience. Mr. Raymo walked the same path to work for 40 years and found an enlightement of sorts. He discovered all things are connected at their most basic level. Read this small volume. Mr Raymo has written the Walden of The Sheep Pasture in Easton Massachusetts.
January 20, 2020
I really enjoyed how the author's focus on the details of a small area allowed him to tie the minuscule to the large, the micro to the macro, the now to the then. Tastes of history, science, and art all from a one-mile walk. Enjoyable and interesting.
April 25, 2020
I just could not get into book. Did not finish.
March 11, 2024
Appreciating the beauty around you can change the world!
July 21, 2024
Not as good as I expected
November 10, 2024
More lyricism than content.
August 31, 2009
This seems to be a theme these days, but ...
This book wasn't what I expected it to be. The cover blurb says "For nearly forty years, Chet Raymo has walked a one-mile path from his house in North Easton, Massachusetts, to the Stonehill College campus where he has taught physics and astronomy. The woods, meadows, and stream he passes are as familiar to him as his own backyard, yet each day he finds something new. 'Every pebble and wildflower has a story to tell', Raymo says."
From that, I thought the book was going to ponder the turn of the seasons, the mystery of an individual flower, the industriousness of ants -- you know the style of thing. If I'd paid attention to what he taught, or registered the phrase "He connects the local to the global, the microscopic to the galatic ..." I might have had a more accurate expectation.
The book is good, but it doesn't have much to do with the turn of the seasons, the mystery of an individual flower or the industriousness of ants. He does range globally and galactically, and quite cogently. I think I need to digest this book a bit -- I might even come back and give it a higher rating.
August 4, 2020
This delightful book reads much like its subject matter, like a ramble with a wise old friend along a shaded path through the woods. Chet Raymo connects the small sights and sounds along his daily walk to work to the larger ebbs and flows of the cosmos -- a pebble encapsulates vast stretches of geologic time, while a flower represents the sum of evolution. Sights along the path are triggers for digressions into history, ecology, the industrial revolution, the movements of peoples and their patterns of settlement, urban design and landscape architecture. Raymo revels in the local and celebrates the present in a way that is transformative and beautiful. He shows how interesting and delightful the humble and the quotidian can be if only we have the eyes to see and the patience to pause and ponder. A perfect antidote to the frenetic pace of modern life and a rebuke to the shallowness of our electronically-mediated lives.
May 1, 2012
This was a lovely book, for the most part, and Mr. Raymo is a very insightful writer. As in Soul of the Night he draws from a lot of sources to tie together his vision of the way things are, and he manages to convey a sense of hope while cataloging the ways in which humanity has altered the landscape - no small feat. But i found myself getting a little bored from time to time, and overall it just didn't wow me the way i wanted it to - the way Soul of the Night did. Good, but a little disappointing.
June 6, 2011
I really kind of what to go 3.5 for The Path, but that's not an option, and I worry it is partially because I have read too many of these books now. Seeing the universe in a blade of grass is a tremendous thing, and Raymo's device of using the path to discuss the world works quite well. I just didn't find myself drawn in quite as fully as I have with other books. Still, it's a quick read and worth it. The New England history is interesting.
November 10, 2008
The Path is a one-mile walk from the author's home in North Easton, Mass. to the Sonehill College Campus. It chronicles the universe he has found by closely obsertving every detail of his route. For those of us who are trained observers of children, systems change, or history, this is an humbling experience.
April 19, 2016
Chet Raymo's The Path is a nature book, but he writes about far more than nature. Interwoven with nature, his topics include local history, astronomy, science. Anthony Doerr said The Path is "a gorgeous book . . . alive with contagious enthusiasm." I would agree, and I'll read it again . . . possibly over and over.
January 4, 2010
This book is the true story of Chet Raymo's daily walk to work at Stonehill College, from his nearby home, via "The Path". You will notice details around you that you never did before after you read this book. Beautifully written.
January 27, 2016
Unfortunately this book totally surprised me and as a result perhaps my rating is tougher than is warranted. I wanted to "follow him down his neighborhood path" and learn about nature, but instead found what I found to be a chaotic rambling about life, nature, and the cosmos.
January 9, 2008
I read this to add to my understanding/appreciation of the natural world.
September 15, 2009
Structured around one mans 1 mile path to his job, Raymo intersperses history of place, science and environmentalism into this lovely book perfect for lazy summer afternoon reading.
January 28, 2011
I liked reading about the history of North Easton, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the naturalists Mrs. Dana and Gilbert White. Very readable, even when talking about various aspects of science.
August 24, 2011
A scientific study of the effects of local history on the ecology of the author's one mile walk to work from his small town hone to the university where he is a professor of physics.
January 9, 2016
interesting combo of history, anthropology, ecology, biology, geology, entrophy, landscape, and a celebration of nature.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews