Timber Press

Starting in Mexico’s fir forests, onward through Nebraska’s cornfields, into southeastern Canada, and looping past Boston and New York City, Sara Dykman rode her bike along a path millions upon millions have circuited before, although she was the first human to do so. In her adventure memoir Bicycling with Butterflies, she writes about tracing the ten-thousand-mile monarch migration route on a rig she built from secondhand parts. Her nine-month trek was filled with bike touring elements any long-distance cyclist will recognize: the generosity of strangers, the bliss of hot showers and ice cream, and a range of campsites from bunkhouses to culverts to soccer fields. Along the way, Dykman brings us into the perspective of the butterflies, and you’ll discover the intricacies of metamorphosis, milkweed varieties, and monarch habitat, as well as the customs of passionate butterfly advocates, or, as Dykman calls them, Crazy Monarch People. Read this book and be transported into the everyday magic of both two-legged and six-legged creatures great and small.

Essays on nature writing as a practice — the craft, the tradition, and the writers who defined it. A companion for anyone trying to put landscape into words.