‘Hidden World Revealed’ will delight nature lovers
10/26/09
book review

‘Hidden World Revealed’ will delight nature lovers


By Dana Wilde
BDN Staff

HIDDEN WORLD REVEALED: Musings of a Maine Naturalist, by Tom Seymour; Just Write Books, Topsham, Maine, 2008; 190 pages, trade paperback, $24.95.

This book by Tom Seymour, a longtime naturalist (a moniker he says amuses him) and contributor to The Maine Sportsman, several midcoast newspapers and many other publications, offers short writings on the natural goings-on in his corner of Waldo County.

Just about any amateur naturalist who pays attention to the birds, beasts, flowers and seasons in campestral Maine will find an eye-opener or two here. Earthworms are not native to the Northeast, we learn. The live-forever flower is also called orpine, and you can eat the leaves. There are lists of things to do with fiddleheads, fun things to do while clamming (along with some good-natured griping about closed flats), and many thoughts on cold weather, which is on everybody’s natural mind here for longer than we care to remember during summer.

These little one- and two-page shots at depicting the backyard woods are breezy, journal-entrylike musings, as the subtitle indicates. There is less revelation here than observation, but the point is not so much to instruct as it is to inform and delight, and that will be the result for fans of Seymour’s periodical writings and for participants in his workshops.

Seymour is the author of “Birding Maine,” “Hiking Maine” and “Fishing Maine,” all guides to good spots for those activities, as well as other books and writings on the great outdoors hereabouts. “Hidden World Revealed” is available from Just Write Books at www.jstwrite.com.

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