My Heart Belongs to Nature: A Memoir in Photographs and Prose - Hardcover

"Such soulfulness! John Nichols has traveled up and down the highest peaks in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, across the wide plateau that cradles the Rio Grande Gorge, and deep into the riverine where he has mastered boulder-dancing and fly-fishing. His photographs portray nature's artistry, and his prose restores the reader's mind to Nature's flow."-Jack Loeffler, author of Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey "This is the book all who love nature would write if only we were John Nichols and had his photographic eye. It's a photographic scrapbook from a lifetime of observing, experiencing, and loving nature, in all its forms, alone or with children and beloved friends."-Robert Julyan, author of Hiking to History: A Guide to Off-Road New Mexico Historic Sites

John Nichols fell in love with nature as a child when his father and grandfather, both naturalists, taught him the names of the flowers and trees, the herons and butterflies they encountered on walks in rural Long Island, New York. When Nichols moved to New Mexico as a young man, his passion for the natural world grew. He began photographing the land and critters observable just outside his kitchen window . . . and far beyond. In My Heart Belongs to Nature, Nichols records his forty-five-year connection to the Taos valley and its mountains, where he still lives. His engaging prose and striking photographs offer a tribute to his infinity in this grain of sand, replete with memories of wives, children, bighorn sheep and rattlesnakes, and high-altitude snowshoe excursions-all of it a paean to the biology that sustains us.