University of Georgia Press
Tracking Desire: A Journey After Swallow-Tailed Kites
Key Metrics
- Susan Cerulean
- University of Georgia Press
- Paperback
- 9780820328195
- 8.48 X 6.46 X 0.47 inches
- 0.48 pounds
- Nature > Birdwatching Guides
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
My memory is etched with a clear image of how that bird swung into view and hung over me, suspended like an angel, so starkly black and white, with its wide-scissored split of a tail.
It took just one sighting of a swallow-tailed kite to dispatch Susan Cerulean on a pilgrimage through its fragmented and ever-shrinking habitats. In Tracking Desire, Cerulean immerses us in the natural history and biology of Elanoides forficatus. At the same time, she sifts through her past--as a child, student, biologist, parent, and activist--to muse on a lifelong absorption with nature.
Once at home throughout much of the eastern United States, the swallow-tailed kite is now seldom seen. With ornithologist Ken Meyer, and then on her own, Cerulean roams the kite's much-reduced homelands, gaining knowledge about the bird and the grave threats to its breeding grounds and migration patterns. Her quest takes her to the muddy banks of the Mississippi, to an enormous and vulnerable roost on corporate ranchlands in southwest Florida, and to the remnant pinelands of Everglades National Park.
In seeking the bird, Cerulean comes to question her own place in our consumerist society. My journeys after kites have led me to understand that the power of our longings is placing the integrity of life on our tender emerald planet so greatly at risk, she writes. What are the fractured places in our hearts and minds and spirits that have allowed us to stand by and watch, and even to participate in, the destruction of so much of life?
Author Bio
Writer, naturalist and activist Susan Cerulean’s nature memoir Coming to Pass: Florida’s Coastal Islands in a Gulf of Change (University of Georgia Press, 2015) received a Gold Medal in the category of Florida Nonfiction by the Florida Book Awards. Her previous book, Tracking Desire: A Journey After Swallow-tailed Kites (University of Georgia Press, 2005) was named Editors’ Choice by Audubon magazine (March 2005).
Cerulean directed the Red Hills Writers Project between 2004 and 2011, and edited Unspoiled: Writers Speak for Florida’s Coast, with Janisse Ray and A. James Wohlpart, in 2010. Unspoiled alerted Floridians to perils of oil drilling in the Gulf (and sold nearly 10,000 copies). With Janisse Ray and Laura Newton, she also edited Between Two Rivers: Stories from the Red Hills to the Gulf (RHWP, 2004). This locally-acclaimed anthology brought together personal essays written by 29 of the area’s foremost writers and naturalists.
In March 2009, she was honored by Tallahassee Community College as one of the “Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet.”
Cerulean has written and advocated on behalf of Florida and its wildlife from her home in Tallahassee since 1981. She is a founding board member of Heart of the Earth and the Red Hills Writers Project. She designed the States Nongame and Watchable Wildlife Programs, and was named Environmental Educator of the year by the Governors Council for a Sustainable Florida in 1997.
Susan Cerulean lives in Tallahassee Florida with her husband, oceanographer and climate scientist Dr. Jeffrey Chanton. They have three grown sons.
Source: comingtopass.com
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