Flying blind One man's adventures battling buckthorn, making peace with authority, and creating a home for endangered bats

Bats used to give Mitchell the willies. Then a bat biologist turned up at his Vermont farm with a request to trap some bats, and in his first night netted two endangered Indiana bats. A few years later Mitchell retired from teaching and began to work his farm again, enrolling it in a forest-management plan specifically targeted to help the bats. By then, white-nose syndrome, a largely fatal disease of hibernating bats, had invaded Vermont, and anything to help the bats was getting government funding. So the 1960s countercultural Mitchell, who had initially bought his farm to live off the land and away from any government interference, discovered himself getting more and more enmeshed. The forestry plan to help bats began to dovetail with the requirement to remove the invasive buckthorn and garlic mustard that were appearing in his woods; so to reduce his taxes and improve the forests for the bats, Mitchell had to play by the government's rules.--Bent, Nancy Copyright 2010 Booklist

Middlebury writing professor, novelist, and shepherd Mitchell (The Nature Notebooks) didn't set out to become an environmental hero at the outset of this elegantly written eco-memoir. Despite his mistrust of authority, in 2009, Mitchell is ridding Vermont forests of invasive plant species and rescuing bats through a government program: the Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP). This quest leads Mitchell into the darkness of the woods, and back out into a deepened understanding of himself and the natural world. The physical labor and nature of the forest come to stand for Mitchell's inner journey-making peace with the darkness in his family's past, while strengthening the bonds in his family's present. The methodical work, both of weeding and writing, allows him to restore the forest within, the "decay" allowing him to access rich literary material in his personal and family history. Collaborating with the government he once despised, Mitchell helps a team track bats, revealing why the endangerment of bats threatens the ecosystem. In helping to save them, he salvages part of himself: "Befriending bats had been a means to figure out, against all odds, where in the world I actually was." Mitchell weaves personal and environmental story lines in patterns as beautiful and natural as any ecosystem could create. Agent: Sally Brady, Brady Literary Management. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.