When it comes to nature, some of us like to traipse through meadows,  ogling butterflies.  Others, preferring more active engagements, hike up pretty hills or bike along meandering streams.  But a few of us, frequently men, seek out the most inhospitable places on earth, preferably aquatic, and throw ourselves in just to see what will happen.

Jon Bowermaster is one of those people.  An Ulster County-based travel writer whose work regularly appears in National Geographic Traveler, Bowermaster has collected 20 of his stories in Alone Against the Sea and Other True Adventures.  Having been tailored for magazines, the tales are brief and Bowermaster's liquid prose makes them go down easy.  They're chock-full of the pleasures of reading travel literature: delicious place names (e.g., Chile's Futaleufu River), knuckle-biting exploits (e.g., Peter Beard's crocodile-catching), and potentially useful information (e.g., young rabbits make good eating, but squeeze the urine out first so it doesn't contaminate the meat).  Plus, he knows how to start a story ("Our escape from Nairobi was plotted at a seedy bar called the Hurlingham"). Devotees of Bruce Chatwin, perhaps the most uncannily gifted travel writer of the 20th century, will detect a wisp of his ghost in Bowermaster's tales.

But Chatwin isn't the only ghost around: the specter of death haunts nearly every page.  In one story, the hills of northern Pakistan prove deadly for one hiker; in another, a Peruvian river nearly swallows several kayakers.  The best tale, which gives the book its name, describes the Vendome Globe, an around-the-world solo sailing race.  Since the competition began in 1989, it has never failed to take a life or two.  Sometimes searchers find the boat; sometimes they don't.

What drives people to take such god-awful risks, to sail or hike or kayak in places that ought to be marked with Keep Out signs?  That's Bowermaster's big question, so it's disappointing that he doesn't press his interview subjects when they supply pat answers, or try very hard to provide his own answer when given the chance in the introduction.  Nor does the author turn a critical eye on the "great white hunter" posture of his adventurers.  To be fair, I suspect National Geographic Traveler isn't all that keen on such musings.  And in the end, man's relationship with nature really is inexplicable.  Bowermaster has dedicated this book to adventure photographer Barry Tessman, his frequent collaborator, who died, mysteriously, while kayaking on a calm lake.

In this era of bustle and distraction, the notion of time alone is an alluring one.  Though many dream of retreat, local author Barbara Bash actually did it: for one year, she spent a week from each season alone in a remote Catskill cabin.  True Nature is a chronicle of this experience.

Bash is an author/illustrator of children's nature books and a longtime Buddhist, and this work combines both interests.  It's crafted to look like an actual naturalist's journal, with vivid sketches and watercolors on every page.  We see her view across the summer meadow, the blazing fall leaves, the brown snake that shares her temporary home.  She's also an accomplished calligrapher, and has hand-lettered every word between the covers - a touch that reinforces the sense of peeking into private musings.  But it adds something else as well: because her slanting text can't be read at a skimming pace, you're literally forced to slow down and experience the book much as she lived it - at the slower, deeper pace of contemplation.

Simple joy is abundant in these pages.  The song of a cardinal is rendered as a jagged crimson line, an airplane is a rising streak of blue.  One spread is a wandering map of a particular morning: the grassy trail, the ridge where she naps, the meadow where she realizes she's lost her hat.

But this isn't just a pleasant idyll: in quiet, loudness rises, in darkness, ghosts emerge.  She's fearful of the long nights, she misses her young son, she struggles with the demons of "not-busy-enough."

True Nature is a beautifully wrought, engagingly honest work: a don't-miss pick for nature lovers, spiritual practitioners, and everyone who's ever wondered what would really happen if they ever had time for themselves.  As Bash says in the book's foreword, "This is a record of that ancient practice of coming to rest where we are."

Bash road-tests her spiritual work here, and the results are entertaining, alarming, and ultimately illuminating.

Barbara Bash will read from True Nature on 11/5 at Ariel Booksellers in New Paltz at 7pm; 11/13 at the Golden Notebook in Woodstock at 5pm; and 11/19 at Oblong Books in Millerton at 7:30pm.

Thomas Frank, one of America's most penetrating social analysts, has once again demonstrated his political acuity in his new book What's the Matter with Kansas?  How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.  He begins with a paradox: During the last 30 years, America's social safety net has been drastically eroded, the tax burden has been significantly reduced on corporations and the wealthy, and the country has achieved higher levels of economic inequality than any other Western European democracy.  These trends have wreaked incalculable harm on working-class Americans.  Yet millions of them have joined a right-wing movement led by the Republican Party, which has implemented the kind of laissez-faire economics and deregulated capitalism that has economically devastated their lives.

Frank documents how rabid conservative propagandists ascribe the powerlessness and insecurity of "Middle Americans" not to capitalism, but to "liberalism," which the propagandists misconstrue as a powerful form of elite control over the nation's culture.  While engaging in an unrelenting class war, conservatives distract attention from its consequences by using important wedge issues to nurture a cultural war over grievances that cannot ever be assuaged.  Economic issues, such as affordable health care and decent paying jobs, take a back seat to struggles over values, abortion, patriotism, guns, religion, gender roles, homosexuality, and national honor.  Kansas, with its past history of progressive populism and periodic spurts of leftism, today represents the most extreme version of this Great Backlash, which has grown into a pseudo-populist movement of national significance.

Republicans presently dominate all three branches of government, but can claim few victories.  Frank maintains that the leaders of the cultural war care less about winning than about stoking their constituents' sense of grievance, impotence, and alienation.  Meanwhile, the ruling class, rooted in the corporate world, dominates the class system and uses its political power to pursue its extreme economic interests.

The Democratic Party, eager to court corporations for campaign contributions, has eschewed the class analysis that once distinguished it from the Republican Party.  Instead, the Democratic Party has chosen to subordinate the economic interests of blue-collar voters, which were its backbone, to upper middle class and corporate interests, making itself increasingly vulnerable to cultural wedge issues.

Writing with wit and passion, Frank convincingly shows how conservatives manipulate ordinary Americans to act against their own socioeconomic interests.  His book helps to restore reason and raise class-consciousness.

Are there people with such stifled souls that they've never experienced poignancy, an uplifting rush of joy, or the glow of tranquility resulting from a particular piece of music?  It's a familiar phenomenon to most of us, at least in fleeting moments.

For Matthew Cantello, an instructor, instrumentalist, and composer, there are levels of that experience far beyond what most people ever recognize, and music is capable of fostering and focusing powerful energies for healing, creativity, and joy.  Ever since he found himself swept into a spontaneous and powerful peak experience while listening to French piano music some years ago, he has been refining a series of methods by which those with less technical background may access for themselves the awesome power of music.

The writing is clean, clear, and elegant, like a long conversation with an erudite friend who's not in the least snobbish (although one senses Cantello might shudder with dismay if someone's personal power music was that of the Bay City Rollers).  He laments the ubiquity of substandard background music that is forced on us in so many settings; indeed, one of the important building blocks in his auditory awareness program is making time in our lives for adequate silence.

To break that silence, Cantello favors what he calls "art music," primarily modern classical music, jazz, and other genres, but usually excluding pop music.  The distinction is based on whether the music in question was created as an artistic expression, or as background or marketing tool.  The book offers a clear, concise overview of the different factors that combine to create a musical expression - tone, melody, harmony, rhythm, and color - and offers suggestions for training the ear and the mind to appreciate each.  Exercises and guidelines are provided to help move the reader closer to Cantello's vision of "absolute listening," a state in which music can be a potent ally in creating relaxation, enhancing love and creativity, and healing the emotions and even the physical body.  Throughout the book, one senses Cantello's joy at living in an age with a smorgasbord of high-quality recordings available.  He believes that this modern-day feast offers far more nourishment than most people obtain from it, and the book is a generous attempt to show the way.

Matthew Cantello will sign books at Esoterica Books in New Paltz, Friday, 11/12 at 7pm.  For information about his ongoing workshops and individual sessions, call (845) 687-8707.