The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
Reviews
Recommended Reading Point Reyes Visions, by Richard Blair and Kathleen Goodwin. Color & Light Editions, Inverness, CA, 1999, 192 pp., $45.00 cloth.
Shortly after losing their house in 1995's Mount Vision Fire, the authors rebuilt a home and studio on Inverness Ridge, where they conceived this gorgeous book. Produced from scratch in that loft office, Point Reyes Visions dazzles the eye with its high-quality reproduction of photographs: A solitary cow obscured by fog. Photographer Blair's silhouette reflected in a stranded kelp float. Bird's-eye views of Point Reyes Lighthouse and Limantour Spit. A firelit sky illuminating Tomales Bay. Goodwin wrote the text and also contributed watercolors and a few of the 259 color photographs, including moody variations of light and shadow falling on Elephant Mountain. Rather than a comprehensive approach like that taken by Jules Evens in his The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula, this text is more a hodgepodge of human and natural interest topics, with brief essays on such subjects as weather, hiking trails, Mount Tamalpais, and oyster and dairy farming. A concluding section profiles several environmental groups active in keeping Point Reyes and the rest of west Marin County as wild and scenic as it appears in this book.
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Summer 2000
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