Tiny Worlds: A Field Guide to Small Wonders

Through luminous prose, Tiny Worlds invites us to consider what we might learn about connection, belonging, and repair by attending to the very small.

In Tiny Worlds, author Chelsea Steinauer Scudder seeks a different way to grapple with the enormity of the changing natural world: by narrowing the lens, and gazing at familiar artifacts of home through a microscope. Chelsea examines curious objects from the natural world in the mountains of Vermont: Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly wing; Goldenrod pollen; Oak gall; Bluejay feather. She does this, she writes, because "The very small can remind us that we exist within limits, within constraints, within particular environments and communities and moments in time." 

In Tiny Worlds, Chelsea bridges the worlds of a naturalist and a spiritualist. Her spectacular, luminous writing expertly guides us through the more difficult spiritual and ecological questions we are grappling with today. What can we learn about place-making and community-building by paying close attention to that which we can reach out and touch, smell, and taste?