Overview

"Smoke to See By is a collection of 21 essays and stories, many never before published, written by award-winning essayist and columnist Ben Moyer. The collection tracks the writer's quest for intimate knowledge of, and personal connection to, the natural features of his home region, the foothills and ridges of Northern Appalachia. Readers will follow Moyer along mountain streams and through native woodlands to insightful encounters with rare salamanders, wild trout, rattlesnakes, bears, songbirds, and bobcats, through a hurricane that turned to a blizzard, and working with troubled adolescents in a therapeutic camping program. In this selection of works, ranging from lengthy to one succinct page, Moyer reveals the meaning, and connection to place, he finds in butchering a deer in a freezing garage or in gathering blackberries amid summer's heat. He also laments the loss of some familiar parts of the living landscape, unnoticed by many, as the region's ecology absorbs onslaughts from invasive species and responds subtly to climate in transition. But overall, Smoke to See By is a quietly joyous celebration of the ecological resilience and diversity of a region those without Moyer's perception might categorize as ""unspectacular,"" yet which harbors its own marvelous natural wonders, offered to those who would know them up close."

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Reviews

Foremost Appalachian essayist Ben Moyer does not take for granted Emerson's adage that for everything you gain, you lose something else. The sensuous prose here, in his finest writing on place-actually the finest literature on place in the northern Appalachian idiom-confronts us with how our losses exceed society's yardstick for gain the more we tune out the miracles at work in this book's simplest, lovingly evoked experiences: tasting the juicy lusciousness of a homegrown tomato; seeing the hourly theatrics of the ridges in our periphery; feeling the cycles of our earth through the bracing scratches of blackberry thorns, to name a few. Ben Moyer's calling is to tune our senses to the gifts of people and places that are slipping irrevocably away. Recover them here, in these sacred pages...PJ Piccirillo, founding editor, the Northern Appalachia Review and author of The Indigo Scarf and Nunc Stans: A Ferry Tale

"Foremost Appalachian essayist Ben Moyer does not take for granted Emerson's adage that for everything you gain, you lose something else. The sensuous prose here, in his finest writing on place-actually the finest literature on place in the northern Appalachian idiom-confronts us with how our losses exceed society's yardstick for gain the more we tune out the miracles at work in this book's simplest, lovingly evoked experiences: tasting the juicy lusciousness of a homegrown tomato; seeing the hourly theatrics of the ridges in our periphery; feeling the cycles of our earth through the bracing scratches of blackberry thorns, to name a few. Ben Moyer's calling is to tune our senses to the gifts of people and places that are slipping irrevocably away. Recover them here, in these sacred pages...PJ Piccirillo, founding editor, the Northern Appalachia Review and author of The Indigo Scarf and Nunc Stans: A Ferry Tale ""Ben Moyer's stories are always pleasurable adventures to read. He brings a depth of experience, an eye for exquisite detail and an intimate human touch that not only place the reader in the scene and the thick of the action but also convey the mature and nuanced understanding he's gained over decades. We are able to absorb the benefit of his experience, but with his light touch as a writer, it's as if we're there ourselves, taking in images, people and lessons of life on our own terms.""...Douglas Heuck, Editor, Pittsburgh Quarterly"

Author Information

Ben Moyer's writing on nature, outdoors, and conservation issues appears in numerous regional and national publications including Northern Appalachia Review and Pittsburgh Quarterly magazine. In 2019, the Outdoor Writers Association of America honored Moyer with its Excellence in Craft Award, which recognizes an outstanding lifetime body of work. His writing has also garnered numerous awards from the Pennsylvania Outdoor Writers Association and the Mason-Dixon Outdoor Writers Association. Moyer strives to convey the value of personal affiliation with place, in his case Northern Appalachia, while interpreting scientific concepts and the region's natural history through creative prose.In addition to his writing, Moyer is president of the Chestnut Ridge Chapter of Trout Unlimited, which works to protect, improve, and restore wild trout streams in the Laurel Highlands region of southwestern Pennsylvania. He writes and lives in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, with his wife Kathy.

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