My Heart Belongs to Nature offers readers a window into writer and photographer John Nichols’ decades-long love affair with the mountain slopes, hidden fishing spots and backyard pastures of the Taos, New Mexico, area — as well as the family and friends with whom he shares these places. He moved to New Mexico as a young man and has been photographing and writing about the landscape ever since. The collection of 108 photographs includes an essay by Nichols, the irreverent author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel The Milagro Beanfield War. Extended captions accompany each image. On the cover, a blizzard of neon-yellow aspen leaves cascades through a high mountain clearing in late September. “No, this isn’t a great picture, but it’s a fabulous moment,” Nichols writes of the photograph. In fact, as one could say of each of the book’s images, it is both. Emily Benson
My Heart Belongs to Nature: A Memoir in Photographs and Prose
By John Nichols. 160 pages, hardcover: $29.95.
University of New Mexico Press, 2017.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline My heart belongs to nature.
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