Author's essays in "Findings" find beauty in disorder

Scottish writer Kathleen Jamie has a few axes to grind in this quietly lyrical book of homespun essays. First, there's our general attitude about darkness. "The natural, courteous dark was too much maligned," she writes in her opener, about visiting a Stone Age tomb in the Orkney Islands. "(T)he whole idea wanted refreshing."

Essay by essay, she plies this skeptical, open-minded stave into the world, studying texture that is taken for granted. She goes on whale cruises, tracks down rare birds and glimpses salmon fighting upstream to mate and then die.

There is a primordial power to all of Jamie's subjects: birth, life, death, and beauty. But she never lets this bully her into a posture of reverence. Why is the "natural" oddly superior to the "unnatural"? At what point do human activities cross from one realm to the other?

There are, of course, debatable answers to all these questions, but Jamie is not a writer in search of order. "Findings" is a book about existing in contradiction. The natural world has rhythms we mimic and others we subvert.

So in addition to essays on birds, the sky and the dark, this book also features meditations on the Georgian skyline of Edinburgh, with its clock towers and spires.

Jamie muses on the value of the Sabbath as a day of reflection. One need only look to these thoughtful, sometimes provocative essays to find a strong argument for the good that can emerge from it.