Is Nature your religion? someone asked, just the other day. It would be presumptuous to say so. Nature doesn t promise you anything an afterlife, rewards for good behaviour, protection from enemies, wealth, happiness...No...Nature is a reward in itself. For over half a century, Ruskin Bond has celebrated the wonder and beauty of nature as few other contemporary writers have, or indeed can. This collection brings together the best of his writing on the natural world, not just in the Himalayan foothills that he has made his home, but also in the cities and small towns that he lived in or travelled through as a young man. In these pages, he writes of leopards padding down the lanes of Mussoorie after dark, the first shower of the monsoon in Meerut that brings with it a tumult of new life, the chorus of insects at twilight outside his window, ancient banyan trees and the short-lived cosmos flower, a new moon in a deep purple sky, a bat who strays into his room and makes a night less lonely... A collector's edition, this volume proves again that for the serenity and lyricism of his prose and his sharp yet sympathetic eye, Ruskin Bond has few equals.