What I Learned at Bug Camp is a collection of illustrated nature essays by Sarah Juniper Rabkin. As the title of the book indicates, her writing is entertaining and informative. In a personal way, she reflects on the outer world and her own thoughts. In this passage from the introductory essay, “Notes from the Trail,” she compares the initial stage of the process of writing an essay to crossing a stream on a hike:

To compose a personal essay, I find, requires a kind of metaphorical creek crossing. What usually motivates me to start writing is the desire to move through some stretch of emotional, intellectual, ethical country: to discover the inhabitants of this landscape, feel its breezes, take in the view from its heights. The beckoning terrain may open up out of an unfinished conversation that I can’t get out of my head. The topography may feature a preoccupying passion, a confounding question, a patch of despair. If it’s a country worth exploring in an essay and if I am writing honestly, then the trail eventually winds up at the lip of a gorge--and then another and another. These are junctures where I am forced to face the limits of my understanding, to explore beyond habitual platitudes and into the unknown.

What I Learned at Bug Camp is available in Kindle and print formats, although the Kindle edition lacks the illustrations. More information on the book and author may be found on the publisher's web site: Juniper Lake Press.