Grasshopper Dreaming: Reflections on Killing and Loving
"Grasshopper Dreaming: Reflections on Killing and Loving" is a provocative exploration of the moral, spiritual and human aspects a scientist's life as a hired assassin for agriculture. Jeff Lockwood, an economic entomologist of international renown, offers the reader a rich account of the sometimes painful, often odd, occasionally funny, and invariably complex realizations that come with balancing a religious perspective with the practices of modern science and technology. Based on 15 years of work on the spellbinding prairie landscapes of Wyoming, the essays reveal the maturing of a scientist as he learns to experience the natural world with an openness to other ways of knowing -- perhaps even to the point where these subjective and transcendent insights became more compelling than the manner of knowing in which he was trained. As such, this book represents the rare and compelling integration of an understanding of Nature through the eyes of a world-class ecologist and a struggling mystic. His insights, observations, ironies, and experiences illuminate one path toward greater internal harmony, a balance that is perhaps most desperately sought by those whose professions demand objective, materialistic perspectives.