Editor’s Note: is a column featuring new books that are written by Maine authors, set in the Pine Tree State, or have other Maine ties.

TEMPLE STREAM: A RURAL ODYSSEY, by Bill Roorbach; Random House/Dial Press, 2005; 288 pages, hardback, $24.

“Temple Stream” is a loosely constructed, nimbly fictionalized nonfiction narrative of life, off and on, at an old house on Temple Stream near Farmington. Bill Roorbach tells stories of expeditions to and from the house, and indulges us in long, amiable passages on the anticipated topics, such as spring flowers, the ins and outs of firewood season, a fondness for poetry (including a certain idolization of Maine’s Ted Enslin), and the conception, birth and care of a daughter. There also are the weird people who enrich and entangle life in rural Maine, such as Ms. Bollocks who lives in the house while the Roorbachs are in Ohio and thinks she owes rent only during any current month she’s there – i.e., in March she does not owe for February because February’s gone by.

While the word “odyssey” is a stretch, the quirks of outback Maine, the galumphing characters, and the affable tone of “Temple Stream” are conveyed with slick literary outdoorsmanism, which Roorbach has cultivated successfully over the last few decades. A winner of an O. Henry Award and the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction in 2001, Roorbach’s writings include “Big Bend,” “Summers with Juliet” and the delivering contribution to “A Place on Water,” also about the Farmington area.

A professor in the 1990s at UMaine Farmington and Ohio State University, Roorbach now holds the Jenks Chair in Contemporary American Letters at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH: BIRDING, OPERA, AND OTHER JOURNEYS, by Thomas Urquhart; Shoemaker & Hoard, paperback edition 2006; 314 pages, $15.

This book can be judged by its cover. Its title perfectly reflects its essays’ tone and topics, and the author’s experience: Thomas Urquhart of Falmouth was the executive director of the Maine Audubon Society in the closing years of the 20th century.

“For the Beauty of the Earth” takes us on 11 meandering explorations and descriptions of his past, with the themes of natural beauty and the necessity for its preservation constantly prominent. The first five essays – most of them much longer than we normally see in this literary genre – are memoirs of his childhood. They wander around with thoughtful good feeling, depicting his days as a boy naturalist in southern England and his feelings about his English ancestry. The next five essays are travel pieces rather than memoirs – although the categories obviously overlap – describing in rich detail Urquhart’s observations on the landscapes and their sometimes discouraging modern degradation in Italy, Africa and France.

These essays are long and sometimes slip into a kind of free-association to works of art, music and poetry. Their atmosphere of appreciation and reflection is pleasant and constantly inviting, in gracefully handled language. The reflection always circles back to the familiar Thoreauvian themes summed up in this passage from “Landscape, with Man”:

“The fields in which humans and nature have played together over a long period of time are the landscapes that set our souls to singing. The hedgerows of England, the woodlots and fields of New England … all have been shaped by centuries of human use. We need to focus as much energy on saving them as we do the rainforests.”

“For the Beauty of the Earth” will appeal not only to nature lovers who are or could be Audubon Society members, but also to devotees of the current vogue for personal and family memoir. Urquhart’s sincere, if sometimes protracted, observations on nature and personal history are, like an intimate afternoon conversation over tea, timely and engaging.