Here's a review I missed from Foreword Review:

https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/wild-delicate-seconds/

Wild Delicate Seconds

29 Wildlife Encounters

Fall 2012 — ForeWord Review

For those who have lived in a landscape that is shared with wild animals, Wild Delicate Seconds will conjure the transcendent moments that occur between wildlife and humans. In a collection of “micro-essays,” Charles Finn describes his encounters with wildlife while living in the Pacific Northwestern United States. Although Finn admits to seeking some of them out, most occurred in a “chance encounter,” producing a “special quality … a timelessness, a residue of the sacred.”

As editor of the High Desert Journal and contributor to nature writing periodicals including Open Spaces, Northern Lights, Big Sky Journal, and High Country News, Finn has published widely in the genre. But it is his poetic gift that offers access to a reader who has not had his own wild encounter: “In the growing light pewter water reflects pewter sky and I watch how this flower-bird stalks: horror and beauty are at one in the dawn.”

Finn’s collection, however, is not one of drama; his quiet essays are deliberate and powerful, each one containing that nugget of surprise, such as the gentle quality of a passage both feminine and haunting: “Above the geese the soft colors of the afternoon deepen into a tremendous wound and a gibbous moon is birthed, shadows crawling over the snow to dissolve into the river.” His message, though understated, is clear: nature, if observed carefully, is transformative.

While not overly reflective, Finn does philosophize about the human condition and perhaps his own choice to live close to the wilderness: “We are given these days, don’t you know, to do with as we will.” Occasionally he lapses into the anthropomorphic, saying, ” I know my one wish above all others is to spend time with one of these cats, to hold and to pet one, to hear one of them purr.” It is Finn’s subtlety—while watching a herd of mountain goats on a rocky 9,000-foot slope—that conveys a hint of nihilism: “They crowd onto their narrow shelves, staring out of black button eyes onto their beautiful and indifferent world.”

Finn’s book should appeal to fans of nature writing and will be a welcome addition to undergraduate courses in that subject, environmental studies, or surveys of literature that include the traditions of Emerson, Dillard, Thoreau, and Whitman.

Kai White
August 30, 2012

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WDS is being used in classrooms and I just stumbled upon this from Six Traits Gurus, a website:

"Featuring standards, traits, lesson ideas, and the BEST in current literature for young people" and "dedicated to providing you with the most up to date information on trait-based writing instruction and assessment”.

Jeff Hicks at Six Traits says this about WDS:

“Short, nonfiction informational essays. Intended for high school to adult audiences, but passages could be used across all grade levels and content areas … Finn’s perspective is that of a scientist/poet/storyteller/teacher and clearly, a lover of wildlife. These micro-essays will have a macro impact on your young writers.”

I love that last line.

The full version reads:

Charles Finn describes the contents of his book as a collection of nonfiction micro-essays—one to two pages in length, “…each one a description of a chance encounter I had with a member (or members) of the fraternity of wildlife that call the Pacific Northwest home.” Each piece is an exemplar of the many forms details might take in writing: sensory details, quotations, observations, facts, images, definitions, and examples. The author gathered information through close, purposeful observations of each animal, and recorded his descriptions and experiences in journals to be crafted later into these focused essays. From Bumble Bees: “I sit watching the bees, their inner-tube bodies overinflated, their legs like kinked eyelashes hanging down. The white noise of their wings soothe me…” From Water Ouzel (also known as dippers, my favorite bird): “The tiny bird dips and dunks…It is tiring to watch: knee bend, knee bend, knee bend, tail twitch, dunking, tail twitch, kneebendkneebendkneebend…” And from Western Toad (offering a counterpoint to The Wind in the Willow’s automobile loving character, Toad of Toad Hall): “It has eyes cowled like headlights, Popeye forearms, and skin that sags. It could be a burp from a tuba.” Finn’s perspective is that of a scientist/poet/storyteller/teacher and clearly, a lover of wildlife. These micro-essays will have a macro impact on your young writers.