TROY — Bangor Daily News columnist Dana Wilde, an itinerant amateur naturalist from Waldo County, has released a collection of essays on Maine’s natural world.

In the essays, compiled from the BDN’s award-winning Amateur Naturalist column, Wilde explores the science and experience of the backyard and the Maine woods.

Wilde’s collection,  titled “The Other End of the Driveway,” “makes up a bright constellation of images and insights that tells the story of Maine’s natural world in all seasons and weather,” writes Kristen Lindquist of the Coastal Mountains Land Trust in Camden. “His close and joyful focus on everything around him, from stars and spiders to bog grasses and bear tracks, instructs and illuminates as all the best stories do.”

Wilde, also an editor for the BDN, has taught at Unity College and the University of Maine, as well as in Eastern Europe and China, and his writings on nature, literature and the cosmos have appeared in a wide variety of publications. He lives with his wife, Bonnie Woellner, in Troy.

“The Other End of the Driveway” is available for $16.95 in paperback and $8.50 electronically from www.booklocker.com, and in paperback from online booksellers and by ordering from local bookstores. For more information,  visit www.dwildepress.net/thedriveway or email Wilde at [email protected].