The ultimate evoker of place, Merwin visits Hawaii (ecological destruction), the Dordogne (cave paintings), the South Pacific (the circumnavigation by Jean Francois Galaup de Le Parouse who visited Easter Island, Maui, Alaska, Monterey Bay, Japan, Russia, and Australia before he disappeared in 1785), and my favorite, Mt. Athos and its monasteries in Greece. Beautiful, densely detailed prose by a master.