Using Robert Frost's poem "Directive" as a companion on a journey through the woods of Vermont, John Elder (a professor of English and environmental studies at Middlebury College) weaves scholarly analysis with reflections on the cycles of loss and recovery in his own life and in nature. Elder explains that not all ecological destruction is intrinsically wrong. After all, the hard-wood forests that were lost to small farms are now replaced by blazing maples, suggesting that the communities of man and nature are compatible, and wilderness is capable of renewal. It's an eloquently written book of memoir, literary criticism and natural history.  (USE55, $20.50)