Outside My Window is a description of things found in an urban nature preserve, but it is much more. A recurring point of view in this collection of essays is the author's search for the story behind the immediate visual impression-an attempt to see with the mind as well as the eye. For example: The shape of the grandfather oak shows that when European settlers arrived they found the landscape of an oak savanna; The spacing of old silver maples in a ring tells of the presence of a ghost tree, once inhabiting the place in the center; The presence of small holes on a maple tree reveals the presence of an unseen bird that has arrived this spring, following the lead of others of his kind in past years; and The size of the glacial kettle in the nature preserve reveals the presence, 12,000 years ago, of a buried chunk of ice the size of the adjacent apartment building that now overlooks the preserve.