A poet is presented with an opportunity to study nature in solitude. A naturalist has offered her digs on an island, and he has accepted. The object is a rebirth of zestful positive American potential energy, a new Whitman, a new enlightened romantic frontier.

The poet produces intricate and amazing photos, four of them, for Natural Nostrums. Using the elaborate photographic equipment available, he has some wonderful miniature jungle scenes depicting the spectacle of scaled movement and mayhem. For the series, he charts ant trails and beetle paths through rotted fallen oak.

He is troubled. The use of stealth, trickery, subterfuge throughout nature bothers him. Also, Man who should walk tall on earth, he realizes, is the worst offender, for not only are other species subject to his whims and pleasure, but he among all life pollutes and poisons his own nest, destroys others of his species on petty transient causes.

The long epic resulting from his year on the island is too dismal for the editors even to read, much less publish.