FRESH AIR, BRIGHT WATER: ADVENTURES IN WOOD, FIELD, AND STREAM.

By Nelson Bryant '46. NewYork: American Press, 1971. 283 pp.$6.95.

Writing a column against a newspaper deadline is a serious challenge. Writing one on a field such as hunting and fishing that has been so thoroughly written about from Izaak Walton on down presents a challenge of a very special order.

This book, a selection from four years of "Wood, Field, and Stream" columns in TheNew York Times, amply proves that Nelson Bryant has more than met both challenges. His interpretation of what comes under his purview is catholic, ranging from ecology to gourmet cooking, and his writing is a perfect blend of the poetic and the precise.

Indeed, a good test of the quality of the writing is this: It interested a non-nimrod, non-angler, such as this reviewer (who, as a onetime newsroom colleague, has been a longtime admirer of the Bryantesque prose), with its descriptions of people and places, flora and fauna, ranging from Parismina, Costa Rica, to Bettyhill, Scotland.

However, if there is one leitmotiv that runs through these remarkably concise pieces (they are seldom more than two printed pages long and more often shorter), it is the woods and waters of Nelson Bryant's beloved homeland, Martha's Vineyard. In addition to the classic fishes of Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds, the blues and the stripers, and the fowl that migrate past twice yearly, there are descriptions of other things. For instance, "Cape Codder Describes Simple Plan for a Home Smoke- house"; or, "Shooting a Well Brings Psychic Release, and Sometimes Good Water."

It is a book that would not only gladden the heart of Natty Bumppo; it would gladden the heart, one would wager, of Natty Bumppo's creator.

Mr Farley, who finds his bright water andfresh air in his home town of Windsor, Vt.,is Assistant in the Office of InformationServices, Dartmouth College.