Pines Above Snow

We Rise

2008-11-05T05:55:00.001-08:00

Still I Rise

By Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Swampbikers Journal

2008-10-02T13:53:00.000-07:00

You’d think chocolate croissants would be incentive enough, but recently my children balked at our Sunday ritual of walking to the farmers’ market. Luckily, it turned out they were irked not by the destination but the pace. Family harmony was restored the next week by disentangling bikes from the jumbled garage and setting out as usual.

Laden with melons, apples, and sweet corn, we parents lagged behind on the return trip, only able to watch from afar as my daughter swerved off the path and crashed to the ground. Sarah laughingly explained, “I swerved to avoid a rock—with a tail!” Her swift self-sacrifice preserved the young life of a quarter-sized snapping turtle. A second hatchling was soon spotted crawling down the hill toward a stream, and we sat on the grass to watch their progress—and make sure no other bikers ground them into the tarmac.

I was thinking: the only thing that could make the discovery more fun would be more kids to share it with. Then down the path came a mom and two small girls. “Did you find a baby turtle?” the mom called. One child cradled a cardboard box, temporary quarters for another fiesty reptile. The mom turned out to be a talented nature photographer, Sharon Shomette, who had found the snapper snippet while out walking her dog and returned home for her camera (and pj-clad daughters). This shot catches the youngster's attitude perfectly.

Sharon’s confidence & enthusiasm instantly convinced us that she should lead our expedition. As she scrambled down a muddy bank to photograph the captive's release, I turned to my forte—-thinking of books that could enrich our experience. Quick as a shutter release, I thought of David M. Carroll, author of three wetlands natural history books known affectionately as the “wet sneaker trilogy.” If you never considered snappers as beautiful creatures, you’ll rethink your position after reading Carroll’s passionate ode to all things chelonian, Swampwalker's Journal. Carroll’s paintings and sketches of turtles and their boggy abodes also grace the books, further reflecting the intimacy of his connection to the New Hampshire marsh where he has studied snapping, spotted, and painted turtles for decades.

As I watched my kids delighting in sunshine, mud, and baby snappers with smiling neighbors, I wished they could experience a friendship like Carroll describes in his memoir, Self-Portrait with Turtles. Two pre-teens roaming free in a red-maple swamp, David & friend learned enough about cattails and carapace patterns in summer to sustain them through the dark classroom days of fall. Even when exploring on his own, young David remained connected to the girl who shared his outdoor adventures. Finding a yellow spotted turtle, he questions his impulse to capture it for his friend. I did not collect turtles or give them away, remembers Carroll, “But as I held this exquisite little one, I saw it as a living jewel she could keep for a time.” I trust that our morning with the snappers will be remembered as that same kind of gift, made less fleeting by Sharon’s fine photos, and more nourishing to the soul than the flakiest croissant.

Encounters in a Salt Marsh

2008-09-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

You never know who you’ll meet in a salt marsh. Tim Traver’s encounters range from the great grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to McMansion developers, to himself as a 12-year-old boy in a penetrating memoir, Sippewissett, or, Life on a Salt Marsh. To Travers, a tidal wetland has many meanings, and he carries readers along on a meandering kayak ride through the history of Wood Hole Biological Laboratory, failed efforts to preserve an original Cape Cod farm, the intimate lives of quahog clams, and much more. Here’s one paragraph that reflects the breadth of Traver’s approach:

“The marsh is a microcosm of the world. With its peat meadows, meandering tidal creeks, microbes and mud, at the living breathing edge of continent and ocean, it seems that life must have started here. Every microcomponent contributes to the whole. Discovering how this system works was a biogeocheical pursuit that took years and is ongoing. Hundreds of studies resulted in as many journal papers. Out of the research came a picture of energy and nutrient inputs, chemical transformations and outputs from the marsh. The human factor reduce to chemistry is in these equations—what is flushed down the toilet, pumped into the atmosphere, spread on lawns, and put into drinking water all goes into marsh, and all is measured. Where, though, is the factor of a famiy? A sacred community? The human spirit capable of sustaining the world? Where figures consciousness?”

The only time I willingly put Sippewissett down yesterday was to watch a new PBS documentary, Where Do the Children Play? The film examines how suburban sprawl, stranger anxiety, and technology have led to the decline in unstructured outdoor play among, especially and perhaps surprisingly, affluent children. Richard Louv, author of the best-selling Last Child in the Woods, appears often to elucidate what a lack of experience with nature does to the human psyche, and children themselves talk about why nature does (or in some troubling cases, doesn’t) matter to them. The goal of the film and its companion book, edited by play researcher Elizabeth Goodenough, is to stimulate the growing conversation about children’s access to natural space—and the time to enjoy it.

I think that books such as Sippewissett should be part of that conversation, reminding and exciting people about the innumerable values of ordinary places. By exploring a sometimes luminous, sometimes sulfurous local wetland with children, friends, mentors, and even adversaries, Travers demonstrates how each of us can become guerilla fighters on behalf of reconnecting each other with the natural world. As Travers asserts, a cadre of scientists, activists, artists, and philosophers have devoted their passionate lives to saving his marsh because they shared his love for it. But ordinary people can’t stand idly by others’ passionate flames if our favorite places are to be protected. “Emerson burned,” says Travers, “and made all of nature transcendent again. Science, infused with poetic insight, was his transformative agent. The scientists working to unlock the secrets of a salt marsh burned in their own way, too, and deep down hoped to save it all. But the few can’t save us. We all need to catch on fire.”

P.S. For a fine review of Sippewissett, see bookslut. She calls the book "truly lovely," and I concur.

Rock Flippin' 101

2008-09-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

The first thing my family discovered, as neophyte participants in the second annual International Rock Flipping Day, is that we have a lot to learn about flipping rocks.

After all, there are so many choices.

Despite my son's tenacious efforts, some rocks resist flipping,

and many are too small to hide big secrets.

These and other frustrations today led my 13-year-old to bemoan that she'd have more fun if we could flip a rock star.

But our spirits were buoyed when we came upon a rock-related mystery on our trail--

Why did someone capture several pounds of small white stones and corrall them in the woods?

And at last we found a rock that was just right for the flipping tastes and talents of a nine-year-old boy.

What did we find under our long-sought, perfect flipping rock?

Our afternoon's search yielded one spider's web, innumerable pill bugs, decaying grass, general muckiness, and one sincere "Wow" from a "been there, done that" fourth grader. No epiphanies, but not bad for a bunch of beginners.

We'll be polishing our flippin' skills to improve our performance for the third annual celebration in 2009. Already, we've learned one important lesson: You never know what you'll find under a rock.

Rock Flippin' and other Fall Romps

2008-08-31T16:35:00.000-07:00

It’s probably a symptom of spending most of my life somehow associated with school. But fall always seems like the start of things to me, and I’m feeling energized by the possibilities before us. Here are a few of my looming favorites. . . .

September 7th, Via Negative is co-sponsoring the second annual International Rock Flipping Day. Here’s how Dave describes the event:

On 9/2/2007, people flipped rocks on four continents on sites ranging from mountaintops to urban centers to the floors of shallow seas. Rock-flippers found frogs, snakes, and invertebrates of every description, as well as fossils and other cool stuff. As before, we advise wearing gloves for protection, and getting the whole family involved — or if you don’t have a family, rope in some neighborhood kids. Be sure to replace all rocks as soon as possible after documenting whatever lies beneath them.

If you participate, please take photos and send ‘em to Dave to share your discoveries. Then drop me a line to let me know which books most inspire you to undertake rock flippin’ adventures, wherever they are.

September 27, the Emily Dickinson Museum is sponsoring a poetry marathon at the Dickinson homestead and all around Amherst, Massachusetts. It’ll take about 16 hours to read all 1,789 poems; you can listen or volunteer to read. The Dickinson family, scholars all, were indefatigable readers, and the museum is determined to replenish the family library (most volumes were gifted to Harvard and other collections), Just skimming the family’s book list (which includes Pines Above Snow favorites such as A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Wuthering Heights) is a treat, and you can pitch in to help re-fill the family’s shelves with a donation of an appropriate first edition or, always welcome, a cash contribution.

They’re giving books away over at 10,000 Birds, specifically copies of Nick Drayson’s A Guide to the Birds of East Africa: A Novel.. Five copies of the Guide were donated by the publisher to spark awareness of Charlie’s 10,000 Bird campaign to raise funds for the “Small African Fellowship for Conservation,” principally aimed at protecting an endangered Kenyan bird, Sharpe’s Long Claw. The deadline to win a book may already have passed, but there’s plenty of time to contribute to protecting the birds. Donations will be accepted until October 1, 2008.

What nature book-related events are you excited about this season?

Kindling Interest?

2008-08-25T19:05:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite periodic guides to more sustainable lifestyles is Sheryl Eisenberg’s This Green Life online column for the NRDC. But Sheryl sparked a controversy when she recently touted Amazon.com’s electronic reader, the Kindle. Eisenberg, like so many of us, not only loves to read but loves to accumulate favorite books, collecting them on shelves to surround her like cherished friends. Yet she increasingly questions the materialism behind such literary acquisitions and sees the Kindle, with its growing library of 120,000 fiction & nonfiction titles, plus top newspapers, magazines, and, yes, blogs, as a rational alternative.

Eisenberg argues that though reading via Kindle consumes electricity & contributes to pollution and global warming, harvesting trees to manufacture what too-often are disposable frivolities (think Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, not Bronte’s Villette) is worse for the planet. She finds plenty to praise about how Kindle works for her (inexpensive, print-like text, easily searchable), especially loving the convenience of nearly-instant downloads to random locations (imagine the delight if a new copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang could suddenly distract you during a long wait at the DMV). Amazon’s certainly doing its best to educate luddite-leaning readers to give the $359 device a chance. Anyone seriously considering purchase would do well to read the customer reviews for practical pros and cons of Kindle.

Eisenberg got so much flack for advocating a step away from traditional paper books that her next column encourages mail order book swapping instead (though it’s internet based too). Yet she doesn’t address questions such as how electronic book reading might impact nascent readers—a group that last Sunday’s Washington Post warns is less enamored of pleasure reading than ever. And it’s worth considering too whether one of the greatest virtue she perceives, rapid downloading, may be one of the device’s worst capabilities. After all, isn’t the need for instant gratification the core of materialism? Would Thoreau’s clarion call for a simpler life ring true if read off an e-reader(Kindle-Walden’s available for just $2.39!)? But maybe the powers in charge of the Kindle repertoire will resolve that kind of problem for us. So far, at least, they haven’t added A Sand County Almanac to their list.

See the Forest from the Trees

2008-08-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

Who hasn’t dreamed of living in a tree?

Yet who would expect to live that fantasy in the grand setting of Pierre du Pont’s former estate in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Longwood Gardens?

But tucked into Longwood’s 1,050 acres this fall are three fanciful treehouses, crafted by gifted designers, for your late summer pleasure.

Though a bit more ornate than we’d envisioned throwing together from old planks and ropes in our backyard, my family appreciated the gracious scale of the distinctive dwellings on the crowded day we visited.

And in case you’d like to foresee a treehouse in your community garden’s future, learn about the work of Forever Young, a nonprofit dedicated to the creation of disabled-accessible treehouses throughout the U.S. See you in the trees!

Happy Birthday, Roger Tory Peterson!

2008-08-10T19:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks to that outstanding carnival,
I and the Bird #81, for all sorts of cool birding news and photos but especially for spreading the word that Eddie over at birdfreak has declared August to be Roger Tory Peterson Month. Great idea, Eddie! Stay tuned all month to his bird photo-rich site for reviews of books by and about RTP in honor of the great painter, educator, photographer, and conservationist's 100th birthday on August 28.

A glowing review of a new Peterson biography is already up at 10,000 Birds. Mike calls Peterson a “true giant of conservation” and admires biographer Elizabeth Rosenthal especially for elucidating Peterson’s legacy in international environmental protection. The Birder’s Library also recommends Rosenthal’s Birdwatcher and more recently features a thorough, generally positive review of the brand-new Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America. Despite, or perhaps because of, some digital manipulations of Peterson’s illustrations, says Grant, “As a tribute to Peterson, this volume is one of the best ways to appreciate his field guide art.”

You can read my contribution to Peterson’s centennial in this month’s Audubon Naturalist News. Many thanks to contributors Julie Zickefoose, Scott Weidensaul, Jeffrey Cramer, and Chandler Robbins for sharing their insights into Peterson’s life and work.

If you live near Peterson’s hometown of Jamestown, New York, or can manage a visit there this year, check out the art exhibits, book talks, nature walks, and other birthday festivities at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute. Wherever you are, though, the best way to celebrate RTP and his legendary accomplishments is to stuff a Peterson’s in your pocket and head outside.

A Muse of Evanescence

2008-08-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

Imagine the astonishment of Lavinia Dickinson when she opened a cherry cabinet in 1886 to discover hundreds of poems by her late sister, Emily. A family friend described the unexpected treasures, “written on backs of brown-paper bags or of discarded bills, programs, and invitations; on tiny scraps of stationery pinned together; on leaves torn from old notebooks. . . on mildewed subscription blanks, or on. . . drug-store bargain flyers. There are pink scraps, blue and yellow scraps, one of them a wrapper of Chocolat Meunier.” Of course, it is the poems’ themes—often flowers, insects, light, weather, or birds—that make Emily Dickinson the favorite poet of so many nature lovers.

Nearly 70 years later, assemblage artist Joseph Cornell re-discovered Dickinson for himself, arranging a Chocolate Meunier wrapper in each of eight boxes depicting the poet as an absent songbird. Literary critic Christopher Benfey particularly admires Cornell’s haunting 1953 Toward the Blue Peninsula (for Emily Dickinson), saying “In its visionary minimalism, the white box with its central blue window sums up a whole cluster of themes that Cornell associated with Dickinson: birds and prisons, the transitory rooms of hotels and decrepit mansions, the starlit sky and the escape and the refuge provided by the voyaging imagination. Toward a Blue Peninsula is at once a deeply personal response to ‘the Dickinson experience’ as well as the single most trenchant interpretive response, in all of American art, to the meaning of her life and work.”

I happened upon Benfey’s delectable, original book, A Summer of Hummingbirds, at the library last week. Far behind in life and work, my reading card was already full, but I couldn’t pass by Benfrey’s subtitle: “Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade.” Says Benfey, “The book had its origins in a confluence of hummingbirds,” when Emily Dickinson gave a poem about hummingbirds to the young protégé of hummingbird painter, Martin Johnson Heade. The poem’s image of a hummingbird’s flight, its “route of evanescence”, flits through the volume, helping to connect the many biographical, cultural, literary, and artistic threads that make this the perfect book to read in the sunshine beside the cardinal flowers.

Though I’d never heard of it before, the book has been widely praised. A Chicago Tribune critic says, “Many will find the narrative in "A Summer of Hummingbirds" to be as dartingly peripatetic as the avian of its title. In part this is because Benfey is chasing an abstract concept, the emergence of a new mind-set after the Civil War, and he finds evidence of it in widely disparate places.” Benfey explains his focus on “this informal cult of hummingbirds” that captivated Dickinson, Head, Stowe, and so many others this way: “. . . . Americans during and after the Civil War gradually left behind a static view of existence, a trust in fixed arrangements and hierarchies. In science and in art, in religion and in love, they came to see a new dynamism and movement in their lives, a brave new world of instability and evanescence. This dynamism, in all aspects of life, found perfect expression in the hummingbird.”

The book was also featured on NPR in its series, Summer Books to Feed Your Literary Addiction. You can even hear the author read Dickinson’s “route of evanescence” poem and a chapter from the book. But be forewarned—finishing this volume will exponentially increase the to-be-read stack by your bedside. Benfey’s deft depictions of cross-pollinations between artists, from Lord Byron to Cornell, left me aching to read more of all their works. There is less about the birds that inspired such devotion than I would have wished, and nowhere does Benfey address the hummingbird in the room—as wild populations and habitats decline, where will future artist find such wild inspiration? Critics and others who dwell apart from the natural world would do well to keep in mind another poem of Dickinson’s which reflects on the indifference of nature to the dead—even those who once found their evanescent muses on the wing. . . .

Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning
And untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze
In her castle of sunshine,
Bubbles the bee in a stolid ear,
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadences:
Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.

Long Time No Read

2008-07-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

Many apologies for my long neglect of PinesAboveSnow. Family obligations post-vacation have kept me away, and I haven't even been reading that much. But I couldn’t resist spreading the word about an NPR commentary I heard on Thursday. This summer, National Public Radio is offering an occasional series where writers recommend three books on a particular theme. July 24, The Washington Post’s environmental reporter, Juliet Eilperin, contributed an audio commentary right up PAS’s alley: “Eco-Friendly Books Explore the Literary Green”.

Eilperin narrows the field of outstanding environmental books to three worthy choices. First, Bill McKibben’s new anthology, American Earth, includes two centuries of fine nature writing--not just essays but also song lyrics, poetry, and political speeches—and should have something for every summer reader. You can hear McKibben speak about the book here. I’m not familiar with her second choice--Where the Wild Things Were, by William Stolzenburg—a sobering look at the “environmental havoc” wrought by accelerating declines in large mammal populations. But the Green Skeptic calls it “Part history, part mystery, part philosophical treatise,” and “ a good read.”

Yet the book I’ll seek out first is Eilperin’s final pick, The Carbon Age by Eric Roston. I’ve heard buzz about this book elsewhere too and look forward to earning a deeper understanding of how carbon atoms, via human misjudgments and misbehavior, have become a threat to life on earth. Roston likens the potential human-induced planetary destruction to a meteor impact, leading Eilperin to conclude, “Reading words printed on dead trees doesn't automatically translate into saving the planet. But by encouraging us to reevaluate the world around us, these three books offer a vision of a different path forward, one that might steer us safely out of the meteor's path.”

I hope that I'll have time to recommend more books that fulfill Eilperin's criteria of excellence soon. Feel free to make your suggestions too. . . .

Tours of Pleasure

2008-06-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

I’m commencing my pilgrimage to Yosemite tomorrow (4:30 am), but I’m taking along a book about another literary shrine, Walden: A History. Thoreau scholar Barksdale Maynard, I trust, will give me needed perspective, through a place I’ve visited over the years, into how a revered landscape can be threatened by its devotees. Plus, reading about the comings-and-goings of 19th century Concord for me is like reading People magazine gossip for normal people.

Someday, I hope to make a pilgrimage to Jane Austen-land, and I’m thinking of her books today too, specifically for a Pride and Prejudice moment of pre-trip euphoria. I hope that each of you has a vacation this summer that you can anticipate as joyfully as Elizabeth Bennet does a proposed “tour of pleasure” with her aunt and uncle.

We have not determined how far it shall carry us,” said Mrs. Gardiner, “but, perhaps, to the Lakes.”
No scheme could have been more agreeable to Elizabeth, and her acceptance of the invitation was most ready and grateful. “Oh, my dear, dear aunt,” she rapturously cried, “what delight! What felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to the disappointment and spleen. What are young men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travelers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We will know where we have gone—we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarreling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of generality of travelers.”

I wonder what books Lizzie took along on her outing? Whatever you choose, happy reading!

Beautiful Writer

2008-06-04T19:02:00.001-07:00

“Got a pot full right off, did you, Grant?”
“Right smart of crabs, right smart of crabs.”
“Crabs are moving. That time of year. They’re out here on the bar, all right.”

This interchange between Chesapeake Bay watermen seems heartbreakingly antique in a year when the governors of Virginia and Maryland are seeking federal disaster assistance for fishermen hit by harvest limits as blue crab numbers continue to plummet. It gains added poignancy when you learn, as I did today, that the passage’s author, William Warner, died this spring. Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay won the 1977 Pulitzer for nonfiction and introduced me to the region where I seem to be spending most of my adult life.

I’m not sure whether I love it most for eloquent descriptions of Callinectes sapidus, the colorful crustaceans scuttling across every page, or for folksy humor as reflected in such chapter titles as “Lester Lee and the Chicken Neckers.” It’s a naturalist’s book certainly, brimming with biological and ecological insights into a place Warner awards a “summa cum laude in estuarine production.” It’s also a reader’s book as Larry McMurtry asserts (quoted in a Washington Post obituary), saying Swimmers “has grace, wit and clarity, on top of a real strength of feeling; were one not inclined to read the book to find out about crabs and watermen, one would still read it merely for its sentences."

A New York Times obituary offers further details into Warner’s mulitifarious background as a dinosaur hunter, ski lodge proprietor, Smithsonian magazine founder, and early Peace Corps volunteer. But my favorite tribute to this favorite author came from a another writer devoted to the “benign and beautiful waters” of the Bay, Kent Mountford. Kent finds comfort in the timing of Warner’s demise, concluding, “The hidden blessing may be that he could not witness the failure of succeeding politicians and citizens to act decisively for the Bay nor the present decline of his beloved commercial crabbing way of life.”

Festival of the Trees #24

2008-06-02T11:23:00.000-07:00

Happy 2nd anniversary to the Festival of Trees, the blogging world’s monthly celebration of pines and pine-wannabes (i.e., other trees). This month’s issue, hosted by the multi-faceted Wren of Wrenaissance Reflections, focuses on trees and human-tree relations. Enjoy!

I’m not reading this week, much less blogging, so I’m also grateful to Wren for her concept of Blogging Without Obligation--looking at your blog as an opportunity, not as a treadmill . Thanks for everything, Wren!

Faith in a Chestnut Seed

2008-05-26T07:30:00.000-07:00

Though ecstatically anticipating my first visit to Muir woods in two weeks, I’m enthralled right now by “redwoods of the East,” thanks to The American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree. Science writer Susan Freinkel tells the riveting & often heartbreaking story of a tree that once dominated the eastern woodlands, from Maine to Michigan and south to Georgia. Moose, bears, turkeys, throngs of passenger pigeons, and communities of hardscrabble farmers depended on the trees’ abundant fruits, and the straight-grained, tannin-rich wood found uses ranging from paper pulp to fine furniture. But the King of the Forest had no defense against a fungus that hitchhiked into the US on Asian chestnuts in the late 1800s. Within a few decades, 3.5 billion American chestnuts had fallen.

Freinkel says she began her book with a question: “what happens when a species disappears?” Part of the answer is biological and ecological, and the author intricately recounts the mechanism of the fungus’ lethality as well as the impacts of the blight on the forest left behind. Much of Freinkel’s story, though, focuses on culture—the economic, aesthetic, and emotional relationships between people and trees. By collecting oral histories, especially in the southeast, Freinkel discovers that American Chestnuts remain a vivid living memory to a few, a bittersweet yearning to many more. “Why do people still care about the chestnut so much?” Frienkel asks one of her informers. She replies:

”Some people say they’re conflating the chestnut with the preindustrial way of life—that it’s an easy symbol,” . . . “I think elements of that are true. People miss their youth, their way of life, their parents and brothers and sisters. They miss their communities.” . . . “I think for people who had the direct experience of eating the nuts, picking them up, seeing the trees bloom, toasting the nuts—they literally miss that. . . . They literally wish they could taste a chestnut.”

Whatever its origins, passion for chestnut trees has fueled a century of labor to revive the species. From traditional techniques such as grafting and cross-breeding to post-modern attempts at genetic engineering and deployment of hypovirulent blight, scientists and horticulturists devote decades of their lives to shrubby, struggling remnants of the Chestnut’s former glory. Sometimes, the researchers’ and aficionados’ obsessions, rivalries, and sacrifices (e.g., indoor plumbing) cross the line between colorful and nutty. But, says Freinkel, “I am continually moved by the patience and underlying optimism of the chestnut scientists I’ve met; in their own way, they are as resolute as the tree itself.”

With dogwoods, butternuts, sugar maples, hemlocks, and other beloved eastern forest trees threatened by development, invasive species, and climate change, Freinkel’s story is a cautionary tale. Thousands of American-Asian hybrid chestnuts are being experimentally planted this spring in the Appalachians, but their success is far from certain. And some oppose the project, asserting that hybrids do not belong in native forests and could have unforseen effects on post-Chestnut plant and animal communities. Research continues on other fronts as well; one controversial project seeks to introduce a European blight virus to weaken the Asian fungus infesting American trees.

But even those who object to some of the restoration techniques can help simply by keeping their eyes open in the woods. Here and there, through luck or resilience, an old chestnut has escaped the blight, and you can report survivors you encounter—potentially invaluable genetic resources—to the American Chestnut Foundation. Freinkel postulates that restoring the tree would do more than just return a missing element to the forest. She writes, “If the day comes when our descendents can venture with wonder into chestnut forests, we will have gained back more than a perfect tree. We will have gained a new reason for hope.”

To Senator Kennedy

2008-05-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

I've been wishing all day that there could be something comforting to send the Kennedy family, who have known so much tragedy yet given our country so much. Here's what I came up with, a remembrance from John Muir's journal, probably written in 1870, when he was living in Yosemite Valley. . . .

Once I was very hungry and lonely in Tennessee. I had been walking most of the day in the Cumberland Mountains without coming to a single house, but in crossing a dark-shaded stream whose border trees crossed over it like a leafy sky I found the frail Dicksonia that I had looked for so long, and the first Magnolia, too, that I had ever seen. I sat down and reveled in the glory of my discoveries. A mysterious breathing of wind moved in the trees, and the stream sang cheerily at every ripple. There is no place so impressively solitary as a dense forest with a stream passing over a rocky bed at a moderate inclination.

Feelings of isolation soon caught me again among these hushed sounds, but one of the Lord's smallest birds came out to me from some bushes at the side of a moss-clad rock. It had a wonderfully expressive eye, and in one moment that cheerful, confiding bird preached me the most effectual sermon on heavenly trust that I had ever heard through all the measured hours of Sabbath, and I went on not half so heart-sick, nor half so weary.

Wishing you well, Senator Kennedy.

Trust Busting for Book Lovers

2008-05-18T03:45:00.000-07:00

Another step out of my reading box recently took me to the biography shelf, where I grabbed Commodore: The Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. My reasoning: stacks of books about natural destruction and heroes & heroines who fight against it haven’t solved enough environmental problems, so maybe a villain’s biography would reveal some answers. At least it would be a refreshing change from Muir’s exuberant, expansive asceticsm in My First Summer in the Sierra to learn about a man who “Commodore” author Edward Renehan describes as a grim, stingy, near-illiterate who founded the greatest personal fortune in history.

Renehan wisely lets contemporary voices delineate Vanderbilt’s character whenever possible. Attorney George Templeton Strong begrudged him respect as an instinctive genius of the most cold-hearted, avaricious kind: “He is like some rudimentary but deadly and swift beast who knows not what he knows, but knows enough—through nature—to endure and thrive on the meat of lesser animals, of which the woods are full. . . . . He is a breed apart: evolved for the sole purpose of money-getting. Either that or his is the dumbest of dumb luck lubricated—I should admit—by a great deal of elbow grease. The beast is never lazy.” That titanic energy was focused single-mindedly toward acquiring money, principally through steamships and railroads, but incidentally through any means, fair or foul.

Vanderbilt’s ruthless greed didn’t surprise me, and it failed to fascinate me enough to read every word of this detailed (and undeniably lively) account of every merger, swindle, collapse, and reorganization that characterized his colossal success. But I was riveted by passages discussing a cynical ethos pervading the business world and much of society the early 1800s. “Sadly,” writes Renehan, “in his fundamental lack of charity, young Vanderbilt was not unlike the bulk of the successful, middle-class businessmen of his day. In point of fact, the first few decades of the nineteenth century were a largely cynical and callous time in American history—a period of institutionalized harshness.” Even formerly generous benefactors succumbed to a view that only about 10% of the poor were “deserving,” and helping the other “degenerates” merely encouraged more to sink into dependency and profligacy—and undermined the prosperity of the rest of society. Writes Renehan, “Like many other young entrepreneurs then and now, he worked conspicuously and diligently for his own personal profit, but never, so far as existing records and contemporary accounts show, for any greater good. Vanderbilt gave no alms to the poor, subscribed not a penny for the support of hospitals or foundling homes, and gave not a nickel to such organizations as the New York Humane Society (which at that time existed to serve the needs of destitute humans rather than stray dogs and cats).”

Self-centered cynic that he was, Vanderbilt can still serve as an object lesson today. His case supports Aldo Leopold’s contention that values are the key to respectful relationships with the natural world. The Commodore knew plenty about the waters and lands traversed by his transportation empire, but somehow he failed to care about them. Yet that even a Vanderbilt can learn to care is apparent at Biltmore, the French chateau-styled home of Cornelius’ grandson George. The younger magnate hired Central Park’s landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, to design Biltmore’s grounds, and perhaps more significantly, the nation's first scientifically-trained forester, Gifford Pinchot, to devise a scientific management plan for the forests. Pinchot’s wise-use approach when he headed the US Forest Service was the germinal idea that grew, through Leopold’s experience as a young forester, wildlife ecologist, and landowner, into the truly wise land ethic. A page devoted to philanthropy on the Biltmore site promises ongoing support for “the legacy of self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship of our natural resources, protection of the integrity of our mountains, and commitment to ensuring our community remains a model for living well and living purposefully.” I like to think scornful old Cornelius is rolling over in his Romanesque granite masoleum.

Deep Blue Battleground

2008-05-16T16:26:00.000-07:00

Heads up to anyone who cares about water resources, especially during May, EPA's designated American Wetlands Month. NPR's Science Friday today featured an hour-long discussion of water issues confronting the 8 states and 2 Canadian provinces bordering the Great Lakes. Guests included Peter Annin, author of The Great Lakes Water Wars. Annin read movingly from his book, describing the many conflicting values and interests he can vividly imagine while gazing over the vast freshwater seas he cherishes. The program site includes a clip from a new documentary about the Great Lakes and curriculum connections for teachers (and others). Wisconsin, of course, is one the states directly involved in the building conflicts, so as I listened I kept in mind that protecting the Great Lakes means protecting Leopold country.

Moss Graffiti and Other Assaults

2008-05-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

Last trip to the library, I stepped out of my nature-book box and picked up something from the art shelf. Linear-thinker that I am often ashamed to be, I read the cover note, “Everything You Need to Put Your Message Out into the World,” and thought that it was a book about graphic design and possibly advertising. I hoped it might help me learn how to promote various community events my family always seems entangled in (mostly donut, plant, baked goods, & jumble sales for group fundraisers). I should have noticed the folksy cover art, duct-tape-reminiscent spine, and unofficial subtitle to better understand this quirky, wonderful book: The Guerilla Art Kit: For Fun, Non-Profit, and World Domination.”

Non-linear thinking author Keri Smith (see her cool blog, The Wish Jar) is a street artist, meaning someone who performs anonymous acts of art in public spaces, “with the distinct purpose of affecting the world in a creative or thought-provoking way.” She immediately provoked my thoughts by quoting Thoreau:

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. To affect the quality of the day—that is the highest of arts.”

This book, I realized, would have ideas not just for selling donuts but for spreading the word about nature books and other ways I would love to affect the quality of days on earth.

To prove that I learned something from this gently subversive volume, here are some randomly-selected topics Smith addresses (sadly limited here in their visual appeal by my limited tech skills:

Recipe for making seed bombs (native wildflowers only, please)

Visual definition of “obos” (Japanese term for pile of rocks that communicates a message)

Guerilla action checklist (e.g., offer free lessons such as “how to converse with a stranger”)

Find solutions challenge (e.g., transform garbage, sell nothing, create a piece of art that depends on the rain).

You’ll find a template for building a portable idea dispenser (maybe put one in a public library?), quotes to print and leave behind in pockets on the sales rack (“Do not be too timid about your actions, all life is an experiment.” –Emerson), and practical tips on non-permanent glues, chalks, and other materials to ensure the ephemeral nature of your work. Etiquette tips further remind perpetrators of street masterpieces how to avoid damaging property, though some may think Smith’s rules too lax. As my eldest son says, any art book with advice on how to avoid police detection at least qualifies as “edgy.”

I think the book could have value to all kinds of bloggers, who will resonate with Smith's belief in the creative stimulus of temporary efforts. "Creating work that is impermanent," says Smith, "helps us release our own attachment to the final product and lets us focus more on the process." While I can’t promise you’ll achieve world domination, trying activities in this book will at least set you free to try new things, whatever message you want to send the world. Now, go paint the atmosphere!

Weekend Highlights

2008-05-04T18:10:00.001-07:00

You’d think that the highlight of this naturalist-wanna-be’s weekend would have been watching this toad couple laying strings of eggs in a backyard pond. Only a few of us were even distracted by the amphibious antics from the main event—shooting photos of our daughters and their dates before their senior prom.

Or maybe the highlight, as an environmentalist, should have been the following interchange, around 2 am, at the After Prom party, between two students, worn-down by eating, dancing, swimming, and more eating, searching for a receptacle for their gnawed pizza crusts—

Girl: Here’s one {i.e., a trash can}.
Boy: It’s recycling.
Girl: Oh.

The couple moved slowly on, still looking. When more desiderata of green living become so routine that exhausted teenagers comply without questioning, we’ll have a healthier planet.

But mostly this weekend I was a mom, admiring and enjoying my grown-up daughter on one of her happiest days. I hope that she felt at least some of the ebullience John Muir expressed after his first few weeks in the Sierra:

. . . . This June seems the greatest of all the months of my life, the most truly, divinely free, boundless like eternity, immortal. Everything in it seems equally divine—one smooth, pure, wild glow of Heaven’s love, never to be blotted or blurred by anything past or to come.

Field Guide to Non-Reading

2008-04-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.-- Oscar Wilde

I drifted on to other things before finishing one of the funniest books I’ve encountered recently, but its author, Pierre Bayard, would probably understand. He wrote How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read because, as a literature professor, he so often confronts embarrassing social situations requiring him to express opinions on poetry or prose he hasn't read, or at least hasn't read thorougly. A generalist and a professional, Bayard’s expected to master vast bodies of work, but even an amateur niche reader like me can feel overwhelmed by the astonishing pace of the publishing industry. As Bayard puts it, "We must not forget that even a prodigious reader never has access to more than an infinitessimal fraction of the books that exist. As a result, unless he abstains definitively from all conversation and all writing, he will find himself forever obliged to express his thoughts on books he hasn't read." So I was delighted to find a book detailing strategies for chatting up, debating, or pillorying works you’ve never cracked open.

My favorite part, as far as I can remember, was the section elucidating various categories, or really degrees, of reading books—from works you’ve never heard of to volumes you loved, perhaps rereading often, but so long ago you cannot recall any details. “Our relation to books is a shadowy space,” says Bayard, “haunted by the ghosts of memory, and the real value of books lies in their ability to conjure these specters.” Shame over spotty memories or omitted classics leads people to lie about their reading choices or their experiences of certain titles or authors, distorting our relations with each other as well as our relations with books. Yet in a world where non-reading is the norm, the community of readers should celebrate, rather than dissemble about, our imperfect attempts at literary competence. As my small contribution to that effort, I’m offering a self-quiz, to help you assess your ambiguous relations with a few great nature books.

Title:
• The End of Nature
• Log from the Sea of Cortez
• The Thunder Tree
• Under the Sea-Wind
• A Sand County Almanac
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Walden
• Mind on Fire
• The Voyage of the Beagle
• High Tide in Tucson
• My First Summer in the Sierra
• Sick of Nature

(a) Never heard of it
(b) Read so long ago that you can’t recall subject or author
(c) Argued strongly for/against, then realized you were thinking of another book
(d) Are sick of hearing its praises and have no intention of reading
(e) Skimmed for class but not well enough, based on test results
(f) Read and recall vividly
(g) Loved so much you recommended it in a blog comment

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reading Outdoors

2008-04-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

What are you reading on Earth Day?

It’s a question many must be asking, as evidenced by today’s laudatory review of a new anthology, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau in the Washington Post (regretably, you must register to see the full review).

Happy as I was to see praises of writings by Thoreau, Lopez, Carson, Kingsolver, and other icons, selected quotes emphasized environmental destruction (from Lydia Huntley Sigourney’s poem, “Fallen Forests” to Marvin Gaye’s lyric, “Oil wasted on the ocean and upon our seas/Fish full of mercury.”). The books I’ve seen on Earth Day displays at a local library and church also lean toward global warming, overharvesting fish, and other distressing topics. Can’t Earth Day, like other holidays, be a little, um, fun?

For my kids, I’d hoped to celebrate by reading aloud a Jane Goodall essay, “The Dragonfly’s Gift,” kindly recommended by Cyberthrush. But the anthology, Kinship with Animals by Michael Tobias, is not at my library or bookstore. Surely one of my friends in the humane community has a copy, but in the meantime, I think I’ll take Charlie’s advice over at 10,000 Birds and find the new The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, by Bill Thomson. The author worked with bona fide children, in his 11-year-old daughter’s class, to develop a truly kid-approved guide that Eli will probably like even more than our Peterson’s.

But as useful and lively as The Young Birder’s Guide sounds, it won’t be a read-aloud candidate. Instead, I think I’ll share my personal Earth Day reading ritual with the kids. April 21st is John Muir’s birthday, so I like to read some of his words between tree plantings and woodland walks. Since we’re headed for Yosemite this June, our first time ever, my pick for today’s family book is My First Summer in the Sierra. In 1869, Muir herded sheep into the high mountain pastures that would captivate him for the rest of his life. His journal of the wildlife, plants, and rocks he grew to know and love is devoted to clouds on June 12, the day my family will arrive in Yosemite Valley:

A slight sprinkle of rain—large drops far apart, falling with hearty pat and plash on leaves and stones and into the mouths of flowers. Cumuli rising to the eastward. How beautiful their pearly bosses! How well they harmonize with the upswelling rocks beneath them. Mountains of the sky, solid-looking, finely sculptured, their richly varied topography wonderfully defined. Never before have I seen clouds so substantial looking in form and texture. Nearly every day toward noon they rise with visible swelling motion as if new worlds were being created. And how fondly they brood and hover over the gardens and forests with their cooling shadows and showers, keeping every petal and leaf in glad health and heart.

Instead of learning more about climate change, biodiversity declines, or mountaintop removal, my kids and I will climb virtually into the Sierra, resting under Muir’s cooling clouds and dreaming of summer. That’s my idea of an Earth Day celebration.

All Jane, All the Time

2008-04-15T17:55:00.000-07:00

A wildlife biologist I interviewed last week told me that brown pelicans, with their comical looks and dramatic fishing behavior, inspired her pursuit of an outdoor career. A person, more than any animal, probably drew me toward environmental work. That person was Jane Goodall, most memorably through the National Geographic tv specials on her early research. I recall a desperate girlish longing for a blonde pony tail and a classy accent just like Jane’s, and seeing snippets of those early black & white films in a recent IMAX movie, Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees brought those emotions flooding back.

My old copy of her 1971 book about those first years in Africa, In the Shadow of Man, is long gone, but my admiration of it is undimmed. “Since dawn I had climbed up and down the steep mountain slopes and pushed my way through the dense valley forests.” Re-reading that opening sentence, I understand why the book cast a spell on my mid-western girlhood.

Though I didn’t end up in a Tanzanian rainforest, I followed Goodall’s behavioral work through books and articles. When I couldn’t find enough Jane-focused writing, I read works like Dian Fossey’s Gorillas in the Mist or Sy Montgomery’s joint bio of Fossey, Goodall, and orangutan researcher Birute Galdikas--Walking with the Great Apes. One day, during a brief stint at the Humane Society of the U.S., I glimpsed if not Jane, her entourage, as they whisked their charge into my building for a board meeting. That near-encounter awakened me to the great conservationist's surprising passion for animal welfare and, in particular, for humane treatment for chimps in biomedical research.
I started reading works such as The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals We Love (by Goodall and Marc Bekoff). “We believe that only when we understand can we care, and that only when we care sufficiently will we help.” Not as thrilling as a hike into a rainforest, but thought-provoking.

I’ve lost track of Jane a bit during my mom years. None of my kids seem captivated by her work or her bio-celebrity. Maybe my daughters are too post-feminist to need the role mode of a venturesome woman scientist like I did. My hopes are dwindling that any of my offspring will read even my favorite children’s book about of my heroine, her own My Life with the Chimpanzees. The first sentence? “It was very scruffy and hot where I crouched, and the straw tickled my legs.”

But maybe my third-grader may still succumb to her charms. He and one sister got to see Goodall in person April 4th, at an environmental education fair near Annapolis, Maryland. She spoke of her childhood, especially her mother’s role in encouraging curiosity and kindness toward animals, even after she disappeared for hours in the chicken coop to see an egg laid. Eli says the most memorable part was her ringing rendition of a chimpanzee greeting call. For me, it was her quiet description of the habitat losses that imperil her forest home of over 40 years. I hope that the many teachers listening follow Jane’s advice, and start chapters of her international youth club, Roots & Shoots. True to Goodall’s encompassing philosophy, the organization aims to empower local children to invent creative ways for improving animal welfare, the natural environment, and the human community. I don’t think the speech, moving as it was, has inspired Eli to long for a long gray pony tail (he already wanted a British accent). But of course it’s made me want to read more about Jane’s unique work, which joins humane and environmental concern better than any other natural scientist I know. Next on my list: Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People. It begins with a quote from The Tempest, Act III, Scene ii:

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,/ Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Magic.

Festival of Spring

2008-04-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

This beautiful photo, from a visit last weekend to DC's beautiful blossoming cherry trees, is in honor of the first bilingual Festival of the Trees. In addition to the reliably stunning photos, informative articles, and insightful essays, look for several links to captivating and touching poetry.

Anyone who visits this site even occasionally will suspect that the well-composed, clearly-focused photo is not mine. Correct! Many thanks to my dear friend Rebecca Lehmann-Sprouse for enjoying the cherry trees with me and sharing her photo.

Happy spring, everyone!

Seeing Trees

2008-03-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

April 1 is the eighth anniversary of my relationship with a plum tree. My family moved into our house on Tinted Hill that day in 2000 and ate our first chilly dinner on the deck, overlooking our new yard. Through the branches of a white birch (my very favorite yard tree since we don’t have a pine), we relished a profusion of blooms on the little plum. I can’t remember what we were eating, but I recall that pink and white, bright against the leafless gray woods behind us.

My then-teenaged son, who was practicing calligraphy that year, might have known a poem about plum trees by Lin Bu (967-1028):

their scattered shadows fall lightly on clear water
their subtle scent pervades the moonlit dusk
snowbirds look again before they land
butterflies would faint if they but knew. . . .

Such trees, Lin Bu thought, shame the rest of the garden by flowering so boldly in early spring. I imagined my young children playing, spring after spring, on our greening grass in the plum-sweetened air. I knew all four kids would grow taller, and I assumed the tree would too, shading their summers for a long, unforeseeable future.

Fast forward to 2008. “Oh-8, Oh-8, Oh-8!” shout my daughter & friends at every high school game, delirious that their childhood days will end officially at graduation, May 29. Even Hannah’s little brother, not yet walking when we moved here, could now scale the plum if I let him. But I cannot. The tree is too fragile this spring, with a pale smattering of blooms, asymmetrically distributed. Last year, it seemed merely fading. This year, it looks half dead. My neighbor, in a fluster, told me last week—“I saw white blobs on some of my trees. It’s spreading!” White blobs? I asked. “From your plum!” Apparently, Rita thinks it has a contagious disease. And she wants it cut down.

Live without my plum tree? The idea shocks me. Can’t Rita see its graceful, twisted limbs from her windows? Hasn’t she heard of the food and shelter value of snags to birds and other wildlife? But living here a decade before we arrived, perhaps she’s watched the plum descend from a glory I never witnessed. Though her daughters never hosted a doll tea party beside it, her loss in some ways may be greater than mine.

The latter possibility occurred to me as I read Jonathan Rosen’s eloquently questioning Life of the Skies, especially a chapter on Robert Frost’s poem, “The Ovenbird”. Rosen calls that work, “a lament for a world that has lost its wildness,” meaning vanished creatures and degraded spaces but also a human spirit desiccating in a less-wild world. Two lines from the poem haunted Rosen as he sought ivory-billed woodpeckers in a cut-over Arkansas swamp and resonate with me as I see my plum through Rita’s eyes:

The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

To my knowledge, no ovenbird has sung on my plum’s branches. But uncounted wrens have fledged from a house that dangles from one limb. These days, the tree is ever-more popular with chickadees, undaunted by the gray-green lichens Rita fears. They peck and pry at its peeling bark after fat grubs for their nestlings. My eight-year-old pokes and prods it too, more gently than the birds I expect, investigating each ridge and fissure with eyes keener than mine. One yard over, Rita lives too far away, and, shopping for prom, his sister is too busy. But Eli, hands-on, knows that dying tree might host “a roosting bat, maybe” or “a snake!”

Eli’s book-bound mom thinks of another Robert Frost poem to answer the ovenbird, for Frost also wrote about chickadees’ defiant vitality in the face of a merciless storm:

. . . . and yet to-morrow
They will come budding boughs from tree to tree
Flirting their wings and saying Chickadee,
As if not knowing what you meant by the word storm.

Maybe ovenbirds and chickadees see the world differently, like Rita and me. Annie Dillard says the “secret of seeing” is to spread your spirit like a sail, until it is “whetted, transclucent” . My unfledged children, at least, retain that sailing spirit, and as long as my plum has wildness enough for Eli, it stays.

For Eli knows a more succinct answer than books can give to Frost and Rosen’s question—how do you love a diminished world? Eli says, “Look closer.”
_____________________________
All 700 + of the above words are just my way of introducing an insightful, unqualified rave review of Life of the Skies by Mike over at 10,000 Birds. Life, says Mike, “astonishes instantly with a scope that draws together disparate threads from the arts and sciences to weave a sophisticated understanding of birdwatching’s allure.” Even better news: he’s giving some away to a lucky few. Visit 10,000 Birds to learn how to win your own copy of a book Mike aptly calls, “truly remarkable.”

Capturing Your Inner Birder

2008-03-25T19:31:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Minnesota Birdnerd, for your delightful, photo-rich bird blog and for tagging me for my first-ever meme. This one asks for a six-word memoir of your inner birder. Here goes:

Horseback mornings,
Riding through birdsong;
Meadowlarks.

Also essential, tagging five (well, I'm picking seven) other unsuspecting but much-admired blogs that might enjoy playing next. Here are my lucky few:

Alone on a Limb
Ivory-bills Live!!!
Nature Remains
Osage+Orange
River Mud Blog
Via Negative
Wild Flora’s Wild Gardening

If you want to play here are the rules:
1. Write a six word memoir and post it on your blog with an illustration if you’d like.
2. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
3. Tag 5 more blogs with links.
4. Don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

And if the bird memoir meme isn’t your cup of tea—or even if it is—check out the latest edition (#71!) of the best nature blog carnival around: I and the Bird. This edition, adeptly hosted by The House and Other Musings, celebrates not just birds and bird images but also words of Darwin, Bernd Heinrich, Peter Matthiessen, John Burroughs, and many other PAS favorites. The quote picked for my entry could hardly have been more perfect:

"Why are not more gems from our great authors scattered over the country? Great books are not in everybody's reach; and though it is better to know them thoroughly than to know them only here and there, yet it is a good work to give a little to those who have neither the time nor means to get more. Let every bookworm, when... he discovers a sentence, a story, an illustration, that does his heart good, hasten to give it." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There’s so much great stuff there, I’m not sure that I’ll finish it before Edition #72 appears next month. Enjoy!

Audubon Arrivals

2008-03-16T18:06:00.000-07:00

A wealth of literary treats arrived with my March-April issue of Audubon yesterday. There are book reviews for every patience level, such as a few-score words on Bruce Barcott’s The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman’s Fight to Save the World’s Most Beautiful Bird and an extended essay on Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by Mark Lynas. Still more tempting, to me at least, are brief excerpts of some new books, notably Kenn Kaufmann’s forthcoming Flights Against the Sunset: Stories That Reunited a Mother and Son. How delicious to get to taste books themselves, rather than rely on someone else’s opinions (no, I'm not criticizing book reviews--I like both options).

Audubon’s editors deepen the content of the printed articles with online suggestions for further reading, including several about the wolves, woods, and waters of Isle Royale National Park. But the most literary pages of all are Jonathan Rosen’s “Life of the Skies.” Rosen caught my attention by quoting Whitman, Emerson, Wallace Stevens, D.H. Lawrence, Henry James and E.O. Wilson in a 7-column article (and still had room to reflect on Sherlock Holmes’ detective methodologies and young Darwin’s penchant for beetle collecting). By bringing poetry, philosophy, and history into his observations of birds, Rosen enriches his understanding of their place in his life and culture. A late-comer to the hobby, Rosen writes:

Gradually the strange contradictory elements of birding seeped into me and deepened its rich appeal. Birdwatching, like all great human activities, is full of paradox. You need to be out in nature to do it, but you are dependent on technology—binoculars—and also on the guidebook in your back pocket, which tells you what you’re seeing. The challenge of birding has to do with keeping the bird and the book in balance.
The book you bring with you draws the birds you see into the library world—a system of names dating from the 18th century, when scientists ordered the plant and animal world and labeled them so that anyone in any country would know he was referring to the same bird. But at the same time that you are casting yoru scientific net over the wild world, the birds are luring you deeper into the woods or the meadow or the swamp. The library world and the wild, nonverbal world meet in the middle when you are birdwatching. We need both sides of this experience to feel whole, being half wild ourselves. Birdwatching is all about balance.

Rosen’s article, also a book excerpt, has sold at least one copy of his just-released The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature. I hope that sales are most encouraging, both to Rosen and to Audubon so the magazine will continue to promote fine nature books in its own pages.

Wildness Incarnate

2008-03-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

To Aldo Leopold and me, spring means sandhill cranes. Leopold characterized their noisy annual arrival as “bugling the defeat of the retreating winter.” A few March’s ago, I got to hear their cries in person on a trip to Nebraska, where a half-million of the migrating birds gather at a mid-continental pit stop in wetlands along the Platte River. Though I can’t go again this year, I’ll tune in to hear and see them on National Geographic’s Crane Cam. For the fifth year, “craniacs” like me can watch live video each evening as the birds settle down to rest in the safety of Audubon’s Rowe Sanctuary and each morning as they take flight to feed in the surrounding corn fields. Best viewing, ‘til April 6, is 7:30-9:30 am and 8-10 pm, EST. Tune in often to increase your chances of seeing diverse species of ducks and the occasional whooping crane among the sandhills.

For the best reading about North America’s two members of the Grus genus, look for Paul Johnsgard’s Crane Music: A Natural History of American Cranes. The author follows the gregarious birds through an eventful year of long-distance migration, ecstatic courtship dancing, and the rearing of ungainly young (Why are crane chicks called colts? Leopold said, “On some dewy June morning watch them gambol over their ancestral pastures at the heels of the roan mare, and you will see for yourself.”).

For a globe-trotting introduction to all fifteen of the world’s crane species, read Peter Matthiessen’s The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes. Matthiessen has been called our “Nature Laureate” for his lyrical writing about snow leopards, shorebirds, tropical jungles, Antarctica, and more. Heaven isn’t my favorite Matthiessen book, and I agree with reviewer Jason Roberts who calls it “a series of imperfect quests”. Matthiessen undertook the expeditions over several years, resulting in an overly-long travel chronicle with a sometimes-uneven tone. But if you stick with it, you’ll find evocative passages such as this:

The larger cranes, over five feet tall, with broad strong wings eight feet in span, appear well capable of bearing aloft a wispy old-time sage. The cranes are the greatest of the flying birds and, to my mind, the most stirring, not less so because the horn notes of their voices, like clarion calls out of the farthest skies, summon our attention to our own swift passage on this precious earth. Perhaps more than any other living creatures, they evoke retreating wilderness, the vanishing horizons of clean water, earth, and air upon which their species—and ours, too, though we learn it very late—must ultimately depend for survival.

Though symbols of sagacity and longevity, cranes have an irresistible, sometimes goofy, appeal to kids. My offspring are especially drawn to the dramatic tale of whooping cranes’ ongoing rescue from near-extinction, so it’s not surprising that they love Eileen Spinelli’s Song for the Whooping Cranes. It’s a gentle, rhymed tribute to the endangered birds, greatly enhanced with watercolor illustrations of both close-up behavior and panoramic habitat. Newberry winner Jean Craighead George also has a crane picture book, called Luck. The hero is a migrating sandhill crane, named Luck by a girl who rescues him from a plastic six-pack ring. Wendell Minor’s paintings illuminate Luck’s momentous journey. And kids who crave a wealth of facts about all kinds of cranes will enjoy North American Cranes, by Lesley DuTemple. One of Carolrhoda Books’ popular Nature Watch series, the book pairs high quality photos with clear descriptions of crane biology, behavior, and ecology for upper elementary students.

Kids, teachers, and everyone else enamored with cranes will also want to visit the website of the International Crane Foundation. ICF’s site offers news on the latest research around the world, a field guide to all 15 species, activity packets for kids, and field trip ideas for teachers lucky enough to live near the Foundation near Baraboo, Wisconsin. Through the online shop, you can even acquire your own craniac tshirt or a copy of Birds of Heaven. I was a bit disappointed not to see A Sand County Almanac for sale there, for “Marshland Elegy” must rank among the most beautiful paeans to cranes. Even though I’m half a continent away from the Platte River, I think of Leopold’s words, as I listen to the Crane Cam, and feel freed—“The ultimate value of these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate.”

Hope Is a Thing with Scales

2008-03-05T18:07:00.000-08:00

I’m on a Robert Michael Pyle jag right now, reading his intricate memoir of place, Sky Time in Gray’s River, whenever I take a break from Sense and Sensibility (Book 5 in my all-Austen quest). Previous encounters with Pyle’s butterfly books (notably Chasing Monarchs) primed me for his ambitious plan for 2008—the world’s first butterfly Big Year. Modeled after Big Years pursued by the world’s best (and best-funded) birders, Pyle’s butterfly year will seek to set a benchmark for how many butterflies a top butterflier could see in 12 months of intrepid continent-wide (but low-budget) hunting. He’ll of course be writing up his adventures behind the wheel of a 1982 Honda (aka "Powdermilk") in an eloquent book after January, 2009.

But why wait? Instead, you can follow along in almost real time through his unique blog. Pyle is eschewing the internet and mailing in entries to Orion Magazine (home of his delightful column, Tangled Bank, for years), which will be posting his cards, letters, and occasional audio recordings for our vicarious butterflying pleasure.

I do have one reservation about getting wrapped up in Pyle’s reports from the road. What if, after embarking with grand dreams of vast butterfly numbers and species, he discovers instead that populations and diversity are crashing? That would hardly be surprising, but in my melancholic mood (I just got home from a global warming rally), I’d much prefer a good-news only butterfly blog. I guess once again I’ll have to follow Austen’s Sensible advice. Her Mrs. Dashwood tells Edward, whose worries about the future are depressing his spirits and paralyzing his ability to act, “You want nothing but patience- or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.”

And while you’re clicking around the internet after Pyle’s blog, why not check out two of the best nature blog carnivals. The 21st Festival of the Trees is up, featuring a fruit tree and orchard theme. An eclectic selection of prose, poetry, and photos graces the 10th edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors Carnival of Environmental Education. With so much to read on the ‘net, we may lose our yearning to trade places with Robert Michael Pyle and side with Austen’s Emma: “Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”

Stamp of Approval

2008-02-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953), among her many literary talents, could write with remarkable sensitivity about plants. In her Pulitzer Prize-winning children’s book, The Yearling, her twelve-year-old hero notices everything about the Florida backwoods where his family subsists, studying the vegetation to understand more deeply his surroundings:
The tar-flower was in bloom, and the fetter-bush and sparkleberry. He slowed to a walk, so that he might pass the changing vegetation tree by tree, bush by bush, each one unique and familiar. He reached the magnolia tree where he had carved the wild-cat’s face. The growth was a sign that there was water nearby. It seemed a strange thing to him, when earth was earth and rain was rain, that scrawny pines should grow in the scrub, while by every branch and lake and river there grew magnolias. Dogs were the same everywhere, and oxen and mules and horses. But trees were different in different places.

Rawlings’ close observations of plants also contribute to the enduring charm of her memoir Cross Creek. In her chapter, “The Magnolia Tree”, she rhapsodizes:
I do not know the irreducible minimum of happiness for any other spirit than my own. It is impossible to be certain even of mine. Yet I believe that I know my tangible desiratum. It is a tree-top against a patch of sky. If I should lie crippled or long ill, or should have the quite conceivable misfortune to be clapped in jail, I could survive, I think, given this one token of the physical world. “ And the tree that she would need would have leaves “shining like dark polished jade” and “great white waxy blossoms” “delicate as orchids,” for in the same way that Aldo Leopold loved all trees but was in love with pines, Rawlings was passionate about magnolias.

Now, I hadn’t read any of these passages of Rawlings' until this week. My mother loved her writing, but I’d resisted picking up her books during childhood from stubbornness and more recently from distaste for the racist aspects of Rawlings’ depictions of some Cross Creek neighbors. What made me pick up two of her books at last? On Thursday, February 21st, the U.S. postal service issued a 41 cent stamp in her honor. Old friends and admirers gathered for the first day of issue ceremony at her preserved Cross Creek farm, where a postal service spokesperson announced the stamp's specific goal: to honor her writings about Florida’s natural environment and people. At least for this reader, the stamp did its job of generating fresh interest in a sometimes-neglected writer and, as a result, in the place she loved.

That’s exciting to me, since I’m always trying to think of ways to get people to read more nature books. I checked to see what other nature writers might be depicted on stamps and found Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Henry Thoreau, and Rachel Carson so far. The Rawlings stamp took years of work by the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society to convince the government that she deserved commemoration. I can think of other nature writers at least as deserving—Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, John Wesley Powell, Henry Beston, William Warner. Of course No. 1 on my list is Aldo Leopold. Maybe after a few years of satisfying effort, we could all gather at Leopold’s Sand County farm to celebrate his work and welcome thousands of new readers to the Almanac, courtesy of the U.S. postal service. I'm not sure how to get the task started, but if it's a letter writing campaign, I'll affix a Rawlings stamp to my first missive.

Jane Austen Saves the Earth!

2008-02-19T13:36:00.001-08:00

For a late winter diversion, I’ve set about the task of reading Jane Austen’s six complete novels in six weeks. I’m a bit behind, just now starting #4 (Emma), five weeks into the project. But I’m dedicated to finishing, at least before the current Masterpiece Theater series, The Complete Jane Austen, concludes. I’ll make it as long as I’m not too distracted by the show’s website, where I fritter away my days perusing reactions to the films on the discussion board (I didn’t know Austen readers could be so vicious), watching video clips of a screenwriter’s interview, and picking my favorite Austen hero, based on their online dating profiles. Based on 55,228 votes so far, Mr. Darcy is the dreamiest of them all.

But perhaps there’s no escape for one obsessed by environmental literature. Though most think of Austen as a prescient social critic and no one cites her as a source of green bon mots, she’s surprising me in every volume by her keen eye for nature and its relationships to individuals and society. Especially in Mansfield Park, the book I just finished, there’s no evading Austen’s insights into nature’s value to the human world. Here’s a little of Jane’s wisdom that I’ve gleaned so far.

1. Beware of those who fail to appreciate the natural world. Emma’s fussy, hypochondriac father warns his daughter, “It is never safe to sit out-of-doors, my dear,” and Fanny Price, heroine of Mansfield Park, recognizes that her romantic nemesis cares little about the landscape they pass on a carriage ride. Says the omniscient narrator of the calculating Miss Crawford, “She had none of Fanny’s delicacy of taste, of mind, of feeling; she saw nature, inanimate nature, with little observation; her attention was all for men and women, her talents for the light and lively.”

2. Loving the planet is sexy. Though Henry Crawford is a scalawag, he loves Fanny and is almost redeemed in her eyes on a walk by the beach: “The loveliness of the day, and of the view, he felt like herself. They often stopt with the same sentiment and taste, leaning against the wall, and considering he was not Edmund, Fanny could not but allow that he was sufficiently open to the charms of nature, and very well able to express his admiration.”

3. Nature heals all wounds. Persuasion’s Anne Elliot finds solace for her benighted love life in strolls along Lyme Regis’ shore. Marianne Dashwood, in Sense and Sensibility, takes long, solitary walks to salve her broken heart and health (and don’t forget Willoughby’s wildflowers that relieve her sprained ankle). In Mansfield Park, Fanny’s visit to Liverpool reveals cities as unhealthful places of “closeness and noise, to have confinement, bad air, bad smells,” in contrast with the bucolic Mansfield estate. There one night, Fanny’s beloved Edward joins her at a window to stargaze, and they look together,

where all that was solemn and soothing, and lovely, appeared in the brilliancy of an unclouded night, and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods. Fanny spoke her feelings. “Here’s harmony!” said she. “Here’s repose! Here’s what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only can attempt to describe. Here’s what may tranquillize every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.

4. Renew your nature connections often. Banishment to Liverpool reminds Fanny of nature’s value to her.

It was sad to Fanny to lose all the pleasures of spring. She had not known before what pleasures she had to lose in passing March and April in a town. She had not known before, how much the beginnings and progress of vegetation had delighted her. –What animation both of body and mind, she had derived from watching the advance of that season which cannot, in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely, and unseeing its increasing beauties, from the earliest flowers, in the warmest divisions of his aunt’s garden, to the opening of leaves of her uncle’s plantations, and the glory of his woods.

5. Words can save the wild. Despite her deep response to landscapes, the reticent Fanny remains mute while Sotherton’s doltish owner spouts plans to hire a landscape gardener to “improve” his gracious estate. Fanny cringes only inwardly as others applaud his vision of replacing wilder landscape elements with more lawns and formal plantings. But when Mr. Rushworth states his intention to destroy a tree-lined avenue, Fanny remembers a poem and cannot keep silent. She says, “Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper? ‘Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.’” Though she couldn’t articulate her personal feelings or muster a cohert original argument, Fanny’s familiarity with Cowper’s “The Task” prepared her well to combat the destructive impulses of everyone surrounding her. What better lesson could I gain from a few weeks of novel-reading than renewed appreciation of the value of poetry and prose in protecting the natural world? Thanks, Jane!

Horseshoe Crab Resource Roundup

2008-02-11T12:31:00.000-08:00

Add PBS Nature to your page

“Crash: A Tale of Two Species” premiered on PBS last night, a beautiful documentary about the grim story of how overharvesting horseshoe crabs may doom a migratory shorebird population. The film takes viewers from the red knots’ Tierra del Fuego wintering grounds to their nearly vacant nesting habitat above the Arctic Circle, explaining the vital role of Delaware Bay horseshoe crab eggs in the birds’ ability to survive their astonishing spring journey north. Anyone who cares about animals will be moved when one of the red knot researchers tries to explain why the little “beach robin” matters.

This happens to be one of the conservation issues closest to my heart. I hadn’t ever seen a horseshoe crab until I spent a college summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. I was taking a course in marine algae and didn’t know that MBL was (and still is) a center for horseshoe crab research. But I noticed a few strange, helmet-shelled creatures washed up on the first ocean beaches I’d ever seen, and I fell in love. In the years since, I’ve traveled to witness the joint spectacle of millions of nesting crabs and 100,000s of egg-hungry shorebirds converging on Delaware Bay in spring. I’ve also assisted, with my family, in a nesting beach census (can you tell a male from a female horseshoe crab? It’s a cinch!), visited a classroom that raises juveniles, and written about horseshoe crabs whenever I could, in the hope of generating more support for their protection.

So of course I know a few books for your horseshoe crab reading pleasure. Here goes. . . .

For adults, I especially recommend a poignant new look at the ancient phenomenon of mass wildlife movement: No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations. While not focused on horseshoe crabs or red knots, it puts the crisis these species face in perspective with lost passenger pigeon flocks and constricted wildebeest, caribou, and pronghorn herds. Wilcove, author of an outstanding history of North American wildlife populations (The Condor’s Shadow: Loss and Recovery of Wildlife in America), relates the current state of scientific understanding of how animals accomplish these feats of navigation and endurance. He also emphasizes that much is lost when a migratory species survives without room to roam, as with South Africa’s springbok. Wilcove writes, “What is gone is not the species but the phenomenon of the species, the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of springbok marching across the Karoo desert, kicking up great clouds of dust, as they wander in search of forage.”

Children have several wonderful books to choose from. For the youngest crab fanciers, I recommend Ruth Horowitz’s Crab Moon. It’s a gentle picture book about a 7-year-old boy, who quietly watches horseshoe crabs coming ashore to nest one moonlit night. Young readers looking for more ecological detail will appreciate Horseshoe Crabs and Shorebirds: The Story of a Food Web. Author Victoria Crenson describes how the food web connects the lives of horseshoe crabs, shorebirds, and many other wildlife species around the Delaware Bay. Another fine, topical picture book is Red Knot: A Shorebird’s Incredible Journey, by Nancy Carol Willis. Presented like an ornithologist’s notebook, entries begin in southern-most South America and follow the birds all the way north and back. Detailed illustrations accurately depict both behavior and habitat at each vital stage along the way.

The web offers reading and activist opportunities for all ages. Here are just a few:
The Shorebird Project follows an international team of red knot biologists as they track their movements from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic. This blog is written by globe-trotting knot expert Dr. Larry Niles, featured in the PBS “Crash” film.

The Ecological Research and Development Group is a leading organization working to protect horseshoe crabs along the Atlantic Coast and around the world. Their website offers everything from basic horseshoe crab anatomy lessons to academic conference announcements, to invitations to participate in crab counts, information on the “Just Flip ‘Em” campaign, and contest entry rules for children designing crab conservation posters.

Children may especially want to visit the site Friends of the Red Knot. Students at a Green Mount School in Baltimore started a club to advocate for red knots in 2007 and are now conducting a letter writing campaign to have the birds children’s group that’s conducting a letter writing campaign to convince the Interior Department to add the birds to the Endangered Species list.

A lively teacher’s guide to “Crash: A Tale of Two Species” and the horseshoe crab-red knot relationship can be found at the PBS Nature website. I’m happy to report that the guide lists my horseshoe crab book (Extraordinary Horseshoe Crabs) for elementary students in its list of teacher resources.

I hope that “Crash”, one of these books, or maybe the sight of a tired but determined migratory bird this spring inspires you to get involved protecting not just individual wildlife species but vital relationships like those between ancient, helmet-headed crabs and migratory shorebirds.

Winter Reading Roundup

2008-02-04T07:38:00.000-08:00

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather this weekend, not up to reading, much less blogging. But my stationary lifestyle allowed me to listen to a couple of excellent nature book-related audio programs. Friday, I heard naturalist Mark Garland, of the Audubon Naturalist Society, recommending a variety of winter reading choices, including works I haven’t read yet by authors I greatly admire—Robert Michael Pyle and David Wilcove. Mark Garland sounds as enthusiastic about Pyle's Sky Time in Gray's River as I usually am about Pyle's books.

I also listened to a superb January 24 interview with Michael Shnayerson on the Diane Rehm show archives about his new book, Coal River. Activists from Coal River Mountain Watch and the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment joined Shnayerson discuss how & why mountaintop coal mining is being allowed to destroy one of the world’s most ancient mountain ranges . Peter Matthiesson’s blurb on the book says, “This damning account of mountaintop beheading and rampant watershed destruction in four states of Appalachia should be obligatory reading for every Congressperson who deserves the name of lawmaker (and the lobby-led political hacks who claim it, too).” Read the first chapter for yourself, then mail a copy to your legislator to help stop this outrage.

Once I’m feeling better, I’m going to catch up on these books and other reading too. One blog-reading (& photo-viewing) destination I’m looking forward to is Ginkgo Dreams for the 20th Festival of Trees. And, thanks to Ivory-bills Live!, I’m also looking forward to a book coming out mid-month--Life of the Skies, by Jonathan Rosen. Scott Weidensaul says, “It is a thoughtful and often unexpected exploration of birding through the lens of history, literature and loss—the process, as author Jonathan Rosen says, of loving a diminished but still seductive world.” I’m planning to order a copy of that one for myself, for some post-flu reading pleasure.

Journey South

2008-01-28T19:16:00.000-08:00

Having spent two of the past three days driving the length of the New Jersey Turnpike, you might think I’d have no recent nature literature experience to blog about. But my bedraggled family paused on our southbound Sunday journey at milepost 30.2 for as much refreshment as tea and Cinnabons could offer. I must have felt revived on the way out, because I noticed a framed poem that had escaped me as we entered. It read in part--

Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets:
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must sleep in those beds;
No bargainers’ bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—Would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.

Imagine my surprise at finding a poem from Leaves of Grass on the wall of a highway rest stop. Fortuitously, we’d stopped at the Walt Whitman Service Area. Why the highway authority felt so inspired as to dedicate a rest stop to Whitman I cannot suppose. Why choose Beat! Beat! Drums? And how would Walt have felt about it?

According to the Turnpike website, 650,000 cars travel that road daily. Though only a small fraction stops at the Whitman area, I trust that at least a few of the travelers glimpse the poem. Meant as a rallying cry for northerners at the Civil War’s outset, maybe some will hear the drum beat as a call to action needed for our times. And I hope this small literary gesture will inspire other highway rest stop designers to add a poetic moment to their prosaic establishments. It certainly lifted my spirits as our wheels rumbled the last miles home.

Writing Classes

2008-01-22T10:46:00.000-08:00

“The Obama-Clinton Squabble Continues” bemoans the Post this morning. It’s only January, and most of us, I suspect, are weary of the escalating verbal violence. I’m leery as well, fearing the consequences of each assault when reincarnated in Republican attack ads this summer and fall. Negative remarks, hostile attitudes, even scornful looks can permanently undermine a candidate or cause.

I’ve noticed the same kind of sniping and denigration in the publishing world. In my main field, children’s books, there seems to be a fairly clear hierarchy defining success. Picture book writers and literary novelists are at the top, nonfiction writers at the bottom. One writing teacher I know, with one published picture book, dismisses the diverse output of another local writer, author of adult romance novels, children’s nonfiction, how-tos for writers and others, and spiritual entreaties, because “she hasn’t done any quality books." This same teacher patronizes nonfiction as “easy to sell” and “a great way to break into the field.” Huh, I thought. I guess Rachel Carson was just treading water with Silent Spring until she could come up with a picture book idea.

The hierarchy is somewhat complicated by snootiness about where you’re publishing (New York-published nonfiction may sometimes trump regionally-published fiction). But the ranking itself, rather than the specific details, bothers me. Such hierarchic attitudes undermine training in my little niche (children’s writers conferences treat publishing picture books and novels as the Holy Grail, ignoring or sidelining a wealth of other creative possibilities). Still worse, this class system constricts teaching and reading of all kinds of literature. With poetry out of fashion in most high school English classrooms, teachers focus on novels, with maybe one Shakespeare play and perhaps a dollop of short fiction. Not Walden, not Sojourner Truth’s Narrative, not Schweitzer’s Out of My Life and Thought, not A Sand County Almanac are deemed worthy of analysis and discussion.

Conversely, the power of fiction is ignored in educating environmentalists. Those students learn about Thoreau, Leopold, Jared Diamond, Bill McKibben, and Elizabeth Kolbert, and maybe read The Monkey Wrench Gang for comic relief. But which teachers explore the power of fiction to tap emotions, develop sense of place, or challenge ethical and social conventions that underlie our environmental crisis? By ranking and partitioning writing—and therefore reading—we are hampering the causes of literacy and conservation. We are limiting the common vocabulary of our arguments and shrinking the audience we can effectively address.

This diatribe all stems from a cozy evening at home, watching Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey Sunday night. In Austen’s time, intellectuals viewed novels as the print equivalent of persona non grata. Coleridge said, “where the reading of novels prevails as a habit, it occasions in time the entire destruction of the powers of the mind.” Austen regularly defended novels and novel reading, (admitting to a correspondent that she and her family were “great Novel-readers, & not ashamed of being so”). Given the ascendance not just of novels but of Jane’s in particular (on film at least), Coleridge has lost the day. But I think we all lose when we fail to respect the many values of diverse forms of writing that have evolved and are still evolving (yes, including blogging). Literature, to my activist soul, is any writing that can challenge, inspire, or, yes, simply inform toward better thinking and behavior.

Cold Comfort

2008-01-14T07:13:00.000-08:00

Few things make a child rue global warming more than a snow-day-free winter. Half way through January with not a flake in sight, my kids are beginning to despair. In contrast, I can recall winters when nor’easters brought days-long ice storms and the consequent school reprieve as late as March. Memory, in this case at least, gives me hope.

But hope doesn’t make me wish less ardently for a blizzard. Instead of staring fruitlessly at Weather.com, I turned for solace to a new volume, The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic. Inspired by the 2007-2008 International Polar Year, which aims at heightening awareness and encouraging research, the work presents writings from the earliest days of polar exploration to the present. The wages of snow obsession, as should forewarn my kids, are abundantly clear in many of the selections. Here’s this from Nobu Shirashe, who returned from a Japanese Antarctic Expedition in 1912:

The whole enterprise was indescribably difficult and fraught with danger, and it was without doubt the worst of the trials and tribulations we have experienced since we left our mothers’ wombs.

The withering monotony of the endless polar night is captured by Fridtjof Nansen, on board a ship helplessly adrift in the Arctic ice:

One day differed very little from another on board, and the description of one is, in every particular of any importance, a description of all.

And from Robert Peary, who may or may not have exaggerated his claims to have reached the North Pole in 1909:

If it were possible for a man to arrive at 90 degrees north latitude without being utterly exhausted, body and brain, he would doubtless enjoy a series of unique sensations and reflections. But the attainment of the Pole was the culmination of days and weeks of forced marches, physical discomfort, insufficient sleep, and racking anxiety. It is a wise provision of nature that the human consciousness can grasp only such degree of intense feeling as the brain can endure, and the grim guardians of earth’s remotest spot will accept no man as guest until he has been tried and tested by the severest ordeal.

Some may quibble that the volume is over-stuffed with such tales of early explorers’ machismo. Indeed, from the relative security of his well-stocked ship, Nansen laments, “I am almost ashamed of the life we lead, with none of those darkly painted sufferings of the long winter night which are indispensable to a properly exciting Arctic expedition. We shall have nothing to write about when we get home.” But looking deeper into the book, I found plenty of variety beyond the standard explorers’ memoirs and logs. Fictional offerings include works by Jules Verne, Jack London, and Andrea Barrett, and expository nature essays appear from Gretel Erhlich, Barry Lopez, and other contemporary masters. Lopez’s essay from his 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning Arctic Dreams in particular gains fresh relevance when read in this context, as he relishes the movements of caribou and snow geese from the perspective of a man not near starvation, as well as extolling immutable rhythms of animals in wild nature in a time before acute awareness of climate change.

Given the ever-more alarming news of shrinking ice sheets and vanishing polar bears and penguins, it may also surprise readers that only a few of authors explore how global warming is impacting the earth’s extremes. Co-editor Elizabeth Kolbert, author of a galvanizing climate change report, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, addresses such concerns briefly but grimly in her introduction, admitting, “A landscape that once symbolized the sublime indifference of nature will, for future generations, come to symbolize its tragic vulnerability.” But I, for one reader, am pleased that the vast majority of the book offers a pure white escape. This warm winter, I found in it a place to refresh my winter memories and, perhaps, to learn how to proceed bravely instead of hunkering down in the cold and dark.

Decluttering Destinations

2008-01-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

Has your decluttering resolution resulted in a towering stack of gently-used books in need of new homes? Are there too many to seek appreciative readers one-by-one through friends or Freecycle? There are plenty of organizations that welcome book donations, either to pass along to needy individuals, schools, shelters, and others or to sell as fundraisers for charitable projects. To me, chucking my beloved books in the Salvation Army bin feels a bit cold. I prefer to think of them being handled lovingly by devoted book people, even if they don't necessarily know the full literary merit of an extra copy of A Sand County Almanac. Most cities have non-profits dedicated to re-distributing used books. Near me in D.C., there’s Books for America, which has announced an urgent need for children’s volumes and accepts mailed donations. Books for America would be a great destination for Owl Moon, Crinkleroot’s Guide to the Trees, Hatchet, or any of your kids’ other neglected old favorites. Baltimore’s The Book Thing also takes used book (and magazine) shipments as well as on-site donations. Unlike many other book-based charities, The Book Thing accepts books on any topic with any publication date. Check out their list of the 14 Strangest Titles donated to The Book Thing, and see if you can help them fulfill their simple mission “to put unwanted books into the hands of those who want them."

Please let me know if you're aware of other good places to donate quantities of good books. . . .

Celebrate 2008 with Trees

2008-01-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

The ball has dropped and the champagne has gone flat, but there’s still time to get your New Year off to a great start with some fine reading and photos at the 19th edition of The Festival of the Trees. This month’s host is Hoarded Ordinaries, a blog worth your time if only to discover what the author means by “Mundane Musings from a Collector of the Quotidian." There’s nothing ordinary about the stunning photos of a solstice tree at Frizzy Logic, Renaissance tree poetry at Via Negative, or “Read It and Weep,” a review of The Golden Spruce from sarala. Click around to find your own favorite entries.

If you enjoy this festival, check out past editions at the coordinating site for the Festival. And make plans to contribute your own tree-philic musings, quotidian or otherwise, to the next version at Ginko Dreams. Happy 2008!

Reading, Writing, and other Resolutions

2007-12-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

“My Journal should be the record of my love,” wrote Henry David Thoreau on November 16, 1850. “I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love to think of.” Thoreau’s record of his affections (and disaffections) grew to over 2 million words, published in both abbreviated and complete editions since 1906.

The latest version is I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau, by the curator of collections at the Thoreau Institute, Jeffrey Cramer. Cramer not only presents a readable selection of Thoreau’s multifarious loves—from friends to fish and from Goethe to the evening sky—but offers commentary to elucidate the historical, cultural, intellectual, and personal context of Thoreau’s text. Cramer’s scholarship deepens the meaning of Thoreau’s entries without weighing them down with too much detail or critical opinion. The result is a balanced and beautifully designed work of value to researchers seeking particular insights into Thoreau’s life and thought or for readers seeking the heady pleasure of immersion in some of the finest prose by any American writer.

Thoreau also wrote, on November 11, 1851, “’Say’s I to myself’ should be the motto of my journal.” If your New Year’s resolutions include undertaking a journal of your own, Cramer’s book offers an inspiring (and perhaps a bit daunting) record of a quarter century’s production. To me, it also offers a starting point for a resolution of a different kind. Given my conviction that books could play a greater role in environmental protection, I’m disappointed when my advocacy efforts sometimes feel like I’m talking to myself. To reach more people, I’m going try writing a few recommendations for favorite works on Amazon.com. I hope it will give me a satisfying outlet for encouraging readers to choose books that have the power to change not only individuals’ lives but society. Whenever I’m not eating better, exercising, or keeping my house cleaner and my family happier, I’ll be working harder in 2008 to advocate for nature writing and the natural environment. Happy New Year!

P.S. Thoreau also wrote, on December 17, 1851, “I do not know but a pine wood is as substantial and as memorable a fact as a friend.” And three days later, “Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine tree.” How could I not love a book with an index listing 33 entries for pines!

Kings of the Forest

2007-12-17T12:20:00.001-08:00

Could any tree steal my heart from pines? For this girl from the Great Plains, a logical candidate would be that tree of all trees, the giant redwood. In true armchair naturalist fashion, I’ve read about them often and with delicious longing, notably while studying Frederick Law Olmsted to write a children’s book. In 1863, Olmsted fled the political miseries of developing Central Park for a job managing California’s largest gold mine, but once there, he escaped labor disputes and financial strains by taking his family to caper among Big Trees near Yosemite. And of course the bard of the High Sierra has written rhapsodies on redwoods: “These kings of the forest,” said John Muir, “the noblest of a noble race rightly belong to the world. . . we cannot escape responsibility as their guardians.”

Given such a deep, though admittedly vicarious, relationship with redwoods, I confronted mixed emotions upon learning about Richard Preston’s new book, The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring. Sure, I’d love to spend more reading time with trees Preston rightly labels “the largest and tallest individual living organism that has ever appeared in nature since the beginning of life on earth.” But could Richard Preston, author of the best-selling bio-thriller on the Ebola virus, The Hot Zone, do justice to these sublime conifers?

Wild Trees’ early chapters focus on human players in the forest drama, starting from an unplanned, unassisted ascent by college students motivated not by botanical science but “tree lust.” This forestry school grad yearned for more and sooner about the biology and ecology of Sequoia sempervirens-- how do they grow so tall? Why are they so geographically restricted? What other plants and wildlife contribute to a redwood ecosystem? Writing more about the obsessed than the objects of their obsession, I assume, is Preston’s deliberate strategy to attract readers not immediately inclined toward tree books. Eventually, I saw merit in the approach, especially in the humor department (see especially the New York Times Review, “Where the Redwoods Grow, the Oddballs Also Flourish.”).

And at last, Preston won me over when he donned climbing gear to ascend the trees himself. The author explores alongside scientists and skilled amateur climbers an uncharted world 38 stories above the ground, a place he likens to “coral reefs in the air.” Suspended on spider ropes, he marvels first hand over fire caves high in massive trunks, glens of huckleberries growing 200 feet up, and hanging ferns in magical sky gardens. The authenticity of Preston’s own evolving passion is confirmed when his children join him in the treetops—though the family tackles Scotland’s ancient Caledonian pines and other lesser specimens. Photos on Preston’s Wild Trees webpage bring readers closer to that part of his story, and the book is effectively illustrated with distribution maps, sketches of champion trees, and selections from scientists’ field notes. To hear Preston speak about Wild Trees and his personal adventures, listen to one of his April 2007 radio interview with Diane Rehm. Or, to see how Preston parries Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, check here.

Again perhaps to lure a wide audience, Preston writes little about the ongoing harvesting of old growth redwoods and even less about the decades-long fight to protect the eons-old trees. To learn about the campaign and how you can help, contact Calilfornia’s Save the Redwoods League. Let’s hope that Muir is right; we must not escape responsibility as their guardians.

P.S. Muir loved pines too. He wrote, ”I drank the spicy, resiny wind, and beneath the arms of this noble tree I felt that I was safely home.”

Dancing with Books

2007-12-11T07:20:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows my love of books and vicarious love of dance, through my dancing daughters, can imagine my excitement at hearing of a program called, “Dancing with Books.” Program organizers at Inner City-Inner Child in Washington, D.C. explain the initiative this way:

ICIC takes this highly interactive, book based arts and literacy rich residency to different inner city centers each year. This 3-month series of workshops is based on well-loved children’s books, and teaches vocabulary and word recognition by singing, dancing and drumming portions of the books. Children and teachers create a word wall together, new dances and their own CD.

According to the ICIC website, studies have shown that 61 per cent of low income families have no books at home for their children, and 80 per cent of low income childcare centers lack books of any kind. Last year, ICIC distributed 5,000 books to low income centers, created reading corners, and taught teachers and parents how to enhance their appreciation and use of children’s books.

The fine folks at the Audubon Naturalist Society have figured out a way to combine this worthy literacy project with their conservation efforts. They’re calling for donations of children’s nature books to Inner City-Inner Child. To sweeten the deal, you can support ANS programs too by ordering your book through their Sanctuary bookstore where the volunteers there will make sure your donation gets to ICIC. Orders will be accepted at ANS until January 2nd.

Happy shopping!

Vote for Books!

2007-12-05T18:01:00.000-08:00

Feeling envious of all those Iowans and New Hampshirites who will soon cast votes of great import for our political future? You too can help direct our path by asserting your preference for the next book club selection over at Crunchy Chicken. Crunchy has already hosted lively discussions of Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable Miracle and Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Stop by her exemplary blog and help CC decide between Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet, and other thought-provoking titles. And while you’re visiting, sign on to Crunchy’s “Freeze Yer Buns” challenge and pledge to lower your thermostat all winter. She keeps hers at 62 degrees by day, 55 at night. At those temps, we’ll need to check out her blog often and generate a most heated debate!

Close Encounters of a Literary Kind

2007-12-02T16:29:00.000-08:00

“Intimacy is a necessity of life, and we would go insane without it,” says Garrison Keillor in today’s Washington Post essay on how books saved his life. Keillor means intimacy with people, even strangers over a cup of coffee or on a protracted bus trip. For me, intimacy also means closeness with place. Many of my reading choices serve to connect me more deeply either with where I came from or where I’ve ended up. Keillor’s words this morning reminded me of a favorite book that enhances my understanding and affection for my home in Maryland and vicinity: From Blue Ridge to Barrier Islands, edited by Kent Minichiello and Anthony White. Selections range from Captain John Smith’s observations on a salubrious Virginia climate (with “abundance of fowle” and “plentie of sturgeon”) to Tom Horton’s anaysis on the role of technology in restoring the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. Wherever you live, I hope you will seek out a similar collection that reveals how your home land through the centuries has been explored, farmed, hunted, fished, studied, developed, restored and loved.

A few of my reading choices also aim at forging connections with places where I’m going—or hope to go. That’s why I read an essay on the Flint Hills of Kansas and Oklahoma in the current issue of the Nature Conservancy Magazine. Though my first decade was spent in Kansas, my mom never thought to pack a car with kids for a field trip to the “the last great swath of tallgrass prairie,” as essayist Sally Shivnan deems the region. Shivnan writes about a sky of crushing vastness and a guide whose intimate knowledge of the grassland relieves its scale, opening her to beauties as slight as a blade of switchgrass. Like most fine travel writing, the piece left me more determined than ever to reach my destination. Reading the essay for me resembled listening to a stranger’s private stories while sipping coffee at a lunch counter. “All storytelling is an opening of the heart,” says Keillor, “a search for intimacy with strangers.” I guess writers are the strangers I turn to for intimate looks at the places I long to go. Thanks to Shivnan, I can imagine myself binoculars in hand, sweeping the hills for prairie chickens, feet planted gently in switchgrass.

Post-Thanksgiving Plenty

2007-11-26T16:14:00.000-08:00

The bird book business has been declared healthy by none other than the November 25 Washington Post. In a review section centerfold flaunting full-color photos of a cock-of-the-rock and other seductive avians, Gregory McNamee introduces a mixed flock of the latest temptations for lovers of birds & books. Titles considered range from an introductory guidebook, National Geographic Birding Essentials, to a biography of birding’s patriarch, Roger Tory Peterson, by Douglas Carlson.
Though McNamee's remarks about each volume are brief, he knows the subject well, remarking in passing, for example, that Scott Weidensaul’s 1999 book Living on the Wind belongs in every birder’s collection. If you’re starting to ponder what new books to bestow on your near and dear ones this holiday, this Post review is a good place to start.

Also consider, in the same Post issue, a review of Colin Tudge’s The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter. The reviewer shares my appreciation for Tudge’s preternatural ability to elucidate complex topics, partly through analogies and anecdotes from outside of science. He frequently quotes Shakespeare and Tennyson, notes the Post, “so that reading The Tree is like being in the company of a kindly biology professor who has strayed into a literature seminar.” I’m hoping to wake up Christmas morning to a copy tucked under my tree.

Any other ideas for nature book gifts this season? Do are some books—such as Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us-- too grim/alarming/depressing to be appropriate presents? What traits make a nature book appealing for gift-giving?

Captain Courageous

2007-11-20T19:57:00.000-08:00

Much of the action in Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous takes place on the Grand Banks, described by the author as “a triangle of two hundred and fifty miles on each side—a waste of wallowing sea, cloaked with dank fog, vexed with gales, harried with drifting ice, scored by the tracks of reckless liners, and dotted with the sails of the fishing fleet.” One set of sails in the 1897 novel belongs to the schooner We’re Here in the months after it scooped up Harvey Cheyne, Jr, the spoiled son of a railroad magnate, after he fell off an ocean liner. The elemental existence aboard a working vessel transforms Harvey’s character from a whining braggart to a stalwart member of the hearty crew. Reading it this week, I’ve ached with nostalgia for the abundance depicted, for cod schools so vast “the deep fizzled like freshly opened soda-water”. Since the fisheries’ collapse in the 1990s, never again may the Grand Banks “long blue skies” be dotted with sails and clamoring with shouts as brim-full nets are hauled above the waves.

Just as lost is the rich understanding of traditions and place mastered by real-life progenitors of Disko Troop, Captain of the We’re Here. While the crew teaches Harvey everything from reefing topsails to salt-curing fish, only the Captain can read the waters themselves. His cabin-boy son relates, “Dad says everything’ on the Banks is signs, an’ can be read wrong er right.” Troop’s unassailable judgment guides his ship around treacherous shoals, through tumultuous storms, and ahead of rivals to ensnare runs of the fattest fish. Kipling, often criticized for didatic prose, portrays Troop unblushingly as “a master artist who knows the Banks blindfold.”

Yet courageous captains still exist. It was heartening also this week to learn about a new portrait of Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Captain of the Farley Mowat. Award-winning adventure writer Peter Heller accompanied Watson and his all-volunteer crew on an eco-adventure aimed at blocking—by any means necessary—Japanese whaling in the Antarctic. Heller tells Watson’s thrilling but often heart-wrenching and even gory tale in The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals. The Mowat’s Captain honed his expertise, as did the fictional Troop, through decades of piloting ships fearlessly across every kind of sea. Called an eco-terrorist by some, the Watson Heller depicts is a dedicated but ethical warrior, proud that none of the ships he’s sunk has lost a human life. Equally dedicated followers express willingness to risk their own necks for a higher good. As one crew member put it, "I don't want to die, of course... But if I die looking to save a whale, that would be OK.”

How does Watson inspire a whole crew of Davids to confront the Japanese whaling Goliath? Peter Heller offers insights in a November 13 radio interview. Especially enlightening are Heller’s responses to phone-in critics, eager to tar Watson as a criminal. To Heller, Watson’s quest to stop illegal whaling may be justified by both the cruelty of slaughter to individuals and the escalating destruction of the ocean ecosystem. Months on the Mowat have convinced Heller that boycotting swordfish and shark, as urged by many mainstream ocean conservationists, is an insufficient response to a deepening crisis. Instead, he advocates eschewing all commercially caught ocean fish and backs other seemingly radical ocean protection policies. As Heller asserts, “If the oceans are dying in our time, and we kill them... we should have committed a crime so heinous we shall not ever be redeemed.” People like Watson prove that much can be done to redeem ourselves, that we have the knowledge and technology and lack only the public will to do the right thing. Perhaps, like Harvey Chaney, we will be rescued by sheer luck from our own arrogance, and even learn to mend our ways. But if we soon need an epitaph for the ocean, we could do worse than Kipling's bitter lamentation: “We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.”

Definitive Giveaway

2007-11-07T13:59:00.001-08:00

Three cheers to the purveyors of all things bird at one of my favorite blogs, 10,000 Birds. Not satisfied with offering insightful, useful book reviews along with tales of swashbuckling birding adventures, top-o-the-line nature photos, and avian conservation alerts, now they’re giving away copies of Bird: The Definitive Visual Guide, via a contest they’re calling The Definitive Visual Guide Giveaway.

To whet your appetite for entering, read Mike’s ecstatic review which begins, “I’ve just fallen in love with birding all over again. I owe this renewed ardor for avian observation to a magnificent new volume simply called BIRD.” He recommends this lush visual feast not just to birders but for “essentially anyone with eyes.” School Library Journal concurs, lauding Bird as a “striking combination of copious graphics, elegant typography, and concise text.”

The 10,000 Birds contest offers two ways to enter. The hard way requires an essay in praise of a favorite bird species, while the easy way, which you are currently witnessing, involves spreading the word on your own blog. Even if a vow of nonconsumption requires you to renounce owning a personal copy, consider winning (or buying) one to donate elsewhere. As Mike puts it so well, “BIRD: The Definitive Visual Guide is an unsurpassed ambassador piece for birdlife around the world. . . . .Leave this tremendous tome out where the non-initiated might spy it and you’re bound to win over a few birding converts.” Good luck, everyone!

One Sky, One Choice

2007-11-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

“I’m too busy.”
“It’s too cold.”
“I’d have to put my tooth in.”

Those were just a few of the excuses that met my invitations to Saturday’s Step It Up anti-global warming rally. Locally, ours was touted as a gathering of the One Sky movement, an initiative that has identified specific, achievable, science-based priorities for climate change activism—e.g., five million green jobs by 2015, cut carbon 30% by 2020, and no new coal fired power plants. Saturday’s rallies around the nation asked leaders, including the myriad presidential candidates, to step up and commit to these tangible goals essential for saving the planet. Hillary, Mitt, and their ilk were conspicuously absent from the modest event near me, and I haven’t heard yet if they showed up elsewhere. While I’ve not been glued to tv or radio, it seems that most reporters were away covering the crisis du jour—or maybe just wanted to relax at home with their teeth out.

But at least some hometown politicians were there. One talked about how refreshing it feels to be for things, such as alternative energy, mass transit, and simple living, rather than endlessly against oil drilling, highway construction, mindless consumption and the like. ( The positive framing of the issue was the reason I felt comfortable bringing my eight year old with me when other family members backed out. ) But the most inspiring words for me came from a state legislator, one of the greenest pols in Maryland. Liz Bobo captured my attention by praising writer/organizer Bill McKibben, calling the author of The End of Nature a prophet of the climate change crisis (though she didn’t mention his new book, Fight Global Warming Now, a resource-packed guide for individuals and communities).

Then, Bobo talked about a recent poetry reading by Jane Hirshfeld, author of After and other prize-winning collections. Hirshfield’s poems speak of nature’s resilience as well as beauty, offering hope in the face of Al Gore’s most alarming statistics. And her imagery, of the wild animal world watching, perhaps in judgment, as humans despoil our shared planet, resonates with Ms. Bobo as she argues with colleagues in the State House and addresses often-meager crowds of supporters. How grand that a poet’s work strengthens a legislator’s; how fine that together we can achieve the vision of One Sky--if only we decide that we must.

Muses--Shaggy, Clawed, and Hooved

2007-10-29T08:51:00.001-07:00

Rachel Carson once wished that the good fairy would endow each child with an indestructible sense of wonder. Barring such ethereal intervention, she argued that a child “needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.” But what if a young person isn’t blessed with a passionate, enlightened, and, especially, available adult companion?

For me, there were horses. It never seems to have occurred to my city-bred mother to take her children hiking, star-gazing, or even gardening. But when we moved to an outer suburb of Kansas City, an empty pasture across the street called to my sister and me to animate it with horses. Lucky Charm and his successors became my ambassadors to the outdoors, drawing me away from my books and literally carrying me into the woods and fields. On Lucky’s back, I chased foxes, watched a snake swallow a frog, and developed my first hostile relationship with an invasive species--—bull thistle—due to its impact on bare legs. While Lucky didn’t tutor me in the names of birds, insects, or plants we encountered, his easy familiarity with the acres we explored gave me confidence to venture farther and more often than I ever would have alone.

Women writers seeking literary adventures often need similar sources of support. Carson herself relied on the calm presence of cats to buoy her spirits during late nights of solitary research for Silent Spring. But an insightful new book--Shaggy Muses--focuses on the canine companions of five literary lionesses: Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, and Emily Bronte. Author Maureen Adams, a clinical psychologist, investigates the diverse powers of human-animal bonds through intimate portraits of each author’s relationships with friends, playmates, protectors, and guides who happened to be dogs.

In some cases, the four-legged personalities Adams depicts clarify aspects of an author’s public work. Emily Dickinson’s black Newfoundland, Carlo, was her “Shaggy Ally” in a private refuge behind the hedges of Amherst, and imagining her gentle compatriot adds depths to her poem describing a hummingbird sipping her garden’s flowers: Til every spice is tasted-/ and then his Fairy Gig/ reels in remoter atmospheres-/ And I rejoin my Dog . . . .
More often, the women’s dogs appear in diaries, letters, and other private writings that reveal vital supporting roles played by each pet. Emily Dickinsons’ faithful Cocker Spaniel nestled by her side through years when illness and an oppressive parent cloistered her in a dark bedroom. Edith Wharton’s Pekinese thrived under her intense pampering, providing an outlet for her thwarted dreams of motherhood. More than one of the woman used pets as go-betweens or symbolic surrogates in romantic entanglements.

The story of Emily Bronte and her mastiff, Keeper, spoke most personally to me. Emily’s reclusive nature segregated her from both friendship and employment. When her sisters left home to attend church, study abroad, or work as governesses, Emily usually stayed behind, running her father’s parsonage. But Keeper pulled her away from the kitchen fires onto the moors, into vast, wind-blown spaces that freed her imagination. Could she have written her bleak, disturbing masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, without those hours striding across the heather beside Keeper? Adams thinks not, asserting that caring for the dog also grounded her when passionate imaginings might have swept her sanity away. Says Adams, “. . . she needed structure for her life while she was writing Wuthering Heights. And Keeper provided that structure. Emily had to take care of him—feed him, give him water, and exercise him—no matter what was happening in the nightmare world she was creating.” For Emily Bronte and the other writers insightfully portrayed by Adams, dogs functioned like Carson’s proverbial fairy, endowing not just wonder but also boldness, independence, and love. These shaggy muses allowed each woman to find freedom through connection with dogs, words, and the world.

100 Year Letter Project

2007-10-16T06:29:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I spent a summer at Woods Hole's Marine Biology Laboratory. Of course, I loved going to the science library there, chock full as it was with the biological tomes that drew my enthusiasm in those youthful days. But I couldn't help noticing a prominent sign over one tall, packed shelf--"Don't read too much--Think!" These days, I'm reading more widely but possibly still too much to satisfy my activist soul, and I try to keep in mind my own version of the MBL library's caution--"Don't read too much--Write!"

Thanks to Emmett over at The Natural Patriot, I just learned about a grassroots writing project for all of us. DeSmog Blog is organizing a 100 Year Letter Project, in which DeSmog is "asking readers to write write a letter to their great, great grandchildren about their vision and hopes for their world in 100 years, in the context of global warming." Emmett at NP encapsulates the potential importance of the project: ". . . I think this personal, emotional approach is just the sort of thing that might work in breaking through the thick, dessicated crust of apathy and cynicism and (deliberately fabricated) confusion and fear that keeps people from getting it, from understanding that climate change is a real problem that will have real and serious consequences for the people that we love most in this world--our children and their children."

Possibilities for your letter include explanations, apologies, encouragement, or just a warm howdy from a cooler time. Check back at DeSmog now and then to see examples of missives others are sending to the future. But don't forget to write yours. Emmett suggests sending a copy to your newspaper as well as to DeSmog. I'm going to work on a list of books for the great grandkids, some, I hope, that will help them see that we were trying to wake up to our actions, some that reveal the beauties of the planet that still persist, and some just for fun. No matter what changes the climate undergoes, I hope that reading will still provide inspiration, information, solace and joy in 2107 as it does today.

Eat, Pray, Love, Protect

2007-10-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Never in my craziest dreams about Pines Above Snow have I imagined raving about the same book as Oprah. But Friday, Oprah hosted Liz Gilbert, author of the “life-changing phenomenon” book, Eat, Pray, Love. I love it for many of the same reasons all the women I know love it (#1: My path to true fulfillment may pass through Italy) but especially because it has reminded me about the importance of ritual in our lives.

Here’s a short selection from Gilbert’s witty, eloquent memoir:

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping.

That got me thinking—what rituals do environmentalists observe that regularly lift our spirits, solidify our bonds, carve a place for us to delight in nature without worrying about it for a moment? Hmmmm. Since the days of tree-hugging flower children, environmentalists have shied away from symbolic rituals for fear of ridicule. We want our arguments for nature preservation to be unassailably based in quantifiable science (e.g., species diversity should be protected because ecological systems need diversity to function optimally) rather than intangible, mystical beliefs (e.g., a mountain should be protected because it has spiritual power). Maybe this has won us a few points in rational arguments about land use (though I’m not convinced that most land use arguments are essentially rational), but Eat, Pray, Love made me question what we have also lost.

Gilbert again gives cause for optimism when she says this about ritual:

And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you’re craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet. If you bring the right earnestness to your homemade ceremony, God will provide the grace. And that is why we need God.

If left up to me of course, “green” rituals would at least sometimes involve books. Why not begin each month with an appropriate selection from Thoreau’s journals or A Sand County Almanac? Or organize a public reading of classic environmental essays to celebrate each Earth Day? Or just make a personal vow to read a nature poem or passage every morning? Imbibing a few well-chosen words about trees, canyons, or salmon runs is a more important ceremony to me than a wake-up latte.

But as Elizabeth Gilbert’s story emphasizes, not everyone’s rituals can—or should—be the same. So like her, perhaps we could all start looking for life-changing, world-changing rituals to bring more strength and joy to the environmental movement. I notice ideas here and there as I explore the blogosphere, but one frequent source is No Impact Man. Especially poignant is his recent post on sukkot, the Jewish holiday of atonement. According to Colin, “Sukkot, as explained to me by my wonderful friend Rabbi Steve Greenberg, is a time for reconciliation or--and this is my word--atonement or at-one-ment. Sukkot means, having taken stock of our wrongs, now making them right.” It’s a joyous occasion that brings families together inside of nature as explained in a video posted below (via NIM).

Maybe, if we find and practice some of these power-generating, hope-stimulating rituals, we'll figure out how to save the earth. I bet Oprah would invite us over to talk about that.

Rabbi Steve Greenberg: Sukkot, A Holiday for Reconciliation

2007-10-06T14:52:00.001-07:00

Learning in the Great Outdoors Carnival

2007-10-01T07:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the October edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors, the Carnival of Environmental Education. The founder and usual Carnival host, Terrell at Alone on a Limb, has thrown caution to the wind to let me host his creation as Pines Above Snow’s first ever blog carnival. I hope that I’ll be able to do justice to the contributors and celebrate learning outdoors in autumn without making too many html errors. Here goes. . . .

County fairs mark the end of summer for many of us, and GrannyJ brings an exhibit to us over at Walking Prescott. She and her husband won a blue ribbon at the Yavapai County Fair for these amazing photos of an Arizona horned toad and her dozen offspring. Congrats, GrannyJ!

Super-sized pumpkins attract crowds at state fairs and farm stands every fall. We know how to decorate with them, puree them into pie filling, and carve them into jack o’ lanterns. But Tricia at Miss Rumphius Effect has found a picture book that turns pumpkins into math lessons. Of How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin, she says, “All-in-all, I love the story, love the art with it's autumn hues, and am thrilled with the possibilities for instruction.”

Nets, rather than books, are the tool of choice this month for Dana at Principled Discovery. By equipping her homeschooled kids outdoors with professional quality butterfly and aquatic nets, she heightens their engagement outdoors. In her post, Tools not Toys, she says “And when the children use them, there is a seriousness and purposefulness about their explorations of the backyard that really was not there before.”

Over at The Wild WoodsWoman, the favored EE tool & tactic appears to be chutzpah. WWW has convinced a nephew of her omniscient nature knowledge primarily through multi-sensory curiosity and unbridled enthusiasm. She urges others to follow her example in Convince a Kid You are an Outdoor Expert, urging us to “Use anything—see it, smell it, touch it, or use it to remind you of a good story.” The ultimate goal, besides winning the “coolest aunt ever” award, is getting kids excited about being outside.

Where will kids go to college when they’ve been immersed in nature though pumpkin math, insect collecting, and family hikes throughout childhood? Jimmy Atkinson at OEDb: Online Education Database identifies 13 campus-wide environmental education programs in the continental U.S. Opportunties from Maine to California appear in a very useful survey, How to Get a Green Education | OEDb. Check out the whole site for online college & grad level courses in biology, ecology, astronomy, and other relevant subjects.

Of course, education isn’t over when you’re out of college, so Todd at We The Change recommends volunteering as a way to learn more about the natural world. He pitched in to help remove invasive plants from a 500-acre preserve in Manhattan, along the way gaining perspective on the role of emotion in nature appreciation. Says Todd, “I think a big part of the beauty that people feel from nature is the ultimate peace and acceptance that emanates from it.”

For me, much of fall’s beauty emanates from the splendor of migration. One champion migrant, the cliff swallow, is honored in poetry this month by Terrell as part of his ever-inspiring Monday Poetry Stretch. Look closer at Alone on a Limb for photos of cliff & barn swallows on the nest. Dana at Backyard Birding offers advice on Enjoying the raptor migration. Click on her post for an interactive map if you want to participate in an official raptor count near you, or just watch for migrants dropping by for a snack at your backyard feeder. Either approach hones your id skills, enhances your appreciation of the season, and gets you & the kids away from the tv.

These migration posts bring me to my selection for this carnival’s award for Virtual Outdoors Children’s Website of the Month. I’m happy to bestow this honor on my homeschooled son’s favorite migration website, Journey North for Kids. We’ve turned there often as we raise and release monarchs this fall, hoping they’ll join the masses headed south to Mexico. The kids' page of Journey North will give your children and students video and photo clues to the many intriguing projects pursued at Journey North. Kids can enter data on their own observations, check maps reflecting citings by students around the country, or order red tulips to plant now and take part in 2008’s studies of the returning spring.

Thanks very much for visiting Pines Above Snow for this month’s Learning in the Great Outdoors Carnival. November’s edition will be back home at Alone on a Limb. Send submissions to Terrell at thelimb[at]mac[dot]com.

Rime of the Out-Moded Long Line

2007-09-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
`By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ?

With these lines, Samuel Taylor Coleridge begins his haunting tale, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Fair weather blesses the mariner’s voyage at first, and when a storm threatens the ship, an albatross appears along with a warm wind that blows the vessel out of danger. The shipmates rejoice and praise the bird for their salvation, yet the mariner shoots it dead with a crossbow. Punishment for his senseless act falls upon the whole crew, who suffer agonizing thirst and die, blaming the albatross-killer for their fate. Only the mariner survives. He repents at last but is doomed to wander the earth, confessing his sinful disregard for living creatures.

I couldn’t help but think of Coleridge’s verse while reading a recent post about albatross deaths by Charlie at 10,000 Birds. The statistics he reports are grim—100,000 albatrosses are killed each year by long-line industrial fishing. As an outraged (he says “bloody infuriated”) Charlie puts it, “100,000 albatrosses dying every year so that - basically - our supermarket shelves can be stocked with tins of tuna and the world’s restaurants can serve up exotic fish from the southern oceans.”

In Coleridge’s world of poetic justice, the perpetrator of such senseless killing was cursed to wear an albatross as a physical sign of his spiritual burden. Or, in the poet’s words, Ah! Well a-day! What evil looks / Had I from old and young! / Instead of the cross, the albatross / About my neck was hung . Unfortunately, 5-star restaurants won’t be looping albatross necklaces around patrons who order swordfish. Charlie questions the effectiveness of a fish boycott though he (and I) won’t be eating any Starkist with plunder like this going on.

Instead, he urges everyone who cares about these magnificent flyers to support an urgent international effort to modify long-line fishing technology. The campaign, Save the Albatross has developed an excellent website with all the tools activists need to get involved, plus inspiring facts about albatross biology, behavior, and roles in history and literature. You can even get images and buttons like the snazzy one above to alert readers of your website or blog about this conservation crisis. With 19 of 21 albatross species already threatened with extinction, there isn’t a moment to lose.

And if you’d like to learn still more about these birds and their oceanic odysseys, you can’t go wrong reading Carl Safina’s Eye of the Albatross: Visions of Hope and Survival. Safina devoted months to chronicling the expansive movements of one particular Laysan albatross, a female he calls Amelia. In the grand tradition of Rachel Carson’s Under the Sea-Wind, Safina relies on the latest biological research to ground rich imaginings of Amelia’s daily activities and experiences, as she skillfully makes a living from the vast and trackless Pacific. Getting to know Amelia is the best way I can think of to understand what the birds are up against.

Concern for their plight has led Safina to launch his own campaign to reform long-line fishing through the Blue Ocean Institute. Blue Ocean’s “Off the Hook” efforts focus on building relationships with fishermen and studying alternative fishing methods. With efforts like “Off the Hook” and “Save the Albatross,” perhaps a future mariner can spread a tale of redemption and hope as albatrosses strafe the waves, snatching fish from a brimming ocean.

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

Nature's Engraver

2007-09-20T06:44:00.000-07:00

Roger Tory Peterson is routinely credited with launching birdwatching as a popular hobby in the 20th century. The 1934 publication of his Guide to the Birds got things going, with its clear, color illustrations and field mark system making bird id simple even for urbanites who’d rarely noticed birds before. A prolific writer and photographer as well as painter, Peterson traveled the world, using his talents and charisma to spread the gospel of birding and environmentalism to anyone who would listen. Before Peterson’s death in 1996, Paul Ehrlich said, “In this century, no one has done more to promote an interest in living creatures than Roger Tory Peterson, the inventor of the modern field guide.”

An 18th century counterpart to Peterson is charmingly revealed in Jenny Uglow’s new biography, Nature’s Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick. The humble Bewick (1753-1828), who rarely traveled beyond his native Northumbria, inspired a generation of nature enthusiasts through his art much like his globe-trotting, media-savvy successor. Uglow details how Bewick elevated the craft of wood engraving to a fine art, developing a realistic, often whimsical, style that became popular for illustrating publications ranging from bookplates and business cards to broadsides and multi-volume tomes. One irresistible feature of Uglow’s biography is the plethora of original-sized samples of Bewick’s work, especially his “talepieces,” or miniature vignettes of rural life--often nostalgic, sometimes sardonic, but always worth careful scrutiny.

Art-lovers collect and revere Bewick’s prints and have formed the Bewick Society to promulgate his legacy. Naturalists esteem him primarily for two works: A General History of Quadrupeds and A History of British Birds. Bewick foreshadowed his much-younger contemporary, Audubon, by depicting his birds in their habitats, relying only on ink on carved boxwood to convey much of what Audubon could with watercolor and brushstrokes. Legendary art critic John Ruskin wrote, “. . . the execution of the plumage in Bewick’s birds is the most masterly thing ever done in woodcutting. . . “

Says Uglow, Bewick’s accessibly-priced volumes catalyzed the early Victorian craze in nature study that fostered the obsessive studies of Darwin and other pivotal 19th century naturalists. Uglow writes, “For a century, Bewick’s work was often a child’s first introduction to studies of animals and birds.” Charlotte Bronte even allows Jane Eyre a few moments of solace with his books. As Jane narrates, “With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy!” Uglow’s intimate look at Bewick’s life and craft offers, more than most artist's biographies, insight into how Bewick attained his lasting achievements. As she explains, Thomas Bewick loved his home moors and dells, and the animals that shared them with him, so deeply that he believed others must share that emotion. “His unpretentious tailpieces of travelers and farmers, streams and windy moors, make the past live, and his woodcuts of animals and birds let us share his own wonder at the human and the natural world, from the ‘Mufflon Zebu’ to the swallow sweeping through the northern skies.” With swift sure strokes, Uglow presents a life of texture, shade, and depth that will lead readers to a clearer understanding of how art, long before Peterson or even Audubon, has helped define--and change--our place in the natural environment.

Ansel Adams in Black-and-White

2007-09-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

1968 was the most tumultuous year of my childhood, when budding awareness of world events met with assassinations and race riots and my mother’s remarriage brought a hot-tempered step-father and two troubled stepsisters into my life. But 1968 was also the year Ansel Adams photographed “El Capitan, Winter Sunrise, Yosemite National Park,” an image of heartbreaking clarity that I might never have appreciated without my step-father’s obsessive camera hobby and adulation of Adams. Perhaps because I lost so many childhood hours waiting in the station wagon for the right light to illuminate my step-father’s next shot, I’ve never pursued photography myself. But I’ve known ever since that photographs are a way of appreciating nature both when you are immersed in it and when you are far removed. Whatever traits others admire in Adams’ technique and artistry, I feel deep gratitude for the connections his work gave me to Yosemite, the Sierra, and wild Alaska, places where I could escape even if I couldn’t get there.

You can imagine my delight when I learned that Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery is hosting a traveling exhibit of 130 Adams prints (September 15 through January 27). The photos celebrate six decades of Adams’ development, from his early painterly efforts to iconic masterpieces such as “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.” Bought directly from Adams’ by William and Saundra Lane, the prints offer a rare chance to see Adams’ work at its finest, in images he developed himself. “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score,” says Adams, “and the print the performance." No matter how often you’ve seen Adams’ posters, calendars and notecards, it is vital see his prints firsthand.

Though I haven’t seen the show yet, an article in The Washington Post notes that it includes an example of Adams’ commercial work, a prosaic shot of a potash company. To writer Blake Gopnik, Adams’ industrial photos reveal the artist was not, as popularly understood, a pure nature photographer. The power of Adams’ most lauded photos, says Gopnik, is not from Adams’ love of the natural environment but from “the particular confrontations between technology and landscape that made those photos possible.” Gopnik relates that when he sees an Adams view of “Moonrise,” for instance, he thinks not of the New Mexico desert but of the Pontiac Adams was driving when he spotted the potential shot in his rear-view mirror. Ignoring the fact that young Adams hiked, aided only by a mule loaded with glass camera plates, to capture images of Yosemite’s backcountry, Gopnik claims Adams was as much about pride in ownership of nature and in technological domination of distance and access as about wild nature itself. In contrast to my own experience, Gopnik also states that Adams’ photos sent him and others exploring not outdoors but in camera shops and darkroom supply stores, “and into the depths of all the complex how-to books that Adams wrote.”

I think--or hope-- that Gopnik is wrong. To me at least, Adams was depicting the feeling of a mountain, forest, or snowfield, not his machine-assisted confrontation with it. Adams’ eminent colleague Edward Weston once explained their shared view that “the camera should be used for recording of life, for rending the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” Adams’ birch trees, aspen leaves, even rock faces never fail to palpitate for me, and one mark of their personal effect was my children’s book about Adams’ environmental lifework Eye on the Wild: A Story about Ansel Adams. But perhaps his impact today is fading, as the forested ranges he once scoured for artistic angles are overrun by bus tours, converted into ski slopes, or dried & fried from climate change. Who wouldn’t prefer the thrilling discoveries of a darkroom lab to a mournful visitation of a birch woods, marked for clear-cutting? Will even our so-called permanent records of wilderness lose their potency if the reality dwindles and vanishes from the earth?

Children's Books that Think Big

2007-09-12T19:14:00.000-07:00

Who could resist the charms of a “joyous, ample gal” who could churn butter from a river of milk or stir up a cyclone by shaking her floor rugs? Paul Bunyan sure couldn’t, according to Marybeth Lorbiecki’s charming folktale picturebook about a larger-than-life romance in Minnesota’s north woods, Paul Bunyan’s Sweetheart. Raised by bears, Lucette Diana Kensack grew and grew as environmentally aware as she was tall, leading toward a delightful twist on traditional renditions of Bunyan’s lumberjacking ways. The illustrations remind me of Garth William’s glowing covers of some versions of Little House on the Prairie and evoke a time of wide open spaces and even bigger dreams.

I like this book so much that I’m going to recommend it for Orion Magazine’s Bibliography of Nature Stories for Children. Orion, a leader in promoting environmental literacy around the nation, argues that stories more than fact-based texts or field guides engage children’s imaginations and inspire them to care about nature. While I disagree somewhat with that position—I think different kids respond to different types of books, and all kinds of good books can equally play valuable roles—I heartily agree that stories like Paul Bunyan’s Sweetheart can fulfill Orion's goal to “bring the world alive and establish nature as our home.” After all, if you can believe a giant blue ox’s footprints made the Great Lakes, the idea that people could learn to restore and protect a piney wilderness doesn’t seem farfetched anymore.

What's More Fun than a Free Book?

2007-08-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

Few things are more fun for me than giving away books. So I recognized a kindred spirit in this morning’s KidsPost, the children’s section of The Washington Post. A seventeen-year-old Virginia high school student, touched by the 2004 tsunami, collected 2,000 gently used children’s books for schools in Sri Lanka. When the student, Sarasi Jayarantne, arrived in one small town to deliver her first donation, the community welcomed her with a marching band. After such success, it’s no wonder that she’s continuing her efforts through a new group, the Keep Reading Foundation, that will welcome your contributions (though she can’t promise a marching band for everyone). Great work, Sarasi!

A non-profit called Bring Me a Book has a somewhat different approach to improving children’s literacy. Rather than donating books en masse, their programs establish lending libraries in preschools, homeless shelters, medical centers, and other places where kids and families congregate. Two unique programs that especially intrigue me are their book bag lending libraries, which enable employers to set up shelves of lendable books for employees to share at home, and workshops that teach techniques for reading aloud to parents and daycare providers. Bring Me a Book programs are enhancing literacy in 9 states and 7 countries so far.

The biggest book fairy organization I know is First Book. That thriving group has already donated 50 million books to children in need around the country, largely through a National Book Bank of new titles donated by publishers. First Book has its own blog, where you can catch announcements such as a pledge this week by Random House to donate a whopping $1 million to the cause. If you know of an organization or Title 1 school that needs free books (of course you do!), visit the website to learn how they can register as a recipient of a First Book distribution.

Part of me dreams of being CEO of a group like First Book, joyfully doling out stack after stack of colorful titles to crowds of smiling children. But the rest of me knows that I’d constantly be clashing with my board of directors, who wouldn’t understand why we’d give away dozens of kids' field guides, nature story books, and Aldo Leopold biographies for every Harry Potter or Captain Underpants. It’s not that I don’t think such popular books have their places; it’s just that my passion is elsewhere. So I know that my true dream is to start a group with enhancing nature literacy as the focus, and book donations as a means to that laudable—and essential—end. Until I figure out how to do that, though, I’ll be giving books like Jane Yolen’s Owl Moon and Amy Ehrlich's Carson biography, Rachel, to people like Sarasi, who have already found a way to spread their love of all kinds of books around the world.

Bloggers for Positive Global Change Award!

2007-08-29T07:03:00.001-07:00

Thanks very much to Wild Flora for tagging Pines Above Snow with a Bloggers for Positive Global Change Award. Flora won the award for her inspiring and lovely blog that uses wildlife-friendly gardening as an instrument for enhancing the beauty and sustainability of our daily lives. Congratulations to Flora for her good work.

The award was created over at Climate of Our Future, a blog with the humble mission of “changing the world we live in for the better.” While their writing focuses primarily on global climate change and myriad methods of reducing carbon emissions, their goal for the award is to recognize bloggers—regardless of focus, ideology, religion, or moral philosophy—who blog with the purpose of inspiring, catalyzing, or otherwise nudging the world toward a more sustainable, humane, enlightened future. Thanks, COF, for your worthy efforts and for a new meme that spreads your idealism, I hope, far and wide.

Now it’s my turn to pass the golden torch along to others. I’m nominating three blogs that I reply upon for information and inspiration, starting with the site of my blogging mentor, Nathan, of Talk-Lab. I love Nathan’s creative mind, which allows him to pursue his aims of creating an online lab for serious discussions of politics, philosophy, urban design, and paths toward a more civil society while having lots of fun along the way. In his blog carnival, the Carnival of Conflict, Nathan welcomes contributions seeking fresh approaches to micro and macro clashes, resulting in posts that explore everything from global justice to personal choices such as homeschooling to revive civility around the home fires.

Another of my favorite reads is Alone on a Limb. Thanks to Terrell, you can start your week with a poem, a ritual he’s used to bring positive change to elementary classrooms for 27 years and is now sharing with web readers. AOL also sponsors a wide ranging environmental education carnival each month, Learning in the Great Outdoors, featuring lively and essential information for anyone trying to reach minds, young or old, about environmental topics, local or global. I often turn to it to learn more about new children’s book titles or how to use them with students, but there’s always a diversity of topics reflecting the many, many ways dedicated educators are improving our world.

Last but not least, I’m tagging a blog that I recently discovered, Natural Patriot. Author Emmett Duffy is a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science and an expert in marine biodiversity yet takes the time to blog with the purpose of expanding our definition of patriotism to include stewardship of natural communities. One tactic is his spotlighting of exceptional thinkers and activists such as Richard Louv, Aldo Leopold, and Lady Bird Johnson as role model “natural patriots.” It’s no wonder that Professor Duffy was awarded an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellowship in 2006.

Congratulations to all of you for your important efforts. I’m looking forward to seeing what blogs you find inspiring and energizing in our shared goal of creating a better future.

Coming to a Campus Near You

2007-08-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

Hannah can’t be old enough attend to college next fall, and, of course, I’m not old enough to have a daughter that far grown. But somehow, despite my shock and protests, it is happening. So today I took her and a friend college shopping to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home since 1783 to Dickinson College. We’ve been traipsing around various campuses since last spring, and I’d seen this one’s idyllic greensward and limestone walls on an earlier drive by, so I didn’t anticipate many surprises. Happily, I was wrong.

First, our information session included an overview of sustainable-living initiatives on campus. Ubiquitous recycling bins, energy-efficient dorm clothes driers, and a solar-paneled, LEED-certified green science building under construction were presented to students and parents as strong selling points for the school. We got to see the school community walking the administrator’s talk in the dining hall, when the line for a turn to compost leftovers snaked longer than the one at the register.

Greener still was the bookstore. I’m sorry to report plenty of unsustainable campus staples such as disposable pens and plastic water bottles. But the shelves also displayed plenty of works that speak to the folly of such consumer choices. Prominent on the best-seller stacks were Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, while required intro course reading featured Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and Michael Grosvenor’s Sustainable Living for Dummies along with the usual suspects of ecology, oceanography, and geology texts. While I didn’t spot any copies of A Sand County Almanac, they wouldn’t have felt out of place.

Just this morning, too, I learned that the National Wildlife Federation keeps track of sustainability innovations at colleges and universities around the country. While I can’t help feeling bereft about the imminent departure of my dear daughter, it’s uplifting to know that she and so many of her peers will be living as we all should, in communities that recognize the value in making changes now toward a greener, more hopeful future.

Rainy Summer Reading

2007-08-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

Much needed summer rain is falling, and I’m trapped inside waiting for a repair guy, so here are some gatherings from around the blogosphere that I’ve enjoyed lately. . . .

Anyone interested in environmental education will want to visit the fifth edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors, a carnival hosted this month by Miss Rumphius Effect. Miss R, aka Tricia, blogs often and well about children’s literature, and her carnival edition includes links to posts recommending books to enrich a homeschool garden lesson, instructions on making a nature journal, and thoughts on using a classic, early 20th century environmental education volume, Handbook of Nature Study, by Anna Botsford Comstock, also for homeschooling. Has anyone else observed that homeschoolers seem to be at the forefront of outdoor ed & getting kids outside these days?

Our friends at 10,000 Birds have posted another item after PAS’s heart, “Keep Every Cog and Wheel.” Mike’s essay is a plea for saving parts of the natural world not currently recognized as commercially valuable, e.g., spotted owls. He likens our natural commons to a precarious Jenga game tower, with spotted owls as vital, if unappreciated, building blocks. Then he turns to Aldo Leopold for his game playing philosophy, quoting from A Sand County Almanac, “The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” I suspect that if we all played by Aldo Leopold’s rules, we’d all win.

There’s an ecstatic review of Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods over at Natural Patriot, calling it “a seminal work in environmentalism”. Also check out Natural Patriot’s Essential Reading list. A Sand County Almanac’s on it, so NP is going on my blogroll today.

Another intriguing list of green books can be found at Ideal Bite. I have mixed feelings about this site, which sends out daily emails if you subscribe, with tips on “light green” living. Many are useful and fun, but many more seem to be pushing products--$150 designer handbags that happen to be made of hemp, $40 bamboo tshirts, etc. But I like this book list, especially if you can get the titles at the library. I hadn’t heard of Ignition, described as “a collection of personal essays by writers, scholars, and activists who have worked to stop global warming.” And I haven’t yet read Plenty, “a memoir about what happens when two people decide to eat only food produced within a 100-mile radius for a year.” But I can second the nomination of Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book that has literally changed my family’s eating life.

Wishing you some refreshing rain so you can enjoy a day of late summer reading.

Bolt from the Blue

2007-08-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Months ago, a thoughtful reader recommended that I take Bill Bryson’s new memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, along on an plane trip. Though I didn’t get it in time for takeoff, it was on hand yesterday when I was looking for a break from environmental tomes. Having read or listened to most of Bryson’s other books, notably A Walk in the Woods, I knew his interests include park protection, human-animal relationships, public recreation, scientific progress, & other environmental topics. But I didn’t expect a book about his 1950s Des Moines, Iowa childhood to have such relevance to so many of our current energy, resource, and political crises. I wanted to laugh while reading it, which I did, but instead of getting a break from worrying about the future, I found new insights into when many of our current problems arose in our past.

I’ll leave the formal reviewing to others, such as The Christian Science Monitor and The Boston Globe. My point is more quickly made by quoting from Chapter 4, The Age of Excitement, which begins, “I don’t know how they managed it, but the people responsible for the 1950s made a world in which pretty much everything was good for you. . . . Every week brought exciting news of things becoming better, swifter, more convenient. Nothing was too preposterous to try.” If a corporation with advertising dollars could imagine it, our cultural ethos was “Go for it!” Bryson writes with hilarity and some hyperbole about the wacky new convenience foods we began putting in our mouths. Rolettes—frozen sticks of pureed mixed vegetables concocted in the General Foods laboratories—didn’t last, but thousands of food products packed with preservatives, stabilizers, surfactants, and emulsifiers for our convenience launched to lasting success. June Cleaver, what were you thinking?

Essentially, Bryson’s book is about attitude change. Some changes he notes since the ‘50s are laudable, indeed essential, such as improving civil rights. But so many other ominous values—mass consumerism, anti-intellectualism, unquestioning patriotism, blind faith in technology—emerged or at least hit critical mass post-World War II. What confluence of events led to their emergence and dominance? Even more important, how can we change—whether it’s a question of changing back or moving toward new beliefs and attitudes? Unfortunately, Bryson’s book doesn’t pretend to offer the answers. Instead, it left me wondering what some acerbic writer, growing up in the 2000s, will be writing about our self-destructive attitudes and actions. I hope a thoughtful reader out there can point me toward a book that will leave me not just laughing but smiling toward the future.

Fears in the Dark

2007-08-08T05:42:00.001-07:00

Barbara Hurd opens her essay, “The Squeeze,” with a panic attack. While teaching creative writing at summer camp, she blithely agreed to accompany her students on a field trip into a cave. Hurd lowered herself into a ten-foot-deep pit with no hesitation and watched a guide and all eleven students disappear into a rocky tunnel. But a nameless terror met her as she tried squirming in after them, and Hurd swiftly clambered back up the ropes and into the light.

I thought of that essay and Hurd’s fine book, Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark, last weekend when my family stood in a sinkhole, gazing into the dim opening of Penn’s Cave. A tourist attraction to hundreds most summer days, Penn’s doesn’t require belly squirming to enter. Instead of adventure, we were seeking the cool relief of 52 degree air wafting from the capacious entrance. Yet fear still threatened to keep me outside, for my phobia is water, and visitors to Penn’s Cave must load onto rickety, rectangular motorboats to admire even one stalactite. In this case fear of my offsprings’ disdain was even stronger, and I inched aboard, focusing on the illuminated flowstone overhead rather than the cloudy water below.

Fortunately for nature essay readers, Hurd’s supportive friends and own resolve have enabled her to venture underground again and again. Each descent has brought her fresh insights, not just of the geological and biological nature of caves, but of psychology, mythology, personal history and intimate relationships. One thread through her book is a friend’s terminal illness, and Hurd searches for moments of beauty within the woman’s agonizing decline as thoroughly as in any cavern she visits. Hurd takes a flowing, unhurried path through her subject, visiting damp grottoes near her home in western Maryland, desert caves in Arizona, and sacred rifts in the mountains of India. Her essay titles alone may inspire you to join her journeys: “The Solace of Beauty,” “Moonmilk,” and “In the Hollow that Remains.”

Ultimately, Entering the Stone is about facing, not conquering, fears—of tight spaces, shadows, heartbreak, and mortality. Hurd makes clear that the border between danger and safety is a fertile place. Waiting at the threshold of one cave, Hurd writes, “. . . I know that to the right lies the cave’s stale air and darkness and to the left lies the passageway out, the light, the green, the song of indigo buntings.” Yet she chooses to enter, to search for meanings in the paradoxes and uncertainties she encounters in the dark.

Festival of Trees #14

2007-08-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

This looks like an extra-hot weekend coming up, and my family is heading to Pennsylvania to visit Penn's Cave. But if you can't escape to a cool, dark cavern, try sitting under a tree with your laptop, perusing the 14th edition of the Festival of Trees, over at Via Negative. Though that wide-ranging blog is usually hosted by talented writer/photographer Dave Bonta, he graciously invited a rather erudite katydid to narrate the festival in celebration of the height of summer.

Dave's katydid sings the praises of blog posts ranging from straight facts on tree species and practicalities of tree planting to poetry and poetic photo images. One of my favorite festival participants is a blog new to me--Trees, If You Please--with an entry featuring evocative tree paintings by Emily Leonard. Any blog author whose "about me" states "I love trees. That's really what it's all about" is bound to win Pines Above Snow's heart. Thanks, Katy (& Dave).

Sunday Not-So-Funnies

2007-08-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

I almost wish I’d just stuck to reading the comics in last Sunday’s Washington Post (7/29/07). The Book World section cover story reviewed The Unnatural History of the Sea, in which Callum Roberts traces the history of our “boundless delusion” that the sea is a limitless resource immune from human overexploitation. In case reading about the possibly-irreversible degradation of ocean life weren’t depressing enough, another review looked at Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming by science journalist Chris Mooney. Storm World looks into the increasingly grim facts about global warming and its spinoffs, such as Katrina and other “hypercanes,” and finds something even more distressing: our government is muzzling the scientists who would alert us to danger perhaps in time to prevent the worst results. I took a breather after these two dismaying critiques and scanned the column for young readers. Sunday’s presented an array of retellings, often with ethnic twists, of classic fairy tales. But I couldn’t help wondering which Brothers Grimm parable of human folly describes our environmental blindness best.

Back to the adult book reviews, the one that most caught my eye addresses the perhaps-surprising best seller, The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman. A science journalist, Weisman postulates that all human life could suddenly disappear, perhaps from a human-specific, airborne virus. Then he asks—how would the Earth react? Within days, New York’s subway tunnels would flood, within years pet dogs would start their decline toward extinction, and within decades, most of our homes would be collapsed, the remains overgrown with vegetation and overrun with new four- and six-legged occupants. The end of humans would also mean the cessation of nuclear power plant maintenance, and the resulting Chernobyls would spread radioactive contamination around 100s of sites. But the most ubiquitous, persistent signs of former human glory would be our plastic trash. Plastic bags would block sea turtle intestines and miles-long plastic nets would continue to fish the troubled oceans long after we vanish into the past.

To my surprise, the reviewer (Michael Grunwald, author of The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise) doesn’t seem to grasp the value of this thought experiment. He says The World “is trivia masquerading as wisdom” and criticizes the author for recommending population control as a partial solution to current and projected environmental crises. It’s just the kind of formal book review I dislike—devoting more space to the reviewer’s reactions than to the substance of the book. We learn that the reviewer attends lots of “depressingly apocalyptic environmental conferences” and that he adamantly opposes strict population limits and thinks human survival is the best and only reason to protect the planet. But he fails adequately to present Weisman’s viewpoint or to quote from the book to give potential readers a taste of Weisman’s prose style. Although I’m a strong supporter of newspaper book reviews as an essential resource for readers confronted with so many books, this one doesn’t do its job. I can’t tell from this reviewer’s strident objects whether or not he’s giving Weisman’s arguments a fair shake.

Luckily, The World has attracted enough attention that Weisman’s out there on the talk show circuit speaking for his book himself. Check out his July 30th interview on public radio. Or you can read a transcript of a live discussion, sponsored by The Washington Post, with Weisman and Callum Roberts (author of the above-mentioned The Unnatural History of the Sea about both of their books. Weisman takes the time to respond to the Post review and to talk about how he remains optimistic about the future in the face of all that he learned during his research. I may have to read it again to capture some of that optimism for myself. Or maybe I’ll just read Zits.

I Believe in Books

2007-07-29T18:07:00.000-07:00

Last Christmas, a few of my favorite people got the same present from me—a copy of the just-released essay collection, This I Believe, edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman. The book sprang from a public radio series that asks each contributor to distill his or her personal credo into a short essay that could begin with the words, “I believe. . . . “

Some people take on grand subjects such as justice, art, nature, or God. More surprising are the often-eloquent rifs on why an author believes in going to funerals, getting angry, or talking with monkeys. The idea originated in the 1950s, when Edward R. Morrow introduced radio essays by Eleanore Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Carl Sandburg, and other luminaries. The book includes a few of the original pieces along with new ones by Penn Jillette, Joy Harjo, John McCain, and others, well known or not. I think what I like most about all of them, apart from getting a peak inside the value systems of creative writers, is that none of the essays are pressing, haranguing, or begging readers to believe the same way. Part of the task is to present your belief as something that works for you—an approach to finding meaning in life, but not a prescription that others must follow. That’s not an easy assignment, as anyone who has tried to write a self-contained, non-didactic esssay about deep convictions will understand.

You--or anyone--is welcome to contribute to this ongoing project. Not only are This I Believe essays a weekly feature on NPR’s Morning Edition, but a nonprofit is collecting thousands of essays and organizing them in a searchable database for writers, educators, and others fascinated with the possibilities of what the website calls “A Public Dialogue about Belief.” One of the most visionary project goals, to elevate the level of public discourse about values, is facilitated on the site by a free downloadable guide for community activists who want to organize local conversations about beliefs. A good place to start is to listen to a few past contributions via podcast.

Or tune in tomorrow to Morning Edition, when nature writer David Gessner will talk about his belief in wildness. I haven’t heard Gessner's essay yet, but I believe you’ll enjoy it.

Worm Watch

2007-07-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

What does No Impact Man do for fun? Apparently, he watches red wiggler worms eat his garbage. A bin full of annelids turns his kitchen waste into compost right there in his Manhattan apartment, much to the delight of NID (No Impact Daughter—age 2). His helpful posts give directions on how to set up your own kitchen compost bin so you can watch, too.

But what if you want to know more about your slimy new pets? Garden writer Amy Stewart gives you the underground scoop on life in the dirt in The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms. Stewart visits Australia’s Giant Worm Museum, sewage treatment plants, and her own backyard to keep the narrative lively enough to read aloud by the bin. Or listen to her public radio interview with Diane Rehm if you’re pressed for reading time.

My favorite section of The Earth Moved talks about one of the more eccentric-sounding phases of Charles Darwin’s long & fruitful scientific life—his earthworm years. Darwin kept worms on an old billiard table and played bassoon to them, testing their auditory responses. His final book was the surprise best seller: The Formation of Vegetable Mould, through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits, which you can find at Darwin Online. The site also has transcriptions of the pocket diaries of Darwin’s wife in case you want to know what Emma Darwin thought about Charles’ worms.

There are books to read, too, if you, like NIM, have young eyes worm watching with you. A simple but accurate book small enough for preschool-sized hands is Tunneling Earthworms, by Suzanne Dell’Oro. Earthworms, by Lola Schaefer, is for early elementary readers, ready for more terminology and detail. For kids eager for more active investigations of worm behavior and ecology, check out Wormology, by Michael Elsohn Ross. There, kids can read for themselves about Darwin’s wacky worm experiments and find directions for some of their own.

And if you just want a whimsical storybook with a spineless, wriggly hero, get Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin. My kids laugh out loud at Cronin’s typing cows in Click, Clack, Moo, and her hokey-pokey dancing worm isn’t far behind. True, real earthworms don’t wear baseball caps, but sometimes anthropomorphizing in the name of fun is ok by me. Kids (or teachers) intrigued by the story to dig deeper will appreciate enrichment activities available from Diary's publisher, HarperCollins,

Death Comes for the Book Critic?

2007-07-17T08:13:00.000-07:00

Is book reviewing a dying art? Some critics think so, according to a piece today on NPR’s Morning Edition: “Book Reviewers Decry Fewer Newspaper Pages”. The number of print pages devoted to book reviews is declining, and yet another major newspaper recently axed its separate review section in favor of carrying scattered reviews in the Arts section.

Some blame declining newspaper readership, but others point the finger at bloggers, especially popular ones such as Bookslut. Critics of blogging book critics assert that independents (like me!) lack institutional credibility. How can a reader know if they're just spinning titles to promote sales or for some other nefarious purpose? Of course, indies (like me again) could counter that we're often less likely to be sales motivated than someone who's writing for an ads-dependent newspaper. Perhaps review readers deserve a little credit for being able to tell when a reviewer is biased and for being wise enough and motivated enough to move on to someone else as need be.

Putting the question of blame aside, as someone who relies on reviews in various media to find good books as well as occasionally writing formal ones for print publication, this is a troubling situation. I've been touched by it recently, when a nature group's newspaper that has often published my reviews decided to shrink the size and number of its pages. I applaud their goal to save paper and funds for other critical environmental projects, but I lament the loss of a good resource for nature book news. My latest review for them appears only on their website.

What’s being done about the decline? The National Book Critics Circle has launched a campaign to save the book review. Part of their effort is a new award, available to print, web, or other media, for outstanding book reviews. Learn more about the whole campaign at NBCC’s blog, Critical Mass.
Many environmentalists might see this is a backburner issue, much less pressing than stopping zebra mussels or protecting parkland from snowmobiles, but I believe that books wield extraordinary power to inform and mobilize environmentalists—and even occasionally make new ones. What other ways can be found to save the book review? I’ll be thinking about ways I can help and looking for suggestions from all of you.

A Book Lover's Birthday

2007-07-15T12:58:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you for knowing me so well! Every one of my birthday books is just what I wanted. You’ve given me not just many hours of reading pleasure but inspiring words to live with and by throughout the next year. Here’s the complete, delicious list.

The Devil’s Doctor: Paracelus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science, by Philip Ball (2006).

Why Pandas Do Handstands and Other Curious Truths about Animals, by Augustus Brown (2006).

Liquid Jade: The Story of Tea from East to West, by Beatrice Hohenegger (2006).

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver (2007).

Double Lives: American Writers’ Friendships, by Richard Lingeman (2006).

The Flight of the Iguana: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature, by David Quammen (1998).

The Way We Garden Now, by Katherine Whiteside (2007).

And as if that weren’t enough, I bought myself a birthday book, too. It’s Sy Montgomery’s The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood (2007). I picked it because I enjoy all of Sy Montgomery's books, but it's the perfect addition to the above list. Friends and family expressed their love to Chris the hog with frequent deliveries of delectables--day-old bagels, melon rinds, cold oatmeal, and other left-overs, learning over time which were his absolute favorites. His choices may not appeal to everyone, but like my birthday books, each gift was met with gratitude and exuberance. I can't want to devour every one. Yum!

Live Earth, Starring . . . .

2007-07-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

We were outside enjoying belated July 4th fireworks during most of the "Live Earth" concert coverage, but thanks to YouTube, I didn't have to miss everything. Here's Madonna's official contribution, "Hey, You."

I like the contrast between the harsh visuals and her calm, sweet vocal delivery, and of course I agree with the message that each indivudal needs to recognize the threats to the earth & human welfare and act asap. Though I missed the multi-channel coverage, it was exciting to think of such diverse stars as Madonna, Garth Brooks, The Police, Corinne Bailey Rae, and so many others lending their talents to raise global warming awareness. Criticisms of the carbon costs of Live Earth were inevitable; critics can't legitimately argue that protesters are wrong to fear and oppose business as usual, so they accuse participants of being hypocrits.

But it does seem to me that the concert organizers missed an opportunity to celebrate the finest singers on the planet. Here's another YouTube video featuring just a few of these performers, all of whom are above the criticism that their work consumes too much fossil fuel:

If you think I'm kidding about the musical intentions of songbirds, I recommend reading David Rothenberg's delightful Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song. Rothenberg, a clarinetist as well as a philosopher, explores human understanding of birdsong from the perspectives of scientists, historians, poets, and fellow practitioners. Best of all, he expands on insights in the text with excerpts of birdsong and other natural music on his website. If the world made any sense, anyone who heard a lyrebird sing would be converted into a climate change activist. But as the world is now, I'm glad that Madonna's voice is part of the growing global choir.

Welcome Home

2007-07-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

Whew! Back from our trip, but still catching up with various backlogs. Here’s just a heads up on a couple of blog carnivals that may interest you that popped up while I was away.

Bean Sprouts has posted the 84th Carnival of the Green, which features an even-more-than-usually-broad array of topics. Drop by to read about such subjects as sustainable communities, nature-themed vacation Bible camp, honeybee colony collapse disorder, and even a rare bit of environmental good news—a correction of overly pessimistic reports on deforestation in Madagascar.

Over at Alone on a Limb, you’ll find the Independence Day edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors. This month’s carnival presents several blog posts on books, including two related to Last Child in the Woods, field guides visual and audio, and assorted children’s nature books. As the mom of a Reading Rainbow addict, I was especially excited to learn about Bookwink, an award-winning site dedicated to getting kids to read. Their strategy is to offer podcasts and webvideos of 3-minute book talks of favorite titles, plus archives of related books. With two readers in their 3rd – 8th grade target audience, I’ll definitely be checking back for more kid lit reviews.

Now, back to unpacking and that overflowing inbox. . . .

Vacation Reading

2007-07-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not going to recommend a stack of steamy romance novels. Instead, while I'm away from Pinesabovesnow, you can peruse other blog writing via the following carnivals.

Carnival of Colors V, hosted by Mike of 10,000 Birds, offers all things colorful, from a visual acuity & coordination test to exercises in appreciating nature's many hues. My personal favorite: A glimpse of the colors you might have seen flying through your own woods this spring, at DC Birding Blog.

The 13th edition of the Festival of Trees is up at Wrenaissance Reflections. Entitled "Putting Down Roots," the carnival presents links from around the world that celebration the connections between trees and places in our minds and hearts.

In honor of the Maryland Blogger Alliance, I include the 10th edition of the Carnival of Maryland, just out tonight. I haven't had a chance to read it, but hey! I'm on vacation. I'll read it when I get back. . . .

Happy Fourth of July!

The Tree No One Knew

2007-07-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

A cherry orchard of one enlivens the left side of our small backyard. Technically, the tree (Prunus cerasus) belongs to our neighbor, but his benign disinterest in its sour fruit yields us much more than my husband’s juicy June pies.

“I awoke every morning happy, looking out at the orchard—“ says Lyubov Andreyevna, the cherry orchard’s owner in Chekhov’s eponymous play. “ This wonderful orchard! Those masses of white flowers, the blue sky . . . “ I feel that same elation each April when our tree blooms, signaling spring of course with open windows and songs of arriving birds. A bluebird pair ignores the blossoms, but they always pick the nest box under the cherry’s shade instead of one near the holly across the yard.

Busy with soccer, recitals, and the end-of-school rush, I can’t watch the fruit slowly grow and ripen. But the birds will tell us when it’s ready. This spring, a catbird’s grating tcheck-tcheck brought the news. Blue jays, crows, robins, and a lone male cardinal soon joined him, and I sent the children outside to pick our share. The feel, the smell, the taste of free fruit brings out the wild in my kids, and they stretch, grasp, jump, and climb to reach the best. There’s some happy bickering over who will hold the bowl, who will assault the tree.

But the happiest gleaners of all may be the squirrels. They ripple across the grass from all directions and scramble through the limbs all day. Dangling by their toes on bowing branchlets, they risk life itself to snatch one more red morsel into their cheeks. I can imagine an aging mother squirrel, after a lifetime of springs sharing cherries with her kits, also sharing Lyubov Andreyevna’s emotion, “My dear, sweet beautiful orchard! My life, my youth, my happiness.”

Last Saturday, we traded our view of the cherry for a day of my daughters’ dance performances. By evening, the cherry looked a bit bare but still bustling. In our absence, though, the neighbor on our right had mangled his American holly. Long past dusk, he hacked and swore in the heat, and by morning, all that remained of the 20-foot beauty was a tall, knotty stump. I’d never paid much attention to the holly, never noted the birds that ate its red berries or hid among its sharp leaves. My dislike of that neighbor’s hard-edged, exotic plant-dominated landscaping has led me to look the other way.

But the stump reminds me of the perils of turning your head, a sin David Brower explicates in his book on the destruction of Glen Canyon, The Place No One Knew. Illustrated by Elliott Porter’s luminous photographs, the book records pink rocks, purple sands, massive walls, and shimmering vistas, all inundated by a hydroelectric power project in the 1960s. As Brower laments, “Neither you nor I, nor anyone else knew it well enough to insist that at all costs it should endure.” Brower blamed himself for not lobbying Congress personally, for not rallying the Sierra Club to launch a nationwide campaign so save the Canyon.

What could I do to convince a neighbor not to chop down a healthy tree? How could I communicate with someone who holds such different values? I ask myself, should I even speak out when we live so closely packed and must get along? These are questions environmentalists face every day, in large and small scale dilemmas. I look at the holly stump with grief and regret, at the cherry with joy and fear.

Lyubov Andreyevna at least owned her orchard, though financial reversals forced her to sell and flee before the axes fell. She mourned, “Oh, my orchard. My dear sweet beautiful orchard! . . . Farewell. Farewell!” And in my backyard this morning, a chainsaw is whirring, stage right. Curtain.

Soaring with David Gessner

2007-06-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

What better way to celebrate the 2007 centennial of Rachel Carson’s birth than a new book about ospreys, a raptor saved by the anti-pesticide outcry sparked by Silent Spring? In his acclaimed Return of the Osprey (Algonquin Books, 2001), David Gessner feted the birds’ post-DDT resurgence through reflections on a summer observing their courtship, nesting, fishing, and fledging. Intimate watching at the nest connected Gessner not only with the birds but also with their marshy Cape Cod home. Yet ironically, that book’s success helped pull the author away, to a new job as a writing professor in North Carolina. The move turned Gessner’s osprey obsession toward understanding the birds’ migratory trajectory, or, as he puts it, “My old question had been how to nest. My new question was how to be at home in movement.”

In Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond, Gessner follows the birds south by foot, car, boat, and computer, virtually-watching ospreys satellite-tagged for a BBC documentary. Most of his avian encounters are fleeting, though long enough for indelible descriptions of hovering, diving, and other dramatic moments. Recountings of human interactions are no less memorable, whether they depict a random couple met beside a spotting scope or hot shot birders buttoned-holed for advice. Gessner’s humor shines in these scenes, as when he imbibes beer along with lessons in soaring physics from a raptor expert near Hawk Mountain.
He switches to rum once he and the birds reach Cuba, but literary heroes accompany him all along the way. A devotee of Thoreau, Gessner here favors Whitman. A worn copy of Leaves of Grass, swiped from one of many guesthouses that shelter him, reveals a fellow wanderer who valued freedom as much as connection. Who would want just one cabin in the woods, Gessner asks, when you could experience many? “So many possible Waldens, “ says the author, “Cabin after cabin. Waldens on the fly.”

As often as he crosses geographical borders, Gessner shifts writing styles.
A lyrical passage on a mountain thunderstorm is soon succeeded by a farcical report on how broken Spanish affects testy immigration officials. This is not just a literary device or quirk but a sign of commitment to crossing boundaries of writing genres and natural place. As Rachel Carson depicted in her natural history classic, The Edge of the Sea, Gessner views borders as fertile spaces for wildlife and the imagination. In Soaring with Fidel, he richly imagines life on the wing for a magnificent raptor and reimagines a meandering but sure route toward his own happiness.

Big Coal Q & A

2007-06-22T10:28:00.001-07:00

Are you infuriated by mountaintop coal mining? Do you need some literary ammunition against proponents of coal-to-liquid as a gasoline alternative? Do you just wonder where your electricity comes from? Jeff Goodell offers authoritative answers to these burning questions in Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future. In a surprisingly engaging book about a global resource extraction industry, Goodell analyzes how our reliance on coal has led to nationwide inertia against alternative energy research. In the 21st century, he argues, few of us realize our dependence on a 19th century energy source. He says, “We may not like to admit it, but our shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks.”

This is an especially important book at this moment of energy legislation debate on Capital Hill. If you don’t have time to read the book, please use that shiny iPod to hear a podcast of Goodell’s June 21 interview, ironically on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. And if you’ve taken your high blood pressure medication, get a podcast from Diane Rehm’s WAMU radio archives of her June 20th discussion of the energy legislation debate. Guests include a well-spoken representative from the Natural Resources Defense Council, but you’ll also hear an employee of the Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers extolling the virtues of coal-to-liquid as the key to defeating the terrorist menace.

If the discussion gets you steamed up as it did me, stay tuned to hear Diane’s radio book club discussion of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette. Thinking about Bronte’s insights into human nature and perhaps her line, “Better to be without logic than without feeling,” seems especially appropriate after just listening to a coal advocate using data and reason to convince us to accept more global warming to improve his profit margins.

Last Child in the News

2007-06-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

How wonderful to wake up and find that one of my favorite nature books made the front page of the Washington Post. “Getting Lost in the Great Outdoors” brings front-and-center the issue that kids are being raised indoors with little connection to nature, a growing crisis analyzed in Richard Louv’s bestselling book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. This timely volume is on the shelf of every nature center and environmental educator I know, and now more parents will pick it up and learn why spending time outside is essential for children to develop healthy bodies, minds, and spirits. What a good way to start off the summer!

As a devote of the book, I’ve joined Louv’s nonprofit, Children & Nature Network and interviewed him for the Audubon Naturalist News. But the Post had big news for a Louv-groupie like me: the Conservation Fund has organized mayors, governors, and leaders from business, non-profits, and education to raise $20 million to fund programs getting more kids hiking, canoeing, birdwatching, and staring at the clouds. To learn about the many groups participating or to see how you can help yourself, visit the Fund’s page on the National Forum on Children and Nature.

Much deeper into the Post, I also came across an obituary of a consummate hiker: Colin Fletcher. His book, “The Complete Walker,” introduced many in the 1960s to the joys and practicalities of backpacking. When we prepped our packs for a Colorado climb in the late 70s, my teen friends and I dutifully cut the handles off our toothbrushes on Colin Fletcher recommendation. The obituary (originally from the LA Times) calls Fletcher “the man whom some call the J.D. Salinger of the high country” and says his favorite among his books was The Man from the Cave. I haven’t read it, but the Washington Post called it “a work of art, a triumph, a monument to the unique spark of humanity Fletcher intuitively recognized in a wild desert cave.” How poignant to learn of the death of this icon of outdoor adventure after reading in the earlier article that only 8 percent of today’s 9 to 12 year olds spend significant, unstructured time outdoors. Let’s hope that Louv and his followers are as effective as Fletcher and his were in getting people—especially young people—outside.

Shame on No Impact Man

2007-06-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

No, I’m not joining in the fray over whether or not No Impact Man should be soliciting donations for himself on his blog. I only know about it because I’ve been reading the comments under his recent post, Kant’s Views on No Impact Living. How cool that Colin’s readers are postulating what Kant, Wittgenstein, Bentham, and other philosophers might think of the No Impact experiment. I couldn’t resist mentioning Aldo Leopold’s land ethic and the Foundation dedicated to spreading his ideas. I even quoted Leopold’s “ecological imperative,” a succinct summary of his philosophy: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

Much to my chagrin, NIM replied that he’s never read any of Leopold’s writings. At least he’s heard of Leopold, via a book I haven’t read--Ethics for a Finite World by Herchel Elliot. I’d been thinking that Leopold was hot news this week, with his son Carl’s interview featured in the always green-hot environmental news & commentary e-zine, Grist. Editors and readers posed questions to Dr. Leopold about contemporary culture & nature as well as on his memories of The Shack and his father. Want to know what environmental offense most infuriates Leopold’s son, about Aldo Leopold’s religious beliefs, or how Carl Leopold thinks we can attract more people into the environmental fold? Curious about what the son of the Almanac’s author is reading lately? Please check out these just-posted comments by a living participant in Leopold’s half-century-old low-impact experiment. I hope Colin of the NIM does, too.

On second thought, maybe I should weigh in on No Impact Man’s request for donations. Instead of money, I think that we should each send him a copy of A Sand County Almanac.

Reynard in the Suburbs

2007-06-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood walks have changed considerably since Henry Thoreau sauntered around Concord. He wrote, “I can easily walk, ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my own door without going by any house, without crossing a road except where the fox and mink do.” My family lives in a planned suburb, with asphalt walking paths winding through narrow woods between and behind close-packed houses. That’s at least more saunter-friendly than most sidewalk-deprived subdivisions, and we occasionally glimpse a fox crossing the road at night or hear one in the dark distance, a sound Thoreau described as “barking raggedly and demonically like forest dogs.” But we don’t expect to cross any mink or many fox trails on an evening’s stroll.

So imagine our surprise on Saturday’s walk when we spotted not one, but four red foxes cavorting in a nearby field. My husband rushed home for the camera, and for long minutes, we watched the animals play, spar, hunt, and watch us right back. They seemed to be a family of one tolerant, watchful parent and three curious, boisterous, well-grown pups. One pup stalked, pounced, and munched a snack-sized prey, and all three pounced on each other, dashed in and out of sight under thickets on the field’s edge, or just rolled in the grass, enjoying the day’s last sunshine. When my daughter moved slightly closer to take pictures, one pup stopped playing to stare directly at her. He didn’t seem frightened, just intrigued, and he stepped a bit closer for a better view of her, too.

As delightful as the experience was for my family, I couldn’t help but compare our fox encounter with one Thoreau describes in his journal. On January 30, 1841 Thoreau spied a fox in the snow and gave chase, “. . . I tossed my head aloft and bounded away, snuffing the air like a fox hound, and spurring the world and the Humane Society at each bound.” Thoreau felt wild enough himself to sample the fox’s wild existence in a pursuit he admits frightened it. Along the way, his experience of the fox was enriched not just by familiarity with their shared woods but by classical literature enlivening his imagination. He wrote, “It seemed the woods rang with the hunter’s horn, and Diana and all the satyrs joined in the chase.”

In contrast, my family stood still on the asphalt path, loathe to disturb the animals’ small oasis—a field undeveloped only because power lines stretch overhead. Quietly, we agreed the view “was just like watching Nature on t.v.” Once home again, I looked up Thoreau’s description of the fox he chased through the Concord snow and recognized the same animal we spied in Columbia—“He ran as though there was no bone in his back,” and “he took no step which as not beautiful.” In 160 years, the fox hasn’t changed. But we have.

Leopold's Colors: Evanescent and Durable

2007-06-06T10:21:00.001-07:00

When Aldo Leopold had his druthers, June found him fly fishing. On the Alder Fork of the Wisconsin River, he might don chest waders and wait for hours in a trout-cold stream, or climb the bank, bushwack “neck deep in jewelweed and nettles,” then re-immerse in a deeper, quieter pool, all for a chance to set hard on a great fish.

Yet as anyone who has read A Sand County Almanac knows, Leopold wasn’t just fishing for trout. An avid hunter, birdwatcher, hiker, and angler since childhood, he believed in outdoor experience as a universal human need, a vital means not just of knowing the natural world but of appreciating it. No essay expresses this better than “The Green Pasture.”

Leopold begins:

Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes.
I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever from human view.

Because Leopold knew the Wisconsin so well, he noticed when the river dipped its brush in silt and painted it on a sandbar. He watched colors begin to appear—goldfinches bathing in blue pools, “great white fleets” of clouds overhead, and, especially, the verdant rush, Eleocharis. Just three weeks later, Leopold writes,

The artist has now laid his colors, and sprayed them with dew. The Eleocharis sod, greener than ever, is now spangled with the blue mimulus, pink dragon-head, and the milk-white blooms of Sagitarria. Here and there a cardinal flower thrusts a red spear skyward. . . .And if you have come quietly and humbly, as you should to any spot that can be beautiful only once, you may surprise a fox-red deer, standing knee-high in the garden of his delight.

Vacillations in the river’s course and level soon erase the painting except from Leopold’s memory. And while he hopes to witness it again, the scene’s ephemeral nature is part of its value to him. Any tourist, he observed, could spot the timeless grandeur of a scenic overlook—yet few step out of the car longer than it takes to snap a few photos. Joni Kinsey in a critical essay on Leopold’s “Land Esthetics,” says, “He even suggests that humble sites are more rewarding than the conventionally beautiful, if only because they require more effort to see fully.”

In June, and in every month, Leopold urged us to venture outside again and again, to seek out the colors, shapes, and textures in nearby nature that bind us to our own land and help develop our aesthetic perception of nature. He didn’t expect everyone to shiver in a trout stream or thrash through nettles, but rather to find a nearby green pasture, where beauty builds with time and repeated visits, beyond the pretty “to values as yet uncaptured by language.” Often, a half-wild patch in your own back forty, unreachable by car, can do more to enhance perception than a motor trek to a distant wilderness. Leopold closes his Almanac with the words, “Recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.”

Many thanks to Ophis for the lovely shot of Canada geese breakfasting on their own green pasture of Eleocharis.

Joni Kinsey's essay, "Land Esthetics" can be found in The Essential Aldo Leopold: Quotations and Commentaries, Curt Meine and Richard Knight, eds. University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.

June Carnival Round Up

2007-06-05T16:43:00.001-07:00

The County Fair won’t open ‘til August, but it still feels like carnival weather today. What could be more fun than eating popcorn, fudge, and candy apples before hopping on a stomach churning roller coaster? Reading lots of great blog posts on books, nature, and nature books, that’s what. So step right up and try your luck with some of the carnivals posted below.

The Summer Vacation edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors is up at Alone on a Limb. This Carnival’s midway offers links to a flashy array of environmental education posts, including several on homeschooling outdoors. By Sun and Candlelight, for example, urges parents to get kids excited about nature study by focusing on wildlife mysteries. Pack a detective kit, complete with field guides, and start looking for clues. Some of the guides you need are reviewed at 10,000 Birds, notably a summer necessity, the Audubon Field Guide to Butterflies. Alone on a Limb also links to photo journal entries of a trip to China by Miss Rumphius Effect, a teacher who writes about children’s literature. Her sidebar won me over to this blog, where you find a button for Library Thing, an online book cataloging service that lists 749 titles for Miss R. I'll be checking that list for good titles in the future.

More exhibits of green writing are on display at the Carnival of the Green, via Groxie. A weekly carnival meta-organized by Treehugger, this edition Carnival of the Green leans toward the practical. Any writers out there will find useful advice for hard core paper recycling over at Confessions of a Closet Environmentalist.
Lighter Footstep tells how to shrink your carbon footprint and expand your wallet with “10 Cheap Ways to Cool-Off Your Refrigerator Bills.” And Veggie Revolution expresses reservations about the marketability of biofuel cars in
Alternative Fuel Vehicles will be Tough Sell.

With all of the above excitement, I haven’t had a chance yet to make my way through three other favorite carnivals. As a faithful Maryland Blog Alliance member, I call your attention to the latest MD Carnivaled at Talk-Lab. 10,000 Birds is hosting the always-surprising Carnival of the Spineless. And I just learned about the Festival of Trees. Pinesabovesnow likes the idea of a tree carnival so much, I’ve added a lovely button on the sidebar so you can go straight to it any time. As my kids would argue, there’s always time for one more carnival ride before going home to bed.

Bats in Books Part II

2007-06-02T09:06:00.000-07:00

How can we help kids avoid chiroptophobia—fear of bats—and grow to appreciate the diverse and talented members of the order, Chiroptera? Cyd from Field Marking comments in Bats and Books Part I that her family plays tennis (of a sort) with bats on balmy evenings. We haven’t tried that yet; my son has taken a more artsy craftsy approach. Eli has built a bat box, sculpted bats out of clay, and been a bat on Halloween. And not just any bat, but a scorpion-devouring pallid bat from the desert southwest. Clearly, creepiness isn’t always a negative in kid-bat relations.

Maybe the plethora of bat children’s books is beginning to assuage old prejudices and fears. Bats at the Beach, a fanciful, rhyming picture book hit the New York Times best seller list last summer. Furry, mouse-faced bats rendezvous on a moonlit shore to fly kites, sing by the campfire, and toast bug-mallows. Much of the humor relies on un-batlike behavior (e.g., bats applying moon-tan lotion), but art which School Library Journal calls “dark yet luminous” introduces young readers to a world after dark that’s festive, not frightening. Author Brian Lies’ website goes further, with bat facts, activities, and a teacher’s guide to music, science, writing, and other enrichments to the text. The site also invites kids to concoct pseudo-bat treats from marshmallows, gummy worms, pretzels, licorice, chow mein noodles, etc., and post photos of their creations in the Bugmallow Hall of Fame.

Here are a few more favorite bat picture books:
Barbara Bash’s Shadows of the Night follows the life cycle of little brown bats from spring births in an attic maternity colony to six months huddling in a hibernation cave.
Betsy Maestro’s Bats: Night Flyers is a fast-paced overview of bat
distribution, anatomy, behavior, and ecology, described in jargon-free but scientifically accurate prose.
Bats: Outside and Inside is part of Sandra Markle’s successful series that looks closely at animal behaviors and the anatomy that makes them possible. Photo illustrations range from a vampire bat lapping up chicken blood to a mom-baby fruit bat pair that is awwww-inspiring.
Bats! Strange and Wonderful is by prolific kids’ nature writer Laurence Pringle. While presenting a crash course in bat biology and behavior, Pringle dispels myths and emphasizes the ecological values of bats to underscore his urgent message of bat conservation.

Titles for older kids are even more varied. For artsy kids like Eli, there’s The Bat-Poet, by Randall Jarrell. It’s a wise fable about a little brown bat who sees the world differently than his friends and writes poems to share his vision. My middle schooler loves another fantasy novel, Silverwing (Kenneth Oppel), in which the questing hero in a talking animal universe is a runty bat. Reality-book fans might prefer Batman: Exploring the World of Bats. That's Laurence Pringle’s young adult biography of Merlin Tuttle: mammologist, photographer, and revered bat advocate who founded Bat Conservation International. Kids and adults can sign up at the BCI website for a free monthly newsletter, get plans for a bat house, access outstanding photos by Merlin Tuttle himself, register to visit a Mexican free-tail maternity colony near BCI's Texas headquarters, and buy books, dvds, bat t-shirts, and more.

Soon, I hope, BCI’s online store will be carrying my own contribution to bat literature. It's the aptly titled upper-elementary-level Bats, just published by NorthWord Books in May. If you squint at the cover image, you’ll see that author credit goes to “Julia Vogel,” a pseudonym I use so far mostly for titles in NorthWord's Our Wild World series. Research for Bats last year led me to read all of the books mentioned above and many more, as well as interview bat researchers and rehabilitators, track down local bat-watching venues, and, especially, long for a trip to Bracken Cave, home to the world's largest bat colony. I'm still watching, yearning, and reading, all part of my personal journey toward chiroptophilia.

Bats in Books Part I

2007-05-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day weekend is the start of summer picnic season, and at my house at least, bat watching. What could be more relaxing after a late dinner on the deck than gazing at bats overhead, snatching bugs so that we can lounge outside a little longer?

Tonight’s rain is grounding (or tree-ing) our little brown bats, but I’m still thinking about them. It’s Rachel Carson’s 100th birthday, and I’m celebrating by writing about an insect deterrent more powerful than DDT. Researchers have calculated that bats from one cave in central Texas gobble 200 tons of insects on a summer night. Merlin Tuttle, the patron saint of bat conservation, emphasizes the pest-control value of bats to combat prejudices that lead to poisoning, shooting, and even dynamiting bats in their roosting caves. Yet fear of bats still often trumps recognition of their economic value, and killings and habitat destruction persist. Understanding that attitude change is key to bats’ survival, Tuttle founded Bat Conservation International in 1982. That makes this year BCI’s silver anniversary as well as Carson's Centennial.

I wish I knew of an action adventure tale, perhaps something like Sy Montgomery’s Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest, for readers interested in bats. Despite an intense period of bat study last spring, I haven’t found any bat-centered novels, either. There are so many children’s books about bats that I’m planning a separate post about them. Here, I’ll just recommend three nonfiction works for adults that I've found quite useful:

Walker’s Bats of the World, by Ronald Nowak (1994). It’s the most comprehensive guide to the world’s 1000+ bat species, addressing taxonomy, distribution, behavior, and ecology. It features an extensive bibliography and black-and-white photos.

America’s Neighborhood Bats, by Merlin Tuttle (revised 2005). Tuttle’s spectacular photos quickly convey the diversity and grace of his subjects. Part ID key, part how-to (for tasks ranging from evicting bats from your attic and to building bat boxes for your yard), this brief book dispels myths and urges a fact-based change in public attitudes as essential for long-term conservation.

Beginner’s Guide to Bats, by Kim Williams and Rob Mies (2002). Williams and Mies are co-founders of another major bat protection group, the Organization for Bat Conservation. They focus on 45 North American species, providing range maps, habitat preferences, and typical behaviors to help you find and identify neighborhood species. I especially appreciate the state lists that narrow down the possibilities to a manageable few.

If the rain blows over, we’ll be outside tomorrow night, munching chips and checking the sky for bats. Someday, we hope a small colony will shelter inside the box my son built as a homeschool project. Eight-year-old Eli could symbolize the success of Bat Conservation International, which Tuttle says in Neighborhood Bats “was founded in the hope that when the shrouds of myth and superstition are stripped away, bats will be appreciated as fascinating and likeable animals.” Rachel Carson certainly liked them as long ago as 1944, when she published one of the first popular treatments of bat echolocation in Collier’s magazine, “The Bat Knew It First.” But Carson would also agree with Tuttle’s sober assertion, “Even more important, we need bats whether we like them or not; their loss poses serious, potentially irreversible consequences to the environment that we all must share.”

A Sense of Wonder--Live!

2007-05-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

Environmental plays seem to be few. Shakespeare, though he wrote “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin”, employs natural forces primarily as omens (e.g., Julius Caesar), metaphors (The Tempest), or plot devices (Twelfth Night). When I saw The Cherry Orchard, my college professor expected us to attend to themes of class struggle and social injustice, though I was more struck by the tragedy of the razed trees than by the dissipation of an aristocratic family. More recently I read in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya: “Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he’s been given. But up to now he hasn’t been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life’s become extinct, the climate’s ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.” Chekhov’s impassioned lines on forests’ roles in ameliorating climate and ennobling human beings are worth a trip to the library or a download from Project Gutenberg. But I doubt that you’ll find many scripts at either place with environmental conservation as a primal force in the drama.

So you can imagine my delight in surviving a waiting list to garner tickets to a May 24 performance of a one-woman play about Rachel Carson. Written and presented by Kaiulani Lee, “A Sense of Wonder” has toured the U.S. and Canada for 15 years, with yesterday’s performance held at the National Wildlife Visitor Center in Laurel, Maryland. Before stepping into character, Lee guided the audience to visualize the sparsely-furnished stage as Carson’s Maine cottage, overlooking the tidepools of Sheepscot Bay where her great-nephew, Roger, explored unseen. Lee magically became Carson in the first moments, reading from a letter well-known to Carson admirers, about her joy in observing monarch butterflies despite her approaching death. Throughout the play, Lee seamlessly integrates her narrative with Carson’s public and private writings. I noticed passages from Silent Spring, The Sense of Wonder, a National Book Award acceptance speech, and letters to Dorothy Freeman (published in Always, Rachel), plus familiar lines that I couldn’t place. To someone who has read and re-read Carson’s words for years, it was like hearing the lyrics of a beloved hymn set to music at last.

But I must add that not everyone responded so warmly. My extra ticket went to Nathan at Talk-lab. While he’s concerned about the environment and doesn’t ask “Rachel who?” when Carson comes up in a conversation, he’s a recent college grad who never read Silent Spring, much less Carson’s jacket notes for a Debussy recording as have I, and I suspect, other enraptured audience members. To him, the play felt dispiriting. By setting it during Carson’s final illness, says Nathan, and reflecting so often on human destructiveness and natural losses, Lee left him discouraged about our environment and, just as important, about the play’s ability to recruit new environmentalists. “If you didn’t love Carson already,” said Nathan, “you wouldn’t love her afterward.”

Nathan’s comments made me reflect on Kaiulani Lee’s remark during the post-play Q & A that Carson was a rare example of an artist who acted on her beliefs, that is, a “dreamer who does.” So much environmental news these days is grim, even frightening. And we certainly don’t want to ignore or suppress evidence of even the most frightening trends (unlike some administrations you might know). But books, poetry, plays, and other art forms have a different function. Lee’s “A Sense of Wonder” inspires many of us already in the Carson choir to keep singing. But we also need works of art that inspire young dreamers like Nathan to join us and not to despair. I fear Nathan’s generation, which came of age post-9/11, are particularly vulnerable. I’m going to be on the lookout for plays, poems, & novels that can help fuel the energies of young idealists. Please let us know what works you’ve come across—or are creating—and if you have ideas about how to reach out with nature books and other art forms to young adults especially. After all, the sense of wonder shouldn’t expire when you hit 21.

One other Carson-related note. John at DC Birding Blog notes that Senator Ben Cardin’s (D-MD) plan to introduce a bill commemorating Carson’s 100th birthday may be blocked. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) bases his opposition on false claims that a Silent Spring-induced banning of DDT has caused millions of deaths from malaria. John deftly counters Coburn’s assertions with facts about the international legal status of DDT and about its effectiveness and long-term health consequences. Though I doubt that Senator Coburn, a physician who should know better, will let facts get in the way of his rhetoric, it’s good to know where to find a succinct rebuttal to this common attack on Carson’s legacy.

Rachel Carson's Silver Spring

2007-05-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

Eco-pilgrims from near and far made their way on Saturday to a rare Open House at Rachel Carson’s home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Carson lived in several houses in the DC area while working as an editor for the Fish and Wildlife Service, but this house is special. In that suburban rancher, she wrote Silent Spring. When she felt well enough she typed drafts in a paneled study, illuminated with natural light from broad windows. But when cancer confined her to bed, her assistant read the manuscript aloud so that Carson could edit though too ill to write.

The Open House was part of many centenary celebrations for Carson, born in Springdale, Pennsylvania in 1907. Visitors must have come for many reasons, perhaps to hear speakers such as Mark Hamilton Lytle, author of a new volume on Carson’s life and impact, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, or Mitch Baker, a horticulturist who gave advice on gardening without artificial chemicals. Judging by the throngs around the snack trays, some people came for the free bruchetta. But others mostly wandered around the yard, stood on her front porch, and looked out her windows. My daughter and I stepped into her study, now crammed with papers, computers, and other detris of the Rachel Carson Council, a non-profit which promotes alternatives to chemical pesticides. I don’t know how she got anything done besides watching birds in her tangled backyard, but we tried to imagine where she sat, which books she stacked around her, how often she escaped to the kitchen or played with the cats instead of writing. While such musings cannot unlock the mystery of her achievement, it helped me feel closer to it and to the struggle that made it possible.
Except in letters, Carson recorded little about her personal life. To get a feeling for her experiences at house, I turned to Linda Lear’s definitive biography, Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. Lear says that Carson house-hunted for months in 1957 before choosing a wooded corner lot to build a contemporary brick ranch “with large picture windows and lots of light.” Though focusing on Carson’s research and writing, Lear offers glimpses into her daily life: relations with friends and colleagues, searches for domestic help, forays into community activism, Christmas shopping for her grandnephew, and too many illnesses. Despite poor health and heavy workload, Carson welcomed houseguests, telling one, “We can promise you the song of mockingbirds and cardinals, and by mid-March we might even manage the beginning of our frog chorus.” I felt especially close to Carson, having just looked up through the branches of her trees, when I re-read a passage from a letter Lear quotes about the night Rachel’s mother died, “. . . occasionally I slipped away into the dark living room, to look out of the picture window at the trees and sky. Orion stood in all his glory just above the horizon of our woods, and several other stars blazed more highly than I can remember ever seeing them.” Even in the darkest moments of her life, Carson found comfort in nature.

My daughter and I also joined Saturday’s Carson celebrations at the National Wildlife Visitor Center. There, festivities included an electric tram ride through the refuge past painted turtles, tree swallows, a great blue heron, beaver lodges, wood ducks and acres of spring blooming woods. Indoors, kids dissected owl pellets and listened to storytellers, but Sarah was riveted by a captive bald eagle, symbolic of Carson’s role in the ban on DDT use that allowed populations of raptors to recover from mid-20th century lows. We missed most of the speeches, by such notables as Senator Sarbanes and Governor O’Malley. But we heard the last minutes of a talk by Jim Fowler, long-time television naturalist of Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom fame. Fowler charmed the audience with low key recountings of decades of outdoor adventures and, especially, with an admission that while lions and anacondas cause him no distress, he fears a little spider that scuttles around caves in the Philippines.
Fowler spoke in the Visitor Center’s Aldo Leopold Auditorium, and his firm message but folksy delivery reminded me more of Leopold than the poetic Carson. In “The Ecological Conscience,” Leopold laments the slow pace of conservation progress in the face of a century of effort. He says, “The usual answer to this dilemma is ‘more conservation education.’ No one will debate this, but is it certain that only the volumeof education needs stepping up? Is something lacking in content as well?” As Fowler puts it, “We need to distinguish between education and information. It’s one of the reasons we’re in the fix we’re in. ” When you sit on a hot stove, he says, you get information up your backside that tells you to get off. But when you get an education, you don’t get on the stove in the first place. To give children that education, we need to get children outside, experiencing and appreciating wildlife and wild places that will vanish without all of our active concern.

Carson, of course, would have agreed with Fowler and Leopold, perhaps adding, “If facts are the seeds that produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.” I think that celebrations like Carson’s centenary are part of how we help children make that emotional connection. I’m so glad that Sarah came with me on Saturday, and I’m planning to take her and her siblings outdoors again on May 27, Carson’s actual birthday. We’ll celebrate Carson’s birthday again, not at her house, but in the natural world where she felt most at home.

Books by the Bay

2007-05-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

For Mom’s Day, my family treated me to a visit to the Chesapeake Bay. We drove about two hours to Solomons Island, a former oystering town on Maryland’s western shore. Besides our picnic of Spanish cheese and Portugese bread, highlights included a climb up into the Drum Point lighthouse and poking around the exhibits of working boats at the Calvert Marine Museum. Maybe it’s my land-locked Midwestern youth, but just the names of Bay watercraft (crabbing skiff, drake-tail fishing launch, oyster buyboat) make me long to get out on the water. It seems to affect my daughter the same way.

I can’t get close even to dry-docked crab harvesting paraphernalia without thinking of the classic book, Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay, by William Warner. As fine a naturalist as a writer, Warner weaves together natural history of blue crabs and cultural history of the harvesters who depend on them. When the book appeared in 1976, a Time Magazine reviewer called it “a piece of popular oceanography worthy of shelf space alongside Rachel Carson’s classic Edge of the Sea and Henry Beston’s Outermost House.” Warner won the 1977 Pulitzer for Beautiful Swimmers, and, also impressive, taught me how to tell a jimmie (male) from a sook (female) blue crab before I’d ever seen the Chesapeake Bay.

Beautiful Swimmers always makes me think of the person who recommended it to me: Dr. Joe Miller, long-time librarian at Yale’s Forestry School library. One of my favorite ways to relax in grad school was chatting with Dr. Miller about his latest acquisitions for the school's already-astonishing collection . When Dr. Miller heard I was moving to Maryland, he immediately thought of a book that would help me feel connected to nature and people in my new place. Following his example, I often try to give place-based literature when friends head to parts unknown. I can usually at least present a guide to nearby hiking trails or a novel set in the region's landscape, but I rarely find as intimate a portrait as Warner’s of the Bay. Years later, my relationship with the Bay is still enriched by Dr. Miller’s exceptional choice, just as my love of the book strengthens my admiration for my kind, late professor.

Books & Blog Carnivals

2007-05-11T05:22:00.000-07:00

Should PinesAboveSnow host a nature book blog carnival? My blogging mentor says yes, having just hosted his first, a far-ranging gathering of posts on political conflicts large and small over at Talk-Lab. Now Mike over at 10,000 Birds has posted Top Five Ways Blog Carnivals Make Blogging Better. Carnivals, says Mike, increase traffic and links to your site but also nurture more personal connections and even lead to the development of community. As he puts it, “Many successful blog carnivals provide the nucleus for genuine online communities that often translate to gratifying offline networks.” Since creating an on- & off-line community of nature book aficionados & activists is one of my goals of PinesAboveSnow, maybe a carnival would be a good idea.

I’d be delighted to hear what others think about the possibilities of a nature book carnival. At the moment, I’ll just keep my eyes open as I click around the blogsophere (especially at existing carnivals) for good book-related writing out there. Today, I found via Tangled Bank a review of Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action by J. Matthew Sleeth. Posted by Jeremy at Voltage Gate, the review turns a skeptical eye on the recent flurry of evangelical conservatives converting to the environmental cause. While Jeremy applauds the book’s anti-materialist ethical stance, he cringes at its anti-science undercurrents. He writes, “Without good science, however, we have no basis for making any decisions regarding the environment, moral or not.” Given the growing numbers of fundamentalist churches espousing green-er views, and the deepening need to work with everyone toward environmental solutions, this is an especially welcome analysis. Also welcome will be the series of reviews of popular conservation and ecology books being promised by Voltage Gate. I’ll keep checking in for ‘em.

And I would be remiss not to mention a carnival with a post from PAS, Learning in the Great Outdoors. You’ll also find there posts on how to do some nature writing of your own, via journaling, and environmental book recommendations from an experienced educator, plus a link to yet another blog carnival, Festival of Trees. With so much cool stuff out there, it’s no wonder I need your help to find good book reviews and other writing about writing out there. Thanks!

No (Book) Impact Man

2007-05-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

Who wouldn't want to read almost daily about "A guilty liberal [who] finally snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, becomes a bicycle nut, turns off his power, composts his poop and, while living in New York City, generally turns into a tree-hugging lunatic"? That irresistible character is No Impact Man, author of one of my very favorite blogs. Since his posts started arriving in my inbox a month ago, NIM has chronicled adventures such as saving electricity by stomping his laundry like grapes in the tub and waxed philosophic about the pollution-induced death of a minke whale in New York harbor. Though I sometimes can't even imagine following his example (we have wayward ants, but no composting worms, in our kitchen), he always gives me something to ponder and often a laugh or two.

You can imagine my suspense upon reading today's headline--"Worse Than Giving up Toilet Paper." What could be worse? NIM is starting a new phase of his energy-efficient living experiment, which he calls the "sustainable consumption stage." A writer and book glutton of long standing, NIM began seeing his bulging shelves as antithetical to his sustainability goals. Yet the prospect of parting with objects of such varied and rich values left him feeling panicked. Will NIM get rid of some or all of his treasured books? Should others seeking to save the planet follow suit? And what should be done with books demeaned unworthy of one's own shelves? I won't spoil his story by telling you. But I'd love to hear what you think about his decision and about the comments on that thread of NIM's discussion. Like NIM, I think that what to do about buying, keeping, and purging accumulated books are vital questions in determining how books can and could be used to slow climate change and generally save the earth.

Urban Campus--People & Nature in Place

2007-05-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Writing is keeping me mostly indoors this weekend. I’m hurrying to catch up on a couple of projects, and this morning I attended a children’s book writers’ brunch. Luckily, the latter event was held at McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland. Founded in 1867, it’s a small, liberal arts college perched on a hill overlooking rural (but rapidly suburbanizing) countryside. My college-hunting elder daughter might say the architecture is “too red brick-y,” but the pastoral landscaping was a welcome respite from the classroom today. My relief outdoors reminded me of Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted’s belief in the restorative power of natural scenery. As he put it, “The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration of the whole system.”

Which brings me to a recent post by my blogging mentor over at Talk-Lab. The Speeker argues that cars, among their many detriments, divide our communities, and it’s time to redesign cities to look and function more like car-free college campuses. McDaniel’s grounds exemplify that ideal. We left our cars behind and climbed uphill to a separate space, with lawns for Frisbee or picnics, shaded benches for chatting, and nooks for admiring sculpture or views of the Catoctin Mountains. Just one road would have disrupted the paradoxically tranquilizing and enlivening atmosphere that students, faculty, and visitors find so valuable to learning and enjoying a day.

Which brings me to a recent book by my grad school advisor, Stephen R. Kellert: Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection(Island Press, 2005). A sociologist, Kellert goes beyond the laudable efforts of other authors who advocate “green” building technologies and materials to focus on the need to design buildings, neighborhoods, and cities that bring humans into contact with nature. Kellert accepts E.O. Wilson’s contention that humans have an evolutionary need for natural experiences, and here he presents research and theory elucidating how our lives are diminished by a built environment that ignores these needs. His aim is to ensure that good ideas, such as The Speeker’s, to improve our cities, go further through what he calls “restorative environmental design.” In Kellert's view, redesign is not an aesthetic or technological issue but a fundamental need for individual health and social function. And reading Kellert’s visionary work, I’m reminded that Aldo Leopold attended high school on a campus designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Coincidence?

Outdoor Online Book Clubs

2007-05-02T05:13:00.000-07:00

Frustrating! Just when it’s almost impossible to stay inside hooked to the internet, I’m signing on for another online book club. This one’s at Crunchy Chicken and will be discussing Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A History of Four Meals. Published in spring, 2006 to much excitement, Omnivore’s Dilemma takes an uncommonly close look at that most prosaic question, “What shall we have for dinner?” Though I haven’t read Pollan’s latest book, The Washington Post says of him, “His cause is just, his thinking is clear, and his writing is compelling.” Crunchy Chicken has already posted questions to stimulate lively discussion, and I hope to join you over there to exchanges views on what we should eat and where it should come from.

Since March, I’ve also been immersed in an online book discussion focusing on Rachel Carson’s works. That group got started in March, so you’ll have to check the book club archives to read our chats about Silent Spring. But now we’re reading a brand new book of essays, Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists, and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson about Carson’s impact, 45 years after her landmark book appeared. That book I have read, but I don’t want to prejudice your approach to it with a rave review here. Instead, I’ll rave about the group, especially as a place to interact with expert moderators, notably Linda Lear, Carson’s esteemed biographer, and Freeman House, author of one of the most disturbing but eloquent essays in Courage for the Earth. Looking closely at Carson’s work with the help of these guides and companions for two months has led me to a deeper appreciation of her as a scientist, activist, writer, and emblem of hope. If any fellow RC Book Clubbers are reading this, thanks!

Two other online nature book opportunities are worth mentioning. Sierra Magazine has an online book and film club, Let’s Talk. All I know so far is that the May/June selection is a film about environmental justice issues related to the coffee trade, called Black Gold. And novelist & essayist Barbara Kingsolver was on a radio talk show today to publicize her new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about her family’s experiment in eating locally. I only heard snatches of the conversation, but one cool twist that I haven’t heard from other “locavores” is that the Kingsolver clan is raising heirloom poultry as part of their culinary adventures. If you’d like to tune into the show, however belatedly, visit the WAMU radio archives. Maybe you can download it to your iPod and listen outdoors.

Native Plants as Necessities

2007-04-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

I read a book not worth blogging about this weekend, so that freed me to talk about some outdoor, book-free activities—which of course led to more books and thinking about books. Two of my kids and I spent Saturday morning volunteering at a native plant sale held by the Audubon Society of Central Maryland. The annual event supports two local wildlife sanctuaries and environmental education projects (including a schoolyard wildlife habitat grant program that I coordinate), but it’s worthwhile for its own sake as a way to encourage native plant and wildlife habitat gardening. Every year, the offerings grow more diverse, including ferns, grasses, groundcovers, perennials and woody plants, each with indisputable native provenance. We arrived before the crowds, and I altruistically resisted buying the ferns and chokeberries that I coveted, letting the customers get first crack at the goodies. By the time we finished hauling purchases to a few dozen cars, it was too late. But that’s ok; the plants are out there adding biodiversity to central Maryland, even if they’re not in my yard.

It occurred to me that my bioblitz site would have benefited if I’d bought at least some bunchberry to add surreptitiously to the near-monoculture of mown grass at my library. While I picked a lawn-like spot deliberately to see what grows & thrives in that common setting, it’s still been depressing to find so little. It makes me think that a new form of monkey-wrenching could be planting wild columbines to replace New Guinea impatiens and similar acts of sedition (seed-ition?). To learn about the damage we’ve wrought by the simple act of yard-construction, read Sara Stein’s Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards. Stein argues that our tidy lawns (and library grounds) are wiping out vast swathes of wildlife habitat, and that each of us has a responsibility to restore at least the patch around our home. Her efforts to transform six acres of Pound Ridge, New York are chronicled conceptually in Noah’s Garden and more practically in Planting Noah’s Garden: Further Adventures in Backyard Ecology. Stein also presents a corollary to her argument that native gardens are good for wildlife--that gardens and outdoor experiences are vital for children--in one of my favorite books Noah’s Children: Restoring the Ecology of Childhood. If that’s not enough gardening books for you, look for recommendations of books appropriate for each region of the U.S. at Plant Native. And if you'd like to witness how a natural landscaper-turned blogger transforms a misbegotten yard into a woodland oasis, visit Wild Flora's Wild Garden.

Sunday, my family managed a hike along the Little Patuxent River and also a visit to an Open House of Chesapeake Climate Action Network. At least once a year, Climate Action invites the public into its founder’s Takoma Park, Maryland home to see how much one family can do to reduce its carbon footprint. We admired a corn-powered stove, rain barrels, and high efficiency appliances, then chatted with a solar water heater installer and a biodiesel car owner. The kids gobbled solar oven-baked cookies, but it was the minescule electric bills that got my husband drooling. Equally attractive, there’s almost no lawn to mow, and blooms of field chickweed attracted a butterfly that would find no reason to stop by my blitz site. The buzz of human visitors, excited by all the possibilities around them, made me think that Sara Stein could extend her argument still further. People of all ages need gardens, outdoor experiences, and new possibilities for improving their environment to thrive. The crowds at the Audubon sale and the Open House were shopping for ideas, for hope.

Bioblitz & Books

2007-04-27T18:38:00.000-07:00

I’d much rather be looking off my deck into the dogwood-blooming woods, but here are a few quick BioBlitz-related items. First, I’m happy to announce the first appearance of PinesAboveSnow in the Carnival of the Green, hosted this week at The Evangelical Ecologist. This week’s Carnival features a variety of what the host calls “eco-bloggy goodness” (e.g., wildlife smuggling, National Gardening Week, and ethical retailing ). The most blitz-friendly is a list of “ten not-so-inconsequential things” we can do to save the earth from The Wild Green Yonder, which urges green-wanna-bes to get to know their local ecosystem and native species. What better way than bioblitzing?

In the “ask and ye shall be given” department, no sooner had I finished whining about my lack of an ant guide for non-myrmecologists than a fine review of an excellent new insect guide appeared at
10,000 Birds. Mike puts the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America to the test, checking if it could decipher the identity of a mystery moth. Despite 11,000 possibilities, the Kaufman guide succeeded in leading Mike to the correct id down to the species level. Though I haven’t seen the guide yet, I’m sold from 10,000 Birder’s assessment of it as “ ideal for casual or modestly skilled insect oglers like myself.” I hope it works for those of us even less than casually skilled.

The Insect Guide is one in a series of field guides by the astonishing naturalist Kenn Kaufman. Always innovative, Kaufman solves the paintings-versus-photos dilemma by illustrating each with digitally enhanced photographs. Yet my favorite Kaufman book has no photos at all--Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession that Got a Little Out of Hand. Kaufman’s memoir traces his drive to know birds back to early childhood, fueled by books, supported by parents, and enlivened by countless hours outdoors. At 16, Kaufman dropped out of high school to hitchhike across North America pursuing a dream to count more birds in a year than anyone else. The stories of his adventures not only reveal the origins of his expertise and commitment to birds and conservation but also the 1970s evolution of birding as a national sport and bird protection as a foundation of modern environmentalism.

For a nature book advocate like me, Kingbird Highway has special meaning. Kaufman recognizes the impacts of books from his earliest years, when he checked out library copies of Roger Tory Peterson’s guides over and over. In his teens, Peterson and Fisher’s tale of their North American birding adventure, Wild America became his bible. As Kaufman puts it, “That book became my daily passport to the wilderness.” While I agree that hand-on field experience, including activities such as BioBlitzing, lead many to commitments and even careers in nature protection, books are often equally vital forces. What better testimony to the value of books to shaping environmentalists than Kaufman’s own prolific publishing record? Who knows when a budding myrmecologist will pick up Kaufman’s insect guide and head off on a quest of his own?