Soaring with David Gessner

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

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

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

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.